Background ----------
Way back in 2003, the original Fedora Project mission statement¹ was straightforward — “to work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from open source software.” This has some virtue: it's clear and concrete, and it encodes the values of community and open source. But, it's also rather small; arguably this was _already done_, so, you know, “good job everyone” — backslapping ensues, nothing more needed, right?
After 6½ years, the Fedora Board (the precursor to our current Fedora Council) decided it was time for a refresh, and put a lot of work into coming up with our current mission² (as well as a vision and objectives). That mission is “to lead the advancement of free and open source software and content as a collaborative community.”
This has many virtues too — it's ambitious, and again keeps those key values front and center. But, it's also very broad. If we were to start a project with a clean slate today to do what the mission says, I don't think we'd even _think_ of creating a Linux distro. There are plenty of other activities that could consume an entire large pro-free-and-open-source project.
When we started Fedora.next, we decided to work underneath the mission as it stood. This has worked out well enough, but we're coming up to what feels like the limit. This is clear in the "Budget.next" process — it's one thing to say that spending is to be determined in public based on clear objectives and measurable results, but for it to really work, those objectives need to be attached to a goal with a more clear scope.
It's now been another 6½ years, and it’s the perfect time to revisit the mission — to look at who we are, what we do well, what we really want to do, what we say we do but actually don't, and so on.
Our Thinking ------------
At our in-person activity days at the end of March, the Fedora Council did just that. We spent some time discussing those questions and worked on lists of strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities. We talked about the Fedora Foundations as well, and agreed that we do want to keep these as statements of our core values. We wanted something which would answer:
* What do we do?
* How do we do it?
* Who do we do it for?
* and, what unique value do we bring?
After a long and productive working discussion, we decided to break for dinner, and come back the next morning to actually draft a new statement to bring to the community for discussion, adjustment, and approval. Brian scribbled down a quick idea in the evening, and in the morning we started bright and early at adding to, subtracting from, rewording, deconstructing, and reconstructing, until we came up with something that everyone on the Council felt good about.
The New Mission Draft ---------------------
So, here it is:
Fedora creates an innovative platform that lights up hardware, clouds, and containers for software developers and community members to build tailored solutions for their users.
Let's Break It Down -------------------
We decided to not write a new vision statement at this point. The Four Foundations³ — Freedom, Friends, Features, First — both state our core values and illustrate our overall goals and objectives. However, we do want to make sure that some of the various parts of the mission are explained.
* Creates an innovative platform — at the operating system level, we don’t just integrate.We do new things. This is what makes us a platform and not just a distribution. And, “innovative” is just a buzzword. Current examples include solving the “too fast / too slow” problem with Modularity, exploring ostree for delivery and updates, and the Layered Image Build Service, where containers become a first-class part of the OS.
- Lights up hardware, clouds, and containers — We want to be specific about a primary focus as an enablement layer for environments people want to use.
- For software developers to build tailored solutions for their users — this includes both upstream software developers and downstream communities who want to build on what we create.
- For community members to build tailored solutions for their users — Fedora isn’t just the toolkit. Many of our contributors are here to collaborate to create solutions for specific user problems, ranging from Fedora Workstation to Fedora Robotics Suite. We have lots of ways to do this within the project, from Editions to Spins and Labs to the upcoming Fedora Playground concept. The core emphasis, though, is on enabling this collaboration.
Next Steps ----------
We really hope our proposed mission statement makes sense to all of you and tries to capture what we want to be for the next three to five years. We would be very interested in feedback from the community, not just in how to make the language tighter but, truly, on the goals of the project and how we can better capture the ethos of Fedora.
----
1. http://web.archive.org/web/20031008035915/http://fedora.redhat.com/about/ 2. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Overview#Our_Mission 3. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Foundations
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 09:55:13AM -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
So, here it is:
Fedora creates an innovative platform that lights up hardware, clouds, and containers for software developers and community members to build tailored solutions for their users.
