"What is the Fedora Project?"

[Mark McLoughlin]

On Thu, 2009-10-08 at 11:59 -0400, Seth Vidal wrote:

> the developers work for their manager. Ie: I work for Tom. So Does Mike 
> and a lot of folks on the fedora team. But the desktop team developers 
> work for Jonathan. So a different set of people in charge.
> 
> 
> The board has no hiearchical control over either Tom or Jonathan so 
> directing them to direct their people to do something or to NOT do 
> something is not within the purview of the board as I understand it.

You make it sound almost like Tom and Jonathan have direct control over
Fedora, which I'm sure they'd surprised to hear :-)

Put it this way - the board can attempt to set a vision for the project,
but it won't work unless it is a motivating vision which roughly
coincides with the ideas most people already have.

That's no different from Jonathan or anyone else on the desktop team
attempting to set a vision for the desktop spin. Unless they can bring
people along with that vision, it ultimately doesn't work out.

Setting out a vision isn't about hierarchial control. We're all bumbling
along now with whatever rough consensus we can garner. The board can
merely help to crystalize consensus and motivate people around it.

Cheers,
Mark.