FESCo meeting summary for 2009-06-26

[Josh Boyer]

On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 03:09:26PM +0200, Kevin Kofler wrote:
>Niels Haase wrote:
>> GNOME & KDE - official support from fedora (first class citizen)
>> XFCE - spin only (second class citizen)
>> LXDE - remix only (third class citizen)
>
>It's actually worse than that:
>GNOME - presented on the main download page (first class citizen)
>KDE - hidden behind a pointless extra link (second class citizen)
>XFCE - hidden on spins.fedoraproject.org (third class citizen)
>LXDE - hidden in some fedorapeople.org directory (fourth class citizen)

Your classification is somewhat flawed.  There is a lot more going on here
that it skims over.

The Desktop (or Gnome) and KDE spins are both primary spins hosted on the
master mirror and mirrored worldwide.  It is also very apparent on the main
download page.  If your only classification for being treated as a 'secondary
cititzen' is that there is a big button you have to click to get it, then I
think you're ignoring the effort that goes on behind the scenes elsewhere.

XFCE is an official spin, hosted on spins.fedoraproject.org with the rest of
the non-primary spins.  The LXDE spin is a fairly new spin.  I don't know
why it's not on spins.fedoraproject.org at the moment off the top of my head.

>What's next? A spin or remix for which you have to personally phone an
>ambassador for an inquiry and send a self-addressed stamped envelope to
>obtain it on one of those self-destructing CDs? ;-)

New spins don't start at the top.  They work through the Spins SIG, get
approved, and get hosted on spins.fp.org.  If there are massive downloads of
a particular spin that warrant it being mirrored on the master mirror, that is
possible.  I don't believe that has happened yet.

>This is starting to feel like a hierarchical and very undemocratic society.

There is a hierarchy.  I'm not sure why you think this is a new development.
We've always had some kind of hierarchy due to resource constraints in one form
or another.

Also, we are not a pure democracy.  The word most used to describe the project
is a meritocracy.  I find that slightly misleading as well, but it's closer
to an accurate description than a democracy would be.

josh