My initial reaction was similar to Neal's. What about inserting "free and open source" just after the "innovative"? Or maybe can find something more meaningful in place of the "innovative"?
Fedora creates a[n innovative] free and open source platform that …
- Lights up hardware, clouds, and containers — We want to be specific about a primary focus as an enablement layer for environments people want to use.
While I don't have any specific issue with that part, it somehow feels out of place for a mission statement. We just learnt that those should be good for something like 6½ years. That's plenty of time for new terminology to emerge that might make the mission look dated. A more timeless "systems" (someone have a better word here?) might be more appropriate.
On Sun, Apr 16, 2017 at 02:36:14AM +0200, Lars Seipel wrote:
My initial reaction was similar to Neal's. What about inserting "free and open source" just after the "innovative"?
I remember we talked about this a little bit at the Council meeting. There is certainly no intent to de-emphasize software freedom in the project overall. We wanted the statement to be short (we came up with 25 words), and we felt like it was better to emphasize the Freedom foundation and not necessary to spell it out in the mission.
However, if there's strong community consensus that it really needs to be there, I'm open to the possibility.
Or maybe can find something more meaningful in place of the "innovative"?
Suggestions?
- Lights up hardware, clouds, and containers — We want to be specific about a primary focus as an enablement layer for environments people want to use.
While I don't have any specific issue with that part, it somehow feels out of place for a mission statement. We just learnt that those should be good for something like 6½ years. That's plenty of time for new terminology to emerge that might make the mission look dated. A more timeless "systems" (someone have a better word here?) might be more appropriate.
We were aiming for about 5 years, not necessarily 6½ again. It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future, but I'm pretty confident that this will remain relevant over that time. And, actually, if something *really* disruptive comes along, I think it's better for us to actually need to reevaluate completely.
My initial reaction was similar to Neal's. What about inserting "free and open source" just after the "innovative"? Or maybe can find something more meaningful in place of the "innovative"?
I agree with including free software (or FOSS ) in the mission. The current mission is very clear about our will to collaborate with upstream projects (that's the main reason I started contributing to Fedora). It makes me happy to see Fedora people contributing to several projects whenever needed. The new text feels like the project will start looking to new horizons and that the former mission may be forgotten at some point.
2017-04-17 20:40 GMT+02:00 Athos Ribeiro athoscribeiro@gmail.com:
My initial reaction was similar to Neal's. What about inserting "free and open source" just after the "innovative"? Or maybe can find something more meaningful in place of the "innovative"?
I agree with including free software (or FOSS ) in the mission. The current mission is very clear about our will to collaborate with upstream projects (that's the main reason I started contributing to Fedora). It makes me happy to see Fedora people contributing to several projects whenever needed. The new text feels like the project will start looking to new horizons and that the former mission may be forgotten at some point.
I am also a user who contributes to Fedora because it is free, and that's still very important to me. We still have our 4 foundations as main principles (as vision?), therefore I wouldn't understand the missing "free" adjective as something we are throwing away. The new mission statement aims to be an evolution of the former one, like Linux distributions and software are evolving almost daily.
Regards.
On 04/17/2017 03:58 PM, Robert Mayr wrote:
I am also a user who contributes to Fedora because it is free, and that's still very important to me. We still have our 4 foundations as main principles (as vision?), therefore I wouldn't understand the missing "free" adjective as something we are throwing away. The new mission statement aims to be an evolution of the former one, like Linux distributions and software are evolving almost daily.
I think mission statements vs vision statements vs the core values vs the objectives vs the user base is confusing. I find it confusing. It'd probably help to present the new mission statement within the context of the other stuff so folks can see community and software freedom is still a core part of the entire framework.
(https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Overview)
~m
I agree with Athos, I think that we should include "free software" in our mission so we can state that we will continue our contributions to the upstream projects.
-- Frederico Lima fas: fredlima fredericolima.com.br
---- On Seg, 17 abr 2017 15:40:54 -0300 Athos Ribeiro athoscribeiro@gmail.com wrote ----
My initial reaction was similar to Neal's. What about inserting "free and open source" just after the "innovative"? Or maybe can find something more meaningful in place of the "innovative"?
