CDE SIG

= Summary =

In pursuit of greater adoption of Free Software in general and the Fedora Linux distribution specifically, especially in corporate desktop environments, we seek to improve the feasibility of deploying the Fedora distribution and the sustainability of such installation.

Target Audience
The targeted consumers for this project are Small-to-Medium Enterprises (SME) as well as Small Business Offices (SBO). The project participants will be users, administrators and developers interested in corporate desktop environments.

Problem Statement
A desktop or laptop has a CI life-cycle (hardware) that usually lasts 3-4 years, depending on local tax regulations. The life-cycle of a Fedora release is 13 months, and too short to last the full CI life-cycle, causing a CI to be installed and upgraded twice to trice throughout its life-cycle. The life-cycle of an Enterprise Linux distribution better suites the requirement for businesses to install a CI and not need to upgrade it again after a certain period of time, but since the Enterprise Linux release cycle is 3 to 3.5 years, software ages and hardware support may become an issue.

Targeted Solution

 * Extend the life-cycle of Fedora with 6 months of security updates only
 * Rebuild recent Fedora software packages for Enterprise Linux

The aforementioned two solutions each target a subtly different audience in the corporate desktop environment, which are described in more detail in the following sections.

Extended Life-cycle Support
With extended life-cycle support spanning just one development cycle, several options are opened up for corporate desktop environments to choose from, merely lowering the barrier -to some extent- to deploy Fedora throughout the desktop infrastructure, while preserving a focus on future versions of the distribution -to some extent. See the Extended Life-cycle Support wiki page for more details. This approach will work for organisations that allow themselves the investment required to test new releases of Fedora, upgrade existing CIs, and generally commit to this investment wanting to work with the latest and greatest.

Rebuild Software for Enterprise Linux
Providing a repository with more recent versions of software typically consumed within or through a corporate desktop environment, such as Office & Productivity, enables businesses to deploy a more stable base platform (Enterprise Linux) that will span the CI life-cycle, while recent versions of software sitting on top of the stable platform helps maintain user productivity and application compatibility (think .docx and OOO 2.3 or 3.0). See the Rebuild Software for Enterprise Linux for more details. Eliminating the need for businesses to upgrade their desktops and/or laptops at all will work for those organisations that want to run Free Software or Linux in their environment,