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DistributionsFedora goals coming into focusFedora is getting closer to defining its long term goals. Board member Máirín Duffy posted a summary of the first draft of goals on January 11, with an invitation to comment on the goals on the blog or on the advisory board mailing list. One might think that the Fedora Project has sufficiently defined what it is and what it's doing. The project has defined objectives, a mission statement, vision statement, core values, and has identified its target audience.
Fedora's vision statement gives a broad idea of what the project is about,
and the core values (a.k.a. "four foundations") help briefly state
what informs the vision. In this case, "freedom, friends, features, first,"
which (with the vision) helps provide a fairly decent "elevator pitch" to
describe Fedora and for teams within the project to consider when making
decisions.
Say what you will about Fedora, but you can't fault the project for being overly vague. But being precise is the point. All of this is part of Fedora's strategic planning effort, something that is lacking from many open source projects. During a discussion of Fedora's mission statement in October of 2009, Mike McGrath expressed the problem that many were seeing with Fedora at the time: Right now Fedora is a place for everyone to just come and do whatever they want which is harming us in the long term. There's plenty of room for everyone in the Linux universe. I understand that by narrowing our focus we might lose some contributors who disagree with our values and mission. But that's better than not having one and having volunteers work against each other because they joined The Fedora Project thinking it was one thing only to find it's something else. Having a clear mission statement and values also enables the project to move forward without being distracted with activities that aren't part of its scope — like worrying about using Fedora for infrastructure services when long term supported releases are not an objective. Rather than being drawn into an (overly) long debate about what Fedora "should be" it's possible to point to the project's objectives — which do not in any way encourage a long term support release. It also enables Fedora to prioritize its resources. As former Fedora Project Leader Paul Frields wrote during the target audience discussion, "having an audience in mind, we as a community can prioritize resources, and at the same time make it possible for people who want to concentrate on other audiences to build community around those efforts." Fedora has been wrestling with these issues for some time, and there has been some unease expressed by some members of the Fedora community that the board is espousing its view of what Fedora should be rather than what the community wishes Fedora to be. Greg DeKoenigsberg addressed this by saying "the Fedora leadership should stake out positions that they believe to be correct, and should work to mobilize resources that move us in those directions... [while guaranteeing] the freedom for dissenting community members to move in their own directions." A long list of goalsWith all of the other strategic items in place, it is now up to the board to define goals for the next few releases; they now have a working list to consider. The initial list includes 15 goals that have been culled by the board from proposals out of the larger Fedora community. Much of the discussion happened took place back in November on the advisory-board list. Initially the call for goals was for the "next 3-4 releases," but that seems to have been cut down to the next two releases over the intervening months. The goals are to move Fedora closer to the vision statement for Fedora, which is: The Fedora Project creates a world where free culture is welcoming and widespread, collaboration is commonplace, and people control their content and devices. The final list includes improving and simplifying communication in the Fedora community, improving communication within the project, recruiting uncommon skillsets into Fedora, and improving the developer experience within Fedora. Some of the goals seem to describe things Fedora already does well. Goal 14, "Evaluate late-breaking technologies for inclusion/interaction with Fedora," for instance, seems to be well underway already. Others, like the goals around communication, could be combined into a single goal. It does seem that, like many FOSS projects, Fedora finds communication within and without the project to be a continual source of difficulty. A set of 15 goals, of course, is far too many to be practical, so the board is trying to reduce the list of goals to five goals for the next two releases. The board has settled on its five, being:
So far, there's been very little discussion on the advisory-board mailing list, but there has been discussion among some of the subgroups in Fedora. For example, the Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee (FAMSCo) brainstormed ahead of meeting with the board to offer their suggestions on which goals should be chosen. The board and FAMSCo seem to have mind-melded, as they share the exact same list of five goals. Fedora's Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo) has also met and discussed the goals and agreed on three goals. The first two (Improve and simplify collaboration in the Fedora Community, Improve and encourage high-quality communication in the fedora community) mirror the board and FAMSCo. The third, unsurprisingly for the engineering committee, is to improve the developer experience in Fedora. All of the goals that have been put forward so far seem perfectly reasonable. Goal #1, for example, would put emphasis on improving Fedora's governance structure and carries a suggestion that the Fedora board meet in person at least once per year. Goal #2 overlaps with #1, and both carry a suggestion about creating a calendaring solution for Fedora. (Also, perhaps, highlighting the absence of a decent FOSS calendaring solution.) More feedback will trickle in before the final goals are set, but it looks likely that improving communication and collaboration will be the primary goals for the next two releases. It's important to note that the goals are only suggestions and, as the wiki states "to help people who want to work on several things to prioritise their time." Coming up with a mission and goals for a large distribution is not easy. This is particularly true of a project with a corporate sponsor shifting from an closed development model to open, and a mixture of paid and unpaid contributors. Consider the efforts of the openSUSE Project to define its strategy. The effort has been in process now since 2009, and is still being worked on, with no target date for completion. The goals will be a hot topic at the upcoming FUDCon in Tempe, Arizona from January 29 through 31. There will be a session on the goals led by Duffy and the board members present, and a governance hackfest where the goals will likely be discussed as well. Fedora, thankfully, is at the tail end of the process. The question now becomes how well the various subgroups in Fedora will adhere to the goals — and whether they'll actually lead to success.