I agree with including free software (or FOSS ) in the mission. The current mission is very clear about our will to collaborate with upstream projects (that's the main reason I started contributing to Fedora). It makes me happy to see Fedora people contributing to several projects whenever needed. The new text feels like the project will start looking to new horizons and that the former mission may be forgotten at some point. _______________________________________________ council-discuss mailing list -- council-discuss@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to council-discuss-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org
The corollary to "innovative platform" needs to be something like "supports an ecosystem". Without that, the platform remains an island. With an ecosystem, it becomes part of a something bigger.
On Mon, Apr 17, 2017 at 8:53 AM, Subhendu Ghosh sghosh151@gmail.com wrote:
The corollary to "innovative platform" needs to be something like "supports an ecosystem". Without that, the platform remains an island. With an ecosystem, it becomes part of a something bigger.
+1 to Subhendu.
On Mon, Apr 17, 2017 at 9:32 AM, Greg DeKoenigsberg greg.dekoenigsberg@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Apr 17, 2017 at 8:53 AM, Subhendu Ghosh sghosh151@gmail.com wrote:
The corollary to "innovative platform" needs to be something like "supports an ecosystem". Without that, the platform remains an island. With an ecosystem, it becomes part of a something bigger.
+1 to Subhendu.
I don't disagree, but ecosystem is very broad. I can think of lots of things we could claim are the ecosystem. Some of them would even be accurate.
However, part of the utility of the platform is to provide a solid base to help bootstrap new ecosystems on top of it that we haven't even thought of yet. Are you suggesting we define the ecosystem in the mission statement? If so, isn't that limiting possibilities?
josh
On Mon, Apr 17, 2017 at 9:37 AM, Josh Boyer jwboyer@fedoraproject.org wrote:
However, part of the utility of the platform is to provide a solid base to help bootstrap new ecosystems on top of it that we haven't even thought of yet. Are you suggesting we define the ecosystem in the mission statement? If so, isn't that limiting possibilities?
We could stand to limit some possibilities.
I mean, I kinda feel like we're dancing around saying "Ubuntu has become the default platform for way too much DevOps stuff, let's go take that space back" and we're trying to find the most mission-y way of saying that, when I kinda feel like we should just... say that. But maybe that's unhelpful. :)
--g
On Mon, Apr 17, 2017 at 9:37 AM, Josh Boyer jwboyer@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Mon, Apr 17, 2017 at 9:32 AM, Greg DeKoenigsberg greg.dekoenigsberg@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Apr 17, 2017 at 8:53 AM, Subhendu Ghosh sghosh151@gmail.com
wrote:
The corollary to "innovative platform" needs to be something like
"supports an ecosystem". Without that, the platform remains an island. With an ecosystem, it becomes part of a something bigger.
+1 to Subhendu.
I don't disagree, but ecosystem is very broad. I can think of lots of things we could claim are the ecosystem. Some of them would even be accurate.
However, part of the utility of the platform is to provide a solid base to help bootstrap new ecosystems on top of it that we haven't even thought of yet. Are you suggesting we define the ecosystem in the mission statement? If so, isn't that limiting possibilities?
If I look Raspberry Pi, BeagleBoard, most hardware systems these days - I would qualify them in the platform category. They can be used as-is, but they support an ecosystem of add-on that are not controlled by the platform. Ansible is another software example - a platform - but allows an ecosystem of add-ons in the form of playbooks available thru Galaxy and other means.
Fedora as an OS or as a Project as not really been good fostering an ecosystem of add-ons and embellishments. I think that we don't have to "define an ecosystem" but we should certainly note that the "platform should support an ecosystem"
Take today's LinuxKit announcement - is that driving platform or is that ecosystem? or both? How do you make batteries replaceable?
As we see hardware and software - we can ask if it belongs "in the platform"? If not (and that's ok) how does the platform still enable is utility and thus support the ecosystem thru mechanisms that are focused on self-service, ease of use, and discoverability.
