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Notes from the Fedora project
The Fedora folks have a lot of important problems on their mind. As part
of that, there is currently a tense
election underway - to choose the codename for the Fedora 10
release. There's a list of nine suitably silly, Red-Hat-legal-approved
names to choose from. Your editor, fresh from another failed Rawhide
update, suggests voting for "terror." Even though Rawhide hasn't been
that terrible recently.
Another election - this one for the membership of the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCO), just finished. FESCO members this time around will be Bill Nottingham, Kevin Fenzi, Dennis Gilmore, Brian Pepple, David Woodhouse, Jarod Wilson, Josh Boyer, Jon Stanley and Karsten Hopp. For the curious, the FESCO mission is:
FESCo handles the process of accepting new features, the acceptance
of new packaging sponsors, Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and SIG
Oversight, the packaging process, handling and enforcement of
maintainer issues and other technical matters related to the
distribution and its construction.
The new feature aspect of the job could be interesting in the near future; there has been some clear confusion on what constitutes a new feature, as compared to a mere "enhancement" which does not involve FESCO. The surprising (to some) replacement of RPM in Rawhide was one of those ambiguous issues which brought this question to the fore. There is now an enhanced draft feature policy up for review which, it is hoped, will clarify the situation. Back in June, the results from the Fedora board election raised some concerns about the process. One reaction to these concerns can now be seen in this proposal for term limits for board members. The reasoning behind this proposal is explained thusly by project leader Paul Frields:
The problem at hand was the perceived dominance by full-time Fedora
people on the Board. People who spend their entire $DAYJOB as well
as their spare time on Fedora are automatically very involved and
visible. That can translate directly to votes on the basis of name
recognition, which really disadvantages people who are very
involved, but in a somewhat more limited fashion because they don't
have the luxury of doing Fedora all day every day.
So the full-time Fedora folks are simply too prominent, to the point that they need to be eased off the stage after a couple of terms on the board to make room for everybody else. Of course, there's a couple of exceptions. The Fedora project leader, not being an elected member of the board, has no such limits. More to the point, though: term limits would not apply to those board members appointed by Red Hat. The reasoning here is:
Extending these term limits to Red Hat appointed seats is not
sensible for a number of reasons -- institutional knowledge,
flexibility, etc.
As of this writing, there has not been a whole lot of discussion of the term limit proposal; opinions which have been posted are not entirely positive. Fedora project members will want to consider whether this proposal can achieve its stated goal. It would be unfortunate if an up-and-coming outsider - with associated institutional memory - got term-limited off the board just as they were really hitting their stride. Finally, OLPC enthusiasts may want to have a look at the newly-formed OLPC special interest group. This group is working to make the Fedora distribution (already shipped by OLPC) as well suited to that platform as possible. One of the results should include a special Sugar "spin" of Fedora. There is a mailing list available for interested people to join. (Log in to post comments)
Fedora Names Posted Jul 24, 2008 19:55 UTC (Thu) by zlynx (subscriber, #2285) [Link] "Terror" is pretty good. It inspired me, and I'd like to suggest "TyrannoCore" or perhaps "Tyrannocore." I know that's "tyrant" instead of "terror." "Dinocore" or "Deimocore" or "Deinocore" might also be good names, although I don't like them as well. I'd also like to apologize that I cannot construct Greek nouns properly.
Fedora Names Posted Jul 30, 2008 4:40 UTC (Wed) by roelofs (guest, #2599) [Link] I like it. And isn't tyrannosaurus loosely translated as "terror lizard"? (I know Wikipedia claims "tyrant lizard," but I don't believe I've heard that translation before.)Greg
Fedora Names Posted Jul 30, 2008 5:02 UTC (Wed) by zlynx (subscriber, #2285) [Link] Nope. "Lizard King" is the name. Dinosaur is "terror lizard." Dino is also part of the name of Mar's moon Deimos. Deimos and Phobos: Terror and Fear.
Fedora Names Posted Jul 30, 2008 14:38 UTC (Wed) by massimiliano (subscriber, #3048) [Link] Actually I think "tyrant lizard" would be the literal meaning...
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