Fedora Board Recap 2009-01-27

[John Poelstra]

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board/Meetings/2009-01-27

== Roll Call ==
* Present: Paul Frields, Bill Nottingham, Chris Aillon, Seth Vidal, Matt 
Domsch, Dimitris Glezos, Chris Tyler, Spot Callaway, and Jesse Keating
* Regrets: Harald Hoyer
* Secretary: John Poelstra

== Followup to Previous Business ==
* Last meeting: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board/Meetings/2009-01-20

=== Trademark Guidelines Slowing Down Community? ===
* Discussion was to be moved to fedora-advisory-board at redhat.com
* No discussion observed on the mailing list
* Some board members re-reviewed guidelines since the last meeting.  Key 
points from today's discussion were:
** Fedora is trademarkable world-wide
** Trademark guidelines on the wiki seem rather long--could a summarized 
version be created?
*** This is generally not advised as it has the potential to create a 
second legal document
** Handling of domain name registration (and payment) by Red Hat on 
behalf of Fedora groups
*** Local groups can choose to register their own domains, need to sign 
the trademark agreement.
*** Alternatively, Red Hat can handle the domain registration and ownership
**** Does not require execution of trademark agreement
**** Domain name points to the organization's servers
* '''ACTIONS''': No further discussion

=== "What is Fedora?" Discussion ===
* Discussion continued from last week's minutes on fedora-advisory-board 
list
* 
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2009-January/msg00048.html 

* The board recognizes this question needs to be answered and spent a 
significant amount of time discussing:
*# Who should answer this question and other questions it raises?
*# How the questions should be answered?
*# What does answering these questions mean to the Fedora Project as a 
whole?
* The Board explored the topic somewhat, but its complexity and 
importance demand further discussions
* '''ACTIONS''' Discussion will continue on 2009-02-10.

==== Comments and Observations (brainstorming) ====
* The bullets below capture the free flow of the ideas and issues raised
** The discussion represented many community concerns from varying 
points of view.
** The Board realizes that there are differing opinions on these issues.
** Therefore, '''these are not the final views or decisions of the board 
and should not be construed as such'''
* Current web page is very vague and wide-ranging: 
https://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Overview
** ''Enthusiast'' definition is very broad
* How well does this the marketing plan capture things?
** http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing/Plan#TARGET_AUDIENCE
* Is it the Board's job to define "What Fedora Is"?
** Is it the Fedora Project Leader's job to define Fedora and its purpose?
** What problems would the board be solving by doing this?
** How would it affect the day to day operation of Fedora?
** Could it help the focus of individual developers and what they work 
on or consider a priority?
* What would be the purpose of further defining Fedora?
** Is it to be able to tell more people "no we don't do that?"
** Does it intentionally or unintentionally try to answer the question 
of whether Fedora competes with Ubuntu or not?
* Is having a "desktop" and a "server" focus a strength or a weakness?
* Which teams are responsible and accountable for setting default 
applications in Fedora?
** Some are specified by individual SIGs
** FESCo?
** Some are not clearly defined?
* Would it be useful to directly address the ongoing question raised 
that our supported release cycle is not long enough as part of "What 
Fedora Is"?
** Is it worth considering extending support timeline another two or 
three months?
** There are no guidelines about what type of updates should be pushed 
and when
*** History has shown that individual judgement is not always good as 
each maintainer uses different criteria
** By not clearly defining what users Fedora is not for it is hard to 
make good design decisions
** By restricting Fedora to a subset of users could we disadvantage 
current or unforeseen contributors?
* What is Red Hat's role in defining Fedora's purpose?
* Does the role of Fedora need to be defined?
* What guidelines are there around what Fedora cannot do?
** Not directly compete with Red Hat Enterprise Linux
* Distill what community is doing now and what we are good at?
* Is it better to have a concrete descriptions of what Fedora is versus 
vague notions of what we want to be: "We only use free and open source 
software"?

=== Status of FUDCon F11 Survey ===
* survey is in the process of being created by a person inside Red Hat 
that has access to the survey tool
* board will get a preview once created and then send out to the community
* Paul Frields is requesting that the Red Hat Community Architecture 
Team administer this survey at all future events

== Next Meeting ==
* Date: 2009-02-03
* Time: 19:00 UTC
* Location: irc.freenode.net
** Moderated channel for board answers: #fedora-board-meeting
** Public channel to ask questions: #fedora-board-public