-subhendu
On Mon, Apr 17, 2017 at 12:53:17PM -0000, Subhendu Ghosh wrote:
The corollary to "innovative platform" needs to be something like "supports an ecosystem". Without that, the platform remains an island. With an ecosystem, it becomes part of a something bigger.
I don't disagree -- in fact, the second half of the statement is intended to be exactly that corollary. Does that not address what you'd like to see?
Matthew Miller (mattdm@fedoraproject.org) said:
The New Mission Draft
So, here it is:
Fedora creates an innovative platform that lights up hardware, clouds, and containers for software developers and community members to build tailored solutions for their users.
Theoretical:
6 1/2 years ago, neither OpenStack nor Docker existed. For a statement that's intended to span 5 years, how does this work to encompass the new areas that may yet come?
Practical: "lights up" reads as very jargon-y to me. Maybe "... platform to power hardware, clouds, and containers that enables software..."
Bill
On 04/17/2017 10:52 AM, Bill Nottingham wrote:
Practical: "lights up" reads as very jargon-y to me. Maybe "... platform to power hardware, clouds, and containers that enables software..."
I also had an issue with "lights up" - sounds like jargon-y slang or just awkward / silly (was the first thing that stood out to me.)
Agreed that some form of "enable" is a good swap-in for "lights up."
~m
M. Duffy,
I think the structure of the statement is wrong and could be improved by changing it like this:
**Fedora creates an innovative open platform for users, community members and software developers to build solutions that lights up hardware, containers and clouds.**
One test of a good statement (like a good image) is you can redact parts of it and it still makes sense. People build solutions that light up clouds, I'm sure that is an image you can work with.
-- Jeff Sandys
On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 5:47 AM, Máirín Duffy duffy@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On 04/17/2017 10:52 AM, Bill Nottingham wrote:
Practical: "lights up" reads as very jargon-y to me. Maybe "... platform to power hardware, clouds, and containers that enables software..."
I also had an issue with "lights up" - sounds like jargon-y slang or just awkward / silly (was the first thing that stood out to me.)
Agreed that some form of "enable" is a good swap-in for "lights up."
~m _______________________________________________ council-discuss mailing list -- council-discuss@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to council-discuss-leave@lists. fedoraproject.org
On 04/18/2017 04:09 PM, Jeff Sandys wrote:
M. Duffy,
I think the structure of the statement is wrong and could be improved by changing it like this:
**Fedora creates an innovative open platform for users, community members and software developers to build solutions that lights up hardware, containers and clouds.**
One test of a good statement (like a good image) is you can redact parts of it and it still makes sense. People build solutions that light up clouds, I'm sure that is an image you can work with.
The "lights up" piece still seems a bit off to me, fairly cheesy. We could illustrate "lighting up" without literally needing that term in the statement.
~m
On 04/18/2017 04:14 PM, Máirín Duffy wrote:
The "lights up" piece still seems a bit off to me, fairly cheesy. We could illustrate "lighting up" without literally needing that term in the statement.
For what it's worth, I agree here. This was my main concern when I read the proposed statement.
~tom
== Red Hat
My real point is 'lights up ...' is the tail of this dog, the wag. People and solutions are the legs, platform the body, Fedora the head. the pieces need to be in order to make sense. Platform lights up doesn't make sense, enable is better here. But the in the context of people light up and solutions light up, this makes sense.
On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 1:14 PM, Máirín Duffy duffy@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On 04/18/2017 04:09 PM, Jeff Sandys wrote:
M. Duffy,
I think the structure of the statement is wrong and could be improved by changing it like this:
**Fedora creates an innovative open platform for users, community members and software developers to build solutions that lights up hardware, containers and clouds.**
One test of a good statement (like a good image) is you can redact parts of it and it still makes sense. People build solutions that light up clouds, I'm sure that is an image you can work with.
The "lights up" piece still seems a bit off to me, fairly cheesy. We could illustrate "lighting up" without literally needing that term in the statement.
