reviving Fedora Legacy

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 11:08 AM, Patrice Dumas <pertusus at free.fr> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 08:00:47PM +0300, Pekka Savola wrote:
>>
>> I was there.  During the last year or so (when the updates were still
>> being cranked out regularly), there were about 2 or 3 folks who would
>> review proposed updates or try to put any significant work in it.
>
> Now there won't be a strict need for reviewers. After some time in
> bodhi things will get pushed, as it is the case in releases. Hopefully
> people will review the updates. As I said repeatedly, we won't ask more
> QA than what is in fedora release, and therefore not the amount that was
> in legacy.
>

I think its this which is causing people to react in fear to the
proposal. The large amount of uncertainty ( how long, what to do with
bad vulnerabilities not getting fixed, no knowledge of the quality of
the package, etc) is causing doubt. And this is the sort of FUD that
comes about because something is too amorphous and isn't getting
fleshed out.

1) Dealing with the fear of hurting the Fedora brand. Come up with a
new brand for this: Long Term Blue Shoes (or something).
2) Dealing with the various uncertainties:
  A. Get a list of people dedicated to this
  B. Put out how long you are extending it:  1 extra year.
  C. How to vet package quality/deal with bad trees.
  D. What stuff is staying 'static/slow-moving' and what gets whatever
is in the latest Fedora?
3) Dealing with the Doubt.
  A. Get the SIG organized
  B. Build a test project of supporting Fedora 9 for 6 extra months.
        This allows you time to get procedures, infrastructure, and
whatever else needed.
  C. Follow your plans
  D. Report how it worked.
  E. Fix what didn't work and repeat.

If you can do that you will have a working project that will show that
LTS is possible and a viable proposition that some place like
Wikipedia or Brazil would trust their computers on.

[And yes, you are going to need to deal with infrastructure. Disk
space, cpu cycles, memory and power is not 'cheap' as much as people
think it is. Extra build boxes will be needed, extra disk space to
store stuff, and extra cpu cycles as Fedora's current infrastructure
is built on the assumption that it only needs to deal with X releases
for Y time. Adding to X and Y means more equipment needed. It will
also mean that someone's on the team are going ot have to focus on the
infrastructure problems as that addition also increases the number of
people needed to watch builds, etc.



-- 
Stephen J Smoogen. -- BSD/GNU/Linux
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"