We seem to frequently have some timing issues with the current Fedora election cycle being so close to and normally overlapping with a release. The Fedora Board and FAmSCo elections aren't really so closely tied to the release cycle in terms of their work and could easily be moved a bit in time without disrupting anything.
FESCo on the other hand is more connected with the development cycle, if not the release cycle, so I'd like to get some feedback from FESCo about whether the current election timing (withing 30 days of a release, which means we start before we even know when the actual release will happen) works best for you. Or would another time actually work better?
If you were to start over with elections from scratch, when would you want the elections to happen?
Thanks for any feedback. We won't change anything if the current timing works well for you, but if you would prefer a shift in the timing of the elections we might be very eager to accommodate the time you prefer.
I had been thinking about this a bit already, I started my current term partway through the F17 process, too late to influence some things but early enough to influence others. Perhaps the FESCO cycle should be closer aligned to the Feature Process?
Also, is there documentation of problems caused by the current cycle timing?
I think in the past the thought was that many members of FESCo would be busy in the run up to release... fixing bugs that QA folks find, doing rel-eng or other maintainer tasks. In practice it seems like official FESCo business tapers off after about Beta (when features are all done), but of course members may be busy in other capacities in the run up to release.
I wouldn't object personally to changing the scheduling, but perhaps if it moves to a busy time in the cycle we could also add more time?
A few thoughts with my (admittedly sad these days) PM hat on:
Perhaps ideally it would be around Feature Freeze or Feature Completion dates - but no matter what, unless it's immediately post-release, some people are always going to be fairly busy with Alpha/Beta/Final. But I think there is definitely value to (a) having a group that is ready pre-release to hit the ground running, (b) not conducting election-prep stuff during a time when people are apt to say, "I can't run right now because I'm just swamped.
That said: Having it totally revolve around feature freeze completion on the basis of the idea that "people will have more time because they aren't working on features" - I do have to wonder how many fesco folks actually have "features" each cycle. Additionally, in theory, one could really start landing features immediately after we branch (same time as feature freeze) and some people do start submitting to fesco that early. It's not a huge number, but something to keep in mind, I suppose.
Lastly (as long as we're talking about schedules, though we could really make this a separate ticket, and I'm happy to be the "we" in that statement): The one thing that has been wacky the past few cycles is the alignment of FESCo meetings to schedule dates, particularly feature submission. In ye olden days past, FESCo met on Tuesdays, which is traditionally the date on which Submission/Freeze/etc. would happen. Currently, they now meet on Mondays, and there's usually a few laggers who wait till Tuesday to "submit the feature" - and it can't get a full turnaround and acceptance on that day.
Anyway, my point here really is: If we did schedule the elections a bit earlier, we could rejigger the schedule prior to the cycle starting to align with whatever day fesco has chosen as the "feature submission date". So that would be a plus, vs. having it change or be poorly aligned if it's already published post-election but the meeting date needs to move.
The current FESCo does not have any strong opinion on the election date change if you want to please propose a concrete change of the date to be voted on.
No concrete proposal. Reopen if otherwise.
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