Desktop Proposal

[Máirín Duffy]

On 10/12/2009 06:45 PM, Jesse Keating wrote:
> On Mon, 2009-10-12 at 17:28 -0500, Mike McGrath wrote:
>>
>> So lets leave the other missions in place, as suggested in the paper, and
>> just add one?  Is there anyone else on the list that thinks trying to
>> build a usable, general purpose desktop is not worth being a mission of
>> the Fedora Project?

> Let me ask it a different way.  What do we accomplish by narrowing down
> the entire project's focus in an exclusionary way to a single product?

I have a couple of issues with your question as you posed it:

"Narrowing down the entire project's focus"

I wouldn't say we're narrowing down the entire project's focus. Rather, 
I think we should define the project's external face to the world, since 
it is right now rather confusing to an outsider.

"In an exclusionary way"

I'm not sure where anybody has proposed exclusion.

I've proposed having different places for different things, so rather 
than having a big bucket of random things, kicking that over to external 
folks looking at is, and telling them "have fun".... we have a bucket 
here for 'desktop product', a bucket here for 'custom built alternative 
desktops and OS spins', a bucket here for 'getting involved in the 
community.' Because the very word "Fedora" is ambiguous - it could mean 
a number of things to different people.

Now, the idea behind focusing on a single product to dub 'the Fedora' I 
believe could help us have a consistent message - Fedora is this OS. The 
Fedora community is the organization that makes it happen, but they do a 
lot of other cool stuff you can learn about.

FWIW I think there are a lot of organizations that have a product that 
gets them exposure / brand recognition that they then use to get 
interest/support for another cause.

A couple of examples I can think of: Girl Scout cookies, Newman's Own 
food products. (Newman's Own is actually a non-profit organization that 
donates all their profits to charities) I'm quite confident there are 
others but I'm having trouble coming up with more examples at the moment.

~m