Feature proposal: Extended Life Cycle Support

[Kevin Fenzi]

On Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:20:50 +0200
Jeroen van Meeuwen <kanarip at kanarip.com> wrote:

> 
> On Mon, 6 Jul 2009 10:57:34 -0600, Kevin Fenzi <kevin at scrye.com>
> wrote:
...snip...
> > - The issue I have with this plan (and the others very like it) is
> > that if you say "we will just do updates for the things we have
> > people willing to do updates" it means the entire end of life
> > distro is not covered and the likelyhood of an outstanding security
> > issue is quite high. There is a chicken and egg issue here where
> > unless there is enough coverage we shouldn't do it, but we can't
> > find out if there is enough coverage without doing it. Doing it in
> > such a way that it fails just gives everyone a bad name and
> > feeling, IMHO.
> > 
> 
> This "issue" depends on an "if", and is thus invalid. Maybe what you
> wanted to say/ask is along the lines of:
> 
> "Are you planning on only providing updates for the packages you have
> maintainers for?". In that case;
> 
> The question doesn't make any sense -given that the Feature page does
> not say "only a selection of packages". To put it in understandable
> English: We are not going to selectively supply updates for a limited
> number of packages, it's either all or nothing.

Great. I did read the page and didn't get that impression... 
The 

"Note that the following items may only apply to those that opt-in
on ELC support" 

confused me perhaps? 

> 6 months is our initial life cycle extension, as the page says.
> 
> I feel like everyone missed that.

ok. I guess I missed it too. 

> Who am I to set the extended life cycle when various people
> participate...? I'm not in control! Would the period of time to
> extend the life cycle with not be the first agenda item at a meeting
> of peers interested and/or participating? I made one suggestion to
> start out with, 6 months, put it on the Feature page and no-one reads
> it. Frankly those 6 months are not set in stone -it's just a proposal
> for the bunch of people interested and a guideline for others
> -including those deciding on whether this feature is in or out.
> Regrettably, some of these people feel like they *are* in control,
> rather then providing the governance they should. Different subject
> though.

ok. How about having a meeting and deciding that before trying to get
the proposal off the ground? 

> > - How many people are on board with this? Do you have guidelines for
> >   what will be updated or not? what packages? Version updates ok? Or
> >   only security fixes? 
> 
> This is a lot of questions for one bullet point. I lost you half-way
> through. What's the actual question here?

Sorry, Should have split it out. 

> Reading it on a question-mark per question-mark basis though, I think
> the feature page answers half of the half-posed questions. Anyway:
> 
> - a bunch

fas names? Approximate number? 
When this comes up there is always "A bunch of people" who want this,
but they never seem to want to sign up to do the work. Do you have such
people ready to go to work?

> - everything that needs to be updated to ensure prolonged security
> fixes' availability for any given Fedora release
> - only security fixes
> - no guarantee for stable API/ABI
> - no guarantee for binary compatibility throughout the life cycle

great. 

> > - Are there any Corporations that specifically asked for this? Would
> >   they be willing to provide any resources to the effort?
>
> The demand is there..., the offerings... not so much. Maybe there's a
> trick to get sponsoring for something that does not and may not exist
> yet because approval is pending, that I don't know about. Care to
> share?

Well, I would say gather your group, show that there is an active
group of people ready to work on this and you will have a lot less
skepticism. I personally look at the last time this came up. As far as
I know the group had 1 meeting, nothing ever happened.

I fear you are going to have to show some great setup and activity
before people are going to take this seriously. :( 

kevin
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