[Ambassadors] Poll ?? No!!

[Chitlesh GOORAH]

Hello there,

Many things bothered me lately and I'm quite sad how things turned up recently.

I know I'm going to write a lot, please bear some time and read what
I'm going to say. Thanks.

#001: The recent poll.
We are the fedora project. A project which has recently gained
attention and respect for its _professional work and standards_.
We already have a voting system
 - which can be used as polls too.
 - which has proved to be an excellent tool for the fedora infrastructure.
 - which is maintained by the fedora infrastructure team.
 - which provided quality results.

Last time, I mentioned "a mentoring module" to the ambassador project.
Why ? Because most of us don't know about the/many _internal_ fedora
facilities provided to them. For example: the above voting system
which hasn't been used.

I wish that we all could spend our time on concrete and long term
marketing projects which could benefit the Fedora Project itself,
rather on breaking the facilities provided(I'll come to that later
on).

If you don't know what long term marketing projects I'm talking of
- look for "Second Life" in your archives
- the F7 release. Hay Fedora will not ship KDE on F7 !! Do you know
about that ??

I'll leave it up to you to see how far is this true.

#002: Unfair Poll.
How many of you have voted for the poll without thinking about the
implications that the merge may have on the project itself ? Or do
your contributions for the fedora marketing world stop where the word
"marketing" stops ?

What I can see, it's the merge idea, came from FAMSCo. No attack.
That's fine and it's good to see ideas popping. However, I see no
indications on a wiki page
 -  where the merge proposal has been brought to FAMSCo meetings/discussions .
 -  where it explains (by the FAMSco member) the benefit of this idea/proposal.

Example of what I was looking for as a proposal to Steering Committee:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackagingDrafts/SourceUrl

Perhaps, those discussions were done on (closed) FAMSCo mailing lists,
where no one else can read. Definitely, there is a reason for that.

Now the implications that may have ??
I already impress some of my opinions before:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2007-February/msg00015.html
Maybe you should re-read it again.

I don't see anywhere where it has described what mesures will be taken for:
 - CLA . (or perhaps no one does take CLA seriously ?? or possibly
didn't understand _why_ fedora ambassadors need to sign it.)
Ask yourself _why_ have you signed CLA, fedora ambassador?

Let me tell you briefly:
You represent fedora during events or wherever you want. Any of your
contributions whether in the form of electronic, verbal, or written
communication is sent to the Project, including but not limited to
communication on electronic mailing lists, source code control
systems, and issue tracking systems that are managed by, or on behalf
of, the Project for the purpose of discussing or improving software or
documentation of the Project, but excluding communication that is
conspicuously marked or otherwise designated in writing by you as "Not
a Contribution."

Any Contribution submitted by you to the Project shall be under the
terms and conditions of this License, without any additional terms or
conditions, unless you explicitly state otherwise in the submission.

Now, what if anyone copies some texts from the mailing list (of a
person who havent signed CLA) and paste it to the Fedora Wiki without
asking for the personA ? This normally happens when summarizing long
discussions from the ML on the wiki. Perhaps, that personA can file a
legal case against fedora.

This above paragraph should automatically make you see the importance
of CLA signed by contributors. And perhaps you know that those have
signed CLA are not only Fedora Ambassadors, but also fedora packagers,
developers, artists....

Now, I don't see anywhere where it described
 - mesures or methods dealing with CLA issues after the merge?
 - whether we are strong for the merge or not ?? (don't take fedora
core and fedora extras as examples, they have high level quality
backbone for that)
 - why _THIS_ period of the release cycle is appropriate for such
talks ?? or perhaps FAMSCo already have thoughts about how to market
Fedora in different countries.

If FAMSCo is working on none priority subject like the merge
- which has no interest on improving
  - quality
  - marketing
- which has no major benefit on the overall fedora project. (Yes,
there are lots of other projects, not only fedora marketing and fedora
ambassadors),
I guess decisions like
 - FedoraEvents
 - Fedora Weekly Reports on the Fedora Wiki
 - solving DVDs problems in different parts of the world
 - marketing F7
 - informing ambassadors about the benefit of the merge of FC and FE
has already been solved and we are moving forward.

If not, perhaps opening FAMSCo ML to Fedora Ambassadors, would benefit
to the whole ambassador project of Fedora ??.


Chitlesh
-- 
http://clunixchit.blogspot.com