Fedora's intended target audience?

[Sean]

On Thu, 27 Jul 2006 16:55:43 +0200
Hans de Goede <j.w.r.degoede at hhs.nl> wrote:

> No, this was the proverbial drop of water that made the bucket flow over
> (Dutch proverb). The thing I want to discuss is the general impression
> that Fedora Developers (both RH and Community ones) are loosing sight of
> end users and are doing things purely on their technical merits even if
> this hurts the end users. This xorg update is but one example.

The xorg update isn't an example of hurting end users.  It's an example
of putting better software in the hands of more users.  That's the same
reason that _any_ updates to FC5 happen.

I'm not sure what other problems you're including in your accusation but
they should be brought up so that they can be addressed.  Remember though
that even though there are many developers that are involved with Fedora
it is mostly a packaging operation of the best that developers have to
offer.  The point being that many problems aren't best addressed by Fedora
packagers but rather by the individual application developer communities.

> Also I'm not alone in this, I've received private mail backing me, but
> people are afraid to back me publicly because they have tried to discuss
> this in the past and instead of having a healthy discussion they got flamed.

It's a mistaken impression that we need to address for sure.  People should
be able to see that Fedora is intending to deliver the best open source
software possible.

> The name of that page describes perfectly what it is a list of
> Objectives. A good list, which with I can fully agree, but it doesn't
> properly define our target audience. The closest to a target audience
> definition I can find on this page is: "built for and by a community"
> 
> Which I find a rather narrow definition, so people who do not contribute
> are not part of our target audience? Them I'm most definetly putting
> large amounts of time into the wrong distro.

I think that phrase was included to acknowledge that no distribution
can be all things to all people.  That Fedora will be built to meet
the needs of the community that builds it.  If it meets the needs of
others then that's great.

Sean