LWN: Comments on "Fedora board meeting minutes"

Fedora board meeting minutes

drag — 2006-11-23T01:30:42+00:00

And just a for-isntance.. Alright you have Java for GTK and such.. but how is java with it's integration into gconf, or gstreamer, or other such things that are standard in Gnome? I know that all those aren't complete but will be required to make Java a full-fledged language for Gnome.

What I think would be cool would be for Java to get together with KDE. KDE doesn't have the same thing aviable for it as you have with Python and Mono for Gnome, but they probably need it.

For instance C++ and how KDE works is very object oriented fasion. Well that is nice for Java.

QT folks are interested getting KDE working on every platform aviable, and Java is already there for most of their targets.

QT and Java on the Linux desktop. QT and Java on mobile devices. All sorts of stuff like that. Seems like a good match.

Fedora board meeting minutes

drag — 2006-11-23T01:22:27+00:00

Well that would be nice.

but right now there isn't much point in getting rid of Mono or replacing mono with anything.

With Mono and software patents it's all just paranoia right now. In my eyes it's not any worse then any other part of Linux that was made a replacement for propriatory software (which is most of it)

Personally I think that Java has a bright future though. But the way things are looking it may not be until 2008 before GPL'd java becomes a real-world full-fledged language replacement for current JVM stuff.

Probably what would be nice is if somebody knowledgable in both C# and Java would write up a technical comparision between the languages..

Relatively security, performance, ease of programming, integration with existing C and C++ code and such things.

The Ministry of Truth

mdomsch — 2006-11-22T05:12:54+00:00

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LifeCycle

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAQ#head-9baa0612d025313054...

both indicate the previous updates and security policy. It lists the example that Fedora Core 3 was updated until Fedora Core 5 test2 was released. Under the new policy (using for example the same versions, just for comparison), Fedora Core 3 would be updated until Fedora Core 5 release plus one month. This is, in effect, an extension of maintenance by test2->release+1m.

Also discussed was "should the new policy be implemented retroactively" such that FC5 is covered until FC7+1m, or should it start with FC6. I believe there was concensus that it should include FC5 as well. This gives people a chance to do the upgrade from N to N+2 and be covered for the whole duration between, without forgoing security errata for a time, and without requiring an upgrade from N to N+1 to N+2 in order to get security errata during that time.

The Ministry of Truth

jimmybgood — 2006-11-21T23:41:01+00:00

It's fascinating what a little research will turn up. I'm dead wrong, at least as FC2 is concerned. You are also dead wrong and corbet was dead wrong in the article I cited. We were all just repeating rumours with our own spin.

I apologize to the fedora community.

I currently can find no indication that Fedora has any commitment to security or bug fix updates for any period. So I'll change my comment.

For me to believe that Fedora can be useful for any serious purpose other than demonstration or as a test bed for Redhat development, they need to clearly state how long they will provide support in the form of security updates.

The Ministry of Truth

khim — 2006-11-21T21:59:59+00:00

The original commitment was two releases a year with security updates available for FCN until FCN+2 was released.

Care to elaborate? Where was it said? Yes, it was said that there are will be security updates "for approximately one year" and there are will be two releases per year - but I never seen any commitment to the FCN and FNC+2 overlap. A lot of people just assumed that "approximately one year" mean FCN and FNC+2 overlap (me included) but when FC3 was scheduled everyone found out that "approximately one year" mean "we'll stop support for FC1 before FC3 is released because we have limited resources and can not support both FC1/FC2 'in fligh' and do quality testing for FC3 release". There was some grumbling (because users hoped to switch from FC1 straight to FC3) - but I never seen any evidence that "approximately one year" ever was supposed to mean "slightly more then one year to allow FCN => FCN+2 transition" so it was left at that.

Fedora board meeting minutes

pflugstad — 2006-11-21T21:43:40+00:00

I was thinking the gp had seen something else.

The Sun JVM is already x86 & SPARC portable. And IBM (and Apple) have one on PowerPC, which I've heard is just Sun's Java + patches.

In any case, I would expect that once the whole thing is GPL'd that it'll be made to work on PowerPC pretty quickly - probably by IBM.

Pete

The Ministry of Truth

jimmybgood — 2006-11-21T21:12:18+00:00

You have redefined the outcome as the commitment, which is easy to do with the assistance of the good folks at "The Ministry of Truth". Here's a link to an article written on lwn.net which states, "Security updates are made for approximately one year...":

http://lwn.net/Articles/119892/

The original commitment was two releases a year with security updates available for FCN until FCN+2 was released. The month or two before part was added later and references to the original commitment were deleted. Notice how the original schedules have been removed and replaced with, well, a flat out lie.

Here is the original link to release schedules:

http://fedora.redhat.com/participate/schedule/

Which now makes the claim that "This Page Has Moved" and gives the new location:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Core/Schedule

But compare what you find at that link with what the Wayback Machine has archived:

http://web.archive.org/web/20040402104236/http://fedora.r...

And you'll see that not only was the page moved, it was also revised and condensed so as to make the comparison of schedules and actual release dates impossible. Without the Wayback Machine, of course.

