Fedora Governance Proposal
As I hope most of you have heard by now the Fedora Board and many community members have been discussing changes to the Fedora governance model at its highest level. I think it is fair for me to say the primary motivation in doing this is to create a system of governance that includes a much more active leadership responsibility. While the proposal before the current Board today is still a work in progress, it is detailed enough now for the Board to decide whether to make the change. As you read the proposal understand that not every detail will be spelled out, those can be added over time. Try to focus on the bigger issues including the new composition of the body, the new decision making process, and the focus on helping drive the Fedora Project as a whole in a clear direction. The Board will be voting on this proposal over the next couple of days but I wanted to share the proposal as widely as possible before we finish. Please read the proposal here https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MatthewMiller/council-draft and feel free to provide feedback on the board-discuss list or contact any current Board member directly. There will be a public vote on the proposal here https://fedorahosted.org/board/ticket/13 over the next couple of days. Please do not add any comments in this ticket. Thanks, John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 7:36 AM, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: Lately, I've been thinking a lot about Fedora's Foundations: “Freedom, Friends, Features, First, particularly in relation to some very sticky questions about where certain things fit (such as third-party repositories, free and non-free web services, etc.) Sure but also understand that no matter what precise words are written down on a piece of paper at a given point in time they will suffer from sticky questions over time as the world we fit into changes. Many of these discussions get hung up on wildly different interpretations of what the Freedom Foundation means. First, I'll reproduce the exact text of the Freedom Foundation[1]: Freedom represents dedication to free software and content. We believe that advancing software and content freedom is a central goal for the Fedora Project, and that we should accomplish that goal through the use of the software and content we promote. By including free alternatives to proprietary code and content, we can improve the overall state of free and open source software and content, and limit the effects of proprietary or patent encumbered code on the Project. Sometimes this goal prevents us from taking the easy way out by including proprietary or patent encumbered software in Fedora, or using those kinds of products in our other project work. But by concentrating on the free software and content we provide and promote, the end result is that we are able to provide: releases that are predictable and 100% legally redistributable for everyone; innovation in free and open source software that can equal or exceed closed source or proprietary solutions; and, a completely free project that anyone can emulate or copy in whole or in part for their own purposes. The language in this Foundation is sometimes dangerously unclear. For example, it pretty much explicitly forbids the use of non-free components in the creation of Fedora (sorry, folks: you can't use Photoshop to create your package icon!). At the same time, we regularly allow the packaging of software that can interoperate with non-free software; we allow Pidgin and other IM clients to talk to Google and AOL, we allow email clients to connect to Microsoft Exchange, etc. The real problem is that every time a question comes up against the Freedom Foundation, Fedora contributors diverge into two armed camps: the hard-liners who believe that Fedora should never under any circumstances work (interoperate) with proprietary services and the the folks who believe that such a hard-line approach is a path to irrelevance. I'm not really seeing what is unclear or dangerous about the quoted statement. To me it says clearly that we make Fedora using free software and free content and the product we hand to you is free software and free content that you can use and modify for whatever purpose you choose. Interoperability with non-free software and services has always been allowed in free software and Fedora. Our choice to make Fedora from free software and content is our choice and I doubt it has always been that way although I can't say for certain. I suspect early Fedora artwork might very well have been made using non-free software. But once the Fedora community began making it they made the choice to use only free software and content in the creation process. Good for them. To make things clear: I'm personally closer to the second camp than the first. In fact, in keeping with the subject of this email, I'd like to suggest a fifth Foundation, one to ultimately supersede all the rest: Functional. Here's a straw-man phrasing of this proposal: Functional means that the Fedora community recognizes this to be the ultimate truth: the purpose of an operating system is to enable its users to accomplish the set of tasks they need to perform. Well, I don't think I agree with this on several levels. There are a lot of users, they want to do a lot of different things. We can't enable everything they want to do. What we can do is provide them with free software that they can modify to do what they want to do if what we provide doesn't quite do it for them out of the box. We will always be guessing what users want, we will always be making choices based on incomplete information, and we will always be wrong in a lot of cases. The Fedora Project has a mission and the ultimate truth as I see it is that the products the Fedora Project produces should first and foremost be responsible for furthering the mission of the Fedora Project. While you choose to single out the Freedom foundation here there are others and they are equally important. One that doesn't begin with an F but that falls into both the First and Features foundations is Innovation. Driving innovative new technologies in Fedora often comes with the short term expense of reduced or impaired usability. Driving these new technologies is way more important to
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 11:37 AM, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: On 04/21/2014 11:56 AM, Eric H. Christensen wrote: On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 08:36:55AM -0400, Stephen Gallagher wrote: ...I'd like to suggest a fifth Foundation, one to ultimately supersede all the rest: Functional. I think anytime anyone suggests a new foundation that supersedes all of what the project and community has stood for for many years then they are doing it wrong. I mean, Fedora has traditionally been very strong in upholding the values of FOSS. We live it, feed it, and use it. Does this mean that Fedora isn't always great when dealing with proprietary solutions later on (like Flash)? Sure, but that also means that there is more of a push to get FOSS solutions in place that remedy those issues. Fedora has never forebade a user to install third-party software (proprietary or otherwise) after the I spoke too strongly there, I think. We do however give a *very* strong impression that using non-FOSS solutions for anything at all is unwelcome at best. Consider the recent discussions around GNOME Software where we have 1) Forbidden it from automatically looking up software from non-Fedora repositories, even FOSS ones In the exact same way yum has always been forbidden from doing the same thing. 2) Asserted that it must consider web apps (either FOSS or not) to be second-class citizens (and call it out as such) You can call them second-class citizens if you want to be negative but no one has before. They are different from applications that users install on their systems, which is what users understand things in this context to be. Upstream was simply asked to make the distinction clear to users. It has nothing to do with a class system and it really did not seem all that controversial. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: The Forgotten F: A Tale of Fedora's Foundations
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 3:48 PM, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: To boil it down: Is the Freedom Foundation too strict? (Alternately, are we reading it too strictly?) In other words, is our hard-line on only displaying FOSS solutions ultimately accomplishing our Mission to advance FOSS? I argue that it is not, because it artificially limits our audience to the set of people who are *already* working on FOSS. I think that relaxing our stance a /little/ could lead to a wider contributor base, providing a greater benefit to the FOSS community than absolute purity. I honestly don't know anyone involved in this discussion who has a hard line about only displaying FOSS solutions. The line is about what we ship. People are free to enable non-free repositories and have those displayed in our tooling if they make that choice. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: Fedora.NEXT Products and the fate of Spins
On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 9:31 AM, Paul W. Frields sticks...@gmail.com wrote: So let's not start by putting too much sacred value on the term Spin. Rather, let's think about what specific technical and community-building problems are caused by using Remixes, how to solve them, and then consider that effort on balance against status quo. Paul, my personal problem with all this remix talk is more of a branding thing. While a spin can be called a remix in the same sense that a square can be called a rectangle we lose important information by doing that. Spins are special cases of remixes that assert values about the spin and its creators that are important both to the creators and to the consumers. Saying this image is all free software from Fedora matters to people. And I think it matters to Fedora too which is why we allow spins to use trademarks differently than remixes. I can imagine a new organization of things. Perhaps a different way to build and distribute what we now call spins. But I'm having a real hard time calling them remixes or treating them in the same way as remixes. And I think deciding the fate of spins before we even see the product that will be all that is left to replace them is putting the cart before the horse. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: Fedora.NEXT Products and the fate of Spins
On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 2:57 PM, H. Guémar hgue...@fedoraproject.org wrote: Hi, I think we should keep spins as long as we don't have a formal process to accept new products. Something like = proposal = crop (aka product-to-be) = validation = product When we'll have that, drop the whole spin thing, any spin that isn't fit to be a product should be reclassified as remix. Why do we expect spins to be any more official products than they are now? I can't really imagine this ever working. Do you imagine a day where Fedora has 20, 30, 50 official products? I don't. I'd rather not confuse what is made from Fedora bits with what is based on Fedora bits but includes other bits. The remix branding does not seem appropriate for spins that are made purely from Fedora bits. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: Fedora.NEXT Products and the fate of Spins
