"What is the Fedora Project?"

[Máirín Duffy]

On 10/22/2009 09:57 AM, Máirín Duffy wrote:
> On 10/22/2009 09:37 AM, Mike McGrath wrote:
>> I'm just going to bring up the elephant in the room, at least the one I
>> see.  Up until this discussion I was under the impression that Ubuntu and
>> us were not in direct competition.  They were catering to noobs and
>> general users, we were catering to enthusiasts and experienced users.
>> Coming out of this conversation (not just with Paul but with everyone) it
>> seems clear that Ubuntu's goals and our goals greatly overlap if not
>> completely overlap.
> 
> I don't think our goals do overlap though. To us, following an
> excellent, open process of producing software is just as important as
> producing excellent, open source software. One of our goals is to be a
> model and an example of that process, and to prove it works so it may be
> taken up by other domains.

One point I failed to make is for us to succeed in our goal doesn't mean
we have to succeed in theirs. Maybe we can't (or don't want to) get
Fedora such that your wife or my younger brother can use it without a
great deal of support. But I think for us to prove our model works, we
need to produce something excellent using it, and I don't think we are
there yet.

We don't need to target Ubuntu's user base in order to produce something
excellent, something polished, something that is delightful to use and
makes people's lives easier, something that impresses them such that
they care about how it was made.

~m