Target market?

[Axel Thimm]

On Mon, Jul 23, 2007 at 03:02:08PM -0500, Mike McGrath wrote:
> One, simple question that may not have an answer.
> 
> 
> What is our target market supposed to be?

You probably need to answer first what the purpose of Fedora is and
then you'll find the target audience.

There are two major stakeholders, Red Hat and the community. Red Hat
wants to have a Linux distribution that

 * acts a healthy upstream project for RHEL, therefore
   * matures technology fast enough
   * sets "Linux standards"
   * educates users to be able to seaminglessly transition to a RHEL
     model once their need is there
 * has a large market share in the distribution jungle, therefore
   * needs to cater for non-direct target audiences like multimedia or
     non-technical pros.
 * has many developers, not only RH paid, but also streams in man
   power from the community
 * doesn't cut a market share out of RHEL and thus hurts RH business

The community is interested in

 * a vivid Linux distribution that they may substantially shape
 * usually latest technology
 * stablity, but not as important as latest and greatest
 * plethora of choices (e.g. many packages)

This symbiosis leads to a very mixed target audience from technology
experts testing beta upstream software to multimedia fans and granpa
George writing his emails. It's probably easier to define what the
traget groups are not: these are the ones reserved for RHEL,
e.g. business customers and long time support seeking groups
(e.g. stable APIs/ABIs over many years). But even these are indirectly
targeted since Fedora as an upstream for RHEL would never create an
uncomfortable situation for the RHEL target groups. So at the end
you'll find that everyone has become part of Fedora's target group in
one way or another.

The reverse question is: Why are you asking this? Probably in order to
decide something according to the target audience. In which case none
of the above is helpful.
-- 
Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/attachments/20070725/b65b375c/attachment.sig>