Attention, Interest, Decision, Action

[Karsten Wade]

On Tue, 2005-06-28 at 17:03 +1000, Mike MacCana wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-06-27 at 11:27 -0400, Jeremy Hogan wrote:
> > 1a)What is Fedora?1b)Who is it for? (Today).
> 
> Yes.
> > 
> > Answered partly on the homepage nicely:
> > 
> > "The Fedora Project is an open source project
> 
> No. That's the Fedora Project. Not Fedora the distro. Which isn't being
> marketed at all.

                !!! Semantic Distinction Alert !!!

The term "Fedora" is used in both ways, colloquially.  Sometimes it is
the overall project being referred to, and sometimes it's the distro
(Core).

In documentation, I get to be pedantic and insist that we say the Fedora
Project or Fedora Core and not Fedora.  It is otherwise confusing, and
confusion is the opposite of good documentation.  Still, there are some
who disagree, saying it is awkward to always use the full term.  At the
minimum, we need to be consistent in usage within the document itself.

Are we going to try to police this usage?  HA HA HA HA HA

At least, amongst ourselves, we can be more careful about usage.  Now we
x2 as many questions to answer

1a^1) What is the Fedora Project?
1b^1) Who is it for right now?
1a^2) What is Fedora Core?
1b^2) Who is it for right now?

Notice that the answers *are* different.  For example:

1a^1) [insert blurb from fedora.redhat.com]
1b^1) The Fedora Project is a superset and controller of Fedora Core,
containing multiple, community run projects.  It is not necessary to
even care about the Project to be a user of Core.  The reverse is not
true.

1a^2) Fedora Core is a community distribution of the Linux operating
system that focuses on leading edge technology and pioneering
development.  Stable releases are supported by the community for two
years.  This community is growing strongly.[1]
1b^2) Primarily for technology enthusiasts, Fedora Core is also seeing
heavy adoption by the Linux curious.  These curious are described as
users from other OS paradigms who are new to Linux.

[1] Yeah, I know, conjecture, in marketing-speak too!

So, by using different values of "Fedora", I could be discussing what is
and who for about documentation, the new directory server project,
Extras, and so forth.

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade, RHCE * Sr. Tech Writer * http://people.redhat.com/kwade/
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