The KDE SIG is ready to formally submit a new product proposal for consideration: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Plasma_Product
the base proposal, Governance and PRD bits. Other stuff .like Technical spec is undergoing further polish.
I can serve as liason, if FESCo has any questions or need of any clarification.
I've said this before, but this should really go to the Fedora Advisory Board first. It's definitely their jurisdiction to decide whether Fedora will deliver an additional Product. After that, it's FESCo's job to see that this delivery is done in a technically-sound way.
Oh, I didn't recall that, but it is good advice, will do.
posted, https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/advisory-board/2014-March/012449.html
Replying to [comment:2 sgallagh]:
"... their jurisdiction..." by their do you mean the Board? I think there's a confusion of terms here.
"Fedora Advisory Board" is a mailing list (advisory-board@). I see that Rex has posted this there, which is fine but the list is open to anyone and is used for discussion by anyone.
"The Fedora Project Board" is a group of people responsible for broader vision/project impacts. The members of said group may or may not react to anything posted to advisory-board. If recent history indicates anything, there won't be much reaction from said group without additional prodding.
If you think this is something the Board needs to approve, please file a ticket in the Board trac instance and point at the advisory-board thread. At least that way it's explicit that FESCo/whomever is waiting on an official reply from the Board.
Mea culpa. I said "Fedora Advisory Board" when I really mean "Fedora Project Board"
And yes, my expectation is that this needs to be approved by the Fedora Project Board first and foremost since it's requesting the addition of a new, marketable offering from the Fedora Project. I don't think that's really FESCo's choice to make, unless the Board wants to cede that power to us.
Replying to [comment:6 sgallagh]:
Mea culpa. I said "Fedora Advisory Board" when I really mean "Fedora Project Board" And yes, my expectation is that this needs to be approved by the Fedora Project Board first and foremost since it's requesting the addition of a new, marketable offering from the Fedora Project. I don't think that's really FESCo's choice to make, unless the Board wants to cede that power to us.
This is my personal opinion. FESCo invented Fedora.next, created the initial 3 products, and presented them to the Board for approval. I do not believe it would be out of line for FESCo to evaluate the proposed Plasma Product at the same time the Board does. In fact, I believe it would actually be helpful because FESCo can do the technical feasibility study and provide a recommendation to the Board based on that. E.g. "FESCo thinks this can be done, but not for F21 because X, Y, Z". Or "FESCo thinks this is feasible within the F21 timeframe because we'll have automation in place to handle the majority of X, Y, Z". Etc.
If FESCo views the broader scope as needing approval, that's fine but I don't believe for a second that FESCo should sit on the sidelines and wait given that they created the entire reason this is now being proposed. The Board is likely to ask technical questions along those lines anyway.
Again, my personal opinion.
One non-technical point of review - the three approved products are 'Server', 'Cloud', and 'Workstation', which all (for better or worse) describe a specific use case for the product. 'Plasma' doesn't fit that model, and I wonder if that would make for more confusing/unclear marketing & differentiation. Might be worth having the marketing team decide.
(Or, if we want to brand around non-use-case words as the brand identifier, we can rethink the brand identifiers for the current server/workstation/cloud products as well.)
Replying to [comment:8 notting]:
One non-technical point of review - the three approved products are 'Server', 'Cloud', and 'Workstation', which all (for better or worse) describe a specific use case for the product. 'Plasma' doesn't fit that model, and I wonder if that would make for more confusing/unclear marketing & differentiation. Might be worth having the marketing team decide. (Or, if we want to brand around non-use-case words as the brand identifier, we can rethink the brand identifiers for the current server/workstation/cloud products as well.)
The reason we went with Plasma is - it's science term, we aim scientific/engineering lab, it's also the name of upstream technology, we're using. But we're definitely open to any suggestions, I'll bring it to the marketing team.
I kinda think notting's second case might be better in the long term (using non-use-case brand identifiers).
EDIT: But that might turn out to be off topic for this ticket :-)
Well, the discussions so far in ticket:1243, and deferring for this proposal, strongly implied that FESCo intended to discuss that proposal, so introducing a redirection to a different body ''now'' would be an annoyance. I think we owe it to the proposal authors to at least discuss it now, even if the formal approval procedure needed to be longer or to use a different order.
Sorry, I suppose my initial reply was probably overstated. I think it's fine for FESCo to discuss this and make a '''recommendation''', but it is ultimately up to the Board to make a '''decision'''.
For what it's worth, the target user bases and the choice of technologies go hand in hand with each other. The flagship applications for the main 2 target areas (science and education) we will be considering are (Cantor and the other kdeedu applications, RKWard, !LabPlot, Kile, LyX) or will be (GCompris, see their latest announcements) KDE- or Qt-based. Therefore, it makes sense to offer them together with a KDE Plasma workspace.
In addition, the technologies are also one of the differentiating factors from Workstation. But not the only one. For example, we believe in getting software to our users within the Fedora umbrella, whereas Workstation wants to officially endorse third-party software.
