Blend Fedora Objectives (was Re: Again: EOL Policy for Fedora Extras)

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

Am Samstag, den 18.02.2006, 15:45 -0500 schrieb Warren Togami:
> Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> > 3. we should let FEL define its own policies. Today we don't know the
> > number of people interested in FEL and their level of involvement. It's
> > useless to dictate rules to a team which is not assembled yet. People
> > who want to do it should first go to 1. and create some form of entity
>
> I think it is entirely broken to "hand over" the entire Extras and 
> expect some other volunteer to take care of it.  This will create a 
> guaranteed failure situation for a community group because the set of 
> packages is potentially infinite and the natural problem that security 
> is difficult to maintain with only volunteers (even Debian struggles). 
> It is a *fantasy* for maintainers to expect they hand over 
> responsibility to some theoretical entity and expect it to actually work.

+1

>[...]
> 1) Task: All new bug reports in Extras should go to a list
> Timeframe: ASAP
> 
> This easy change already discussed in FESCO would increase the chances 
> of new issues reported against Extras packages to be handled by somebody 
> in a timely manner.  There currently isn't agreement whether we should 
> have this mail go to the existing fedora-extras-list and further 
> overload those subscribers, or create a new extras-bugs-list limited 
> only to people interested enough to subscribe.  I am leaning towards the 
> latter.

Me too. But I'm wondering bugzilla-spam should go; Maybe we even need
three mailinglists:

fedora-extras-list -> for discussions and questions regarding FE
fedora-extras-reviews-list -> bugzilla spam from review bugs
fedora-extras-bugs-list -> all other extras bugs

> It is clear to me however that this is not a feasible long-term 
> solution.  The amount of mail will never stop growing, and it will 
> become more and more detrimental over time for any person to attempt to 
> read everything.  I think that we should always keep subscribing to a 
> bug list as an *option*, however we should move toward the next goal.

The section "About OPEN-BUGS packages" in
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/PackageStatus#head-b08e03806e3ec607e04e9dc478d2e97caed889f1
is a great help IMHO. We just need to start using and enhancing it.

> 2) Task: All Packages in Core and Extras should officially have multiple 
> owners in the database
> Timeframe: Early FC6 cycle [...]

Nice idea. Related: We should have a policy that regulates when Fedora
Extras packages should be allowed to touch packages that are owned by
somebody else (in case of security fixes for example)

> 3)  Task: Organize formal security status tracking of Fedora Extras 
> similarly to how Core is tracked.
> Timeframe: FC6 cycle
> Who: ??? Yes, security is a hard problem for volunteers for many reasons... [...]

A security SIG/Team/Task Force is already in the works. Still in the
early planing stages. I asked Hans for a status update an hour ago.

>[...]
> === WARNING: PURELY THEORETICAL STUFF BELOW ===
> 
> 5) Task: Allow direct participation in Core from Fedora community
> Timeframe: ???

Side note: openSuse plans to simplify participation to their
"Core-Distro" afaik, too. It's high on their todo-list iirc.

> 6) Legacy contribution goes directly into older Core
> Timeframe: ??? [...]

Don't forget "Updates build by 'Legacy' should be uploaded to the same
place where Core updates from Red Hat were uploaded to before -> no yum
re-configuration, no special 'legacy' repos for yum/pirut"

> 7) Possibly Abolish "Legacy" name 

+1

> [...]

Cu
thl
-- 
Thorsten Leemhuis <fedora at leemhuis.info>