"What is the Fedora Project?"

[Mike McGrath]

On Thu, 8 Oct 2009, inode0 wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 11:23 AM, John Poelstra <poelstra at redhat.com> wrote:
> > inode0 said the following on 10/08/2009 08:58 AM Pacific Time:
> >> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 10:29 AM, Jeffrey Ollie <jeff at ocjtech.us> wrote:
> >>> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 9:40 AM, inode0 <inode0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>> Is it in the board's purview to "lead" the project by singling out
> >>>> technologies it wants to move along over the next few releases?
> >>>
> >>> Yes.  Fedora has limited resources. That means that someone needs to
> >>> prioritize the use of those resources.  As a corollary to that it may
> >>> mean that some projects/ideas may be denied resources.
> >>
> >> I thought I was asking a rhetorical question there. And I think the
> >> answer is no.
> >>
> >>>> Are there structural problems within the project that this would help?
> >>>
> >>> Fedora can't be everything to everyone, and if anyone in the project
> >>> thinks we can, I would call that a structural problem.
> >>
> >> I think it is a problem if we exclude contributors who have a vision
> >> that nine board members don't understand yet. Let them do their work,
> >> make their case, and prove their point. We have mechanisms now for
> >> determining winners and losers among competing technologies.
> >>
> >
> > This is too "all or nothing."  There has been no discussion about excluding
> > contributors who have a different vision than the board. Fedora provides a
> > tremendous amount of flexibility and opportunity to do your own thing...
> > including creating your own distro.  Even if the core direction Fedora is at
> > odds with some contributors, nobody is saying they can't do what they want
> > to, within reasonable bounds of course.
>
> Yes, there is discussion of exactly that in the text quoted above.
> Granted it was not made by a board member. At least that was how I
> interpreted the comments about prioritization and denial of resources
> to projects/ideas the board doesn't like.
>

There's a big difference between a board member saying "You're no longer
welcome here" and a contributor realizing "These people don't have the
same values I do".  For example, no one kicked ESR out of Fedora.

	-Mike