Replying to [comment:13 kkofler]:
For example, we believe in getting software to our users within the Fedora umbrella, whereas Workstation wants to officially endorse third-party software.
I disagree with this assertion. Workstation is indeed aiming to make Fedora a more stable platform for people developing software, both inside and outside of Fedora. Making software not packaged in Fedora available in a more user friendly fashion is useful to users wishing to use said software. Acknowledging that 3rd party software and 3rd party software developers exist is not the same as endorsing it.
It is worth remembering that virtually all software within the Fedora umbrella started as 3rd party software and was eventually packaged and brought in. "Third-party software" is not equivalent to "poor quality software" or "proprietary software". Neither of those two cases are something Workstation endorses.
This comment was made for clarification purposes. It will be my only comment on this immediate topic.
I want to make very sure that this proposal isn't meant to fit something into the product framework primarily out of fear that KDE won't get respect within Fedora overall without being a capital-P Product. Kevin, I appreciate your comments about the user base and the technology choice going hand in hand; that is exactly what I at least am looking for. But, alternately, I would like to at least discuss whether presenting a KDE spin (along with other alternative desktops) in a shiny way in the new website would actually be better.
I would like to be able to present very clear and simple stories to end users looking for a place to start in Fedora -- and users looking for documentation, getting help, and so on. I'd like to hear ideas from the web, design, and docs team for how having multiple top-level desktop products (as opposed to havin more focus) impacts their work. (And thoughts about those things from the KDE sig as well.) I know that's not quite fair because we didn't demand that of the other products, but it's increasingly important as we grow.
We do have some overlap between Cloud and Server products, and I think that's okay, but there's also a fairly bright line in the pets-vs-cattle distinction. I don't think it's controversial to say that this proposal and Workstation have a lot ''more'' overlap, and that that overlap needs some thought. If we do go with this, maybe we present it as something like this:
{{{
______________________________________________________________
| | | Get Fedora Cloud! | | -> Cloud Base (minimal but versatile) | | -> Atomic Fedora (run Docker containers!) | | -> Big Data Image (ready to hadoop) | |--------------------------------------------------------------| | | | Get Fedora Server | | One install, pick your role... | | - IDM server | | - web host | | - database | |--------------------------------------------------------------| | | | Get Fedora Desktop | | ___ ____ | | | | | | | | | Fedora Workstation | | Fedora Plasma | | | | (elevator pitch here) | | (elevator pitch here) | | | |___| |____| | |--------------------------------------------------------------| | | | More Fedora... other technologies, or build your own.... | |______________|
}}}
Just throwing this out as a strawman for complaining about; it's certainly not as clean as "1, 2, 3, and more".
And I'm not a designer. :)
I also have a little bit of a concern about the process for selection of working group members. For the other working groups, we had a message to the devel-announce mailing list and a one-month open period for self-nominations. And then, the membership lists were ratified by FESCo vote. In this case, I didn't even notice an announcement to the Fedora KDE list (although I might have missed it).
I don't know that this is an actual problem in practice, or that the membership listed wouldn't have ended exactly as it did now. But I already see someone on the KDE mailing list responding to a plasma-proposal-related post with "I'm not a member of this group, which I have never heard of".
People will be asking what is inside server? Is it GNOME? How can I install KDE in Server. These things should be also visible. I was furious, when I finally downloaded Fedora and it contained only GNOME :) Since then I'm using minimal networking installation, but that's not solution for everyone.
Replying to [comment:17 mmaslano]:
I think the discussion about level of detail shown on the front page and how that is presented is really a question for marketing/design/websites. We can give our input, of course.
Re: comment 16
some good points about governance... as the initial post went out on Mar 11, https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/kde/2014-March/013196.html
some valid criticisms I see include: the process was not as open/transparent as it could have been, being only announced on kde list initially the open nomination period was relatively short (less than 2 weeks)
I'll leave it for FESCo to decide if these should/must be addressed prior to any consideration of ratification.
Agreed on today's FESCo meeting:
Dropping the meeting keyword, pending discussion at the Board.
Board ticket filed: https://fedorahosted.org/board/ticket/177
Replying to [comment:21 mattdm]:
That link no longer goes anywhere. Can you provide an updated link (and ideally indicate if a decision was made)?
This topic will be discussed at FESCo meeting on Wednesday 2014-11-19 on 18:00 UTC.
Replying to [comment:24 tmraz]:
Why? What are we going to discuss here? It went to the Board and was not approved.
Whether we want to close the ticket or not. Also that board disapproved was not clear from above.
Replying to [comment:26 tmraz]:
https://fedorahosted.org/board-private/ticket/177 is the original ticket (which is not open)
https://fedorahosted.org/board/ticket/4 is the generalized Product ticket, which the Board approved.
I don't think there's anything to discuss at the moment. I would suggest just closing this ticket.
Closing the ticket as the new product proposals should be presented to Fedora Council.
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