Fedora v. Fedora (was Re: Attention, Interest, Decision, Action)

[Greg DeKoenigsberg]

On Wed, 29 Jun 2005, Karsten Wade wrote:

> This confusion is happening in this thread, not made any easier because
> everyone keeps asking what "Fedora" means.  It doesn't mean anything, it
> means several things, and what can we do about that?

Fortunately, we're not alone in this quandary.  We need only look as far 
as the Apache Software Foundation and ask, "what did they do about this?"

Well, for starters, they came up with identifiable names for all of their
projects.  HTTP Server.  Ant.  Tomcat.  Cocoon.  Maven.  NOT: "The Apache
Web Server Project" and "The Apache Java Build Tool Project"  and "The
Apache Java Servlet Engine Project" and so forth.  And when you talk about
the Apache Software Foundation, you talk about "the ASF", not "Apache".  
I wonder if we could take a lesson from that.

It's a bit more complicated than that, of course, but the further we go 
down this path, the more it becomes clear to me.  I will make the 
following statement, and I will make it in an absolutist way, and ask 
people to agree, or not:

  The goal of the Fedora Marketing Project is NOT to "market Fedora" as 
  an entity.  The goal, rather, IS to explain, promote and recruit for 
  individual Fedora projects.

Do these conversations make more sense if we cast them in this light?

--g

_____________________  ____________________________________________
  Greg DeKoenigsberg ] [ the future masters of technology will have
 Community Relations ] [ to be lighthearted and intelligent.  the
             Red Hat ] [ machine easily masters the grim and the 
                     ] [ dumb.  --mcluhan