[Ambassadors] Introduction to Fedora-fr

[Thomas Canniot]

OK, here is a mail to respond to several topics which seems to be in
many people minds.

*First, let me re-introduce you the Fedora-fr Community, the
"Who-are-you" question.*
Fedora-fr.org is a community website whose aim is to promote Fedora. It
is lead mostly by active Ambassadors. It is made of a forum, several
mailing lists, an IRC channel on Freenode and a local documentation
project. There are at the moment more than 9000 members subscribed to
our forums. On these forums, we help people if they have problems and
questions about the distro, obviously, but we also help people creating
their own RPM to help them participating into Fedora Extras. We have
also about 15 people contributing to the local documentation project.
Fedora-fr is also the area where French Ambassadors are altogether.
There are 13 active ambassadors. On Sundays, they meet themselves to
discuss the promotion of the distro at a local scale, but also the main
decisions taken by the Project in general.

*What are you doing?*
We are actively promoting the distribution. How are we doing this ?
First, we created a strong community website. People can share their
thoughts about Fedora, with the forums, the IRC or the blog platform.
Finally, Ambassadors and involved people also go to different events.
They first met during a big install party which happened in October
2006. And this year, Fedora was officially represented by some
ambassadors (6) at the biggest Linux event in France, Linux Solutions.
Some French Ambassadors (3) also went to FOSDEM to meet European
Ambassadors and worldwide involved people. 

*What is this Fedora-fr Organisation thing?*
First, I need to explain to you how we came to this idea. There were
first requests from French people to be able to give Fedora some money.
They couldn't, as the Project does not accept gifts due to legal issues.
Then, there were several misunderstandings and little organisation (from
both side it seems), and we were invited to create our materials
locally. As nobody here wanted to spend its own money for it, we decided
that a non-profit organisation was a very good thing to do: it would
allow us to create our own materials and to be recognised as a fully
organised and legal entity both by the Fedora Project and RedHat.
Moreover, as RedHat Brandful store goodies shipping costs are completely
unaffordable by Europeans, we decided to create a webshop as well.
As you can see, everything is about promoting Fedora, as it has never
been the case elsewhere and before.

*How are you going to do it?*
As soon as the organisation will be authorised by the french
governement, we will invite people to subscribe to it, if they are
willing to. This would create a lot of money. Then, because we know that
subscriptions will slow down a day or another and because Fedora goodies
are very difficult to find in Europe, we had this webshop idea: on each
product that are going to be sold, we will get a small profit for the
organisation. Finally, we will have some money to work with, so as to
create DVDs and help people promoting the distro (by having a part of
their trip reimbursed for example).
Involved ambassadors voted for the creation of the non-profit
organisation on January 31st, during Linux Solutions event. Here are the
involved people: Thomas Canniot (myself -- president), Armel Kermorvant
(vice-president), Johan Cwislinski (treasurer), Guillaume Kulakowski
(secretary) and two others people involved in the Steering Committee,
Thierry Delmonte and Charles Vinchon.

*What do you think of Fedora Europe Infrastructure (FEI)?*
We think that Fedora Europe Infrastructure is a very good idea and we
want to take an active part in its creation. Let me explain to you how
we see things. We think that FEI has to help people organise themselves
into local non-profit organisations, mostly as we have done here in
France. If there are some money to deal with, from RedHat for example,
FEI will get the money so as to share it to non-profit organisations
which need to promote Fedora locally. If they can't / don't want to
create a non-profit organisation or if they don't want to create goodies
locally, then FEI will have goodies made for them and send to them. FEI
however should only accept large orders and not give DVDs one by one.
Local community don't need all the army with them (a big website and all
that stuff), but only a legal entity ruled by recognised rules that help
FEI understand that they are not trying to get things for themselves.

*How should FEI be organised?*
Well, I don't think it may be a good idea to have only one person
leading FEI. It may be a very good idea however that some people manage
things. At least, 3, but not more, to avoid under activity.
FEI Steering Committee should be elected by Ambassadors. And only
European Ambassadors should be allowed to be at its head (or maybe one
person from the Fedora Ambassador Project, as its leader, or even
higher, Greg or Max).


The French Ambassadors
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