On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 1:19 AM, Rahul Sundaram <sundaram@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > The feature list gets filled by following the policy outlined in > > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Policy > > This is based not just on popularity but someone or a team actually willing > to work on any particular feature. And let me stress that the importance of doing it this way. Unlike Dell, the bulk of the work done directly as part of this project is volunteer. Having a long list of wishlist or popularity list of potential features is a recipe for disaster unless there are people who are committed to doing any of the work. An Idea Storm sort of thing is only going to be valuable if people are prepared to actually use it as a way to decide what they are going to work on. And as a Board member, I can't just point at people and tell them to work on something that other people want. I have a hard enough time convincing people to do what I want, and I was voted in based on 'popular' support. Popular opinion doesn't translate directly into interest in working towards getting it done. We simply do not have the resources to direct people to work on things they aren't interested in working on. It just doesn't work that way at the larger Fedora project-wide level. The Feature process is there to make sure that we are doing what we can as a Project to adequately track and support people who have made a commitment to do the hard work of making something new happen. Now that isn't to say that some groups of contributors or even particular individuals wouldn't be interested in working on something based on popularity. I would not be one of those people, but they could very well exist. As a starting point for any serious discussion on how to do something like an Idea Storm, I would need to see a group of contributors commited to the ideal behind the concept. If you want to see an Idea Storm attempted, first find the group of developers/maintainers/contributors with a broad enough skillset to be an effective development team. Have those people affirm publicly that they will make the commitment to try to use an Idea Storm like list to direct the work that they do. We can then have a real discussion about how to position and run an Idea Storm. Once we settle on that, the team can run an Idea Storm, cull a concept, make a plan and then put an item on the Proposed Feature List for the next release like any other development group could. But you know what, I haven't seen skilled contributors asking to run this sort of thing anytime someone asks about it. I think there's more than enough work to go around as it stands. People aren't just standing around idle waiting for something to work on. I don't think this Project's problem is finding more work to do. I think the problem is finding more people to do more work. An Idea Storm will not help that. Failing the creation of such a development team to serve the whims of the populace, these sort of activities should be done inside the scope of an appropriate SIG who is receptive to making use of this sort of information. If a particular SIG wants to makes a commitment to organize its available resources around a popularity poll...it's up to them. The key idea here is there really needs to be a group of contributors willing to make use of a poll in a meaningful way, before we bother constructing this sort of poll. Having a long list of things languish and see no love..is a PR lose. If we are going to do it, then people must step forward and commit to using it before me generate the list. -jef -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
