@garoeda | good evening all |
@garoeda | it's time to start our 21.00 gmt talk |
@garoeda | questions go to #qc |
@garoeda | This talk is about Fedora and I think mr riel is jumping to get started |
@garoeda | So I'll leave the word to him and his collegues |
@garoeda | the stage is yours :) |
@riel | well, this is meant to be an interactive session |
@riel | Warren Togami, Greg DeKoenigsberg and I will tell you some things about various aspects of Fedora today, and you can ask questions at any time in the #qc channel |
* gregdek waves hello. |
@warren | Hi. |
@riel | Warren is founder of the Fedora Project and Associate Software Engineer at Red Hat, Inc. |
@riel | Greg is community manager, and takes care of almost all non-technical aspects of Fedora. |
@gregdek | Especially the lawyers. |
@warren | Greg also kicks us when we're stalled on technical aspects |
@riel | I am a kernel developer, and I am happy that Greg and Warren take care of most of Fedora ;) |
@riel | We will try to cover these topics today: |
@riel | - What is Fedora? |
@riel | - What Fedora projects are there? |
@riel | - What's new in Fedora Core 5. |
@riel | - What is the Fedora Foundation? |
@riel | - Q & A |
@gregdek | OK, I'll start, then. |
@gregdek | So, number 1: What is Fedora? |
@gregdek | Basically, it's a community project where Red Hat and community folks meet to produce both a distribution (Fedora Core) and a set of projects around that distribution (Extras, Docs, Directory, etc.) |
@gregdek | It's also becoming a Foundation. |
@gregdek | As Red Hat seeks to turn more and more responsibilities to the community, the Fedora Foundation will be the entity that manages all that stuff. |
@gregdek | The key to Fedora... |
@gregdek | ...is that it is now, and will forever be, free. Free as in libre, and free as in gratis. Both. |
@gregdek | Fedora Core, the heart of Fedora, is produced by Red Hat with increasing community involvement. |
@gregdek | Because Red Hat bases its business on Fedora Core, Red Hat will continue to maintain Fedora Core for the foreseeable future... |
@gregdek | ...but the community continues to have more and more direct involvement even in the direction of Fedora Core. |
@warren | A key difference between this idea "...is that it is now, and will forever be, free.", and past examples like Debian however, is the substantial amount of commercial support pushing forward the project. This leads to what I believe is a central aspect of Fedora, rapid forward progress of Free and Open Source Software. Constant forward progress creates excitement about Open Source Software. |
@gregdek | Right. |
@gregdek | The nice thing about Fedora Core... |
@gregdek | ...is that it's also, essentially, the first place where Red Hat R&D hits the community. |
@riel | <huw-l> presumably that means technical decisions in fedora are always taken by the RH folks rather than the community at large? |
@riel | huw-l: good question! |
@gregdek | Who wants to take it? :) |
@riel | in some projects, Red Hat needs to make decisions |
@riel | for example, our lawyers have decided that it is not a good idea for us to ship mp3 software (because of patents), and this is not something the community can change |
@riel | on the other hand, one of the goals in Fedora is to keep the software close to the state in the upstream community, and not change things too much |
@riel | so in that case, we try to not make the decisions ourselves |
@warren | huw-l, later in this presentation I talk a little bit more about this, but I can give one example now. |
@gregdek | Of course, the fact that we won't ship mp3 means that we've got even more incentive to make the alternatives better. :) |
@warren | ... and to fight at the government level toward changing the laws that we feel are unjust, but that is another story. |
@warren | huw-l, actually, I will come to the example soon. |
@riel | [a procedural note: if you have a question, please /join #qc and ask it there] |
@warren | Next I'd like to talk about four things that I personally feel are Primary Principles of Fedora. |
@warren | Keep in mind "rapid forward progress in FOSS" as a goal as I explain these. |
@warren | 1) Importance of Upstream |
@warren | ========================= |
@warren | Whenever possible, Fedora strives to push changes made to our packages upstream. For example, look at our kernel package. We almost always refuse to add patches and extra drivers to our source RPM when asked. Instead, we ask that whenever possible, to push for patches for inclusion in the upstream kernel. This benefits everyone in several ways like: |
