Fedora Stakeholders Debate Concerns Over "Karma" Term For Their Updates System

The latest terminology within the Fedora camp causing concern is "karma" that's long been used for conveying feedback around package updates with their Bodhi software used for gating Fedora Linux package updates.

A thread was started yesterday on the Fedora development list for moving the Bodhi update system away from using the term "karma" to rate updates.

As noted on the Fedora Bodhi wiki page, Karma is their means of simple +1 or -1 voting for indicating by testers whether a given package update is working or not. The displayed karma is then the sum of all the +1/-1 votes for indicating how well a proposed package update is working by Fedora testers.

Going back years have been requests to drop the "karma" usage within Fedora due to connections to some religious beliefs and Fedora's Bodhi Karma may trivialize religious references while also not being too descriptive.

The most recent plan being discussed on the Fedora mailing list is to replace "karma" with "feedback". But some Fedora developers and other stakeholders are finding this proposed terminology confusing. Some suggest other alternative names like "update feedback" or "kudos".

For now the matter of replacing Fedora's Karma terminology is being discussed on the Fedora devel list for those interested. While "Karma" has long been used by Bodhi, it looks like it's on the way out but now a matter of what the developers will agree to as the new accepted term.