A new vision statement for Fedora
by Matthew Miller
A few years ago, the Fedora Council updated the Fedora mission statement.
The result is functional but not particularly inspiring. It talks about what
we’re doing, but not much about the why. So, this year, we worked on a new
vision statement to serve as the proverbial “banner on a hilltop” that we
can use to rally our existing community and to attract new contributors.
Our draft is at:
https://communityblog.fedoraproject.org/lets-write-a-new-vision-statement...
We need your feedback and help in crafting a final version. Please reply
here in this thread to keep discussion in one place. We'd like to come to a
decision on this in Februrary.
--
Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org>
Fedora Project Leader
3 years, 6 months
My two cents worth
by Ian
I would like to contribute a few thoughts to this list as a
non-techhead, non-guru, humble end user.
Please note that all of the comments below are my opinion only, and are
not intended to reflect any truth or fact.
I spent most of my life in IT departments of large companies and
government departments preparing system design documents and working
with developers and end users to build the user systems to meet the
user's requirements. So I basically had one foot in user space and the
other in development space.
From that perspective, may I say that, to me, it looks like some of the
documentation referred to in this list has been prepared by people with
a strong technical background, but perhaps with less focus on the end
user experience. I feel that there could be some benefit from taking a
broader view of where Linux may be going. Couple of questions.
Do you see the future of Linux as growing in the community and seriously
challenging the current software paradigm of paying to use software?
Do you see Linux desktop becoming more ubiquitous in the community at
large? And even seriously challenging the market dominance of the
current market leaders?
Do you see Linux becoming more ubiquitous in the corporate community,
running corporate networks with Linux desktop on every desk?
If the answer to either/both of the last two is "yes" do you see Fedora
as being the distro of choice for these scenarios? Or coexisting with
some number of other distros living in the same user spaces.
Do you see the development and maintenance of Linux moving from the
realm of the amateur enthusiast and centralised in one of more corporate
like organisations that can manage the development and distribution of
Linux cooperatively?
Do you see Fedora as a leader in the Linux ecosystem? How do you see the
relationship of Fedora to all the other Linuxes?
Do you see Linux "coalescing" into a smaller number of varieties than
are currently available (hundreds on distrowatch)? If so do you envision
that Fedora will be (or should be) the motivating driver behind the move
to a smaller number of "primary" Linuxes; better supported, more robust
and generally better managed?
I hope from the above you can see that my view is to ask what
Linux/Fedora can or should *be*, not what it can *do*. In five years
time what do you want to see when you look at Linux? where is it? What
is it doing? How is it being used? Who is using it? How is it making all
our lives easier and better?
In my view, part of the future for Linux is expansion into the non-geek
world of personal users who want to use their computers to get stuff
done. A certain amount of rationalisation of the Linux space may need to
occur for this to happen, and there may emerge a few market leaders that
support personal users, and become the "go to" distros for new Linux
users. It would make sense, in this scenario, for Fedora to to be one of
the market leaders, as it is one of the oldest and best supported
distros. (the first distro I ever used was Fedora). If this occurred I
think it would leave the rest of the Linux userspace basically
unaffected. Some of the more esoteric distros out there might lose a few
users, but I would expect the effect to be basically unmeasureable. On
the other hand it may be that, once the average PC user has had a taste
of Linux, they may look around for something that suits them better, so
some of the lesser known Linuxes could actually gain users. Roundabouts
and swings.
I also see an opportunity for Linux, and Fedora in particular, to move
more aggressively into the corporate sector. This expansion however
would have to be managed, and would require "corporatisation" to manage
the development, maintenance and marketing of Linux to the corporate and
government sectors. It seems to me the logical organisations to take up
this role would be those offering implementation, management and support
services for large computer networks and installations, on a contract
basis. They already exist (Like RHEL), and many of them already manage
Linux networks. But two things need to happen for this to occur.
1) a greater focus on marketing the Linux desktop to corporates and
government, and
2) a more robust, resilient and reliable Linux desktop.
Unfortunately I believe that currently the Linux desktop is just not
robust enough to be considered for corporate use. I like to tell my
friends that the difference between using Windows and Linux is like the
difference between driving a Toyota Camry and a '66 Mustang. The Camry
will always get you there with no fuss, always work, is reliable,
efficient, and boring as bat-poo. The Mustang on the other hand is
exciting and fun to drive, drinks petrol, can surprise and delight you,
terrify you sometimes, will usually get you there, and is fairly
reliable. But expect to spend a fair bit of time under the hood (or
bonnet, if you are in Australia). I hope you get my point. So the Linux
desktop needs to be the Toyota Camry of desktops (maybe without the
boring part).
