On 01/29/2014 07:10 PM, Ian Malone wrote:
On 29 January 2014 23:58, Josh Boyer <jwboyer@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.