"What is the Fedora Project?"

[Máirín Duffy]

On 10/08/2009 11:58 AM, inode0 wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 10:29 AM, Jeffrey Ollie<jeff at ocjtech.us>  wrote:
>> Unless a clear mission and purpose is defined, Fedora will just kind
>> of float along pushed around by whatever currents are strongest at the
>> moment.  Maybe that sort of philosophy suits you, but I'd rather have
>> an idea of where we're headed.
>
> The currents that push the strongest, those the contributors want to
> spend their time on, are the currents we will ultimately float along
> with. We can't force people to work on something they aren't
> interested in working on and have the sort of community we have today.
>
> There is a strong hint in all of this that some people prefer a
> traditional hierarchical management structure to this project.
> Fundamentally that is what fills me with the trepidation I mentioned
> in my very first post on this thread.

I don't think traditional hierarchical management is a foregone 
conclusion with strong vision statements.

Having a strong vision of what we're trying to achieve can help us drum 
up more enthusiasm for the project attract more contributors. I kind of 
liken it to some of the experiences I've had dealing with product 
requirements in the past, for example along the lines of this little 
diatribe:

http://blog.monochrome.co.uk/2009/02/if-architects-had-to-work-like-software-developers/

That blog post is how Fedora operates today. Who wants to work on a 
project like that? Yes, good things happen within this model when strong 
contributors stand up and take responsibility for their swath of the 
community. But it is confusing and disjointed, and at times highly 
frustrating and demotivating.

There's no reason though that contributors can't get involved and move 
up the ranks of meritocracy, getting things done, underneath a shared 
vision of where Fedora is going. Rather than something like this guy's 
scattered rants about how he demands alumnium siding and the approval of 
his mother-in-law and his 1952 refrigerator, which is scary to face... 
we could maybe have a nice story of where we want Fedora to be in the 
future and just a little more direction.

~m