#1440 New Spins process
Closed None Opened 8 years ago by jkurik.

When working on Changes for F23 I have realized the Spin process needs to be clarified.

Currently there is a request to include Cinnamon desktop as a new Spin. The request follows [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Spins_Process Spins Process] on the following wiki page: [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Cinnamon_Spin Cinnamon Spin].

However the developer has been asked to follow [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Policy Changes process] instead. The request has been turned to [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Cinnamon_Spin Changes/Cinnamon Spin] wiki page.

Having a discussion with Christoph Wickert we were pointed to proposal of a new [https://cwickert.fedorapeople.org/presentations/New_Spins_Process.odp Spins process description], which is worthwhile to be followed.

To move things on, I would like to ask FESCo to help with the process. One of the proposals is to merge the Spins Process together with Changes Process.


The text above is mixing two completely separate questions: ''contents'' of the process and ''mechanism'' of the process.

As for the contents, there seems to be not that much overlap in the process, people, and actions between Changes and Spins at least as described today (Spins need trademark approval and kickstart review, Changes need documentation, contingency plans and testing), so suggesting to use the Change process instead of the Spins process, or merging them, is somewhat surprising to me.

I don’t know, perhaps the Spins process ''should'' end up being more similar to the Changes process (e.g. now that Spins have a required testing sign-off before being published, that could be dealt with together with Change checkpoints).

As for the mechanism, having a real application with ticket tracking and understanding of the tracked data and all would of course be better than manually maintained wiki pages, OTOH developing all of this for a rarely performed process might not be worth it—and new spins seem to be added so rarely that truly automating ''this'' instead of pretty much anything else would not be worthwhile. Using trac might be a good and cheap enough improvement.

Personally I’m fine with whatever the Program Manager / Change Wrangler decide to use, as they have to interact with the system most of all people—as long as the submitters of new items can deal with the system at all, and FESCo action items end up as FESCo trac tickets I guess.

New spins will need Changes, it is how they will end up on teh list of things to advertise for a release. the Spins process has not been functional for many years now. mattdm in a thread on the spins list[1] was looking to have the trademark usage granted when FESCo acks the Spin as being a good thing for Fedora, Kickstart review is and should be done by peers, like we do for RPMs. FESCo is welcome do the review if we want but I do not think FESCo should do the review of kickstarts.

Spins also need documentation, contigency planning and testing. The process of adding a Spin really is just a Change. There is websites, releng, marketing etc all needing to do pieces of teh puzzle.

[1] https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/spins/2015-May/004201.html

18:29 < dgilmore> #agreed Spins to be treated as any other change accepted (+:7,-:0,0:0)

at todays meeting it was decided to treat Spins the same as any other change.

I went ahead and added a section on trademark approval to the change policy https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Policy

I added a "Trademark" bullet to the [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/EmptyTemplate#Scope Scope section of Change Template], to make sure it is covered during requesting a Change.

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