On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 3:33 PM, Josh Boyer jwbo...@fedoraproject.org wrote: On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 4:03 PM, inode0 ino...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 2:57 PM, H. Guémar hgue...@fedoraproject.org wrote: Hi, I think we should keep spins as long as we don't have a formal process to accept new products. Something like = proposal = crop (aka product-to-be) = validation = product When we'll have that, drop the whole spin thing, any spin that isn't fit to be a product should be reclassified as remix. Why do we expect spins to be any more official products than they are now? I can't really imagine this ever working. Do you imagine a day where Fedora has 20, 30, 50 official products? I don't. I'd rather not confuse what is made from Fedora bits with what is based on Fedora bits but includes other bits. The remix branding does not seem appropriate for spins that are made purely from Fedora bits. That's fair. From a resource and quality perspective though, I'd rather not burden rel-eng and QA with having to maintain, create, and test spins. They can be done entirely outside of Fedora. They can be created and hosted on their own sites, etc. F20 improved spins overall, but that was because of a concerted effort with our existing resources. If Fedora.next is going to succeed, those resources are already going to be overwhelmed with the 3 products. Spreading them thinner for little benefit in most cases seems irresponsible. So I am being pulled in both directions on this. One of the goals of agility is to facilitate more things being made from Fedora (at least that was a discussed goal at various times). I agree with that and pushing aside the best things we have built from Fedora now (understanding they have been problematic in various ways in the past) seems to work against that goal. I don't accept the blanket assertion that the spins have little benefit. Do we actually have any idea how many people install Fedora from spins? Irresponsible is bit loaded. I don't know that rel-eng will be overburdened by running the script that builds them. I also don't know that there aren't other creative arrangements that could be made to facilitate the creation and distribution of spins largely or entirely under the control of those creating them without pushing them entirely outside of Fedora infrastructure. I guess I'd like those active in the spin community to make suggestions here. I imagine spins and other new creations built on Fedora to be things the project wants to promote, not push away. The reality may be that we can't do what we do now in support of spins, but I hope we can continue to do something that helps and encourages those making them. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: Fedora.NEXT Products and the fate of Spins
On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 4:11 PM, Josh Boyer jwbo...@fedoraproject.org wrote: On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 5:01 PM, inode0 ino...@gmail.com wrote: So I am being pulled in both directions on this. One of the goals of agility is to facilitate more things being made from Fedora (at least that was a discussed goal at various times). I agree with that and pushing aside the best things we have built from Fedora now (understanding they have been problematic in various ways in the past) seems to work against that goal. There is a difference between things being made from Fedora and Fedora making things for people. I'm concerned that Spins have transformed into the latter. There is nothing preventing someone from taking Fedora and making a spin and hosting it themselves. Fedora isn't making the spins for people. The spins are putting up with Fedora's current requirements that this group do X and that group do Y on top of what the spins do in order to host the spins. At least that is my impression of how it has worked so far. And, of course, there are things preventing people from just going off and doing everything on their own. The new Workstation product could make that choice too and make the Workstation product they envision outside of Fedora. I don't accept the blanket assertion that the spins have little benefit. Do we actually have any idea how many people install Fedora from spins? We had download statistics at one point that showed most of the spins were not downloaded much. Maybe the Infra group still collects them. Those numbers were horrible but also not very informative. Approximately 150,000 copies of the desktop spins are distributed directly on pressed media each year and just that dwarfs the download numbers for the spins. Irresponsible is bit loaded. I don't know that rel-eng will be overburdened by running the script that builds them. I also don't know that there aren't other creative arrangements that could be made to facilitate the creation and distribution of spins largely or entirely under the control of those creating them without pushing them entirely outside of Fedora infrastructure. Growing rel-eng could help with the resource issues (similar with QA). If the people doing spins want to step up and do that, then some of my concerns are alleviated. At least in terms of people resources. I guess I'd like those active in the spin community to make suggestions here. I imagine spins and other new creations built on Fedora to be things the project wants to promote, not push away. The reality may be that we can't do what we do now in support of spins, but I hope we can continue to do something that helps and encourages those making them. Promote is an interesting word there too. I think we want to encourage people to create things with and on Fedora. I'm not sure _promoting_ those things simply because someone made this is the right idea with Fedora.next. This isn't specific to Spins though. It's part of a much larger branding conversation that we need to have. I agree and while it isn't what I said I did mean promote the idea of making stuff with Fedora. I suspect promoting that idea will involve examples of cool things made with Fedora though so it is muddled a bit. I completely agree about the branding conversation but I'm not sure we are ready to make some decisions without having the branding conversation first. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: Fedora.NEXT Products and the fate of Spins
On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 4:39 PM, Jon jdisn...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 2:30 PM, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Apologies for the slightly alarmist $SUBJECT, but I want to make sure that this gets read by the appropriate groups. [snip] 1) Are Spins useful as they currently exist? There are many problems that have been noted in the Spins process, most notably that it is very difficult to get a Spin approved and then has no ongoing maintenance requiring it to remain functional. We've had Spins at times go through entire Fedora release cycles without ever being functional. Putting on my rel-eng hat I can say that any spin that fails to compose will be dropped. I believe we also encourage or even require the spin maintainers to test their spin as functional. (To work out if the spin succeeds to compose but fails to actually work) The idea is to encourage active spin process, inactive spins will auto retire by policy if they fail. Another aspect I worry about is the mirroring stuff. With the coming WGs I fear the rsync mirroring will grow very large, and spins are an attractive piece of fat to cut. You probably didn't mean for that to sound so negative but a piece of fat to cut is how rel-eng thinks of spins? I recall being assured at the beginning that some interested company was willing to provide the necessary support for us to give this a fair try. Reducing size is something we worry about on the infra, rel-eng side of things. That is pragmatic but be a dreamer while dreaming is in style. Give worrying about how to increase the capacity of infra a try instead. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: Fedora.NEXT Products and the fate of Spins
On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 5:19 PM, Stephen John Smoogen smo...@gmail.com wrote: On 29 January 2014 15:49, inode0 ino...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 4:39 PM, Jon jdisn...@gmail.com wrote: Putting on my rel-eng hat I can say that any spin that fails to compose will be dropped. I believe we also encourage or even require the spin maintainers to test their spin as functional. (To work out if the spin succeeds to compose but fails to actually work) The idea is to encourage active spin process, inactive spins will auto retire by policy if they fail. Another aspect I worry about is the mirroring stuff. With the coming WGs I fear the rsync mirroring will grow very large, and spins are an attractive piece of fat to cut. You probably didn't mean for that to sound so negative but a piece of fat to cut is how rel-eng thinks of spins? I recall being assured at the beginning that some interested company was willing to provide the necessary support for us to give this a fair try. How long is a fair try? It would help to define that before people go on a rant about doing it for a couple of years now. I meant giving our new adventure a fair try, not giving spins a fair try. I also really did not mean to go on a rant. I think we have a group that sees little benefit to spins and another that sees a lot of benefit to spins. The former wants to get rid of them, the latter wants to keep them. We won't ever quantify the amount of benefit they bring so we are probably at a stalemate on the benefit question. On the resources question we can either ask for them in order to allow us to do both or we can look for new ways to reduce the cost of spins to those complaining about the burden they impose. I'm open to either of those approaches. Getting rid of them to me would be an admission that are unwilling or unable to continue supporting something that is valuable to our users and our community (just my subjective opinion and I know not everyone shares it). John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: [Ambassadors] Ambassadors places in new Working Groups
On Sun, Oct 27, 2013 at 4:32 AM, Nobrakal nobra...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, Sorry for the double-post, but I think it's necessary. Recently, some Working Groups has been created [1]. In the most of case (except in the Server WG with Truong Anh. Tuan), we don't have any representant of the ambassador group. As others have pointed out we do have ambassadors in at least almost every group and it is really important to understand these announcements are only regarding the initial voting membership of the groups. Everyone is encouraged and welcome to participate and they will be listened to during any discussions. Not being a voting member of the group does not mean your input to the process is any less valuable to it succeeding. It really isn't any different than only FAmSCo members getting to vote during FAmSCo meetings. You can still attend FAmSCo meetings and give your input on any issues. It is up to you to participate though. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: Fedora Working Groups: Call for Self-Nominations
On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 8:52 PM, Adam Williamson awill...@redhat.com wrote: On Thu, 2013-10-24 at 19:56 -0400, Josh Boyer wrote: It is up to each WG to determine their product requirements. That includes which architectures and target users they are trying to produce a product for. We've done a lot of work over the last few cycles to really bump ARM up to 'first class citizen' status, and a lot of that is coming together - I think reasonably successfully - in F19 and F20. It would be rather odd to go with a change for F21 or F22 which goes in the opposite direction. ARM is important long term, yes. I don't necessarily think that ARM is equally important across all of the existing products. I find it more likely that ARM is important enough to have it's own WG and it's own product, which may or may not have commonality with the other products. I'm not entirely sure that makes sense; it seems to be a conceptual error. ARM is an architecture. In practice, at present, the ARM-architecture based hardware we support mostly falls into a certain category that kind of naturally lends itself to a particular kind of product, but that seems a transient scenario, not a permanent one. Looked at conceptually, it doesn't make any more sense for there to be an 'ARM working group' and an 'ARM product' than it does for there to be an 'x86_64 working group' and an 'x86_64 product', but those are, I think, prima facie absurd. The concepts of 'working group' and 'product' have been drawn up along broadly _functional_ lines, and a 'working group' or 'product' for a specific system architecture doesn't really line up with that design. I think the approach I implied in my email - making sure the functional WGs and products we are inventing do not neglect any of our primary architectures and use cases - is the correct way to go. You make a good argument but we probably do need to account for the case that a particular product might not be suitable for every architecture. I was thinking more along the lines of every primary architecture has to have one or more of the core products but should not be required to have to them all. How to accomplish that is rather fuzzy. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: A fresh idea (was: fedmsg for voting?)
On Thu, Sep 12, 2013 at 11:22 AM, Ralph Bean rb...@redhat.com wrote: A fresh idea came up in #fedora-apps: What if we nix fedmsg for voting all together, but we supply a link in each election page: Claim the badge for voting that you can click to, well, get the badge. This way no tracking is done whatsoever and we can also give the I voted sticker to only people who want it. Best idea yet and you can change my -1 to a +1 for this. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: fedmsg for voting?
