On 01/29/2014 07:10 PM, Ian Malone wrote:
On 29 January 2014 23:58, Josh Boyer
<jwboyer(a)fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> I consider myself squarely in the middle of those two camps. I think
> they have value to people. I think they fill a niche, however large
> or small it might be. I also think they can be done by the people
> wishing to provide them without relying on Fedora resources for
> hosting and creation (outside of leveraging existing packages and
> repositories).
>
> I don't consider that "getting rid of them" at all. On the contrary,
> I think it lets people have more control over their spins, allows them
> to refresh them as they see fit throughout the release, and allows
> them to market and promote them beyond a token mention on a Fedora
> website.
Some care is needed, if there are things getting packaged to fill a
role in a spin they may disappear from Fedora if the spin in question
does.
On one hand, I am impressed by many spins as an excellent technology
demonstration. On the other hand, what should existing users of a base
Fedora do if they find an useful spin with a superior functionality? If
its function is not integrated and easily accessible from the base
system, they must either dual-boot or re-install from the spin.
Therefore I prefer that the spins ultimate goal is to include the
functionality into generic Fedora. The same goes for other bundling
schemes discussed here. It's not that I object to them per se, but I
do think that there's an opportunity cost involved: the person caring
about the spin has to chose between working on integrating the spin
functionality in generic Fedora, and developing the spin separately. I
do recognize that the former is harder, but the opposite tack has a
potential to fragment Fedora. Spins should be like branches in a VCS:
let's not turn them into forks.
I think the strength of Fedora comes from it being an excellent platform
for all kinds of FOSS software, and the associated network effect---the
better the platform is, the faster it gets better.