~m _______________________________________________ council-discuss mailing list -- council-discuss@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to council-discuss-leave@lists. fedoraproject.org
On 04/18/2017 04:45 PM, Jeff Sandys wrote:
My real point is 'lights up ...' is the tail of this dog, the wag. People and solutions are the legs, platform the body, Fedora the head. the pieces need to be in order to make sense. Platform lights up doesn't make sense, enable is better here. But the in the context of people light up and solutions light up, this makes sense.
Understood. I think even with your repair, though, the phrase is too cheesy to work with.
~m
On 04/18/2017 01:49 PM, Máirín Duffy wrote:
Understood. I think even with your repair, though, the phrase is too cheesy to work with.
As you said, it's not only jargon but an idiom, therefore hard to translate. It would require explanation to non-native English speakers as well.
- Karsten
On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 7:46 PM, Karsten Wade kwade@redhat.com wrote:
On 04/18/2017 01:49 PM, Máirín Duffy wrote:
Understood. I think even with your repair, though, the phrase is too cheesy to work with.
As you said, it's not only jargon but an idiom, therefore hard to translate. It would require explanation to non-native English speakers as well.
To everyone that dislikes "light up", OK. We hear you. We debated this phrase repeatedly in the Council FAD. All the other terminology didn't play well either:
"enables": this was second place, but what does that mean? We do specific hardware enablement? No, we don't. "powers": Also jargon-y and weird "turns on": Archaic, technically incorrect, and has awkward double meaning "boots": technically accurate, but very limiting in terms of the platform Fedora is aiming to provide "drives, facilitates, switches on, is the core of": all pretty vague
Please provide alternatives rather than just say it is jargon-y.
Also, I don't want to bikeshed this mission to death word-for-word. Perfect is the enemy of good. If "enables" is what everyone feels is best, great.
josh
On 04/18/2017 05:27 PM, Josh Boyer wrote:
Also, I don't want to bikeshed this mission to death word-for-word. Perfect is the enemy of good. If "enables" is what everyone feels is best, great.
Whoops, yeah; I had a longer email a few days ago that I sat on to see how the discussion went, and it actually suggested some colors for the bikeshed.
So what I like is this, with Jeff Sandys' reordering, addition of free/open, some Oxford commas, and replacement of lights-up:
Fedora creates an innovative free/open platform for users, community members, and software developers to build solutions for hardware, containers, and clouds.
(I prefer 'innovate' because I think the value of FOSS is as an innovation engine. I dropped the extra verb that "lights up" was there for, the verb 'build' is strong enough.)
Here's the same thing without specifying the tech flavor-of-the-month:
Fedora creates an innovative free/open platform for users, community members, and software developers to build on with modern technology.
Getting there ...
And I apologize for how this thread has almost completely changed the original proposal. OTOH, this is the main bikeshed, and all the other cool decisions and ideas you came to on your recent FAD can now slip through uncontested. :-D
Regards,
- Karsten
On 04/19/2017 12:48 AM, Karsten Wade wrote:
So what I like is this, with Jeff Sandys' reordering, addition of free/open, some Oxford commas, and replacement of lights-up:
Fedora creates an innovative free/open platform for users, community members, and software developers to build solutions for hardware, containers, and clouds.
I like this. To bring it a tad closer to the original statement:
1)
"Fedora creates an innovative free & open source platform for users, community members, and software developers to build tailored hardware, container, and cloud solutions."
"Solutions" is kind of jargon-y too, but more in a worn and overused than a cheese sense. It might be better to focus on what a solution does for the end users - progressively more grandiose from 2 to 4 below:
2)
"Fedora creates an innovative platform for users, community members, and software developers to solve problems using free & open source technology for hardware, containers, and clouds."
3)
"Fedora creates an innovative platform for users, community members, and software developers to better the lives of their users via free & open source technology for hardware, containers, and clouds."
4)
"Fedora creates an innovative platform for users, community members, and software developers to create a better world using free & open source technology for hardware, containers, and clouds."