On Thu, Sep 12, 2013 at 7:59 AM, Ralph Bean rb...@redhat.com wrote: On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 09:23:44PM -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote: On Sep 11, 2013 6:02 PM, Matthew Miller mat...@fedoraproject.org wrote: What if we made this like the I voted stickers -- you can get one by checking a box in the voting app? (Even if, by the way, you cast no actual votes?) I had thought that this would trigger off of someone hitting submit on the election page. That should vote 0 for all candidates if no votes are assigned but still meet the trigger condition. Not sure if that meets the criteria for objectors, though. Ralph bean should weigh in here as to whether logged in during an election period would also be suitable (which was something that people seemed to think would be acceptable earlier in the thread). Hm, its not worth doing if we're going to make it complex like this. I think we should just drop it. No fedmsg broadcast for votes, only for election period opening/closing and only for election results publication/retraction by the admin (with obviously no user participation data included). It is just not important enough to: 1) cause anyone any worry. 2) bother engineering a complicated compromise solution. If someone wants to argue that we still try to make it happen, I'll hear that and implement it if a consensus is formed. (FWIW, personally I'm still all for it). I thought triggering off logging into the election app would be easier and at least in my case is a compromise that I would be comfortable with even without any opt-in/opt-out addition beyond what you have already made available globally. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: fedmsg for voting?
On Wed, Sep 11, 2013 at 10:06 AM, Eric H. Christensen spa...@fedoraproject.org wrote: On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 03:50:58PM -0500, inode0 wrote: No. In what election where the votes cast are secret is the fact of voting public? I can't recall ever participating in such an election but maybe my head is full of mud today. I have an expectation that my voting behavior is private. If you vote in the United States the fact that you did, in fact, vote is public record. *How* you voted is not, however. Ok, now we are getting into a semantic argument for sure. Where I have voted for decades they simply do not have any way to know if I did, in fact, vote. All they know is I showed up to vote. Was the first thing I did in the voting booth click the I'm Done. button? Did I drop an empty ballot into the box on my way out the door? Only I know. You can conclude from registration records most places that someone did not vote for some period of time but I don't see how one can really conclude that anyone in particular did vote if the votes are cast in secret. Of course, if choosing to not vote at the polling station is considered voting then, yeah, you know I voted. Fedora has treated my voting behavior as private so far. If Fedora has respected my privacy to a greater degree than the various governments running other elections I have been involved in then I say good for Fedora. Now I am going to click the I'm Done. button on this. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: fedmsg for voting?
On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 3:08 PM, Ralph Bean rb...@redhat.com wrote: A question has come up in #fedora-apps as to whether or not we should publish fedmsg messages for voting. In particular, we're looking now at the new nuancier webapp[0] that will be used to vote on supplemental wallpapers. It is in development. There is a demo instance[1]. There is a pull request up[2] that adds fedmsg messages to nuancier. It publishes messages when an election admin opens or closes an election for voting, as well as when an election admin publishes or rescinds the results of an election. Everyone seems to think that this is fine. What is under question is that it publishes a message for each set of votes cast by users[3]. It includes the number of votes cast, the fas username of the person who did the voting, and in what election they voted. It does *not* include what the person voted for or against. That can often be easily obtained from the other information. If we are able to add fedmsg messages to this, then we will be able to award badges for voting on wallpapers. That would be nice. Maybe it is just me but I really don't want badges for voting. I don't wear those stickers they give you at the voting places in the US and I don't want you sticking one on my back as I walk out of the Fedora voting booth either. Whatever the decision we come to on the supplemental wallpaper voting app, we would like to apply that same logic fedmsg messages on the general elections voting app later down the road. -1 unless we just want to adopt public voting. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: fedmsg for voting?
On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 3:38 PM, Matthew Miller mat...@fedoraproject.org wrote: On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 03:24:28PM -0500, inode0 wrote: What is under question is that it publishes a message for each set of votes cast by users[3]. It includes the number of votes cast, the fas username of the person who did the voting, and in what election they voted. It does *not* include what the person voted for or against. That can often be easily obtained from the other information. Assuming the number of votes cast is removed, the two bits of new information here are 1) person voted in a certain election and 2) when they voted. Would it help if we removed #2, by storing the messages and releasing them in random order when the election completes? No. In what election where the votes cast are secret is the fact of voting public? I can't recall ever participating in such an election but maybe my head is full of mud today. I have an expectation that my voting behavior is private. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: fedmsg for voting?
On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 4:11 PM, Toshio Kuratomi a.bad...@gmail.com wrote: I never considered this until today. In the US elections I attend, they have my name on a list at the voting precinct. When I come in to vote I sign my name and they mark that I've come in. Until today I'd never thought if that information was public record (ie: someone could look it up at some later point in time) or if it was internal bookkeeping and only accessible by certain people in case of voter fraud. After looking around the internet, it seems that it varies by state. In California, where I live, the records are available for election/political, scholarly, journalistic, or governmental purpose. Requesters must apply to the California Secretary of State or the county elections office for the records and must certify the purpose for their request. It looks like California is neither the most lax nor the most restrictive state in this regard. There is a record of you presenting yourself at a public polling place - being a public place that fact is by its nature public in some sense. But I doubt there is any record of whether you actually cast a ballot or for which offices you voted that is in any way public. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: fedmsg for voting?
On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 4:19 PM, Matthew Miller mat...@fedoraproject.org wrote: On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 03:50:58PM -0500, inode0 wrote: No. In what election where the votes cast are secret is the fact of voting public? I can't recall ever participating in such an election but maybe my head is full of mud today. I have an expectation that my voting behavior is private. For example, in most elections in the United States. I'm sure the particulars vary by state, but it is the general case. For example, here's Iowa: http://sos.iowa.gov/elections/voterreg/voterlistrequests.html; in that case, I don't think the specific votes are recorded, but you will be marked as inactive if you don't vote at least once every four years. Other states track and provide more information. Being from Iowa I know that they do not have any idea whether I voted. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: fedmsg for voting?
On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 5:00 PM, Matthew Miller mat...@fedoraproject.org wrote: On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 04:53:59PM -0500, inode0 wrote: But anyway, if people feel really strongly about this, I think the opt out of badge tracking is an okay approach. (Even if it makes more checkboxes.) I find it hard to agree that forcing people to opt out of things they reasonably feel invade their privacy is a road Fedora wants to go down. But if you all conclude my argument/expectation for privacy in the case of my voting behavior is unreasonable then proceed. I think the benefit of encouraging more participation through voting is a reasonable tradeoff for this particular bit of information (voted in a particular election, possibly chosing no candidates). I do think we need to disclose it. How shallow are Fedora contributors if a badge is what it takes to tip them over from being non-voters to being voters? If doing this increases our turnout from 300 voters to 900 voters the only thing I'll conclude is that we have 600 chuckleheads who voted to get a badge. Well, I might also conclude that the thoughtful voters were outnumbered 2 to 1 by the chuckleheads. Do you feel strongly enough about this that you would refrain from voting in Fedora elections? (Serious question.) - Serious answer --- I have no idea how my behavior might change as a result. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: fedmsg for voting?
On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 4:50 PM, Ralph Bean rb...@redhat.com wrote: On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 05:06:58PM -0400, DJ Delorie wrote: FWIW, if you log in to https://badges.fedoraproject.org/ and visit your profile, I got Internal Server Error when I tried this... and now I'm on the home page, when what I really wanted was to make sure I had nothing to do with it :-P Oh no! Sorry about that. I just tried it too but I couldn't duplicate the error. you can opt out of all badge-stuff in one click (Deactivate Account). Does this deactivate your FAS account, or just the badges? Just the badges. You won't show up on the badges.fp.o frontpage, or the badges.fp.o leaderboard, and the backend awarder won't consider you for future badges. Deactivating your account there has no effect beyond the badges systems. Would it prevent messages about my voting behavior from being visible in other places? John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: fedmsg for voting?
On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 4:29 PM, Matthew Miller mat...@fedoraproject.org wrote: On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 04:21:30PM -0500, inode0 wrote: For example, in most elections in the United States. I'm sure the particulars vary by state, but it is the general case. For example, here's Iowa: http://sos.iowa.gov/elections/voterreg/voterlistrequests.html; in that case, I don't think the specific votes are recorded, but you will be marked as inactive if you don't vote at least once every four years. Other states track and provide more information. Being from Iowa I know that they do not have any idea whether I voted. You're talking about the distinction between actually voting vs. showing up at the voting place and then not voting, right? For the purposes of this particular discussion, I'm pretty sure we can dismiss that as semantics. Presumably, from the point of view of Iowa, that counts you as an active voter. I don't think it is a semantic point. You can not in any way figure out whether or not I voted in the last Presidential election based on voter registration information. You can't even conclude that I ever voted in any election in Iowa. I'm considered an active voter if I do any number of things not all requiring even showing up at a polling place. But anyway, if people feel really strongly about this, I think the opt out of badge tracking is an okay approach. (Even if it makes more checkboxes.) I find it hard to agree that forcing people to opt out of things they reasonably feel invade their privacy is a road Fedora wants to go down. But if you all conclude my argument/expectation for privacy in the case of my voting behavior is unreasonable then proceed. I'm indifferent about badges in general. They give me a slightly uncomfortable feeling that my every move is being tracked and recorded. Given the rest of the world I am sadly at the point of just shrugging. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: fedmsg for voting?
On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 5:32 PM, Matthew Miller mat...@fedoraproject.org wrote: On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 05:13:03PM -0500, inode0 wrote: How shallow are Fedora contributors if a badge is what it takes to tip them over from being non-voters to being voters? If doing this increases our turnout from 300 voters to 900 voters the only thing I'll conclude is that we have 600 chuckleheads who voted to get a badge. Well, I might also conclude that the thoughtful voters were outnumbered 2 to 1 by the chuckleheads. It's not the voting-to-get-a-badge that I'm interested in. It's raising the visibility of voting as an important part of Fedora participation. That sounds good but no matter what our intentions badges affect people's behavior because they want badges. :) How about something that is more analogous to voter registration? If you login to the voting app during an election you get a voting badge of some sort without indicating anything specific about the election? That would raise awareness without changing the de facto privacy of voting behavior that has historically been respected by Fedora in elections? John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: F20 release name election?
