"What is the Fedora Project?"

[Paul W. Frields]

On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 11:05:44PM -0500, Mike McGrath wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Oct 2009, Paul W. Frields wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Oct 07, 2009 at 08:13:29PM -0500, Mike McGrath wrote:
> > > On Wed, 7 Oct 2009, Paul W. Frields wrote:
> > > > This is why I feel so strongly that we should not be assuming that the
> > > > people we see every day in our roles in the Fedora community,
> > > > participating and contributing in constructive ways, are de facto
> > > > representative of our only target audience.  Do we want those people
> > > > involved?  Almost invariably the answer is "yes."  But there are many
> > > > more people we reach, and more that we want to be reaching, to
> > > > encourage an appreciation for sustainable software freedom, on the
> > > > terms we set out in our mission and core values:
> > > >
> > >
> > > Can you give some more detailed examples here?  You've defined the people
> > > we see day to day but then went on to describe the people we don't see day
> > > to day.  Those two groups combined are everyone :)
> >
> > Dangling reply never went out:
> >
> > People we see daily:  Packagers, admins, and developers.
> > People we don't, in decreasing levels of visibility:  Ambassadors, bug
> > filers, potential bug filers, independent open source developers,
> > students
> >
> 
> Also windows users, oracle employees, those without computers.  I guess
> I'm just not following the logic.  If you're saying we should cater to
> those we don't ever see, how?

If you're committed to reductio ad absurdum, this discussion can't get
anywhere meaningful.  I specifically indicated we want to reach people
on the terms we set out in our mission and core values (see above).

The people you and I are in direct contact with every day in our
Fedora $DAYJOB represent a much smaller set of people than the people
who use the Fedora distribution and are interested in what the Fedora
Project does.  Set A is a very small subset of Set B, not a disjoint
set.  By ensuring that Fedora gets better and is more appealing for
Set B, we can not only generally make Set A's life better but we can
also grow Set B, and if the size of Set A is governed by some
proportion (albeit small), Set A is likely to grow as well.

Calling this "catering" comes off as exclusionary to me, and I think
that's unhealthy for the Fedora Project in the long run.

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