@warren | a) Encourages development to go to the right place. |
@warren | b) Upstream has many more testers than Fedora alone. |
@warren | c) Reduces Fedora's long-term maintenance burden by having fewer deltas from upstream. |
@warren | While Fedora is a vehicle for getting the latest FOSS to users, and rapid improvement of FOSS, it is counter-productive for us to diverge from the software that is shared by everyone in the community. |
@warren | Whenever possible we strive to push patches upstream, or refuse patches and tell folks to push for their inclusion upstream. But sometimes we're just too busy and miss things. If you see such things in packages, we need your help. Talk to the Fedora Core or Extras maintainer and help to coordinate those patches with the upstream project. Match Fedora and upstream bug tracker #'s. etc. |
@warren | next primary principle... |
@warren | 2) Mutual Benefit between Company and Community |
@warren | This is one point that I think is, or at least was unique about Fedora until OpenSuSE decided to follow our example. I think a partnership between Commercial and Community interests works very well for Open Source Software development. Volunteers and paid engineers are better at working on very different things... |
@warren | Volunteers generally work on "fun" things first, with more immediate benefit. Of course this is only a generalization and there are exceptions. This also does not mean to demean the contributions of volunteers to FOSS, as the community is the primary builder and reason for the existence of FOSS. |
@warren | However longer-term projects which require a significant amount of design, implementation, and a long term commitment very often don't happen from volunteers alone. This is where support from commercial interests benefits FOSS. |
@warren | There are many examples from Red Hat engineering and the Fedora Project where our commecial interests has created long-term benefit for the entire community. Bigger changes to kernel/glibc like NPTL is a good example. Or the more recent release of Fedora Directory Server. |
@warren | Volunteers are better able to attend to attention to detail and various other things that generally our company does poorly at. |
@warren | So Fedora Core is where we together, company and community, rapidly improve the FOSS distribution for the benefit of everyone. |
@warren | and now the next principle... |
@warren | (wow I'm slow at typing...) |
@warren | 3) Release Early, Release Often |
@warren | This goes back to my idea that "rapid progress in Open Source Software" is important to the Fedora Project. |
@warren | People want to see constant progress in order to feel excited about a project. |
@warren | Red Hat engineering pushes improvements on a daily basis to both upstream projects, and also Fedora Rawhide and Extras. |
@warren | Or users of our Fedora Core distribution may have noticed a startling amount of Updates every week. |
@warren | This rapid turn-around is essential to Developer/User interaction. |
@warren | New software has wider exposure sooner, where we receive feedback and are able to refine things |
@warren | this I think created momentum in the project |
@warren | and lastly... |
@warren | 4) Collaborative Development |
@warren | It seems like common sense when talking about Open Source Software, but to my surprise it wasn't happening much before Fedora, at least within the Red Hat add-on software sphere. |
@warren | With Red Hat's leadership and better communication between the company and community, we together build a greater central project. |
@warren | and especially opportunities for new contributors to get involved, learn and grow. |
@warren | We're still working on improving this, with better automated infrastructure |
@warren | It is a high priority for me to educate new contributors, improve documentation, and have them become the new educators for the next new contributors, so the community becomes more self-sustaining and is able to build an ecosystem of consistent, high quality packages. |
@warren | And now time to answer some questions brought up on #qc |
@gregdek | OK. |
@gregdek | <ChitleshG> Release Early, Release Often : what about firefox 1.5, gnome 2.13.3 and kde 3.5 ? |
@gregdek | These are in rawhide, and will roll into FC5. |