On Sat, Aug 24, 2013 at 10:29 AM, Mathieu Bridon boche...@fedoraproject.org wrote: That begs the question: what if the elected word has received a very low score compared to the maximum possible? Doesn't matter. That would mean that it received a very small support from our community, and in fact that the majority was either voting for no name or for none of the proposed names. It would not mean that. You aren't voting for and against the choices, you are expressing your relative preference as best you can. What it would mean is that the voters preferred the one that got the most support. If that happened, would we decide that Fedora would not be named, because no proposal managed to raise enough support? If None was an option, which I think is a terrible idea, the only thing you could conclude from it winning is the we preferred to not have a release name in this election given the names on the ballot. It would mean absolutely nothing about whether we as a community prefer to not have release names in general. I think we just recently tested that theory with a vote of questionable meaning and it was concluded that we did prefer to keep them. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: F20 release name election?
On Sat, Aug 24, 2013 at 1:08 PM, Stephen John Smoogen smo...@gmail.com wrote: On 24 August 2013 10:55, inode0 ino...@gmail.com wrote: If None was an option, which I think is a terrible idea, the only thing you could conclude from it winning is the we preferred to not have a release name in this election given the names on the ballot. It would mean absolutely nothing about whether we as a community prefer to not have release names in general. I think we just recently tested that theory with a vote of questionable meaning and it was concluded that we did prefer to keep them. Uhm no. You can't test a question with a test of questionable meaning. The test wasn't between 2 choices.. it was a test of 3 which basically allowed you to put the middle choice to either side of the equation and say that one side or the other has an absolute majority. Bringing up that vote as validation is like bringing up a cricket game to say which country is the better one... it is a false dichotomy which just keeps people flustered and doesn't prove anything. Well, I did not offer it as proof. I stated the fact that those who designed that election concluded from its results what they concluded. The point I really wanted to convey there is that None winning the F21 release name election would not prove much of anything in general either. I'm just going to accept the Board's previous decision for now and not re-open it for new consideration every 6 months. In the end, I understand the reason the board doesn't want to spend time on this molehill community breaker. Just state it as that and not that some vote proved people selected one way or another. Say instead: If you don't want to deal with names, just don't get in the emails or vote.. because it isn't worth getting worked up over. No point saying that because it won't happen. This was just an announcement of the vote and look where it has gone. The only way to stop people from getting worked up over this silly business is to stop doing it and that is about the only thing I want to discuss at this point. There isn't any point tweaking the process as those dead set against it are not going to stop complaining about it at every opportunity. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: F20 release name election?
On Sat, Aug 24, 2013 at 3:59 PM, Stephen John Smoogen smo...@gmail.com wrote: On 24 August 2013 12:35, inode0 ino...@gmail.com wrote: If you don't want to deal with names, just don't get in the emails or vote.. because it isn't worth getting worked up over. No point saying that because it won't happen. This was just an announcement of the vote and look where it has gone. The only way to stop people from getting worked up over this silly business is to stop doing it and that is about the only thing I want to discuss at this point. There isn't any point tweaking the process as those dead set against it are not going to stop complaining about it at every opportunity. Well I am saying it. Hi, everyone who is bringing up removing the names (especially myself). Let It Go. Move along, Go find something positive to do and go do that. Let the people who have fun doing this, do it and get out of their way. There. Done my bit. Going for a bike ride. Perfect. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping. Thanks smooge. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: F20 release name election?
On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 8:04 AM, Michael Schwendt mschwe...@gmail.com wrote: I don't think it's been hatred (or passionate fighting, or else he would have tried to reach a decision at the FPB level), but indeed, he has been one of those who think the release name process is a waste of time and of no use. https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/advisory-board/2012-March/011419.html That was a very practical solution to what appeared to be another layer of hassle around release names. In reality so far at least that hassle hasn't materialized. How many people are involved in suggesting release names, reviewing them, checking them (Red Hat Legal)? How many people enjoy doing all that? There aren't many voters. Part of the deal with participating in a community is that sometimes you do things you would not choose to do to enable others to do what they do choose to do. Red Hat legal can kill release names at any time by simply saying they no longer are willing to vet the names. The Fedora Board can do the same. Neither has so why do we have to keep going over this? The Board spends maybe 3-4 hours on this twice a year. If that is too much to enable part of the community to enjoy participating in the tradition of release naming then propose the Board simply stop doing it. It has come up many years ago already, too, that hardly anybody refers to a Fedora distribution release using its codename instead of the release numbers and/or shortnames: Fedora 19, F19, F-19, f19. It doesn't get more accurate. No point releases as with Red Hat Linux. And there really isn't anything accomplished by bringing up the same old arguments again now except to spoil the fun those who enjoy this might have. At least I can't see any reason. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
Re: Fedora as an crowd founded project an additional funding source to our sponsor
On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 7:04 AM, drago01 drag...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 10:07 AM, Brendan Jones brendan.jones...@gmail.com wrote: On 07/25/2013 12:11 AM, Adam Williamson wrote: On Wed, 2013-07-24 at 16:50 +, Jóhann B. Guðmundsson wrote: On 07/24/2013 04:40 PM, inode0 wrote: On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 11:07 AM, Jóhann B. Guðmundsson johan...@gmail.com wrote: The entire budget is not public so you won't get a definitive answer for a large portion of the budget. Why is it not public any reason why we the community cannot know how much we cost? I don't think there's any particular reason, but one thing is that it's not particularly obvious even within Red Hat: there isn't a single nice clear Fedora Budget, money gets spent on Fedora out of all sorts of other budgets. It may well be the case that *Red Hat* does not know precisely how much money Red Hat spends on Fedora. :) I contribute regularly to opensource projects (monetarily) with no issue. While I take JBG's anti-RH implications with a grain of salt, he has highlighted a lacking there. It *should* be easier to contribute, although I cannot see this happening if Fedora is a legal entity resides state-side. To clarify, I think RH is an awesome sponsor, and the resources they provide do separate us from other distros, and for that I am grateful, BUT there needs to be another way to contribute Well there are ways ... you can contribute code its not money but it helps. If you really want to spend money and for some legal reason it cannot be done easily you can do it indirectly by purchasing RH's products / services. Also anyone can purchase things for Fedora directly. So if anyone would like to pay for 500 t-shirts we'd be most grateful. This tends to be a little awkward to execute in the real world though since paying bills directly for another party is messier than just giving the other party the money to pay the bills with themselves. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Fedora as an crowd founded project an additional funding source to our sponsor
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 7:49 AM, Darryl L. Pierce mcpie...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 12:37:09PM +, Jóhann B. Guðmundsson wrote: On 07/24/2013 12:15 PM, Darryl L. Pierce wrote: On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 01:50:11AM +, Jóhann B. Guðmundsson wrote: snip Obvious we cannot have crowd funding for every moving part in Fedora that would just be ludicrous so we need to apply that concept upon the entire project, as in Fedora would be just a one crowd founded project. snip The first issue that comes to mind (for me) is who cuts the checks? IOW, who is going to be the person responsible for the money itself, and who has oversight to ensure money's being properly managed and not siphoned off? We would need to form a financial sig that handles that. Are these people going to be paid for their efforts, since it's completely non-technical? Why is being non-technical related in any way to paying someone to do it? I'm a board member for my kids' summer swim league. And our treasurer has to deal with writing checks for things like buying bulk swim caps, tshirts, meet supplies, reimbursing people for purchases made for the team, etc. And for 8 weeks of her life that's a lot to do. To then ask someone to do the same all year round as a volunteer for a _much_ larger group is probably not going to happen. You just described a small part of what Ambassadors do now with the exception of cutting check. We do have three community members who have been doing that for a long time now as well but the number who are able to help in that way is limited by Red Hat's comfort level in letting the community participate in making direct payments. For the record I am not endorsing the proposed change here but do want to take the opportunity to thank all the Fedora folks who actually have been doing the work described above for their efforts over the years and I hope more people will be aware of those efforts now. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Fedora as an crowd founded project an additional funding source to our sponsor
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 8:23 AM, Stephen Gallagher sgall...@redhat.com wrote: My understanding is that Fedora is registered as a non-profit organization in the United States which I believe allows for anyone to donate to it *today* if they so chose. The fact that the only donations we see are *time* rather than *money* is an interesting fact (and given Red Hat's sponsorship covering most things anyway, I think that's a better expenditure from our community members). Fedora is not any sort of legally recognized entity as far as I know. And the fact that the vast majority of contributions are time rather than money is because in order to contribute money requires one to send a check made out to Red Hat and I don't think Red Hat wants checks sent to them earmarked for Fedora which I'm sure would have interesting legal and accounting complications. This latter point may have changed very recently although I'm not aware of the details of how other organizations are making money contributions to Flock. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Fedora as an crowd founded project an additional funding source to our sponsor
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 9:31 AM, Darryl L. Pierce mcpie...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 09:05:40AM -0500, inode0 wrote: On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 7:49 AM, Darryl L. Pierce mcpie...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 12:37:09PM +, Jóhann B. Guðmundsson wrote: We would need to form a financial sig that handles that. Are these people going to be paid for their efforts, since it's completely non-technical? Why is being non-technical related in any way to paying someone to do it? It's an administrative role. I'd assume that you'd pay somebody who's going to be doing this job. If not, that's fine. That's why I asked if it was going to be paid for, since it's a lot more work than just writing checks.` I'm a board member for my kids' summer swim league. And our treasurer has to deal with writing checks for things like buying bulk swim caps, tshirts, meet supplies, reimbursing people for purchases made for the team, etc. And for 8 weeks of her life that's a lot to do. To then ask someone to do the same all year round as a volunteer for a _much_ larger group is probably not going to happen. You just described a small part of what Ambassadors do now with the exception of cutting check. We do have three community members who have been doing that for a long time now as well but the number who are able to help in that way is limited by Red Hat's comfort level in letting the community participate in making direct payments. Are they paid for their efforts? No. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Fedora as an crowd founded project an additional funding source to our sponsor
