Target market?

[Jeff Spaleta]

On 7/26/07, Rik van Riel <riel at redhat.com> wrote:
> seth vidal wrote:
> > no - I mean bill is right. If we want polish we have to make choices.
>
> "This configuration is polished."
>
> Others may work, but won't have had the same focus.

To put a finer point on what I think Seth means by choices.
We will need to identify areas where we allow ourselves to take a step
or two away from the "upstream upstream upstream" mantra. We we'll
also have to agree that the integration work in those areas may
require patching individual components in such a way will detriment
non-focused usage cases.  We have to be OKAY with these high level
policy realities.

Beyond that....the harder question really becomes one of resources...
who exactly drives a particular focus area and how are they
accountable to make sure focus is actually occuring.
I've no problem with supporting someone who makes a good case that,
they can lead a focus area and that work will actually get done. But
I'm not going to throw support behind someone who talks big but can't
deliver. It does this project no good to say we are going to focus on
something and then have that focus linger with no direction. We must
have strong leads, and we must be okay with stepping back after a
period of time and being honest about when things haven't worked out
and we need to let another idea blossom.

And the hard reality, that we really would like to avoid discussing,
is  for areas that see a significant amount of investment of Red Hat
engineering resources, then Red Hat needs to internally decide to
assign resources to drive that focus area in Fedora or we are going to
have significant problems moving forward when an externally led effort
comes into disagreement with internal Red Hat engineering groupthink.
For things which Red Hat doesn't have a palatable engineering
investment in, then there is opportunity for external leads.  We can't
hide from the fact that in certain areas of development, how Red Hat
tasks their employee's time impacts Fedora in a significant and
impossible to ignore way. Instead of fighting that reality, we need to
help Red Hat as an entity, understand that there is a need to orient
resource management to leverage potential external community interest
in situations where Red Hat's engineering time is already
significantly impacting the possible directions Fedora can go.

Or to put an even finer point on it. If we want to focus on Gnome
integration in a serious way, and push things significantly beyond the
"upstream mantra" then Red Hat we'll need to decide how to re-arrange
resources to lead a Fedora effort by communicating a compelling
vision.. a vision which incorporates a range of opportunities for
external community members to get involved beyond bug reporting.  For
KDE however, with the Red Hat internal investment may not be
significant, a community lead has the freedom of movement to build a
"new" team around there own compelling vision, without the
complication of decision-making that could run counter to Red Hat's
vested interest in the space.

To make a more general statement about the topic of this thread.  I
feel the areas of focus which will be successful will be the areas of
focus that have a strong development lead who can communicate a
compelling vision for involvement.  We can talk for days on end about
what we'd like to see others produce for us, but unless there is an
identified lead who is listening to the feedback in such
discussions... such discussion isn't particularly fruitful.
It simply does not matter if 70% of us want one thing or another to be
a focus.... unless we are willing to do the work.  I'll tell you right
now, as much as I'd love to see a more polished desktop.. I'm not
leading that effort... I'm not going to be contributing significant
development manpower to build those integration bits.. so I'm going to
keep my mouth shut until there is a clear leader in the space and I
will support them in the ways that I can come hell or high water.

-jef"The question isn't what do we want to see Fedora become. The
question is what are we, each individually, willing to do to push
Fedora into becoming something more than it is."spaleta