6:48 p.m.
The beginning of a the new year is a good time for reflection... (even if
it is in the last few hours of January).
Over on the new CommOps team, there's a great initiative for all our
various Fedora subprojects to look back at successes for 2015 — see
https://communityblog.fedoraproject.org/share-your-year-in-review-with-fe...
Here, I'd like to discuss what we want to do _this_ year. What would the
ideal 2016 look like for Fedora? What do we collectively want to accomplish,
both in the big picture and in specific areas which will have big impact?
I have some ideas for things I think are important, but most of all I'd like
to have a discussion of all our thoughts as a community, and then the
Council can work on a short summary of the top points which we can refer to
throughout the year (and reflect back on once we've made it to 2017).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here's what I'm thinking about:
Fedora Hubs (or, Up from the Depths of the Internet!)
=====================================================
For several years, I've been talking about Fedora's online presence as a
like the proverbial iceberg — it's mostly lurking beneath the surface.
Our primary engines for interaction are email and IRC (and we use a _lot_ of
both... stay tuned for some future posts on metrics around these things!).
Both tools are awesome and productive, but we also need a modern, visible
online "home". I want it to feel like the excitement and recharging energy
of Flock or FUDCon, all the time.
So, enter the "Fedora Hubs" concept. If you haven't heard about this
before,
read more at:
* https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Hubs
* https://pagure.io/fedora-hubs
* http://blog.linuxgrrl.com/2015/07/01/fedora-hubs-update/
This year, let's see it become reality.
Initiatives for Project Growth
==============================
I'm working on a "State of Fedora" talk for DevConf.cz, and one of the
things that I'm happy to report is that our metrics are showing a lot of
real growth over the past year. Fedora 20 was a very successful release — one
of our most popular ever. But, the early numbers didn't really show an
overall increase in popularity — more, a flat line with the popularity maybe
explained by people upgrading from early releases. But the numbers for F21,
F22, and now F23 show continuing growth. For 2016, let's take that and run
with it.
First, we need to really step up our active marketing. Hitting the tables at
traditional Linux events isn't bringing in new users and contributors like
it might have in the early days. With the Three Editions strategy, we have
the beginning. Each edition has a target market and userbase defined. This
year, let's go beyond just making an awesome OS release and hoping people
will notice. Let's find where we can solve real problems people have with
their existing developer's workstation, small server environment, and in
cloud computing - bring real problems back, solve them, and get a real cycle
of feedback and growth.
Let's make sure that at key conferences and meetups, we have people talking
about great things that Fedora enabled them to do - not just about Fedora
itself. We have an initiative for better university involvement, and while
that's still getting off the ground, it has a lot of potential and can fit
right in, since student developers are part of the Workstation target, and
it's important to get the next generation of developers doing _their_ cool
stuff with Fedora.
Read more on this in the "PRDs" for each edition:
* https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Workstation/Workstation_PRD
* https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Cloud/Cloud_PRD
* https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Server/Product_Requirements_Document
and this on the University Involvement objective:
* https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Objectives/University_Involvement_Initiative
Making Fedora Atomic "Primary"
==============================
Continuing on the Editions marketing strategy... when we came up with that
idea, cloud computing was one of the key strategic areas we identified. The
idea of the Cloud Base image as it stands was to provide a minimal platform
on which people deploying to the cloud could add various software stacks and
create their own solutions. I think we did a fine job with that technically,
but it wasn't exciting enough to make anyone who didn't want to use Fedora
already take notice. It's good, but there's nothing _really_ compelling to
make someone make it their first choice.
With Atomic, though, I think we now have that. So, as a tweak to the
Editions strategy, I want to replace Cloud with Atomic. This addresses the
same scale-out commodity computing area, but does it in new, interesting
ways with technology that is really breaking new ground. (For people who
want the traditional cloud image, we can still keep making that as basically
something akin to a Spin, and if people are interested enough possibly
provide a Fedora Server variant of that as well, for easy launch of more
"pet-like" servers into public cloud providers.)
We talked about this at the last Flock - and in 2016, let's do it.
More about Project Atomic, Fedora Atomic's current every-two-week
releases, and a longer version of what I just said above:
* http://projectatomic.io/
* https://getfedora.org/en/cloud/download/atomic.html
*
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/cloud@lists.fedoraproject.o...
Making Modularization Mean Something
====================================
And finally, also in the category of "something I've been talking about for
a while, but now let's do something"... this idea of a more modular Fedora.
My "Fedora Rings" talk at Flock in Charleston two and a half years ago
proposed that a more loosely-coupled system would allow for better growth
into the next decade. It's one of those things that's easier said than done.
A more modular construction of the Fedora package collection, rather than
one big unified repo, would provide a number of advantages. We could
consider a longer lifecycle for select configurations of Fedora Server.
Fedora Workstation releases might be synchronized with upstream GNOME
releases, without either blocking other changes or being blocked on them. In
cases where size matters, we could have better management of the hundreds of
megabytes (literally!) of constantly-churning metadata. And we could better
provide multiple versions of software stacks, without the massive
duplication of effort this requires now.
I've started to see some people with concrete ideas of what this might look
like. This year, let's see some actual prototypes for these ideas. They
might not all work, and some might be terrible - but others could be great.
Let's find out!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
These are things I'm thinking about. But of course it's not all about me.
What do *you* want for Fedora this year?
--
Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org>
Fedora Project Leader