"What is the Fedora Project?"

[Paul W. Frields]

On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 02:51:05PM -0400, Seth Vidal wrote:
> >All in all, it does sound like *I'm* not a target user for Fedora.
> >In fact, it sounds like (please please please please correct me if
> >I'm wrong) that the Fedora you and Mike are pushing for is not
> >meant to be used as a productive desktop by anybody, rather it's
> >meant to be a laboratory setting they submit themselves to for the
> >benefit of science and progress!
> 
> Actually Mike and I aren't really pushing for it - we ARE pushing
> for us to be realistic about our goals vs what we are actually
> achieving.

I would rather we set a goal that concerns what we want to achieve,
and then work toward it, as opposed to setting our goal based on what
we've been succeeding at so far.  I understand where you're coming
from, and the mismatch issue.  Perhaps we meant somewhat the same
thing but I think it's important to be explicit about what we're
trying to do.

> You know what this discussion says to me more than anything else:
> Lots of people claim to want fedora, but what they really  want is centos.
> Not rhel.
> centos.
> why, you ask?
> b/c they want something that a lot of people spent a lot of time
> making stable and they want it  secure and updated.
> and they want it all for free.

I think you're right that there are people out in Fedora-land who are
still confused about this.  But let's not confuse that with the issue
that there are a crapton of people also out in Fedora-land who are
perfectly happy to re-install or upgrade their systems every 6 months
or so, even if that means a small batch of new, small growing pains --
as long as they know that (1) a month later, after those pains are
solved, they don't reappear, grow, or get replaced unexpectedly with
new and larger pains; and (2) they can get an accurate readout from us
at release time as to the actual scope of the existing pains.

I think there's a possible additional condition here, (3) we are
making headway on constantly improving the reward vs. pain ratio that
apply to some small assortment of user profiles.  I think there's a
clear case to be made that the reward portion has grown considerably
-- maybe even radically -- over the last couple of years.  But
unfortunately the pain ratio hasn't dropped, and that's where we need
to concentrate now.

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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