Board/FESCo mission/vision FAD

[Matt Domsch]

On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 07:39:32AM -0400, Steven Parrish wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 12:30 AM, Robyn Bergeron
> <robyn.bergeron at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 8:13 PM, Jon Stanley <jonstanley at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> I think that both the FESCo and the Board are in agreement that we
> >> have some very challenging short term issues to solve that would
> >> benefit from face to face meetings between the relevant groups (but
> >> not necessarily restricted to them). I'd generally try and push stuff
> >> like this off to FUDCon, because that's part of what it's there for,
> >> but these needs are more immediate than that.
> >
> > ... is there a timeline that these needs are on?
> 
> Yes, they needed to be resolved yesterday.  Without a quick resolution
> Fedora is adrift and its starting to show.

I'm mot at all sure I'd call Fedora "adrift".  Maybe I'm just an
eternal optimist.

I agree that the "What Is Fedora" question took the Board way too long
to come up with an answer.  It was a long process, never quite
complete, and regardless of how much time goes in, or how many
people's inputs we ask for, there was always this background of "if we
don't get it right for everyone, people will leave, and then what will
we do?".  I don't think that's healthy either.

The Board did come up with a Target Audience statement, which aimed to
clarify the Fedora product ( it is that, even if we don't charge for
it) audience.  We tried to be specific, without alienating too many
possible users, and leaving open the possibility for other use cases
(e.g. Spins) to help address those not immediately in the target.
Which, may have come off as wishy-washy.  But if we're any more
specific, people get bent that their own interest isn't the target of
the larger group.

The Board did come up with a Stable Updates Policy, and asked FESCo to
implement it.  FESCo has started just that.  Is everyone happy now?
No.  The folks that don't want a stable release, but want each rolling
release to be free for anyone to enhance (or break), are still going
to agitate.  The folks that want a stable release are a little hacked
that, even with a policy statement, there's little done yet to enact
(e.g. force) that policy, and are looking for ways to be sure that the
folks in the "don't want it" group can be forced into following the
policy.

And there are calls for more input into these decisions.  While I love
input, and love asking people for their opinions, in the end, the
Board, FESCO, and the developers will ultimately be the ones writing
the policies (which we've done), and, like it or not, at that point,
the time for debate is over, the time for enacting them has begun.

I see FADs as a great way to both clarify the corner cases of the
policy, if necessary, and set a plan in place to enact them.  But I
don't see a FAD as a way to gather input and create policy.

Jon and Robyn have both asked for a survey of users.  Great!  We've
done surveys before, and if someone steps up to create one, we'll
figure out how to get it in front of our users.  But as I was reminded
during a policitcal push-poll this weekend, creating a survey that
answers the questions you want in the way you want is pretty easy.
Creating a survey that gets at the heart of what people really want,
and is as unbiased as possible, is really hard.  What I'd like to
believe is that our Election process is exactly that - a way to put
forward individuals who share your passions and desires, so that they
can articulate them into vision/mission/policy/direction and that the
Project participants will follow.  If we hold elections, then
disregard the viewpoints of our elected bodies to look for more, more,
and even more input before doing anything, then what's the point?

There's concern that our elected bodies have no real power - we can't
make anyone do anything.  Yep.  That's the way volunteer organizations
work.  But we can articulate what we're trying to do, and find
similar-minded folks to help out.  I think we've done a pretty good
job of finding people to help out over the last few years.  While by
some counts our user base is declining, by others, maybe not so much.

So, on that point, lets finish the job of getting the Stable Updates
Policy implemented, and see what the fallout is therefater.  It's a
risk I'm willing to take.  Are (collectively) you?

Thanks,
Matt