The big What-Why-How

Thu Sep 8 21:06:24 UTC 2005

On Thu, 2005-09-08 at 15:14 -0400, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> On 9/8/05, Stuart Ellis <stuart at elsn.org> wrote:
> > I do think that it important to differentiate between solutions,
> 
> If you want to do it with an eye at being informative and
> honest..thats one thing. If are doing such comparision to gain
> promotional leverage for this project..be very wary of bias. 

Bear in mind that this is not a draft as much as a summary of various
ideas and thoughts thrown around for people to use as a start point for
discussion. There isn't a formal marketing strategy yet, so writing
about Fedora requires figuring out a bunch of things.

One of those is, "how is Fedora different from any other Linux
distribution ?". Somebody reading the Website is going to mentally ask
that question, and look for an answer.

> There it is... there's the crux of the matter.
> Fedora: The right thing to do.
> Not the easy thing... not the quick thing...the right thing. The right
> thing for future of the existing community, as well as the future of
> open source computing in a broader context.
> Short term release schedules with long term focus.  

That sums up how I feel, personally. A lot of people, though, are very
interested in the idea of a well-made, no-fee desktop. Should Fedora be
trying to address that need directly ? (That's not a rhetorical
question, I genuinely don't know).

> All the efforts to shoehorn a definition of the Fedora experience
> that tries to detail what Fedora is "now" feels so very badly out of
> place when the development is clearly focused on getting things right
> long term. The payoff simply isnt istant gratification. Its not about
> the best desktop or whatever "now" its about progress toward the
> ideal.

Hmm. So perhaps the solution is to focus less on the features
themselves, more on what the purpose is, and how users can help with the
development.

Concrete examples are probably important, though. I know that it was
only after I began using Linux and follow on-line discussions that I
started to even think these kinds of big thoughts.

Stuff like "Open Source means that you can download whatever software
you need, without restrictions" sounds a bit dumb and simplistic, but
perhaps that's the level to start at.

-- 

Stuart Ellis

stuart at elsn.org

Fedora Documentation Project: http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/docs/

GPG key ID: 7098ABEA
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