[Ambassadors] Red Hat's investments (was Re: Going passive)

[Max Spevack]

On Tue, 9 Nov 2010, Christoph Wickert wrote:

> One could certainly argue if Red Hat get's more valuable by the 
> community or by the work of their employees, but the general tendency 
> that the community is doing more and more work that ends um in RHEL is 
> undeniable.

I don't think anyone, anywhere, is trying to deny that community 
contributions to Fedora make their way into RHEL.

Isn't it the opposite?  Aren't we celebrating that fact?  Aren't we 
holding up Linux overall as a *better* option *because* contributions 
can come from so many different places, and that there can be so many 
competing vendors?

There are people who are paid by Red Hat to spend all of their time on 
Fedora.  Some of those people do technical work.  Some of those people 
do logistical work.  Some of those people do what could vaguely be 
called "leadership" or "management" work. (And that last point is, 
admittedly, a tricky role to fill.  What happens if someone is placed in 
a leadership role that the community doesn't respect or want in that 
role?)

There are people who are paid by Red Hat to work on specific technology 
(kernel, virtualization, GNOME, etc.) for whom Fedora is a tool that 
they use to distribute their work to a massive audience, for free.

Now, if there are people in either group who are operating in ways that 
disrespect the larger Fedora community, that's always a problem that 
needs to be addressed.

But I fail to understand the point of trying to compare contributions to 
a project that is, ultimately, entirely voluntary.  If someone doesn't 
like the fact that Fedora is a distribution that a company chooses to 
invest lots of money (in the form of cash and people's time) into, then 
that someone should find a distro that doesn't have any corporate 
sponsors.

Because Red Hat believes in the value of Fedora.  There is *tremendous* 
value in separating the fast paced open source technology innovation 
from the supported, long-term stability of an Enterprise Linux.

--Max