Meeting:Board meeting 2008-11-11

Fedora Project Board Meeting :: Tuesday 2008-11-11

Roll Call

Attendees: John Poelstra, Paul Frields, Matt Domsch, Jesse Keating, Jef Spaleta, Karsten Wade, Mike McGrath, Seth Vidal, Bill Nottingham, Spot Callaway, Harald Hoyer, and Chris Tyler

Follow-up to Previous Business

Spins Process

• Board/Meetings/2008-11-04#Communicating_Spins
• https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2008-November/msg00026.html
• Discussion is continuing led by Jon Stanley

New Business

Personal Trademark Usage

• A community member approached the board to brand non-software goods and sell them for personal gain
• Paul continuing discussion on this topic with legal counsel
• Would like to create FAQ around trademark usage that will hopefully answer questions like this
• RESOLUTION: the board denies trademark usage to individuals for non-software goods for personal benefit

Extending Updates for EOL Releases

• Background:
  • Extras/SteeringComittee/Meeting-20081015#Keeping_Infrastructure_Open_for_EOL_Proposal
  • User:Pertusus/Draft_keeping_infra_open_for_EOL
  • Extras/SteeringComittee/Meeting-20081015
  • http://bpepple.fedorapeople.org/fesco/FESCo-2008-10-15.html
• Mike McGrath reported that resource are available (CVS, disk space, builders) for maintaining package for more releases
  • A year or more out storage space will become a concern
  • Requests do come to mirror manager for EOL releases
    • Graph of requests for Fedora 7 packages from January to October 2008: http://mmcgrath.fedorapeople.org/f7hits.html

• The following observations were made during board discussion:
  • Resource needs are unclear in existing proposals
    • how many builds are anticipated?
    • how will builds be distributed?
    • where will bugs be tracked?
    • how long will the trial period be to measure resource usage
  • It is unclear who the technical leader and implementer of the proposal will be
  • Concerns about granting Fedora resources and space to a project that will not use the Fedora Brand
  • Concerns around the haphazardness of package updates and what determines when updates are issued
    • No set requirements or policies around when package updates will be issued--appears to be completely at the will of an interested maintainer
    • What about security updates?
    • Is there a community of people to do the updates? How is this different than the unsuccessful Fedora Legacy project?
  • If the core issue being raised by this proposal is extending the length of time Fedora releases are support, that issue should be explored separately

• RESOLUTION: The board:
  • Is very unclear if there is real user demand or actual use that warrants providing resources for this effort
  • Is not willing to put Fedora resources and funds behind a pilot project that does not include the Fedora brand and whose viability, based on the current proposal, appears doubtful
  • Encourages the supporters of this proposal to demonstrate the technical viability of this proposal by setting up a self-hosted instance outside of Fedora and engaging a group of interested people to show it can work and generates enough interest and demand. This is how things usually start in Fedora. For example, Fedora Extras when it began.

IRC Meetings

• Missed first Tuesday of November
  • Next IRC meeting is on 2008-11-18 (next week)
  • Resume regular IRC meeting schedule with first Tuesday of December: 2008-12-02
• Paul Frields will send out announcements

Next Meeting

• Date: 2008-10-07
• Time: 19:00 UTC
• Location: irc.freenode.net
  • Public channel to ask questions: #fedora-board-public
  • Moderated channel for board answers: #fedora-board-meeting
  • Board to only join moderated channel so as to focus discussion there