In order to be released to the general public, the PRE-RELEASE Candidate (RC) must meet all of the following criteria. This is intended to make the decision process as clear and straightforward as possible. Mostly met items are incomplete until they are met. Optional and nice to have items should not be included in this list.
There may be times where a requirement is unmet only in a particular configuration, such as with some keyboard layouts but not others, or if a particular character is used in a username, password or passphrase. In such cases, the release team should use their judgement and refer to precedent to determine whether or not the issue should be considered to block the release. They should consider the number of users likely to be affected by the issue, the severity of the case when the issue is encountered, and the ease or otherwise with which the issue can be avoided by both informed and uninformed users.
The term release-blocking desktops means all the desktop environments in which bugs are currently considered capable of blocking a Fedora release. The current set of release-blocking desktops for the x86 architectures is GNOME and KDE, and for the ARM architectures is Xfce. Note that bugs in desktops that are not part of this set which would infringe these criteria automatically qualify for freeze exception status, according to the freeze exception bug process.
The term release-blocking images means all the images in which bugs are currently considered capable of blocking a Fedora release. The current set of release-blocking images includes the images defined by the three primary Products - Server, Workstation and Cloud - in their product requirement documents and/or technical specifications, and the KDE live image. As of Fedora 24, no 32-bit x86 image can be 'release-blocking', by FESCo policy. The canonical list of release-blocking images for Fedora 42 is on this page.