Requesting a Clear ELC Proposal

[John Poelstra]

I agree with Dimitris that we should be open to considering new ways of 
doing things and that progress and innovation often happen by getting 
out of our comfort zones.  I also think that the board should be 
presented with enough information to make an informed decision.  An 
informed decision requires specifics beyond "would the board be opposed 
to a particular 'idea'?"

For me I keep coming back wanting to know exactly what it is that the 
board is deciding and what information we are using to make that 
decision.  I think 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Extended_Life_Cycle is a good 
start, but the presentation format does not fit the context of the 
request (which too me is another problem)
   --https://fedorahosted.org/fesco/ticket/180
The board does not review other feature pages that are not deemed 
features.  Why has the board been asked to review this one?  This 
information should be in the ticket when it comes to the board in the 
future.

For your best shot at success (or at least to get my vote) I would 
suggest the following:

o Create a formal proposal (discard the feature page format as it is 
confusing and doesn't work for this purpose)
   --the mailing list threads are already tangled and forming 
conclusions from them is difficult
   --In other words, create the best situation you can for the board to 
say "yes."
o In the proposal:
   a) be as specific as possible.  This doesn't help the board make a 
decision: "we seek to extend Fedora's life cycle with a yet to be 
determined additional period of time" (from the current summary)
   b) Bullet point the *problems* you believe need to be solved
   c) Bullet point the *reasons* those problems need to be solved
   d) Explain how you will *solve* those problems
   e) Explain the *risks* involved with the proposed solutions
   f) Explain how you will *mitigate* those risks or what the 
contingency plans will be
   g) Explain how the problems that need to be solved are relevant to 
Fedora's mission and objectives
   h) Time line for implementing the proposal
   i) Time line for evaluating the effectiveness of the implementation 
to determine if it should be continued or canceled.

A lot of this information can be extracted from the feature page and is 
also probably in many of the email threads.  I guess what I'm trying to 
say here is that I think this request has a much better chance of being 
fairly heard and considered if it can be presented in clear straight 
forward manner.  Expecting people to remember all of the back and forth 
of all the mail threads (on this and other lists), combined with a 
feature page that isn't a feature page is possibly too much.

John