So my vision for Linux would include:
Linux supports everybody using computers to achieve their goals,
whenever and wherever they need it.
Linux champions the principal of free and open source software.
Fedora is a market leader in the development, distribution and support
of Linux.
Fedora welcomes all contributions to its continuous improvement and
quality at all levels.
Fedora provides a simple, powerful and reliable user experience.
As a final note, this blog post
https://sourceforge.net/blog/open-source-growing-not/ gives another
perspective of open source software development. It recommends that
developers get paid to contribute to open source software development, a
not unreasonable outcome. In my opinion, it also lends weight to the
concept that the development of open source software needs at least a
degree of centralised management, which could also help in the
management of payment to developers for their contributions. Just a
thought...
3 years, 8 months
I want to post on this list
by Vitaliy Shatrov
D0dyBo0D0dyBo0(a)protonmail.com
Sent with [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com) Secure Email.
3 years, 8 months
Cancel 22 January meeting?
by Ben Cotton
Anyone strongly opposed to canceling the 22 January Fedora Council
meeting? I know I'll be getting ready to depart for Brno at that point
and I assume others will be too. If you want to have the meeting, you
can do it without me. :-)
--
Ben Cotton
He / Him / His
Fedora Program Manager
Red Hat
TZ=America/Indiana/Indianapolis
3 years, 8 months
Re: [social-media] What about Mastodon?
by Justin W. Flory
Hi Alessio,
On 1/12/20 6:15 PM, Alessio wrote:
> Hello.
>
> I submitted this idea to the marketing team some time ago [1]
>
> What do you think to have a Fedora presence on the Fediverse?
> I'm not an expert, but it is now a mature technology, and no more an
> hype. Many people started using Mastodon, in many cases with the intent
> to leave the mainstream social medias.
> I have not statistical data, but, looking around, a lot of these people
> are concerned about privacy, freedom and digital rights, they are free
> software supporters, and they are critical versus the overwhelm power
> of the big giants of the internet.
>
> There were some toughts about running a Fedora instance [2], but maybe
> it is not useful, it whould be an high energy expenditure; however this
> is not the point of this mail.
>
> What I'm talking about is a profile on the fediverse.
> We are on twitter, we are on facebook, youtube, instagram. Why not on a
> social network that is powered by an open source software, and where
> there are many free software supporters?
>
> Gnome is there https://floss.social/@gnome
> Fosdem is there https://fosstodon.org/@fosdem
> Opensuse is there https://fosstodon.org/@opensuse
> Gentoo https://fosstodon.org/@gentoo
> Ubuntu (that runs his own instance) https://ubuntu.social/@ubuntu
> KDE https://mastodon.technology/@kde
> And many other FOSS projects and communities.
>
> What do you think?
>
> [1] https://pagure.io/fedora-marketing/issue/286
> [2] https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/fedora-in-fediverse/1168
>
I think this is a tough issue for the volunteer community to take a lead
on, even if the interest is there.
To add historical context, we did discuss Mastodon at some point in the
last couple years—I forget exactly when. There was no opposition to a
Mastodon as a concept, but it was more an issue of who manages it.
Most/all of Fedora's social media accounts are managed by Red Hat
employees in RH's Open Source Program Office, with some volunteers on a
few accounts.
When it was last proposed, the discussion faded out because the folks
managing Fedora's social media account were concerned there were already
many platforms to cover and things would get dropped. For example, we
used to have profiles on GNU Social and Diaspora, but I'm not sure if
they were actively maintained.
Account permissions and privileges is an issue still faced by Fedora's
other social media accounts too. See these Mindshare tickets for more
context:
https://pagure.io/mindshare/issue/138
https://pagure.io/mindshare/issue/139
- Justin
--
Cheers,
Justin W. Flory
justinwflory.com
TZ=America/New_York
Pronouns: he/him/his
3 years, 8 months
A Big Idea for a New Decade [was: Minutes for CentOS Board of
Directors 2019-12-18 Meeting]
by Matthew Miller
On Fri, Jan 03, 2020 at 03:13:53PM -0500, Karsten Wade wrote:
> As a centralizing effort, the Board agreed to revisiting the goals
> document created five years ago, and to undergo an effort to refresh those
> goals in the light of the project’s evolution. The Board will be inviting
> various stakeholders into these discussions as we undergo a public
> revision of the goals at the start of 2020.
