boston wrap up

the labs at boston u. closed for us at 14:00 today so it was an unexpectedly short day. rex had to catch his 17:00 flight anyways, so it all sort of worked out anyways i suppose.

we discussed default package contents and what settings to look into for customization for fedora 7. looks like f7 stands a good chance of having really nice kde packages thanks both to the fedora community expanding their embrace of the community in general (merging core and extras is a nice move, too) and rex and other kde fans putting in the time and effort.

there are still things that could be better, but aren't there always. =) i feel that this was a weekend well spent working due to the gains. i also got to talk about kde4, qt4, greenphone (one of which arrived just before leaving for boston), freedesktop.org, etc... i think a few people were tired of hearing about fd.o after a morning discussion of it involving several of the desktop team members. it's an important topic, however.

interestingly, some view gnome and kde as being analogous to mac and windows: separate platforms, people don't move between them often and so standardizing things such as default application storage isn't very interesting. i happen to agree that not everything should be or needs to be standardized so as not to get in the way of each project's personal vision(s) and innovation, but i'm also sympathetic to those who manage large mixed deployments and operating system vendors who are forced to do more work and trickery to get things harmonized. it's an interesting discussion as to where that balance exists, particularly since there isn't a general consensus on the matter even within projects.

overall i was very impressed by the fedora and red hat communities. they're doing some solid engineering and put a lot of thought and personal passion into things. i'm going to keep a closer eye on the next couple of releases of fedora; it'll be interesting to see what emerges, what works, what doesn't and how their community evolves.

personally i've had a couple of early, though thoroughly enjoyable, evenings. some of the other people have partied a wee bit harder than i (to say the least), but i wasn't particularly in the mood. i did get out last night with a couple of local linux enthusiasts and rex for a couple of pints at a nice brew pub where the beer was good, the conversation interesting and the atmosphere relaxing. i leave for back home tomorrow morning at 11:00 and hopefully things go better on the way back than they did on the way here =)