Brief items Distribution quotes of the week
The timing of it is very important, as most major distros would like to
adopt some of the features that just became popular in the various new app
markets and stores, such as screenshots, user comments and ratings. It
looks like a lot of new code is about to be written, or a lot of existing
code is about to gain quite a bit of popularity.
-- Enrico Zini
The fact is that it's still much easier to work on things in a corner. The
funny thing is that people are generally not opposed to work together, far
from it. When discussing low-level bits related to packaging systems, many
would expect dpkg/apt developers and rpm/zypp developers to have some
heated discussion just because we always hear confrontational stories here
and there. The truth is that those stories are generally from users, and
developers are generally happy to accept differences.
-- Vincent
Untz
Debian derivatives censusThe Debian Project has invited representatives of Debian-derived distributions to participate in a census of Debian derivatives. "By participating in the census you will increase the visibility of your derivative within Debian, provide Debian contributors with a contact point and a set of information that will make it easier for them to interact with your distribution. Representatives of distributions derived from Ubuntu are encouraged to get their distribution added to the Ubuntu Derivative Team wiki page."
Debian Installer 6.0 Release Candidate 2 releaseThe Debian Installer team has announced the second release candidate of the installer for Debian Squeeze. "We need your help to find bugs and further improve the installer, so please try it."
Announcing EPEL 6The Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) project has announced the release of EPEL 6. "EPEL 6 is a collection of add-on packages available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 and other compatible systems, maintained by the community under the umbrella of the Fedora Project. EPEL 6 is designed to supplement RHEL 6 by providing additional functionality and does not replace any RHEL 6 packages. As a community project, EPEL is maintained and supported by volunteers via Bugzilla and mailing lists. EPEL is not commercially supported by Red Hat, Inc."
Fedora 14 for IBM System z 64bit official releaseThe Fedora IBM System z (s390x) Secondary Arch team has announced the official release of Fedora 14 for IBM System z 64bit.
Announcing the release of Foresight Linux 2.5.0 ALPHA 1 GNOME EditionForesight Linux 2.5.0 ALPHA 1 GNOME Edition has been released. "Well known for being a desktop operating system featuring an intuitive user interface and a showcase of the latest desktop software, this new release brings you the latest GNOME 2.32 release, a newer Linux kernel 2.6.35.10, Xorg-Server 1.8, Conary 2.2 and a ton of updated applications!"
Distribution News Debian GNU/Linux Bits from the Security Team (for those that care about bits)The Debian Security Team had a productive meeting earlier the month. Topics discussed include Improvements to the team workflow, Hardening compiler flags, Longer security support for Debian stable, "Beta testing" of security updates, README.test, Backports security support, Issues in specific packages. There is also a call for volunteers.
Join the DebConf teamDebConf team is looking for new people to help with DebConf11. "DebConf is a huge process, and there are many things we could use help on. People come and go, and are usually overworked after a year or two -- so we would love new people to get involved. If you have new ideas, we'd love to hear about them and we can discuss if they'd work and how to make them happen. And by the way, if you are looking for a good way to get involved with Debian and don't know where to start, this might be among the best options!"
Debian Project at several conferences and trade fairsThe Debian Project will be present at several upcoming events. "The Debian Project invites all interested persons to said events, ask questions, take a look at Debian 6.0 "Squeeze", exchange GPG-Fingerprints to boost the Web of trust and get to know the members and the community behind the Debian Project."
Fedora A security incident on Fedora infrastructureFedora project leader Jared Smith has announced that a Fedora account was compromised. It would appear that the account credentials were somehow compromised externally and that the Fedora infrastructure is not vulnerable to some kind of exploit. "While the user in question had the ability to commit to Fedora SCM, the Infrastructure Team does not believe that the compromised account was used to do this, or cause any builds or updates in the Fedora build system. The Infrastructure Team believes that Fedora users are in no way threatened by this security breach and we have found no evidence that the compromise extended beyond this single account."