@warren | ChitleshG, good question. While rapid forward progress in FOSS is important to Fedora, we try not to be too reckless with past "stable" releases. |
@gregdek | The mindset is to have a stable release every six months (or so). |
@gregdek | And if we're out of sync with a particular project, we have a choice: |
@gregdek | 1. Roll the changes into a distro that is basically stable; |
@gregdek | 2. Wait until the next release of our distro. |
@gregdek | We choose 1. most of the time. |
@warren | ChitleshG, in those 3 specific examples, they are known to be not quite as stable as the version currently in FC4. |
@gregdek | Because we're committed to being *both* pretty cutting-edge *and* pretty stable. Both. :) |
+spot | If you're interested in living on the development edge, we provide a yum repo config for the "devel" branch with each release. By enabling that, you can ride the rawhide. :) |
@gregdek | <hlen> RH as a company never really got into Debian-like `live-upgrades'. that's a major disadvantage for users imo. i've seen mailing list postings suggesting it might not be hard to pull that out with yum for FC 5. is that so? |
@warren | usually we do push new stable versions of KDE into Fedora updates. |
@gregdek | Answering hlen's question: You can do it now, if you like. |
@gregdek | http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/YumUpgradeFaq |
@gregdek | But if it breaks, you get to keep both pieces. |
@warren | hlen, I assume this means upgrades between one major distribution to another. Generally we think it is risky, but there is documetation to do so at your own risk. |
@gregdek | And then there's this one: |
@gregdek | <gianni> There are lots of projects derived from Debian, will Fedora Foundation audit any projects derived from Fedora? |
@warren | I personally have done remote upgrades of boxes from RH7.x era to FC2, but that really wasn't a wise thing to do. |
@warren | gianni, good question. Already many projects are coming into existence based on Fedora. |
+mether | "<hlen> gredgek, that's the question.. this was always possible in that sense. i'm wondering if FC's attitude about that is bound to change in the future?" |
@warren | http://auroralinux.org/ Aurora Linux, basically Fedora fixed and rebuilt for SPARC architecture. You can ask spot questions in #qc about that. =) |
+spot | ack! |
@warren | http://www.alphacore.info/ AlphaCore, the same for Alpha architecture |
@gregdek | <riel> hlen: sometimes configuration files need to be changed - the package that does that is the installer |
@gregdek | <riel> if you upgrade packages, you may need to do some of those config changes by hand. |
@warren | There are also various LiveCD's and other projects |
@gregdek | OK, let's move on. |
@gregdek | Let's talk about the various Fedora projects. |
@warren | gregdek, yes. There are many technical challenges involved during upgrades. For example upgrading from FC2 to FC3 moved from static /dev to udev, which is rather dangerous in a live upgrade... |
@gregdek | So, there's Fedora Core, which is mainly Red Hat... |
@gregdek | ...and there's Fedora Directory Server, which currently is also mainly Red Hat... |
@gregdek | ...and then there are the other projects, which are mainly community: |
@gregdek | * Fedora Extras, which allows contributors to package anything in the world for easy integration with Core, so long as it's free and non encumbered by patents; |
@gregdek | * Fedora Documentation, which is... well... documentation; |
@gregdek | * Fedora Legacy, which is maintenance of versions of Fedora Core that are no longer maintained by Red Hat engineers; |
@gregdek | * Fedora Translations, which translates Fedora into a ton of languages, a truly impressive effort; |
@warren | literally thousands of accounts for translators |
@gregdek | * And Fedora Ambassadors, in which we encourage individuals to be advocates for Fedora, Linux and open source in their communities, and to whom we provide as much support as we can in doing these things. |
@gregdek | And this is a *perfect* time to address a question: |
@gregdek | <offray> RH/Fedora and SuSE/OpenSuse are examples of comunity projects around enterprise initiatives, but there are others like Ubuntu/Debian that seems the other way instead. Both models are valid, but those where comunity is the core seem more democratic and more versatile. ¿What do you think about it? |
