RFE: Retire Fedora Core 4 only _after_ FC6 has been released.

[Jeff Spaleta]

On 1/18/06, Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 at freenet.de> wrote:
>Pardon, but is Fedora under RH's dictatorship and has to take RH's
>decisions for granted? Or is Fedora a "community driven project" and
>decisions are subject to the community?

> There apparently is a strong end user demand for a change on release
> cycles.

Explain to me in very small words, how that "user demand" is not
satified by a "community driven" Legacy?  Why does the demand
translate into a requirement that RedHat maintainers be the ones
responsible for extended updates?  What problems with Legacy can not
be solved by adding Legacy into the default repository configurations
in FC5 and beyond?
If community were part of the Core maintainership process directly
wuthout increasing the available manhours, the issues would involve
exactly the same tradeoffs between developer burden and pace of
development.

Legacy is EXACTLY the mechanism by which community gains control of
the lifetime of updates.  Being a Core maintainer means being RedHat
personel. Deal with that reality and stop beating your chest
pointlessly about the constraints on participation that creates. Using
loaded language like dictatorship is extremely unhelpful. Legacy is
there to be used AND participated in as a contributor. Legacy is the
mechanism by which community can take responsibility to extend update
lifetimes beyond which RedHat is comfortable supporting.

Extras is the mechanism by which "community" can extend the depth of
software available for Fedora as "demanded" by users, which RedHat can
not maintain with available resources.
Extras was original not available as part of default configurations
and not it is.

Legacy is the mechanism by which "community" can extend the lifetime
of Core updates for Fedora as "demanded" by users, which RedHat can
not maintain with available resources.
Legacy is not available as part of default configurations but will be
soon so dicussion seems to indicate.

The parallels between the scope of the two "community driven" portions
of Fedora are very clear to me, I'm sorry you don't see the parallels
and I'm sorry you feel that RedHat must be the sole provider of
solutions to meet user demand in this "community driven" project.  I
see both Extras and Legacy as forward momentum in community gaining
incremental control over portions of the Fedora project.

And I'm more than hopeful that additional "demands" from the userbase
that can not be met by RedHat directly, could very well end up with
their own subprojects in the Fedora space in the future based on merit
and community interest to contribute.

-jef