Fedora Board Meeting January 24The minutes of the January 24 meeting of the Fedora Board cover a Fedora strategic goals discussion with FESCo.
Ubuntu family Ubuntu Technical Board meeting minutesDuring the January 11th meeting the board discussed a version template for -extras and reorganizing drivers/owners/release managers permissions in Launchpad.The January 25th meeting covers default ntpd configuration and Seamonkey microrelease SRU exception.
Newsletters and articles of interest Distribution newsletters
Untz: Results of the App Installer meeting, and some thoughts on cross-distro collaborationOn his blog, Vincent Untz reflects on the recently completed cross-distribution App Installer meeting, which by his and others' accounts was definitely a success. In the posting, he also spends some time talking about the need for more cross-distribution collaboration. "To be honest, since I started working on openSUSE, I've kept wondering why all distributions duplicate so much work. Sometimes, there is a good reason, like a radically different technical approach. But sometimes, it looks like we're going different ways just for the sake of doing something ourselves. We should fix this. Cross-distro collaboration is not the way we usually do things, and I believe we're wrong most of the time. Cross-distro collaboration is a cultural shift for us. But it's very well needed."
Shuttleworth: Qt apps on UbuntuMark Shuttleworth has plans for more Qt applications in Ubuntu. "System settings and prefs, however, have long been a cause of friction between Qt and Gtk. Integration with system settings and preferences is critical to the sense of an application "belonging" on the system. It affects the ability to manage that application using the same tools one uses to manage all the other applications, and the sorts of settings-and-preference experience that users can have with the app. This has traditionally been a problem with Qt / KDE applications on Ubuntu, because Gtk apps all use a centrally-manageable preferences store, and KDE apps do things differently. To address this, Canonical is driving the development of dconf bindings for Qt, so that it is possible to write a Qt app that uses the same settings framework as everything else in Ubuntu. We've contracted with Ryan Lortie, who obviously knows dconf very well, and he'll work with some folks at Canonical who have been using Qt for custom development work for customers. We're confident the result will be natural for Qt developers, and a complete expression of dconf's semantics and style."
New Linux Distribution Brings Goodies to Debian (OStatic)Susan Linton takes a look at Saline OS 1.0, a new distribution based on Debian Squeeze. "Saline OS is delivered as an installable live CD and features Linux 2.6.36, Xorg X Server 1.7.7, and GCC 4.4.5. Chromium Web browser, IceDove mail client, Rhythmbox, Fotoxx photo manager, Parole video player, Osmo organizer, OpenOffice.org, Pidgin, and Xfburn media creator are part of the software stack. Synaptic setup with Debian Squeeze repositores is available to install other software if desired. An icon on the upper panel launches automatic updates, which are pulled in from Debian Squeeze. The lower panel with lots of application launchers hides until hover."
Maciel: Because your distro should be coolOg Maciel writes about why he likes Foresight Linux. "Reason 2 - Roll backs: Because the entire system is kept under a complete version control down to the file level, It is possible to perform something that other distributions can only dream of: system roll backs! Don't like the application you've just installed? Remove it and it will be as if your system never had it installed! Want to go back to the update you ran 3 weeks or even months ago? Not a problem! Your system is like a giant Git/Mercurial repository and you control what to clone and what branch to checkout."
Mepis Goes to 11 (Linux Magazine)Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier reviews a beta of Mepis 11. "Mepis is not one of the best-known Linux distributions, but it does have a loyal following. Though it's never been my distro of choice, it was a favored distribution with some of my colleagues at Linux.com circa 2005 and 2006. In fact, it was favored by a lot of users then - coming in 5th in the DistroWatch listings in 2005, and 4th in 2006. What happened? The Ubuntu/Kubuntu juggernaut, that's what. But user base is not a clear indication of the quality of a distribution. Let's see what Mepis 11 has to offer."
Domsch: Consistent Network Device Naming coming to Fedora 15Matt Domsch has been working on Consistent Network Device Naming for Fedora 15 (and beyond). "Systems running Linux have long had ethernet network devices named ethX. Your desktop likely has one ethernet port, named eth0. This works fine if you have only one network port, but what if, like on Dell PowerEdge servers, you have four ethernet ports? They are named eth0, eth1, eth2, eth3, corresponding to the labels on the back of the chassis, 1, 2, 3, 4, respectively. Sometimes. Aside from the obvious confusion of names starting at 0 verses starting at 1, other race conditions can happen such that each port may not get the same name on every boot, and they may get named in an arbitrary order. If you add in a network card to a PCI slot, it gets even worse, as the ports on the motherboard and the ports on the add-in card may have their names intermixed."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol |
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