@warren | When we say Core is mainly by RH engineering this is true, however a significant amount of contributions from the community go into Core, especially during rawhide development of the next release. |
@gregdek | I think there's a certain truth to what offray says here. |
@gregdek | But as the folks in the Debian project know, sometimes it's awfully convenient to have someone who is empowered to make a decision without taking a vote. |
@gregdek | This has certainly been a large part of Ubuntu's success. |
@riel | I think in both the RHEL/Fedora and Ubuntu/Debian example, it is not the case that one project "revolves around the other" |
@warren | RH engineering alone cannot make a quality distribution. Fedora Core comes from the tradition of the older Red Hat Linux distributions, but many who have followed FC since then have noticed that we now have accelerated in progress with 1) more rapid acceptance of patches and other improvements from the community 2) rapid updates in the stable release |
@warren | this goes back to the "Mutual Benefit between Company and Community" which makes Fedora strong |
@riel | it also comes down to the fact that the Fedora Community and the Enterprise Linux customers both want something completely different |
@warren | Extras and Legacy however, are directly in the hands of the community. The community controls the content and destiny of those bodies of work. |
@riel | the Fedora community tends to want new software, things that are fun to play with |
@riel | the Enterprise Linux customers tend to want software that is boring - it works, but never causes excitement or causes their beeper to go off ;) |
@riel | luckily this mostly means that the Enterprise Linux customers want the software that has just become boring for the Fedora community |
@riel | so both communities can get what they want, without the wishes of one community deciding what the other community gets |
@riel | speaking of new software, we should probably move on to the next part |
@riel | What is new in Fedora Core 5 ? |
@gregdek | riel, can I jump in? |
@riel | well, the most obvious things would be the standard software upgrades |
@riel | gregdek: go ahead |
@gregdek | There's a question I'd like to answer: |
@gregdek | ¿How do you think that ideas from one project (Fedora OpenSuSE, Ubuntu) can be in another without reinventing the wheel all the time (for exampl Yum apt or Yast4Debian, etc.). We will see more interdistro cooperation? |
@gregdek | (From offary again.) |
@gregdek | This is a really interesting question to me personally. |
@gregdek | Essentially, we've got two broad families that break by packaging standard right now: |
@gregdek | RH/Fedora/Novell/OpenSuse/Mandriva on the one hand... |
@gregdek | ...and Debian/Ubuntu on the other. |
@gregdek | It's a substantial technical gap, but I think there's lots of room to share ideas regardless. |
@gregdek | Ubuntu and Fedora folks spend a lot of time together driving GNOME, for instance... |
@gregdek | ...and there's lots and lots of instances of cooperation in upstream projects. |
@gregdek | As far as package metadata goes... |
+mether | and adding to offray's question, i'd like to ask if there has been any interest by FC leaders in the `package repository metadata' project, at http://linux.duke.edu/projects/metadata/ |
@warren | offray, my answer is only my opinion, but I think generally what is a solution for one does not automatically make it the best solution to another. If you're talking specifically about apt or yast for example, Fedora has made technical decisions that we want to build something better. We believe we have a great plan for a GUI package frontend that is now taking shape in FC5 and FC6. However Fedora does not limit the users if they have t |
@warren | ools that they prefer, are compatible and are 100% Free & Open Source Software. So apt and soon smartpm exist in Fedora Extras for users who want to use them. |
+mether | Yum in Fedora already uses this format |
@gregdek | Yep. |
@gregdek | And has practically since its inception. |
@warren | Users may prefer smartpm, which also uses that common metdata format. |
@warren | metadata* |
@warren | So the tools are converging, and with Extras you have a choice, which is all what FOSS is about. |
+mether | incidentally smartpm has just been submitted for review in Fedora Extras for those want that package manager |
@gregdek | One might note that Seth Vidal, who was instrumental in the metadata format, is also (a) the maintainer of yum, (b) a member of the Fedora Extras steering committee, and (c) the guy who hosts fedoraproject.org at Duke University. |