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 10:09 AM, Jóhann B. Guðmundsson johan...@gmail.com wrote: On 07/24/2013 02:13 PM, inode0 wrote: Fedora is not any sort of legally recognized entity as far as I know. And the fact that the vast majority of contributions are time rather than money is because in order to contribute money requires one to send a check made out to Red Hat and I don't think Red Hat wants checks sent to them earmarked for Fedora which I'm sure would have interesting legal and accounting complications. This latter point may have changed very recently although I'm not aware of the details of how other organizations are making money contributions to Flock. Cant one not just donate directly to an earmark account via paypal or direct money transfer. There is no such receiving account for Fedora. Do people still use checks on the 21 century where paper money is slowly becoming obsolete? You can substitute any sort of funds transfer where I said check above. One can only contribute money to Fedora by sending it in some fashion to Red Hat. Fedora has no way to receive it. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Fedora as an crowd founded project an additional funding source to our sponsor
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 10:24 AM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 9:50 PM, Jóhann B. Guðmundsson johan...@gmail.com wrote: I as a donor donating $20 would like those to run to $20? It's going to be a long road! 25,000 to 50,000 of those could get us started. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Fedora as an crowd founded project an additional funding source to our sponsor
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 11:07 AM, Jóhann B. Guðmundsson johan...@gmail.com wrote: On 07/24/2013 04:01 PM, Tomasz Torcz wrote: On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 03:55:41PM +, Jóhann B. Guðmundsson wrote: On 07/24/2013 03:47 PM, inode0 wrote: On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 10:24 AM, Martin Langhoff martin.langh...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 9:50 PM, Jóhann B. Guðmundsson johan...@gmail.com wrote: I as a donor donating $20 would like those to run to $20? It's going to be a long road! 25,000 to 50,000 of those could get us started. Speaking of numbers, where can the community see how much money is being spent on hosting,events etc. from Red Hat? Like http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/EMEA/Budget ? That just covers Ambassador as in one sub-community The entire Infrastructure cost for the project number of servers, storage, powerbill etc ) is where the baseline lies. The entire budget is not public so you won't get a definitive answer for a large portion of the budget. The only part that really is public is the regional support part of the budget which can be seen here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FY14_Budget So roughly $90K is allocated to supporting Ambassadors which includes production of media, Fedora branded merchandise, and events where Ambassadors promote Fedora. I think it is fair to assume the number allocated for Flock, remaining FUDCons, other premier events (FADs), and miscellaneous items exceeds the $90K allocated to regional support. Numbers for infrastructure costs, engineering costs (including support for Red Hat folks who work on Fedora to attend Fedora events), and other groups inside Red Hat who help cover Fedora related costs from their budgets have never been public so you will have to guess at what all that costs but I would expect it is more than the total from above. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Fedora as an crowd founded project an additional funding source to our sponsor
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 11:50 AM, Jóhann B. Guðmundsson johan...@gmail.com wrote: On 07/24/2013 04:40 PM, inode0 wrote: On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 11:07 AM, Jóhann B. Guðmundsson johan...@gmail.com wrote: The entire budget is not public so you won't get a definitive answer for a large portion of the budget. Why is it not public any reason why we the community cannot know how much we cost? I don't know, it isn't my choice to make to what extent Red Hat wants to do separate internal accounting for Fedora or to what extent Red Hat might make that information public. The infrastructure cost ( with the exception of any paid manpower ) is what sets the baseline for host/run and that cost is what would determine the infra/hosting tax % or at least gives a number for a minimum we would need to aim at. I suspect you could get an estimate based on needs and the cost of public providers. What actual cost Red Hat incurs piggybacking this onto part of its infrastructure may not be all that enlightening for your purpose. I expect it would cost more for you to do it elsewhere. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Do you think this is a security risk and if not is it a bad UI decision?
On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 5:01 PM, Adam Williamson awill...@redhat.com wrote: On Sat, 2013-05-04 at 22:48 +0100, David Woodhouse wrote: On Sat, 2013-05-04 at 05:01 +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: The appropriate place to discuss deliberate design decisions is a forum where said decisions are made, ie not Bugzilla. Or a forum where said decisions can be overridden with a little more sanity, such as FESCo. I don't think it helps to start calling people's sanity into question. You can debate the merits of the decision without going over the top. I don't think he was calling anyone's sanity into question. Just saying FESCo would be a reasonable forum to discuss this if you are hoping to get the decision overridden. But I suppose the goal was really to get the developers to reconsider if there was enough push back in this peer forum. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Embedded SIG
On Sun, Apr 21, 2013 at 7:01 AM, Markus Mayer lotharl...@gmx.de wrote: Hi, I have started developing for embedded devices (aka microcontrollers) lately (mainly ARM cortex-M3 devices). Although fedora provides some of the needed tools, there are still some bits missing to provide a good out-of-the-box experience. So I have decide to ask if there are others like me, and if there are willing to form a SIG (special interest group) to enhance embedded developing with fedora. I think the main things to discuss within the sig are: - Finding out what fedora is missing to provide a good develepmont experience - Packaging (Cross-compilers, cross-debugers, ...) So if you are interested in helping to move thinks further or if you have any interesting/help-full information, I would highly appreciate your help. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Embedded While there is renewed discussion going on about who Fedora engages as a community and as a platform it is really a great time to move this forward and understand whether more could be done to make Fedora suitable for embedded development. Are there difficulties that go beyond tooling that can be identified? John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: RFC: Fedora revamp proposal
On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 5:17 PM, Rahul Sundaram methe...@gmail.com wrote: On 03/07/2013 05:16 PM, Adam Williamson wrote: I don't know for sure, but I'm not aware of any, sadly. A lot of the discussion happened in a big free-for-all that ensued from the flaming wreckage of spot's talk on a proposed new release cycle (not spot's fault, but the discussion of his proposal very rapidly mutated into a wide-ranging, 'what do we want to change in Fedora?' discussion that lasted for a few hours.) I don't think anyone was recording at that point. I think some people wrote blog posts about it, though. Unfortunately, this leaves people who haven't attended the FUDCon disconnected from the discussions and you only get very distilled impressions. Recording conversations like this is fairly important Notes were collected at the end and this thread began with I believe a fair representation of the outcome of the discussion and it was signed off on by the list of people included in the original post to which I am happy to add my name as someone who was present for most of the discussion. Of course it was fully expected there would be extensive discussion here about the idea. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Proposed F19 Feature: Cinnamon as Default Desktop
On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 9:47 AM, Máirín Duffy du...@fedoraproject.org wrote: On 01/28/2013 02:06 AM, Dan Mashal wrote: You don't see the point of MATE or Cinnamon? How long did you play with them 5 minutes? Do you remember the GNOME 1.x = 2.x transition? Similarly to how there are forks of GNOME now to 'keep the GNOME 2 candle burning,' there were forks of GNOME 1.x to 'keep the GNOME 1 candle burning.' Do you remember what they were called? I didn't; I had to look 'em up. Do you ever wonder what happened to them? Dead projects nobody seems to remember. Do we really want to switch to a desktop that history has shown is likely to become a dead project in a few years? http://osdir.com/modules.php?op=modloadname=Newsfile=articlesid=1295 There are lots of reasons to not choose a desktop as the default and lacking a demonstrable history of dedication and success is among them. It also doesn't seem smart to switch from a desktop on the basis that Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox - kernel developers, not UI experts or even typical desktop users by any means - don't like it. I think switching the desktop that has been our default for over 10 years and 18 releases requires just a bit more research and reason than that. A couple of observations here. UI experts aren't the target audience of the default desktop either and while I agree that we need very clear reasons for switching I don't accept that we have used X for 10 years as a reason to not change it. What concerns me isn't that Linus and Alan don't like it. What concerns me is where about 2 million of our users went after F14. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics#Total_repository_connections There are probably a number of reasons why people stopped using Fedora at that time and what we can do to recover isn't at all clear. Even if they all left because of dislike of the default desktop (which surely isn't the case) changing it now won't bring them back. I'm happy to see renewed discussion about the future of the Fedora desktop. After four releases it isn't bad to step back and take a look at how things are working out. I hope we can do that with an eye to where we want to go in the future rather than looking to the past. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Feedback wanted: Fedora Formulas
On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 2:15 PM, Kevin Fenzi ke...@scrye.com wrote: Greetings. I've whipped up the early ideas of a way to replace (most) spins with something that is more generic and useful. I have signed up for a fudcon session to brainstorm on this idea and see if it can be beaten into a plan/schedule/feature, or if it's not going to work for whatever reason. I have a very brainstormy/draft wiki page outlining the idea at: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_formulas The short version: Setup a infrastructure/framework around a collection of ansible playbooks to allow our users to simply download a formula for what they want to do and have a curated setup made for them using Fedora packages. Want a electionics lab setup? download. review. answer some questions. click. Want a LAMP stack? download. review. answer some questions. click. Want a openstack demo cluster? ditto. Want a graphics designer workstation? ditto. Note that this assumes you have already installed Fedora, it's a post install setup. This would mean that we should continue to do spins for various desktops as people may way to install their desktop as a base before adding on formulas. Looking at the distribution of even the desktop spins it jumps out at me that only the KDE spin seems to exceed 100 downloads while we distribute all of them in the thousands via pressed multi-desktop media which we also make available to users for download or transfer to USB as a group. This indirect distribution of desktop spins is likely close to two orders of magnitude larger than the direct download distribution. From a marketing perspective I think the multi-desktop media form of distribution achieves the desired ends even in the absence of pushing individual desktop spins to all the mirrors. Which makes me wonder if we should consider having a pre-desktop base with formulas for the desktops as well? Even if the answer to that is no I can imagine lots of potential uses for which the existence of a desktop isn't necessary or even desirable. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Am I the only one who missed the election?
