Since LibreOffice is relatively large, I can see a reasonable
argument for
leaving it out if it lets us put more shiny things into the LiveCD.
Yes, but that argument was never made. No one ever proposed to put something very shiny on
the disk instead of an office suite. Quite the opposite, I haven't seen much of any
feedback until today. And when I should choose:
1) an install media with 215 MB empty space and no office suite
2) an install media with 90 MB empty space and an office suite
I definitely choose the latter. It provides a better user experience and a more complete
Linux Desktop environment by default.
I secretly wish there were more people on this list who care about the default experience
Fedora provides to their users, and I wish discussions raged here whether large
LibreOffice is better or worse than smaller Abiword + some more shiny stuff, but as you
can see, the discussions don't really happen. So that's why I took initiative and
decided to fix at least something.
If you have other proposals how the default desktop should look like and what
should/shouldn't be included, please post it. But please be clear about which Fedora
release you want to target. Because F18 release data is very near and I _hope_ we will
manage to implement at least my proposal. I don't think some large changes can be
discussed and implemented in time.