Seneca breaks silence on Fedora Remix

Chris Tyler posted an update today.

Estimated release date is 20th, but lots of work to do.

http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/arm/2012-July/003631.html

New estimated release date for Fedora Remix from Chris Tyler:

"aim to ship next week", with 3.2.27 kernel.

http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting-1/2012-09-26/fedora-meeting-1.2012-09-26-20.00.log.html

Also, the RPF is reportedly working with Fedora on firmware licensing:

>> I heard that there won't be an official Fedora build of the Raspberry Pi remix because

>> the firmware license is not compatible with the Fedora firmware guidelines.

>

> Correct at this point in time. I meant an official remix stable release.

> Fedora legal and the board are working with the foundation to try and resolve the firmware issue

http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/arm/2012-September/004085.html

I'm sure that was in fact the "Big Anouncement"  personally I can't see what the camera module has to do with a Fedora Release, unless they planned a release n the same day which supported it?

I managed to get an order in for one of those cameras after a load of hassle the only similarity between them both is that they are both like Unicorn Manure(TM)

the camera board is supposedly still in stock for now, I put my order in earlier today.. I've been watching the '840 in stock' number diminish rapidly ever since.

Currently can't decide if they'll last the day or not..

Yeah I was initially directed to the Farnell site and that went buy 9.30am yesterday !!

Also they have implemented strict one per customer limitations.

I hope to get mine soon as I ordered it yesterday and normally CPC do next day

I live in hope ......or at least where a few Unicorns run about

John Alexander wrote:

 

Yeah I was initially directed to the Farnell site and that went buy 9.30am yesterday !!

Also they have implemented strict one per customer limitations.

I hope to get mine soon as I ordered it yesterday and normally CPC do next day

Interesting that CPC have done a one-per-customer thing again (and out of stock already), there's absolutely no indication of anything like that on the farnell site

My bet is that the May 14 camera announcement was pure coincidence,

and that Chris Tyler's non-announcement was due to yet another delay

of the hard-float Fedora 18 Remix release.

There are lots of software release lessons to be learned from the Seneca folks,

and it is ironic that their group is based on a class on that topic.  One of the

obvious lessons is not to discontinue maintenance on your current release

while you are working on the next release, because the next release might

not come as soon as you expect.

... or perhaps the "ctyler" who made the mysterious pre-announcement on the Pi forum isn't that C Tyler at all. User "ctyler" isn't exactly prolific, so it's rather hard to judge authenticity by other posts:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=39637

joined Pi forum: 22nd Oct 2012

last visited: 30th April 2013

total posts: 1

There are indeed many lessons to be gleaned here. Perhaps one of the most crucial is that as the Fedora Project don't officially support the Pi then it's always going to be an uphill struggle. Another is that after reading endless meeting transcripts, mailing list faddle and the like, it's pretty clear to me that Seneca are very good at making plans, but not so good at actually getting stuff done, or communicating with users of their product.

I wouldn't hire them to organise a kiddies' party. They'd probably spend a year having meetings trying to decide on the optimum inflation pressure for the bouncy castle. Then they'd forget to hire the magician and the party food would doubtless be made from tofu, brussel sprouts and granary floorsweepings.

If Fedora had any sense they'd slap a "cease and desist" on them.

There is news coming today.

The agenda for the Fedora Arm meeting that starts at 4pm EDT says:

        5) Pidora Status Update

http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/arm/2013-May/005992.html

Pidora is what they are calling the planned hard-float F18 RPi Remix.

The meeting log at:

    http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting-1/2013-05-15/fedora-meeting-1.2013-05-15-20.18.log.txt

20:54:28 #topic 5) Pidora Status Update

20:55:10 Do we have a Pidora 18 final image.

20:55:11 But!

20:55:30 The foundation updated the firmware on Monday, and we have some breakage.

20:56:02 Should have that fixed in the next few hours. Once we have final image, we'll schedule the release announcement.

20:56:10 firstboot doesn't run

20:56:39 Looks like an issue accessing the vfat /boot partition.

20:56:50 We would have shipped with the previous firmware rev, but the new firmware

20:57:04 enables Pidora to be included on a new multi-distro card image

20:57:16 that will be bundled with the HW for a few dollars.