On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 4:17 AM, Benjamin Lewis ben.le...@benl.co.uk wrote: There is really no reason why the election messages couldn't go to all of FAS, and just have a note explaining that you need cla_done to vote. There is equally no reason, aside from it being more admin work, why you couldn't have two lists. I just don't see how this is in any way better than just catching some people who are ineligible to vote... When only 200 people choose to vote in elections I'm not sure we need to spam thousands of people who don't care in the least. If you do care about them then there are plenty of opportunities to help run them and there are plenty of opportunities to become aware of them happening. I understand there are times when people who do care are extremely busy and just can't deal with every piece of email that comes through. We can't change that fact of life. For anyone who does care and is worried about missing the announcement please subscribe to the main announce list and read it. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Am I the only one who missed the election?
On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 9:58 AM, Kevin Kofler kevin.kof...@chello.at wrote: inode0 wrote: People working on the elections certainly try to make the community aware of the elections. Unfortunately we never seem to be able to get everyone's attention. One issue is that the voting period is just too short. This time, I found out about the elections 6-7 minutes after they had ended. I had also been burned in some previous elections by the deadline, wanting to make up my mind about whom to vote for, and by the time I had, they were already over. I think they should be open for at least 2 weeks, I don't see a good reason for the rush. Funny how people see things differently. I have always thought there should be a shorter window to vote since most votes happen at the very beginning or at the very end of the period. No matter how long we stretch out the middle nothing much happens vote-wise then. Of course I understand people could be considering matters deciding how to vote during that period. I do suspect that if 8 days isn't enough neither will 14 days as people will just put off dealing with it for that much longer. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Am I the only one who missed the election?
On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 8:50 AM, Brian C. Lane b...@redhat.com wrote: I just saw the Fedora election results, and was surprised to learn there had been an election. After some digging I figured out what happened. Robyn sends her announce emails to: announce@, devel-announce@, test-announce@ I saw the nomination email and the election results email, but no announcement of the elections being open. This is because Ankur Sinha didn't send the announcement to the same set of lists. I am apparently not on announce, only on devel-announce Looks like it was sent to the devel list as well. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2012-December/174779.html Emails like this should see a wide distribution, at the *least* they should be sent to the same set of lists that the other related emails are sent to. I suspect that the election turnout would have been greater if this had happened. People working on the elections certainly try to make the community aware of the elections. Unfortunately we never seem to be able to get everyone's attention. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Am I the only one who missed the election?
On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 10:25 AM, Michael Schwendt mschwe...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, 10 Dec 2012 09:59:03 -0600, inode0 wrote: Looks like it was sent to the devel list as well. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2012-December/174779.html 417 messages in December so far! Too easy to miss the announcement, if one doesn't pay attention to that list for some time. Even if it's just for a few days, the elections are not open long enough. Right and the sad truth is that busy people will miss announcements even if they are sent to every single Fedora list. Emails like this should see a wide distribution, at the *least* they should be sent to the same set of lists that the other related emails are sent to. I suspect that the election turnout would have been greater if this had happened. People working on the elections certainly try to make the community aware of the elections. Unfortunately we never seem to be able to get everyone's attention. Well, could you *please* decide on a list (or a well-defined set of lists) where to announce _future_ elections for sure? Well, the main announce list seems safe doesn't it? It may be helpful to analyze what has gone wrong this time, but that's useless if no attempts are made at trying to improve for the next election. I'm happy to try to improve it and I agree it would have been better to have sent it to the other announce lists as well. But I do not think that will prevent someone from missing it in the future. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Am I the only one who missed the election?
On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 12:18 PM, Michael Schwendt mschwe...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, 10 Dec 2012 10:33:33 -0600, inode0 wrote: Looks like it was sent to the devel list as well. http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2012-December/174779.html 417 messages in December so far! Too easy to miss the announcement, if one doesn't pay attention to that list for some time. Even if it's just for a few days, the elections are not open long enough. Right and the sad truth is that busy people will miss announcements even if they are sent to every single Fedora list. Well, that's not specific to announcement mails. Some people miss everything, ranging from incoming bugzilla reports, dist git commits, to personal mail. Perhaps you should return to the first post that started this thread. And there is no need to post to every single Fedora list. Let's use the _low-traffic_ moderated lists more appropriately. *I* don't mind adjusting my subscription of announce list and adjusting the procmail recipe, even if subscribing devel-announce is mandatory for packagers. Hopefully it will be announced whether the next election announcement will move to even another list. I wasn't suggesting announcements should go to every list. I was pointing out that no matter where they are made some people will miss them. It happens every election and I'm quite sure it will happen in every future election. Well, could you *please* decide on a list (or a well-defined set of lists) where to announce _future_ elections for sure? Well, the main announce list seems safe doesn't it? Safe? In which way? It's opt-in. Unlike devel-announce, which is mandatory. What about all devel-announce subscribers, who expect to receive election announcements as before? If you want one list to subscribe to to make sure you see the announcement that one should be safe. Have elections ever not been announced on that list? (I think devel-announce should be a subscriber to announce which would cover both anyway.) Reminder: Voting has begun in Fedora Board, FAmSCo, and FESCo elections, ends June 7th http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel-announce/2012-June/000937.html If announcement move to announce list, it would make sense to announce that on devel-announce. ;-) I'm happy to try to improve it and I agree it would have been better to have sent it to the other announce lists as well. But I do not think that will prevent someone from missing it in the future. This thread (and my one on test list) are because we were expected to learn about the election by paying attention to devel-announce where previous elections have been announced. Ok. As I said I would have preferred that it went to that list too. I'm sure those involved in making announcements will create an SOP so the announcement will go wherever people find it useful. But at the same time I think we should also note that the election bits were widely announced and for each of the last two elections, regardless of the devel-announce list, we have heard from one person who didn't notice them. My recommendation at this point is to guarantee the announcement will go to the main announce list. You can be sure you will get it if you subscribe to that. We will also announce it all over the place as we always do, on various mailing lists, blogs, social media outlets, etc. in an attempt to catch the eye of anyone who happens to be watching. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Where are we going? (Not a rant)
On Sat, Dec 8, 2012 at 7:12 AM, Dan Mashal dan.mas...@gmail.com wrote: This IS a rant. And this includes a few analogies. Some good, some bad. This is one of the reasons why I chose to run for board. Nobody really knows where Fedora is going. It's like a too many chefs problem. We might not have enough chefs. If we pick a handful of top chefs we create a recipe for far less innovation. If you have 20 minutes you might enjoy thinking about what Charles Leadbeater has to say about open innovation and whether/how we might apply these idea to our organization. http://www.ted.com/talks/charles_leadbeater_on_innovation.html John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: fedora elections questions [Re: remove polkit from core?]
