Mastodawn

@gnuplusmatt

Yeah, this is a darn good example of what's happening. (Not really; that was sarcasm.)

This proposal was made by a Red Hat employee and appears to be fully supported by the Fedora Project project manager, who's also a Red Hat employee. Among other Red Hat employees.

@jrredho
And it's opposed by several red hat employees, including me. This is how we do things in fedora. Also, matt has not actually stated any opinion on it yet. Matt considers things from every angle and tends to have a thoughtful opinion when he gives one.

We have rejected proposals from RH devs many times in the past, including ones from the desktop team. I wouldn't make any assumptions about how this one will turn out until the process is done.
@gnuplusmatt @blackard

I'm reading the same posts, Adam, so I see that there are plenty of Red Hat employees who are opposed.

But I can also tell which way the wind is blowing with people who are further up the food chain. If this decision was up to Matt? Throw in the towel, it'd be done.

I find this whole story line incredibly sad, to tell the truth. They aren't going to learn anything innovative from this telemetry data, and what they could learn they could get from RHEL users.

Adam Williamson

@jrredho
Data from RHEL users would likely be very different to data from Fedora users, because they're very different sets of people who use the distros differently. I'm not sure it'd make folks happy if we made decisions about how to build Fedora based on how other folks use RHEL.
@gnuplusmatt @blackard

All I've read is telemetry would be related to GUI/DEs, not innovative framework aspects. The bulk of the discussion early on was about down selecting Settings menus in Gnome for heaven's sake. Any class of user can give you that data.

That ain't deciding to push systemd or pipewire or btrfs or container frameworks, etc. The full history of those types of thing must be truly be vast. Respect. And so much of that germinated in Fedora without any telemetry.

Adam Williamson

Jul 12, 2023

@jrredho
Well, yes, it's a proposal from the desktop team, after all. GNOME is what they work on. (I think it's getting a bit lost in the discussion that this proposal is for *Workstation* only; other spins/editions wouldn't get the system at all). But this absolutely is an area where data would be useful! I see that myself.
@gnuplusmatt @blackard

Adam Williamson

Jul 12, 2023

@jrredho
So, real examples. Currently because they have no data, they work the way systemd or pipewire or btrfs were done: they build what they think needs building. So, they built a calendar app and a contacts app, because a desktop "ought to have" those things.

Then we (QA) find bugs in them, and then we have a debate about how important those bugs are. Should the desktop team drop other important work to fix them? Well how many people use those apps? We don't know.
@gnuplusmatt @blackard

I'm not saying the data aren't useful. I'm saying that that isn't the stated mission of the Fedora Project, as they've written it, and, until this, they've lived it.

None of that data would've given y'all an indication about pushing Pipewire or systemd, et al, imo.

Has the Project run out of ideas for new directions?

I also realize who the proposal is going from, and who they work for.

If this change gets approved it will move into all the editions and spins. It'll just be a matter of time.

And messing with Gnome, settings or otherwise, still ain't innovation. Everything about the goal is flawed, imo.