A Modest Proposal: A Technology Innovation Lifecycle Process for Fedora

[jspaleta (Jef Spaleta)]

@decathorpe

For example, where would sandboxed experiments that affect alternative (or additional) versions of packages / images / deliverables get developed (where would the sources live?) and built? CentOS Stream has CBS for this, where CentOS SIGs can do something similar, but Fedora does not (yet?) have an equivalent “second koji”. Who would provide and maintain this additional infrastructure?

Hmm would a CBS-like thing be a good first project to run through this process?

@decathorpe

On the other hand, some Sandbox projects might require changing some Packaging Guidelines and / or FESCo policies. One example that I could imagine would be a Sandbox project to provide alternative Kernel packages that enable some experimental features or include non-upstream patches, or even kmod packages to ship kernel modules that are not enabled in the “stock” Fedora kernel. Both would (currently) violate the Packaging Guidelines, which only allow for one kernel package and no kmods external to the kernel. Do you expect to update docs / policies and guidelines to account for Sandbox projects like when needed?

I fully expect that projects in the lifecycle process will break documented policy in both the sandbox and curation stages. If this process is adopted there may have to be significant changes to clarify that the fully integrated project outputs will be expected to meet policy and guidance. We may need to have a trademark subbrand for outputs that integrate sandbox and curated stage technologies separate from the main brand to help with this clarification.

Non legally binding policy applies in my head like this:
MUST-> integrated
SHOULD → curated
MAY-> sandbox

For policy violations that survive from sandbox to curated, we have to have a reasonable path forward towards resolution in time for integration, and that should be discussed as part of sandbox exit review, so that the correct stakeholders are talking about corrective actions for policy alignment during the curation stage.