Fedora Spins and "where will this end?"

[Sebastian Dziallas]

Axel Thimm wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 10:31:20PM +0200, Sebastian Dziallas wrote:
>> [...] EDU Math spin was born.[...] Warren announced a K12LTSP spin
>> including his LTSP5-work [3], even if I don't know, how the current
>> state is there [4]. [...] The Astronomy SIG is preparing an
>> astronomy spin, too. [...] an OLPC (or more specific: a sugar-based)
>> spin more than soon [...] There might be still some place for an
>> Fedora Education Language Spin (hey, why don't why split this one
>> up? - Fedora Education Language English and Fedora Education
>> Language German spin are awaiting their maintainers!)...
>>
>> Sorry, this might somehow sound inappropriate, but that is just the way  
>> it is. Don't get me wrong - I'm even myself a member of the Spin SIG and  
>> I applaud everyone's efforts to make use of this innovative technology -  
>> and I'm not going to blame anyone for his/her work, but still: I think  
>> it's obvious that we're going to run into trouble that way...
>>
>> What do you think?
> 
> Personally as a user I'd prefer a less fragmented landscape,
> especially in the broader educational institutions like schools.
> 
> OTOH the spin technology gets more throughput and gets improved and
> astronomers and mathematician, LTSP and OLPC can be on their own
> independent release schedules.
> 
> So in the end you have a users vs developers problem. But IMHO I'd say
> let the spins do their start and then we can discuss about how to merge
> them. From a naive POV I would think that for example merging math and
> astro/phys spins should be just a collation of package lists and then
> maybe a space problem (e.g. no CD spin, straight-to-DVD).
> 
> But for some special technolgies like LTSP or OLPC which go beyond
> package collations [1] I see a clear need for their own scheduling
> until they become standard components.

Agreed! Later, we could consider those mergers... for now, you may be 
right that the best way would be to move on and to publish something 
first. I also agree concerning those "upstream" spins, but some kind of 
discussion cannot be bad, though?!

> My advice: Perhaps some spin people don't know that there are similar
> spinning efforts (like math and astro folks), and if they do get to
> know that they might join up forces. So having a spin coordinator that
> introduces the various groups to each other sounds like a good idea
> (and sounds like his first name should be Sebastian :). But other than
> that, if the groups prefer to spin alone, let them and they can still
> later discover each other.

Yeah! :) That's also what I wanted to point out: It was really not my 
intention to criticize the Spin SIG's policies or anything like this - I 
just wanted to bring this topic to the surface, since I think it should 
be mentioned.

I also believe that we need a kind of collaboration between those 
groups, which are all acting more or less in the same sector. That's how 
we can make sure, that we're not doing the same work two or three times. 
Maybe we should even have an IRC meeting concerning this topic soonish, 
so that we might get some opinions from the other SIGs and further 
interested people.

> [1] I'm not lowering math/astro/lang spins, but LTSP/OLPC are almost
>     upstream spins hot from development to testing users