<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2008/11/29 Paul W. Frields <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:stickster@gmail.com">stickster@gmail.com</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c">On Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 09:15:21PM -0500, Jon Stanley wrote:<br>
> On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 6:56 AM, Jonas Karlsson<br>
> <<a href="mailto:jonas.karlsson@fxdev.com">jonas.karlsson@fxdev.com</a>> wrote:<br>
><br>
> > Am I compleatly wrong or have anyone of you been asking the question, what<br>
> > is fedora?<br>
><br>
> So I'm on both sides of the fence - Fedora contributor and RHEL<br>
> customer (as I suspect that many of us are). And the question does<br>
> come up a lot, so here's my "stock response":<br>
><br>
> Fedora's goal is to be the best of what works today. RHEL's goal is<br>
> to be the best of what works and is supportable for the next 7 years.<br>
> These are fundamentally incompatible goals, which cannot be served by<br>
> one distribution.<br>
><br>
> Fedora accomplishes it's goal by being a completely open and<br>
> transparent R&D lab, for both Red Hat and members of the community.<br>
> Anyone, whether you're working on Fedora in your spare time (as I do),<br>
> or if you have a mandate from your manager at Red Ha because they'd<br>
> like to see a particular feature in the next version of RHEL, can get<br>
> a feature into Fedora by following the same process. Let me make some<br>
> cases in point, using some features from Fedora 10.<br>
><br>
> First, from the community side, Hans de Goede (now a Red Hat employee,<br>
> but that's really irrelevant - he wasn't when he started work on the<br>
> feature and is employed doing something completely different), decided<br>
> that we needed better webcam support in Fedora. He defined the<br>
> problem space, worked to implement the drivers required in the<br>
> upstream kernel, and packaged a library to provide v4l2 access to v4l1<br>
> apps (sorry for the technical details there).<br>
><br>
> >From the Red Hat "features we'd like to see in RHEL" side (note that<br>
> this is speculation as to the motivation for this feature, but pretty<br>
> educated speculation), libvirt (which is the hypervisor-agnostic<br>
> virtualization mangement layer in Fedora/RHEL) can now remotely<br>
> provision storage and perform remote installations. These features<br>
> were again implemented upstream (even though we are upstream for<br>
> libvirt), thus making the improvements available for any consumer of<br>
> libvirt, Fedora included, packaged in Fedora, put through a test plan,<br>
> and accepted.<br>
><br>
> If it really were a fact that "Fedora is a perpetual beta of RHEL"<br>
> were true, two things would not be true:<br>
><br>
> 1) The first feature would not be in Fedora, it provides very little<br>
> "enterprise" value (however does provide a lot of value in that we now<br>
> have a wider range of hardware that Just Works(TM) ).<br>
><br>
> 2) I would not be a member of the Fedora Engineering Steering<br>
> Committee (FESCo) which decides on the technical direction of Fedora<br>
> and is in charge of the feature process.<br>
><br>
> I'm sorry that this has been long, but I really think that this is a<br>
> really important topic, and we (Fedora Marketing) need to find a way<br>
> to spread this sort of messaging.<br>
<br>
</div></div>Jon, this was a great explanation and reflects exactly the way I try<br>
to educate journalists who are reporting on Fedora. I would encourage<br>
anyone who wants to contribute to the Marketing team to generalize<br>
this onto a wiki page.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
</font></blockquote><div><br>In terms of finding a way to "spread this sort of messaging" - and forgive me if this<br>has already been discussed, but I didn't see anything in archives - has anyone<br>ever given any thought to doing a Fedora analyst day? Similar to what a public company<br>
would do, minus that whole dreadfully boring "profit" part of the day :)<br><br>Maybe financial analysts would not be quite as interested (but perhaps they would,<br>who knows) - but it would be a good way to interface with industry analysts and <br>
press people and really drive this type of message home - along with giving<br>some depth to the subject of "how fedora users are counted," which I saw is also a <br>point of pain when it comes to reading what press people are writing, discussing<br>
what Fedora believes their share of the market is (does anyone do this?)... and just generally<br>giving some longer, informative sessions to a lot of analysts and press people at once<br>to clear up any misinformation stored in their brains. Not to mention give them reasons<br>
to have and keep Fedora on their radar when it comes to writing reports or stories. And<br>just start developing good ongoing rapport with these people. <br><br>A lot of depth can be covered in a 1/2 day or day that just can't be covered in a half-hour briefing<br>
or interview. It's something that could be done the day before / after someone else's analyst day<br>(RH, or anyone else who would be bringing in the desired audience of people) - or really even<br>before/during/after any conference where all the appropriate parties would likely be <br>
(get a room for a 1/2 day during linuxcon)... or even do something streaming online for a first <br>attempt. <br><br>Just a thought. :)<br><br><br>-Robyn<br><br><br><br>PS. Hi! I'm new here. ;) <br> </div></div><br>