Fedora 10 is a 10

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 7:04 AM, Máirí­n Duffy <duffy at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> My one-liner response would be: "It's not just about *software* freedom, but
> using that free software to produce free media."

Here's my 1023-liner response:

Where did he see improved artwork as a "feature"?  He doesn't
reference any of our own materials. I'm not sure where he's getting
his 10 point featurelist from actually.  It doesn't correlate with our
F10 Feature wikipage nor with the release notes as far as I can see.
If he's read in some of our press materials that the release thematic
artwork is a "feature" that's probably something we should avoid
doing.  If we are going to have a featuring process, then we should
try real hard to draw from that feature list in press material.  But I
can't find where we made that sort of oopsie.

I'm not saying that artwork isn't important, in my mind our release
artwork creations are akin to album cover artwork you find on really
good concept albums (though that analogy maybe out-dated in the new
age of digital music.)  I wouldn't call the Beatle's album cover
artwork "features" of the album, but at the same time I wouldn't be
real thrilled if all the albums were incrementally polished version of
the Abbey Road or White Album covers.

I'm just saying that we should be clear and consistent about
terminology. If we are going to talk about features at release time
then we should try to make sure we stick to the ones that go through
the feature process.  And that may mean we make sure we find a way to
talk about artwork as something different.  It could be that we aren't
talking about the artwork process enough, and people are just lumping
it in with features because we haven't given them a mental framework
on which to hang their opinionated window dressing about our artwork.

So if the core ideal behind our artwork process is Máirí­n's one-liner
above... that its an expression of the believe that free(libre) media
content matters... how do we better communicate that in a way that
doesn't get confused with our featuring process?

I think we really have to find a way to ween operating system
"reviewers" from talking about artwork in the same context as they
talk about boot speed.   The 'free media content matters' discussion
is worth having.. and the ' os reviewer' soapbox stadium may not be
equipped to have it.  How do we get people talking about our artwork
process in more useful way? People who care about supporting and
creating collaborative media but don't care so much about technical
bits of throwing a linux distribution together?

-jef