Fedora Media Project (was: Re: New Member introduction)

[Max Spevack]

On Wed, 29 Mar 2006, Clair wrote:

> * If we give one vendor special treatment by mentioning them on the FM 
> page, they'll all want it.

Is it really special treatment?  Special treatment, in my mind, would be 
putting a vendor to the top of the list because they offered us a 
kickback.  Special treatment implies "shady dealings".  I don't see this 
proposal as being special treatment at all.  Karlie is voluteering to 
offer a service that *none* of the other vendors are offering, and we are 
acknowledging that.  It's not like she is the *only* vendor who can do 
this.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if all of our vendors believed so strongly 
in Fedora that they wanted to do the same thing?

> * The idea, as good as it is, is still primarily as a 'vendor'. * It 
> isn't quite FreeMedia, but it is closely related.

FreeMedia: some entity says "i'll create and ship, at cost to myself, X 
number of Fedora discs to people in the queue.  I decide what X is, and 
that's fine with you guys, because you'll take *anything*".

All Karlie is doing is stating *her* manner for determining X.  X == the 
number of orders that she gets for Fedora.

She is acting as a vendor and as a FreeMedia participant.

The fact is, she can fulfill a *much* larger number of FreeMedia requests 
than random people who are burning DVDs at home, because *this is what she 
does*.

What it looks like here is that we've reached the point where Fedora 
Marketing has incubated an idea to the point where it needs to have its 
own project.  It's time for Fedora to have a Media Project, that can look 
at the issues here, and figure out the best way to work with Karlie. 
This should encompass the FreeMedia efforts that are already going on, 
formalize it, figure out the issues, and make things happen.  You have my 
support, and Greg's as well I'm sure.

Tejas Dinkar has offered to work on the code of a request tracking queue. 
We need a couple of people step up and handle the logistics.  Thomas Chung 
seems a likely candidate, since he's heavily involved in FreeMedia as 
well.  Who else wants to be involved?  Thomas has his hands in lots of 
pieces of Fedora, and this is a good opportunity for someone to step up 
and be a leader.

-- 
Max Spevack <mspevack{at}redhat.com>                 gpg key: mspevack.asc
http://people.redhat.com/mspevack/                  fingerprint: 5A17 CF21