lwn article on the death of Fedora Legacy

[Eric Rostetter]

Quoting Jesse Keating <jkeating at j2solutions.net>:

>> Without a functioning lifespan of over a year, Fedora is only practically
>> useful as an enthusiast, bleeding-edge distro. That's only supposed to be
>> _part_ of its mission.

As noted, I disagree with the above statement.

> Here is what I think can happen.
>
> A) Kill off RHL now.  Stop trying to do stuff there when we just don't have
> the man power or the volunteers.

But, then there is no trust in the project.  You said you would support
it until December, and people depend on that.  If you drop it now, then
where is the trust?  How can we be sure you will support FC5 for the length
of time you claim, rather than just dropping it?  Is 2 months really worth
losing trust over?

> B) Move to using Extras infrastructure for building packages.  They're ready
> for us for FC3 and FC4.

Then why haven't we started doing this yet?

> C) Move to Core style updates process.  Spin a possible update, toss it
> in -testing.  If nobody says boo after a period of time, release the darn
> thing.  If somebody finds it to be broken, fix it and resubmit.

I think this is fine for FC releases.  No problem...  It is in line with
the FC philosophy.

> Somewhere in there convince Luke Macken to do the work to get a Fedora Update
> tool available for use externally that does the boring stuff like generate
> the email with the checksums and with the subpackage list and all that boring
> stuff.  It could even handle moving the bug to 'MODIFIED' when it goes in
> updates-testing, and finally to CLOSED when it goes to release.  Then it
> would be easier to get people to contribute, as they'd just be doing things
> like checking out a package module, copying a patch from somewhere, commit,
> build.  That would help a lot.  Somebody more "senior" in the project would
> fiddle with the tool to prepare the update, and do the sign+push.

Is he the only one who can do this stuff?  Does he need help?

> I honestly think that doing these things is the only way that Legacy will
> survive.

I agree with all but dropping RHL 2 months early.

-- 
Eric Rostetter
The Department of Physics
The University of Texas at Austin

Go Longhorns!