Wow, five years goes fast! I'd like to raise an idea for discussion and
thought, and possible further discussion between the Fedora Council and the
CentOS board. [I'm posting this in both groups.]
Around the same time the CentOS goals were being created, Fedora was working
on plans for "Fedora.next", which included among other things Fedora Server.
I won't rehash all that here, but in short: while that succeeded at some of
its goals, it never really had the user adoption we'd hoped for. Of course,
some of that is simply a matter of lifecycle: while a fast-moving server OS
is useful in some very real cases, it's decidedly niche.
When Fedora launched that plan, CentOS wasn't really in the "family", and
after, we just kind of existed in parallel, with some very loose
collaboration in areas like EPEL.
Of course, things are different now. Therefore, I propose that in this next
decade, we make that collaboration stronger. Together, we have a very nice
answer to the fundamental problem of unified operating systems. That is,
some parts move too fast and other parts move too slowly. Between Fedora and
CentOS, we have answers to both! And, with the in-progress dist-git merge,
we even have both _in the same place_.
Specifically, I'd like to suggest three things.
First, let's replace Fedora Server as a user-focused artifact with CentOS
Stream. There's still a need for a Fedora Server as an upstream, but most
users of Fedora as a server are making custom builds (or using the basic
Cloud image), not using Fedora Server per se. So, I think we should stop
marketing that to users, and steer people with server use cases outside of
the fast-moving niche to CentOS Stream. The current story of CentOS and
Fedora is pretty confusing to users, and Stream only makes it more so. Let's
simplify things!
Second, where there's overlap, let's look at merging Fedora and CentOS SIGs
into joint bodies. We have groups like the cloud image SIGs which are
basically doing the exact same thing in two different ways. Same thing with
containers. We also have huge overlaps in documentation and community user
support and all sorts of non-technical project areas. I'm not saying these
all need to be smooshed together, but where it makes sense let's work
together. This, too, brings simplification to the "what's with CentOS vs.
Fedora" story: rather than making contributors pick, we can welcome all with
open arms.
And finally, let's really take advantage of a merged dist-git repository,
and the capabilities that Modularity gives us. SIGs building things for
CentOS should be able to directly reference Fedora branches where
faster-moving software is useful — and people building things in Fedora
should be able to pull in branches from Stream where a slower-moving version
would make sense. And we could even make additional shared branches where
necessary, using modularity to make optional streams which could be used in
CentOS SIGs, EPEL, or a Fedora OS.
What do you think?
--
Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org>
Fedora Project Leader
3 years, 8 months
Getting more metrics: Fedora net promoter score survey
by Matthew Miller
Hey everyone! I happened by chance to meet someone at Red Hat who works on
Red Hat's Net Promoter Score program. NPS, if you're not familiar, is a
metric based on the simple question "How likely are you to recommend this?"
on a scale from 0-10.
I think this can be very useful, especially as tracked over time. And it
turns out that the group at Red Hat who does this would be happy to provide
this to Fedora as a service.
I'd like to make a link to this survey available on some of the various
Fedora websites. (Get Fedora, Fedora Magazine, Ask Fedora...)
We'll ask that basic question and a couple of followups like "Do you
participate in the Fedora community" and "What are your top challenges?"
(This is different from the demographic / contributor survey and won't ask
any of those sorts of questions.)
For, like, a hotel chain, you usually get this survey as an email to some
customer list. While we have email addresses of Fedora contributors, for
obvious reasons we aren't gonna be using those for this in bulk. I also
don't feel good about using the announce list — I will probably
include a link to the survey in future release announcements, but just
sending mail about the survey itself doesn't feel like what people signed up
to that list for.
I am thinking, though, of creating a "please survey me" mailing list that
people can opt-in to — if you sign up, we'll email you once every three
months or six months or so.
What do you think of this idea overall? We also have the option of creating
more specific surveys focused on an edition or spin, if your team would be
interested in such a thing.
--
Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org>
Fedora Project Leader
3 years, 9 months