On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 9:19 AM, Matthew Miller mat...@fedoraproject.org wrote: On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 09:43:41AM +, Richard W.M. Jones wrote: Anyway, I'd like to hear what FESCo members have to say about this, because it would strongly influence who I would vote for. Yeah, I too came up with a couple of questions I'd like to add to https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F19_elections_questionnaire, but the question collection period is over. There will be a townhall where you or a proxy can ask them as well. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Fedora multi-arch
On Wed, Sep 12, 2012 at 4:10 PM, Kevin Fenzi ke...@scrye.com wrote: On Wed, 12 Sep 2012 13:59:16 -0700 (PDT) Henrique Junior henrique...@gmail.com wrote: Fedora multi-arch [1] is a good idea that is not receiving the emphasis it should. In fact, most people do not even know it exists and I wonder why not give a little more emphasis on this download option. maybe adding one more entry in Formats when downloading[2] . What do you think? ... so, if we are going to make them, they should get tested, produced and distributed (including signed checksums) like every other image we produce. IMHO. In F17 signed checksums were added. In F18 they should be tested if all goes well. https://fedorahosted.org/fedora-qa/ticket/307 Distributing them in the same way as other images has some issues due to the large amount of additional space that would require on mirrors. I think it would be nice to advertise them somewhere on get-fedora and on the verify page as well. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Default image target size [Was:Re: Summary/Minutes from today's FESCo Meeting (2012-06-18)]
On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 6:53 PM, Kevin Kofler kevin.kof...@chello.at wrote: inode0 wrote: The quota for these would need to be much higher already as the Multi-Desktop is now 6.1GB The Multi Desktop Live DVD is dual-layer, it's not expected to fit 4.7 GB. But dual-layer DVDs also have a finite capacity. ;-) So we can allow each spin to grow to a certain extent, but not to an arbitrarily high size or to a full DVD. We need arbitrary quota which sum up to at most the size of a dual-layer DVD. Right. We should note also that there is no requirement that the Multi Desktop include the desktops that it currently includes. Right now it includes 5 desktops and while I hope it can continue to include all 5 there is no requirement for it to. And it really would not be the end of the world for the Multi Desktop to not be dual architecture in the future, this is convenient but at some point 32 bit will be dropped anyway and it could just be split into arch specific DVDs if necessary. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Default image target size [Was:Re: Summary/Minutes from today's FESCo Meeting (2012-06-18)]
On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 12:57 PM, Kevin Kofler kevin.kof...@chello.at wrote: Andre Robatino wrote: Would it be possible for QA to get access to the Multi Desktops before release and test those directly against a media-determined hard limit? That makes sense, though the problem then is which spin gets the blame if the overall quota is exceeded? We probably need to define per-spin quota. The quota for these would need to be much higher already as the Multi-Desktop is now 6.1GB and the Multi-Install is 7.3GB. These images are also dual architecture and are generally not intended for direct download although that is allowed from alt. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: *countable infinities only
On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 1:15 AM, Tomas Mraz tm...@redhat.com wrote: On Mon, 2012-06-04 at 21:30 -0500, Dennis Gilmore wrote: El Sat, 2 Jun 2012 12:18:17 -0400 Orcan Ogetbil oget.fed...@gmail.com escribió: On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 12:05 PM, Jesse Keating wrote: The only Freedom you've lost is that now, in addition to the person-hours to do the work and monetary cost to host your bits or generate physical media, you have an additional cost if you wish to have your own cert that will be accepted out of the box by the next generation of PC hardware. You have as much equal footing as Fedora does to plunk down the $99 and play along in the PC sandbox. That's a better deal than Fedora's gpg signing setup. Hmm, will the package maintainers have the freedom to not support users who have the secureboot enabled? How are we going to detect this? i look at it this way. if you patch your software to only run on machines with secureboot disabled your software then becomes non free and has to be removed from fedora. this is becasuse you are placing usage restrictions on it. depending on the license of the software adding such a restriction would violate the license. I am not a lawyer at all and never pretend to play one, but i do not think you as a package maintainer can do that. an upstream could, but i imagine it would be viewed in the same light as a commercial use restriction and become non-free. That's a total nonsense unless the restriction is by-license and not just technical obstacle. If it is just a technical obstacle in the code, you can remove it and run the software on any crippled machine at your will. So no, making your software not to work on particular machines does not make it non-free at all. Aside from being distasteful it is wildly at odds with the goal of the proposed feature. If the proposal before us is accepted with the expressed purpose of making Fedora usable out of the box on this hardware I have a hard time accepting that Fedora would view requiring patching and recompiling components by the end user to remove obstructions to such use as acceptable packaging behavior. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: *countable infinities only
On Sat, Jun 2, 2012 at 11:40 AM, Matthew Garrett mj...@srcf.ucam.org wrote: On Sat, Jun 02, 2012 at 12:18:17PM -0400, Orcan Ogetbil wrote: Hmm, will the package maintainers have the freedom to not support users who have the secureboot enabled? How are we going to detect this? Any piece of userspace can read the SecureBoot and SetupMode variables and check that they're 1 and 0 respectively. But refusing to run in that scenario would provide no extra security, so the only reason to do so would be to warn the user that kernel functionality the application depends on may not be available. But if you mean I philosophically object to secure boot and want to prevent my packages from working on systems with it enabled then yes, that's clearly a thing you could do. I don't think it's worth discussing whether it's something that you should do or something that would be treated as a bug unless someone actually wants to do it. Doing this in my mind should not be allowed as it discriminates against a subset of users. Whether this is legally allowed or not I hope no one would consider doing it. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Install Fedora Button for LiveCD
On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 12:20 PM, Jesse Keating jkeat...@j2solutions.net wrote: On 4/3/12 9:44 AM, Matthias Clasen wrote: Anyway, we can easily arrange things so that the installer does not get autostarted anymore once you tick the 'No thanks, just playing' checkbox. Instead of autolaunching the installer, why not autolaunch a very light window that has two buttons: Install Fedora and Evaluate Fedora. Hell, could just be one button, Install Fedora but the window/app itself can be dismissed. So basically every time you boot and log into a live CD you get a popup offering you the ability to install, that can be easily dismissed. Thoughts? As someone who often uses live media but who almost never uses it to install Fedora this would be extremely annoying compared to just booting to the live media and having some obvious way to do an installation if that is what the user wants to do without repeatedly bothering those who don't. My experience may not be ordinary, but I really think the install from live media use case isn't all that common compared to other uses of live media. I could be wrong, I certainly know people who do install from the live media as well. From the options I've seen put on the table so far I would lean toward either the original just make it easy somehow to do it from the desktop or having it be an optional boot choice that is not the default but that has an obvious label. Making it simple to do and making it not a bother to those who don't want to install Fedora from the live media would be a win for all use cases I think. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: /usrmove? - about the future
On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 1:02 PM, Scott Doty sc...@ponzo.net wrote: On 02/10/2012 10:57 AM, Adam Williamson wrote: On Fri, 2012-02-10 at 10:39 -0800, Scott Doty wrote: On 02/10/2012 10:05 AM, Adam Williamson wrote: You're not supposed to be running Fedora on production servers. That is not what it's for. Sez who? http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Server Sez the board: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User_base https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User_base_-_general_productivity_user These are _minimums_. I'm not saying that anyone should be bending over backwards to support using Fedora on servers, but it's not for servers doesn't hold water with many in the community. Really those are just about the default offering (i.e., the Desktop Live image) too. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: [HEADS UP] remove ddate(1) command from rawhide
On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 6:54 AM, Karel Zak k...@redhat.com wrote: I'd like to remove: ddate - converts Gregorian dates to Discordian dates command from rawhide (F17). IMHO this crazy command is used by very very small minority of Fedora users. Comments? That would make me very sad. Instead please consider adding robotfindskitten to util-linux which would make me very happy. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Trusted Boot in Fedora
On Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 12:06 PM, Bernd Stramm bernd.str...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, 25 Jun 2011 10:41:36 -0600 Kevin Fenzi ke...@scrye.com wrote: I welcome posts back on the technical topic of trusted boot. ;) Right. So can we have specifics about what it's good for? Not how it is implemented, but what the purposes are. And who the trusted entities are (can be) in the chain of trust. Those sorts of technical topics would be interesting. I agree this would be interesting. On a more practical level I'd like to hear with more specifics about how this fits the definition of a feature as stated here http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Policy/Definitions Does it meet any of the points 1, 2, or 4? If it is proposed as a feature based on either or both of points 3 and 5 has marketing or anyone outside of FESCo been involved in deciding whether this meets those requirements from their perspective? I ask this because points 3 and 5 don't seem to be based on anything technical. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Meeting summary/minutes from today's FESCo meeting (2010-09-14)
On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 11:31 AM, Nils Philippsen n...@redhat.com wrote: On Wed, 2010-09-15 at 22:46 -0400, Jon Masters wrote: Right. I'm not saying Jarod should issue Fedora Arrest Warrants (FAWs?) I like this. We also need black helicopters. Those are in the hangars at the secret desert compound now. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Meeting summary/minutes from today's FESCo meeting (2010-09-14)
On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 9:46 PM, Jon Masters jonat...@jonmasters.org wrote: On Wed, 2010-09-15 at 18:09 -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote: That's a good point, but I would hope that someone elected to serve on a body in Fedora would actually *want* to vote, and the measures above are just ideas meant to be motivation/reminder than forcing. Right. I'm not saying Jarod should issue Fedora Arrest Warrants (FAWs?) for the members of FESCo (or the Board), but there should be an official means by which votes can be counted in absentia, and in some cases it may be required that everyone has to vote, and that's a good thing. btw, I think Kyle said earlier he's standing aside. So does that mean there now is a new FESCo election? No, FESCo has policies in place to deal with this situation described here http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FESCo_election_policy John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Search Engine Proposal
On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 1:59 PM, Manuel Escudero jmlev...@gmail.com wrote: 1) We're already using a GOOGLE SEARCH BOX!! in http://start.fedoraproject.org/ ¿Do you have the code for this one? NO. And Fedora Project is using it. I'm sharing a Fedora Solution an applied search engine for the community. and I can add as many collaborators as I want, I can share my code, I can Modify it, it's more opensource that the one that we're already using... We wish we weren't and we want to learn from our mistakes rather than repeat them. In the case of the start page I believe it was a concession combined with the hope that it would be replaced with a free solution in the future. It at the very least should not used as a shining example of the way Fedora does things. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Mailing list guidelines and smartphones
On Saturday, August 14, 2010, Jesse Keating jkeat...@redhat.com wrote: I'm still looking for an android email client that allows me to place the reply below the quoted text. I guess an alternative is to delete the entire quoted text... While not very convenient the web browser let's you do whatever you please. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Best distribution for developers? (was Re: Board efforts: scope, concept, and permission?)