Fedora board meeting minutes

davej — 2006-11-21T17:24:09+00:00

actually, technically there are times when we have 3 distributions 'in flight'. Right now for example, we have FC5, FC6, and rawhide.

(Yes, rawhide isn't technically a 'supported release', but its equally as much work, if not moreso).

Fedora board meeting minutes

phgrenet — 2006-11-21T16:27:06+00:00

Eclipse is a great application using the Gnome platform, using SWT. Granted it is not fully integrated in Gnome, because it just links to some gnome libs.
Here is an idea: now that Sun's JVM is GPLed, why not integrating it within the Gnome desktop. This would lead to much better integration of applications and better performance (the same JVM can run any number of Java-based application).

Fedora board meeting minutes

rahulsundaram — 2006-11-21T15:12:04+00:00

Updates from Fedora Core was never claimed to be 12 months. It was around 9 months. For details about the current change see http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraSummit/ReleaseProcess

Fedora board meeting minutes

rahulsundaram — 2006-11-21T15:08:50+00:00

The current Sun JVM does not work on the PPC architecture.

Fedora board meeting minutes

nedrichards — 2006-11-21T11:44:55+00:00

Cool, thanks for the clarification. Even better than LWN coverage is the people its covering adding clarifications in the comments!

Fedora board meeting minutes

khim — 2006-11-21T08:55:03+00:00

Where have you got the idea about "12 months" support commitment ? The policy was always "FC N support is stopped 1-2 months before FC N+2 is released". And it was always honored AFAIK. It was good deal for developers (they only need to support two distributions, never three or more), but not so good for users (you can not skip FC releases - or you'll be without support at some point). If they'll offer some overlap between supported times of FC N and FC N+2 then user will be able to skip FC N+1 - big win!

Fedora board meeting minutes

thebluesgnr — 2006-11-21T07:10:21+00:00

Will GNOME integrate Mono components as a deep and irremovable part of the standard desktop?

Not likely, since a huge part of the GNOME community is against that idea.

Will GNOME try to promote a truly and unquestionably (post-March 2007) liberty GNOME-Java platform?

Promote in what way? GNOME has been shipping Java bindings for a while and yet Python, Mono and C++ are still more popular than Java (talking about GNOME apps here). The only effective way to promote a language within the GNOME community is, IMO, to write great applications that use the GNOME platform with that language. This is what Novell's been doing for a while with Mono, and in a way Red Hat with Python. Not even Sun is using the Java bindings at the moment.

Fedora board meeting minutes

jimmybgood — 2006-11-21T06:55:23+00:00

They didn't live up to their 12 month support commitment, why should we care whether they extend it to 13?

Fedora board meeting minutes

mspevack — 2006-11-21T04:39:08+00:00

I'm "mspevack" from the meeting log.

I think it's great that LWN covers Fedora like this, but it's important to realize that what you're reading here is a "as fast as we can type it" summary of larger conversations that are being had on a phone call with anywhere between 7-9 people on it.

So a lot of the notes are going to be a bit brief, or lacking in detail. So just take that for what it's worth as you read these notes.

The best place to really get information on what Fedora is up to is the Fedora Advisory Board mailing list:

http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-advisory-board

Fedora board meeting minutes

pflugstad — 2006-11-21T03:37:37+00:00

March 2007 is the release date, and even then it will be missing pieces making it not immediately usable for Fedora, like parts needed for PPC.

Do you mean that they won't release the JVM implementation for PowerPC? Or what? I would expect most of what's coming out will be platform independent. Thanks. Any references?

Fedora board meeting minutes

wtogami — 2006-11-21T00:08:18+00:00

March 2007 is the release date, and even then it will be missing pieces making it not immediately usable for Fedora, like parts needed for PPC.

Another question is what happens to upstream GNOME. Will GNOME integrate Mono components as a deep and irremovable part of the standard desktop? Will GNOME try to promote a truly and unquestionably (post-March 2007) liberty GNOME-Java platform?

Yes, Sun made the right choice for the community in choosing GPL, but this is not a magic bullet that will solve all problems immediately.

Fedora board meeting minutes

rahulsundaram — 2006-11-20T23:21:58+00:00

You probably are missing context. Its not about skepticism. The full code drop with the ability to build JVM's out of completely GPL'ed code is stated to happen sometime before March 2007. Currently there are bunch of missing pieces. The inclusion of Sun Java in Fedora is out of question for the next release and hence porting Mono apps over to Java is not feasible within that time frame. Longer term there are probably other alternatives.

Fedora board meeting minutes

mitchskin — 2006-11-20T23:05:21+00:00

<warren> GPL java and community replacement is still highly theoretical at this point.

I find this statement odd. I was often confused about Sun's direction when McNealy was CEO, but with Schwartz they've been pretty clear about GPL Java. It's already started, even! Why are people so skeptical about this? I can imagine people being worried about scheduling; like not wanting to commit to Fedora 7 using Sun Java in case Sun takes longer than expected to finish opening the libraries. In this context, though, the question is long-term replacement of Mono apps, which isn't particularly schedule-sensitive.