Hi Sarah, On Tue, 2018-06-05 at 11:39 +0200, Sarah-Julia Kriesch wrote:
Hi,
a short time before the oSC we had our F2F Board Meeting. openFATE has to be shutdown now. SUSE didn't create any annnouncement. Christian and I wanted to have a read-only period. During this time we received some questions by openSUSE Contributors, why they wouldn't be allowed to create any feature requests any more. So we had this topic in our Board Meeting. We thought about solutions and need your opinion (especially Ludwig and Dominique) now.
Reasons for shutting down openFATE: Developers didn't use openFATE and ignored Feature Requests.
That is indeed true. It was more like "if you want to tell somebody, tell it to openFATE - but don't expect a reply" The concept of 'asking' for a feature feels quite 'foreign' to openSUSE: As 'directing resources' is not in our power, at best we can hope for somebody to 'find something they like on the list, and do it'. As you already differentiated, there is a distinctionto be made what a feature consists of - and generally, 'upstream' is the right point to ask forr any feature. From a distro-perspective, there are few features that are 'just asked for, but not driven by the person asking for it' (somewhat as we'd also expect it to be). See for example the complete change of the btrfs volume layout done in the last months. The person wanting to do it (Richard in this case) as outlining his plan/rationale on the -factory mailing list (one perfect example of what should be on that list) and then followed through. As rhis also implied touching a lot of packages, he of course was asking for / getting help of various package maintainers to get things done in a reasonable time. As his story had a clear goal, it was not 'too difficult' to rally the people behind him.
Our proposal: 1) Adding Feature Requests to Bugzilla (for existing projects there) and github (upstream projects) -> perhaps special rules for projects like KDE and GNOME (better in Bugzilla)
=> Upstream is always the right entry point. Just in some cases, openSUSE is upstream already, whcih then makes sense to put it in 'bugzilla' (as enhancement). This in turn will require clear lineing up of various teams (like e.g. YaST team) to not send people away with feature requests filed there (for lack of a better place to do it)
2) Adding a Feature Requests wiki page like "Submitting bug reports"[1] OR Adding this topic to "Submitting bug reports"
This is certainly welcome - but with 12k packages and 'almost as many upstreams', don't expect that page to be a complete overview of where to go in every single case.
3) Creating a redirect from features.opensuse.org to this page like with bugs.opensuse.org
How do you watch the future of Feature Requests in openSUSE?
Not at all (speaking for myself). As said, we can't 'allocate resources in the community' - so unless somebody feels like scratching an itch and it happens to coincide with features, mostly nothing would be done.
What is your opinion or do you have any alternative ideas?
For smaller features in openSUSE: 'just do it' - for larger things, a disucssion with a plan on how to appraoch it on the mailing list. This obviously does not work in the manner of 'begging for a feature' Cheers, Dominique