On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 8:41 AM, David Malcolm dmalc...@redhat.com wrote: On Wed, 2010-02-03 at 20:51 -0600, Mike McGrath wrote: On Wed, 3 Feb 2010, inode0 wrote: Sadly they don't have categories like the best linux distribution for developers there. Is that what we're doing? If so would we win it? (Apologies for diving into this thread, this got me thinking) best linux distribution for developer seems too vague to me to be achievable. I think there are different categories of developer. Well, according to the above analysis it is achievable if linux.com says we are. But even if we assume we are in fact the best linux distribution for developers or for engineers or for graduate students in scientific fields or for whatever it doesn't follow that we want to have that group in mind for a target audience for any particular product of the distribution (at least I find it inconceivable those would be target audiences of the default desktop). Even if we change the focus to identifying a target audience for the project, which is where I think developers would rank very high on the list your analysis is valid. We don't appeal to all developers as a project either. Do we focus on a narrow achievable target audience that it is realistic for us to be the best for now? I bet that would result in a worsening of the perceived crisis. Or should we focus on a group with broad appeal that while perhaps not ever being achievable will lessen the indicators of the crisis? Or do we go about our business attracting, say, recreational FOSS python developers who as a side-effect of adding cool feature X to the Fedora distribution also add less visible things Y and Z to make the life of a python developer using Fedora better? I always, perhaps mistakenly, thought the point of the default spin was to showcase the work of the developers, artists, documentation writers, and others who are contributing so much to the Fedora Project. Who is supposed to find that sort of showcase interesting? Or is that just a quaint old notion of the output of a project in its infancy? It probably is ... John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Board efforts: scope, concept, and permission?
On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 10:26 AM, John Poelstra poels...@redhat.com wrote: Adam Miller said the following on 02/03/2010 08:02 AM Pacific Time: I'm not on some crusade to undermine the Board if that's what you think, I'm honestly looking for clarification but not only from those involved in the Board but the community as well and both are located here on this list. I don't see why it matters where the questions are asked, just so long as they are asked. Thanks for your clarification. I think it is great to ask questions, I ask a lot of them myself. I question how productive it is to all of us though, to ask questions if the starting point of those questions is incorrect. While I understand your point I think (reading too much into draft remarks with possibly not the full context of the surrounding discussions) I do think after all this time there are still a number of people in the community (I am one of them) who aren't convinced that the board isn't going down an unproductive path founded in assumptions of a community structure that doesn't really exist. I believe that what fundamentally makes the Fedora Project a great place to be is that it is an open community where the participants share a group of core values that guide them both individually and collectively toward an unwritten end that is worth pursuing and I see danger ahead in trying to write that ending in advance because that short-circuits the evolving direction the project gets from the collective wisdom of its contributors. I wonder how widely that belief is held in the community?! My sense here was that a few words on a wiki page struck you the wrong way so instead of going to the people that wrote them by asking, Hey, what do you guys mean? These ___ things concern me for these reasons. It was first asked instead to a mailing list that didn't write them :). I can't speak for Adam here, but to me it isn't a few words on a wiki page causing the concern, those words reinforce the concern. The board has a really difficult task when it comes to its leadership role. Since it doesn't have much structural authority to impose its will on contributors it requires that the board make a case that is compelling to the contributors so that they internalize and adopt it as part of what they do. If contributors won't do that, then stating our target audience is X will fall on deaf ears. While I've not been convinced that defining a target audience is remotely a good idea, I know from talking to a lot of people in the community that *they* do think it is. So don't be too discouraged, the folks with doubts are more likely to jump up and down than the folks who agree. I specifically requested feedback on advisory-board for this very purpose and received no responses. Is there something I could have done better on advisory-board list to engage the people that have participated so freely here? Perhaps that indicates that the advisory-board list wasn't the best place to ask. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Board efforts: scope, concept, and permission?
On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 3:26 PM, Jesse Keating jkeat...@redhat.com wrote: On Wed, 2010-02-03 at 12:54 -0600, inode0 wrote: I believe that what fundamentally makes the Fedora Project a great place to be is that it is an open community where the participants share a group of core values that guide them both individually and collectively toward an unwritten end that is worth pursuing Perhaps the problem is we don't all agree on those core sets of values, or how those values should guide us to what unwritten end. Or we suspect we don't agree because so much of it is unwritten. We are about to fall off the edge of the philosophical cliff now. I really don't analyze how my values guide my actions. I approach the check-out counter behind a little old lady. I could speed up and cut in front of her, I could slow down and let her go first. I make a decision which I believe is formed in large part by my values without thinking about them. If the assumption is that we all share these values, what are they? The four F's? Those are just vague enough to be practically meaningless in this context. Enumerating the values with surgical precision is meaningless too if you want it to lead to an idea of what the Fedora distribution will look like in 5 years. It just doesn't work that way. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Board efforts: scope, concept, and permission?
On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 8:28 PM, Mike McGrath mmcgr...@redhat.com wrote: On Wed, 3 Feb 2010, Mike McGrath wrote: I really don't know what our users are a measure of. I don't think it's marketing as inode0 suggests, because the people using Fedora already know about it. But if we step back and take our users seriously. We'll find that since Fedora Core 6 released in 2006-10-24 to today, we've experienced a net growth of negative 3%. Yup, a 3% loss of users. Our own users are moving _AWAY_ from Fedora. For whatever reason more users have chosen to not use Fedora then who have chosen to use Fedora. I suspect many have moved downsteam to Enterprise Linux. Which is ok but it's an indication that people came, tried Fedora, and moved on. Along with the above... If we're going to be the best at something don't we need to pick something to be the best at? http://www.linux.com/learn/docs/ldp/282996-choosing-the-best-linux-distributions-for-you I particularly like this: Ubuntu edges out its closest contenders, Fedora and openSUSE, because its development team is constantly focused on the end-user experience. What is it we're focused on? Do I need to just ask everyone individually and hope we all say the same thing? Sadly they don't have categories like the best linux distribution for developers there. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Board efforts: scope, concept, and permission?
On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 8:51 PM, Mike McGrath mmcgr...@redhat.com wrote: On Wed, 3 Feb 2010, inode0 wrote: Sadly they don't have categories like the best linux distribution for developers there. Is that what we're doing? If so would we win it? One thing I know that I am not doing is competing with Ubuntu for the market it appeals to. Another thing I know that I am not doing is trying to win anything. I am trying to support a community that works in a variety of ways to promote freedom, whether that be in terms of software or in terms of content or in terms of culture. It is well known for being an engine of innovative, cutting-edge technology largely accomplished by working closely with upstream projects. I suspect that is something that appeals to a healthy segment of the developer pool and that distinguishes us from other distributions. I don't need to win a prize or see Fedora in a poll finish ahead of Ubuntu to view this as a success. ... omission of about 50 other things we stand for and promote ... If we foster the sort of community described on the overview page of the wiki, we are winning what matters - we are living the mission we defined. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Board efforts: scope, concept, and permission?
On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 10:45 AM, Mike McGrath mmcgr...@redhat.com wrote: And to answer your question about what isnt' broken. I suggest you look at our http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics page. We've only seen growth in 2 of our last 6 releases. Think about that. While I don't see that as directly relating to the mission of the Fedora Project I understand it is important to many people and I understand there is an indirect link with the mission. But what indicates that is a problem with the distribution as opposed to a marketing problem? John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Board efforts: scope, concept, and permission?
On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 11:28 AM, Robyn Bergeron robyn.berge...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 9:54 AM, inode0 ino...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 10:45 AM, Mike McGrath mmcgr...@redhat.com wrote: And to answer your question about what isnt' broken. I suggest you look at our http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics page. We've only seen growth in 2 of our last 6 releases. Think about that. While I don't see that as directly relating to the mission of the Fedora Project I understand it is important to many people and I understand there is an indirect link with the mission. But what indicates that is a problem with the distribution as opposed to a marketing problem? The marketing problem is this: Who are we marketing to? Defining the target audience - as broad as it may be - helps here. To be clear I wasn't suggesting there actually was a marketing problem, although there is probably always a marketing problem in the absence of a monopoly. I can imagine other approaches though. What are the characteristics of good contributors? Market to that segment of the population. What the desktop spin is or isn't probably doesn't matter in that case to the marketing effort. Why hasn't marketing defined *its* target audience(s)? Why can't marketing identify the characteristics of groups they wish to market Fedora to and do it? I'd also speculate that part of the reason that Fedora is not seeing as much grown in terms of downloads is that a lot of people don't like to fix what isn't broken. When things -just work-, the average end-user doesn't necessarily want to rock the boat. It could be a good thing. :) Especially when you consider that - although growth in downloads may not be consistent - contributor account growth seems to be very healthy. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/File:Accounts_2009-10.png I agree the one metric cited tells only a small part of the story. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Board efforts: scope, concept, and permission?
On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 11:45 AM, Mike McGrath mmcgr...@redhat.com wrote: Unless you were misquoted the question you asked was: Isn't it amazing how thousands of contributors doing whatever they want created such a spectacular OS? [1] That was a rhetorical answer to the question, Does letting thousands of contributors do what they want have a negative impact on our OS? It translates more succinctly as no. And was followed by a suggestion that asking questions about what in the unorchestrated stew that is the Fedora Project caused that result was something worth investigating. As far as your question about the lack of growth, I was under the impression that to you our growth didn't matter[2]. My apologies. I don't consider growth for the sake of growth important or part of the Fedora Project's mission. Targeted and sustainable growth where that growth furthers the Fedora Project's mission is what I care about and I don't think that is reflected in download statistics. But my question about growth was sincere. Identifying lack of growth as a problem to me suggests on the surface a marketing issue, not an OS issue so I wanted to know why we were addressing it as an OS problem. There could be reasons it is, I'm not denying that possibility. John -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
