"What is the Fedora Project?"

[Paul W. Frields]

On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 03:40:15PM -0600, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Seth Vidal <skvidal at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Wed, 21 Oct 2009, Paul W. Frields wrote:
> >
> >> On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 01:46:56PM -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
> >>>
> >>> On 10/15/2009 12:18 PM, Seth Vidal wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> And I think the point that Mike and I have been making on this list is
> >>>> that given the claimed goals of fedora we shouldn't expect people who
> >>>> are not religious about free software and heavily involved to get
> >>>> ANYTHING out of fedora.
> >>>
> >>> Sure, and I think you guys have done a good job advocating for that.
> >>>
> >>> What I'm telling you here, though, is that I *am* the target user
> >>> you're advocating for (freetard/zealot, techie, contributor), and at
> >>> times I'm at my wit's end trying to use !rawhide Fedora.
> >>>
> >>>> In short we have a choice:
> >>>> 1. change the goals of fedora
> >>>>
> >>>> OR
> >>>>
> >>>> 2. tell people we are intending for a small segment of the over
> >>>> population and those folks who are not in that segment and/or are not
> >>>> interested in becoming a member of that segment are NOT in the righr
> >>>> place.
> >>>
> >>> I'm trying to point out if our goal was to only reach for
> >>> software-freedom-religious folks who are heavily involved in it, we
> >>> could still do a much better job for *them.*
> >>
> >> A point that occurred to me that didn't make it into the conversation:
> >> If anyone needs a user case less specific than Mairin, imagine a
> >> Fedora Ambassador for instance.  Surely we don't want to say to an
> >> Ambassador, "Please contribute by promoting Fedora, but we'd rather
> >> you adjust to our way of thinking rather than us accommodating you"?
> >>
> >
> > Why not? If you change to whatever the latest group of users wants then
> > you're not leading, you're following.
> 
> And vice versa.. if you don't listen and adapt you end up behind what
> people would ever want to use. Its a conversation not a dictation
> which I think we have forgotten in our current society.

Let me try this again with some better explanation.  I think a Fedora
Ambassador -- and let's say an experienced one -- makes a good example
of someone who subscribes to our foundations and is interested in, and
in fact is currently, contributing to Fedora.  I think the decisions
we make around the distribution should not make it harder for this
Ambassador to promote or to use Fedora.  As an alternative to
personalizing the target case to Mairin Duffy -- not that she doesn't
provide a good profile -- I think a generic, experienced Fedora
Ambassador works well.

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