20:57:27 And we really want to be there.

20:58:41 ctyler, great, any features we can look for, cool things? or should we wait for the announcement?

20:59:16 Reasonable performance of the GUI, full toolchain on the card, nice firstboot,

20:59:32 headless mode, many other fun things.

To be honest this sounds altogether more likely.

I'm a great Fedora fan but unless moreof this project gets pushed into the mainstream I really can't see it as relevant.

Every one is now "Rasbian" for the most part and all the specific stuff(drivers,documentation etc) now reference it.

Maybe the other software development lesson they could learn is to produce something and keep doing it as well as

comunicating with your "customers"!

What we have here is failure to comunicate WIKI

Ha maybe they are thinking in the right way ...Everybody rub their Lucky Unicorns!!

Ha maybe they are thinking in the right way ...Everybody rub their Lucky Unicorns!!

Mark Shuttleworth stole all the unicorns

The problems they're experiencing with firmware updates (which are to be expected given the ongoing nature of Pi development) suggest that they are well outside the loop these days. Wasn't there a similar problem when the firmware was updated for compatibility with the memery chip change?

Thanks for posting that part of the meeting transcript, coder 27. I wonder if the "announcement" will be followed by some kind of sustained presence, or will the unwitting alpha testers user community just get a "here's the new remix, kthxbai" followed by another protracted silence when it won't boot / download? The other place is the official forum of the Foundation after all, and not to drop in there regularly seems lazy and short-sighted.

If Wikis were an effective way of passing on information to people who aren't already in the know then companies wouldn't spend a metric buttload of money on advertising, websites with at least a functional "search" button and human readable documentation that's organised in a vaguely intuitive manner.

@ coder 27: out of interest I did an internet search for "Pidora" and (apart from sharing it's name with an internet radio application) it is probably the most closely guarded secret since that Manhattan Project. Does this mean tacit support for the Pi from the Fedora Project H.Q. despite the moral objection to the closed binaries, or are they conjouring hard float out of thin air for a generation of legacy hardware, but not specifically the Pi? It's all most odd and more than a bit fishy.

Edit: lol at the Shuttleworth gag,   I hear that unicorns will shortly be available for sale on Amazon!

> The problems they're experiencing with firmware updates (which are to be expected given the ongoing nature of Pi development) suggest that they are well outside the loop these days. Wasn't there a similar problem when the firmware was updated for compatibility with the memery chip change?

It doesn't look like the firmware issues are similar.

The previous firmware problem, involving Hynix memory compatibility,

was simply a matter of Seneca not including the latest firmware with

their F18 Remix release on March 8, 2013.  The firmware had been

changed on github to support Hynix memory on January 16, 2013.

The RPF got around to publicly announcing the new firmware on

March 20, 2013.  The RPF doesn't appear to have a regular mechanism

for declaring new firmware releases to be stable and ready for widespread

use.  

Seneca still hasn't updated F18 to use the January 16 firmware even

to this day, although it has been reported to them on IRC by Drew,

and in both of their bug tracking systems.  So they may have been

out of the loop in March, but that's not a good excuse now.  Which is

why I pointed out the lesson to be learned about not stranding your current

customers without support just because a new version is coming soon. 

They told Drew on IRC not to worry about the obsolete F18 firmware because

they had a whole new release coming soon that would have the latest firmware. 

But due to unforeseen delays in Pidora, their Hynix RAM customers have been

unable to boot since March, unless they updated the firmware themselves,

which is appalling.

Equally appalling is that the RPF hasn't updated the Debian soft-float

release on their download page, nor have they updated their quick-start

guide, which still says to use the obsolete 2012-12-16 version of Raspbian.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/quick-start-guide

>I wonder if the "announcement" will be followed by some kind of sustained presence ...

None of their releases so far (F14,F17,F18) have been followed by any sort of

sustained presence, either in this forum, or the RPi.org forum, so I don't have much

hope for a major change.  It wouldn't hurt though for E14 to extend them an invitation

to participate in this forum.

>  If Wikis were an effective way of passing on information

I wouldn't mind at all if they had a well-maintained wiki or at least complete and

detailed meeting minutes as a substitute for forum participation.

