Fedora Feature Process Rolls On

[John Poelstra]

As we head into the third week since the release of Fedora 8 lots of great Fedora 9 features are already being proposed.  See http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/CategoryProposedFedora9

Starting at this week's FESCo meeting (Thursday, 2007-11-29) we will start the first round of feature reviews.  New features will be reviewed accepted until Feature Freeze (Tuesday, 2008-03-04).

FESCo met on 2007-11-15 to review the Feature process and make some minor changes
o The updated process is here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Policy
o All the discussion related to the changes is here: http://bpepple.fedorapeople.org/fesco/FESCo-2007-11-15.html
o Details of the changes made to the policy page from this discussion are below along with minor changes I added for clarity.

John


Changelog for http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Policy

o Substitute use of "Approved Feature" with "Accepted Feature"
  --As mclasen and f13 pointed out, we want to be in the business of 'accepting' new features into the release--not 'approving' them.
o Reduced Feature Page update requirements. The new requirements are:
 1. Updated at: 
    a. Alpha freeze
    b. Beta freeze
    c. every two weeks after beta freeze until ''final development'' freeze
 2. At final development freeze all feature pages should be at 100% completion, and if necessary, the feature page adjusted to reflect everything completed. 

o Clarified first qualification of a feature to read "consistent with the goals and policies of Fedora while within the laws governing the corporate entity sponsoring Fedora--Red Hat."

o Major vs. Major features--Enhancements
  --Discussion centered around tracking improvements in Fedora that are not captured in a feature page.  Instead of distinguishing between "major" and "minor" I have referred to undocumented features (not to be confused with bugs) as "enhancements" as suggested by someone in the meeting.
  --Enhancements will be added and reported in the Release Summary

o Clarified section on dropping features that are not complete
  --All features must be complete or in a testable state by "feature freeze"
  --Added guidance as to what "testable" means

o Mailing list usage
  --Reminders to developers about upcoming feature deadlines will be sent to fedora-devel-announce at redhat.com
  --Nag mail to developers with delinquent feature page updates will be emailed privately and shamed in a nice way on fedora-devel-list at redhat.com