@gregdek | <boldstrik> i'ver read that some people have succeeded in using both rpm and deb files in a single distro. does fedora see this as a good direction to move in for the future? |
@gregdek | We could have seen this question coming. :) |
@gregdek | And the answer is: I don't know. |
@warren | I have an answer, again only my opinion. |
@gregdek | Honestly, fundamentally the concepts of rpm and deb are just not that far apart. |
@gregdek | But the devil is in the details. |
+mether | essentially whats important is good package specifications. The particular format is just not that relevant |
@gregdek | I agree with Mether. |
@warren | While technically it is possible, I believe relying on something like "alien" for deb packages is counter-productive to the 'centralized development' goal of Fedora. |
@gregdek | And one of the important advances in Fedora Extras has been to adopt a rigorous set of packaging guidelines for community contributors, that shares much with the Debian Social Contract ideas. |
+mether | If there are good ways to convert between these formats and such projects can automated which is hard to do, there is no reason not to accept that as tool within Fedora - Core or Extras |
@warren | We want people to be working together in a centralized repository in order to make software that is guaranteed not to conflict with other packages into the distribution. |
@gregdek | That's an important point that Warren makes. |
@gregdek | We work hard to make sure that Core and Extras fit well together and comprise a strong universe of free software, that also holds its referential integrity. |
@gregdek | <gianni> So will it be possible to update a whole distribution release with YUM in the upcoming Fedoras? |
@gregdek | gianni: Yes, but with substantial risks. |
@warren | gianni, it has always been possible, but sometimes you have to fix things afterward so that it works properly. For this reason we recommend that users use anaconda in the install disks in order to avoid problems and reduce support issues. |
@gregdek | There are some changes that are always going to break from release to release, that require external configuration changes that we currently put in Anaconda. |
@gregdek | Apparently gianni is not satisfied with this answer. :) |
@warren | That is a good point |
@warren | Fedora is not for everyone. |
@gregdek | Anyway, all of the community projects have plenty of room for helpers. |
@gregdek | If you're interested in contributing to Fedora, visit fedoraproject.org and dig in. :) |
@warren | Feel free to ask me questions in #qc |
+mether | especially http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/HelpWanted |
* gregdek takes a deep breath. |
@gregdek | Okay! |
@gregdek | Fedora Core 5! riel? |
@riel | yes |
@riel | I'll go quickly over the new things in Fedora Core 5 |
@riel | the obvious ones are software upgrades |
@riel | a newer kernel (2.6.14 now, maybe 2.6.15 by the time FC5 comes out) |
@riel | modular X |
@riel | GCC 4.1 |
@riel | Gnome 2.13 (I think) |
@warren | currently we have GNOME 2.13.x which will eventually turn into GNOME 2.14 by final release |
+mether | Following the recent moves towards Fedora's rebranding (i.e. the new logo), will there be any other to shape Fedora's own identity apart from RHEL's? Especially at the desktop look and feel level. |
@riel | we also have a number of things that go beyond the standard software upgrades |
+mether | definitely see http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork |
@riel | for example, Asian language input support is switching to SCIM |
@warren | if you have any questions about SCIM or Asian language input, you can ask me |
@riel | and we are working on integrating Xen 3.0 with the distribution (virtualization software, which a talk was given about earlier this week) |
@riel | the installer is now based around Yum |
@riel | there is a graphical package updater, called pup (Package UPdater) |
@warren | http://people.redhat.com/sundaram/pup.png screenshot |
@gregdek | ovidiu: Notably, on the desktop we try to keep the gui as close to upstream as possible. |
@riel | we have a greatlly improved Open Source Java implementation, based around gcj, classpath, eclipse, etc... |
@gregdek | <gianni> Will be possible to fetch updated packages from installation time, then? |