> Does this mean tacit support for the Pi from the Fedora Project H.Q.  ...

They are supported by a grant from the Canadian government and Red Hat.

Hi coder 27 and thanks for the reply. I never was that good touch typing straight to html (anf this forum makes quote formatting a bit hit and miss), so excuse the randomness of my responses...

I would imagine that if Seneca were still a serious contender they would have access to firmware updates pre-release as part of a beta test -> report issues else integrate routine. Firmware updates (regardless of their integrity) seem to come as much as a surprise to Seneca as they do to the rest of us! This could of course be part of a bigger problem at the Foundation's end, but one would hope that someone tests this stuff before release (although that'a a topic for another time!)

Your point about not stranding customers by abandoning previous builds because a new one "is on the way" is very well put and Fedora Head Office have their own support lifecycle policy. It's just a pity that they don't exercise more control over third parties who exploit their intellectual property!

Regarding my question regarding Pidora and whether this suggests tacit support for the Pi from Fedora Head Office despite the fact that the Fedora Project explicitly doesn't support hardware with closed binaries and such - I'm genuinely intrigued. Where has the armv6hf build come from, especially as it seemed less than a year ago that porting for legacy hardware wasn't going to happen? According to Chris Tyler:

http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/arm/2012-July/003669.html

I guess that what I'm saying is that Seneca seem unable to tie their own shoelaces, so perhaps I'd be a little surprised if they've done all the hard work themselves. Even more surprising is the fact that they're putting in all this effort and not actually bothering to tell anyone! Perhaps they're too busy having constant meetings about nothing...

I think Seneca has the same access to firmware updates that everyone else has,

the updates just appear on github without much fanfare.

> Where has the armv6hf build come from ...?

The OSTEP team at Seneca, particularly Jon Chiappetta (fossjon),

has been working on it full time since at least last September,

with Alpha release of Pidora planned for last October 9.

http://blog.chris.tylers.info/index.php?/archives/268-The-OSTEP-Team.html

http://zenit.senecac.on.ca/wiki/index.php/Fedora_ARM_Meeting_2012_September_11

Grant funding is described here:

http://blog.chris.tylers.info/index.php?/archives/263-New-Role-Industrial-Research-Chair-Open-Source-Technology-for-Emerging-Platforms.html

There is a new Seneca web site announcing Pidora,

their hard-float version of the Fedora 18 RPi Remix.

http://www.pidora.ca/

I don't see any release notes that mention what version of

the firmware is included or what problem reports have been closed. 

Their problem report #161 regarding obsolete firmware that prevents

booting with Hynix memory is still listed as Open:

http://trac.proximity.on.ca/projects/rpfr/report/1

I know they know what release notes are, since the soft-float F18

RPi Remix had them:

http://scotland.proximity.on.ca/raspberrypi/raspberrypi-fedora-remix/18/images/RaspberryPi-Fedora-Remix-18-Release-Notes.txt

which shows the firmware version (perhaps not accurately) as:   

    raspberrypi-firmware-20120727git0d88fba-1

and lists 3 fixed issues (although not by problem report number).

Coder27, do we know if Pidora has any particular "Super Abilities" or key selling features?

The problem as i see it now is  that Raspbian is so well engrained in to the documentaion  that no one will take Pidora seriously as an alternative except possibly as extertainment and psssibly some experimentation??

I must say even as a big Fedora nut I won't be busting a gut to put it on a spare SD card unless it offers something that Raspian doesn't.

Any ideas here guys ?

> do we know if Pidora has any particular "Super Abilities" or key selling features?

That's a really good question, and I hope Seneca addresses it in their release notes

and/or wiki.  It looks to me like they are still playing catch-up with Raspbian, based on

their open problem reports, such as ticket #4 suggesting they use Simon's

10-month-old optimized memcpy and memset.

http://trac.proximity.on.ca/projects/rpfr/ticket/4

In theory Seneca has an advantage in funding and team size, but this

advantage doesn't appear to have translated into tangible benefits so far.

Pidora 18 RC1 is now available for download from

    http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads

although not (yet) from

     http://www.element14.com/community/groups/raspberry-pi#downloadcenter

Thanks for that I've down loaded

Wonder if it supports the Camera?