@riel | gianni: I do not know if the installer can do that yet |
@warren | gregdek, mether: We have some recent movement to redo the "Fedora Art" project with new leadership, will tell you more about that after. |
@riel | gianni: Yum in the installer is still very new, and does the basics - I think it will do fancier things only after FC5 |
+spot | gianni: that's always been a stated goal for the long term, and one of the reasons for the yum integration. |
@warren | gianni, it is the goal by FC6 to make it possible to install directly from Extras during install time. |
@warren | If you are following rawhide and our FC5 test releases, by our current schedule test2 is due before Christmas. We are trying very hard to make that release deadline. |
@warren | http://fedora.redhat.com/About/schedule/ |
@riel | are there any more questions about new content in Fedora Core 5, or should we move on to the Fedora Foundation ? |
@warren | Foundation |
@gregdek | Foundation! |
@gregdek | It's an American 501(c)3 non-profit. |
@gregdek | It serves a number of functions: |
@gregdek | 1. It's the entity that builds and maintains community infrastructure. |
@gregdek | 2. It's the entity that blesses projects with the "Fedora" name. |
@gregdek | 3. It's an intellectual property holder. Specifically, we will hold COPYRIGHTS and PATENTS (yes, PATENTS)... and makes them FREE for the open source community. |
@gregdek | 4. ...and an entity for open source advocacy in general. |
@gregdek | It's still a very young foundation... |
@gregdek | ...which means that a lot of the details are still moving parts. |
@gregdek | We've got a broad advisory board that will help us work with issues like governance. |
@gregdek | i.e. how do we give the community the necessary power and ownership to make it successful? |
@gregdek | <gianni> Is the Foundation the one responsible for the Fedora Use Guidelines? |
@gregdek | Kinda. |
@gregdek | That's one of those open questions we're chasing down now. |
@gregdek | *As of right now*... |
@gregdek | We're working on those issues with counsel. |
@riel | for non-native speakers, "counsel" means "lawyers" |
@gregdek | We're trying to broaden the definition of "Fedora distros" to include any distro built with Core OR Extras components. |
@gregdek | But we've got a ways to go. |
* gregdek spends lots of time with lawyers. Sigh. |
@gregdek | So stay tuned; we continue to make announcements from the Foundation side. |
@gregdek | Like for instance the new logo. :) |
@warren | OK, so I think we finished our agenda. |
@riel | if anybody has any other questions, please ask them now |
@warren | I can go into more open Q&A: Any other questions? What would you like to see that we are not currently doing? |
@riel | we'll be wrapping up this presentation in 10 minutes or so |
@riel | does anybody else have any questions ? |
* warren wonders how many people were listening to us |
* plokta certainly was |
MJesus_ | thanks ! |
@riel | warren: around 60 on this channel I suspect, and many more people will read the channel logs later |
@riel | ok, since there seem to be no more questions, we can wrap up this session |
@riel | thank you for being here! |
MJesus_ | I'm also! |
@warren | Thanks for the opportunity. |
plokta | Thanks for the background, it's been very informative |
MJesus_ | thanks you for your talk ! |
gianni | I'm very pleased to have been able to take part on this meeting. |
* spot goes to hide from the people looking for aurora |
roel | very interesting |
boldstrik | i enjoyed it very much! |
MJesus_ | very interesting ! |
gianni | I'm eager to find out more about what's in store for us Fedora fans for the future! |
@garoeda | I think I can speak for the organizing committee now, I would like to thank warren , riel and gregdek for this talk |
* gianni on my feet clapping hands |
MJesus_ | thank you very much! |
* garoeda pets NeoCool |
MJesus_ | the log will be at http://umeet.uninet.edu/umeet2005/english/prog.html soon |
gianni | Excellent! |
gianni | Will there be another of these talks some time soon? |
gianni | Maybe around Core 5 launch or something? |
@garoeda | gianni: well, I fear there will be no umeet around that period |
ignacio | There's always the various #fedora* channels on irc.freenode.net, which are the official channels. |
gianni | What? What will it happen to umeet? |
@garoeda | gianni: this is only organised during december |
gianni | Oh |
gianni | Well, gotta go now. Nice talk!! |