~m
On Wed, Apr 19, 2017, at 06:48 AM, Karsten Wade wrote:
On 04/18/2017 05:27 PM, Josh Boyer wrote:
Also, I don't want to bikeshed this mission to death word-for-word. Perfect is the enemy of good. If "enables" is what everyone feels is best, great.
Whoops, yeah; I had a longer email a few days ago that I sat on to see how the discussion went, and it actually suggested some colors for the bikeshed.
So what I like is this, with Jeff Sandys' reordering, addition of free/open, some Oxford commas, and replacement of lights-up:
Fedora creates an innovative free/open platform for users, community members, and software developers to build solutions for hardware, containers, and clouds.
This structure seems to really change the meaning. We are now saying we build a thing for users, community members and developers to use to make hardware/container/cloud solutions. That reads to me like Fedora is a project that exists to enable hosting providers.
I think about the mission statement as a statement that says "We make X to cause Y to happen which enables Z to do P" X = our software platform for hardware/clouds/containers Y = an ecosystem around our platform Z = our community members and developers and users P = achieve their goals (i.e. building a new web app, running a university, building the best desktop&services platform for knitters, etc.)
I realize I am biased because I was part of the team that generated the original statement, but I still like the modified form of:
Fedora makes an innovative free/open platform available on hardware, clouds and in containers that enables our community, users, and developers to achieve their goals.
I realize that some people find "innovative" to be buzz-wordy, but I feel like we are actually innovating with initiatives like Modularity. I don't think we should lose that. We are a strong supporter of upstream, but we are also changing the world ourselves!
regards,
bex
(I prefer 'innovate' because I think the value of FOSS is as an innovation engine. I dropped the extra verb that "lights up" was there for, the verb 'build' is strong enough.)
Here's the same thing without specifying the tech flavor-of-the-month:
Fedora creates an innovative free/open platform for users, community members, and software developers to build on with modern technology.
Getting there ...
And I apologize for how this thread has almost completely changed the original proposal. OTOH, this is the main bikeshed, and all the other cool decisions and ideas you came to on your recent FAD can now slip through uncontested. :-D
Regards,
- Karsten
-- Karsten Wade Community Infrastructure Team Open Source and Standards, @redhatopen @quaid gpg: AD0E0C41
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Hi all,
to pitch in with my cent or two, I like the new statement as well, as I think that there are many developers using Fedora and very few "pure users" (which is an assumption without any basis in statistics.) I see Fedora as already great Linux distribution for regular user, with an awesome selection of spins and labs making it really simple and comfy. I like the new mission statement, because it exactly describes my contribution to Fedora, enabling .NET Core. I would like to see Fedora as a friendly environment for dotnet developers, with all the tools necessary to write and run C# code.
Best regards, Radka
------------------------------ *Radka Janeková* .NET Engineer, Red Hat *radka.janek@redhat.com radka.janek@redhat.com* IRC: radka | Freenode: Rhea
On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 1:10 PM, Brian Exelbierd bex@pobox.com wrote:
On Wed, Apr 19, 2017, at 06:48 AM, Karsten Wade wrote:
On 04/18/2017 05:27 PM, Josh Boyer wrote:
Also, I don't want to bikeshed this mission to death word-for-word. Perfect is the enemy of good. If "enables" is what everyone feels is best, great.
Whoops, yeah; I had a longer email a few days ago that I sat on to see how the discussion went, and it actually suggested some colors for the bikeshed.
So what I like is this, with Jeff Sandys' reordering, addition of free/open, some Oxford commas, and replacement of lights-up:
Fedora creates an innovative free/open platform for users, community members, and software developers to build solutions for hardware, containers, and clouds.
This structure seems to really change the meaning. We are now saying we build a thing for users, community members and developers to use to make hardware/container/cloud solutions. That reads to me like Fedora is a project that exists to enable hosting providers.
I think about the mission statement as a statement that says "We make X to cause Y to happen which enables Z to do P" X = our software platform for hardware/clouds/containers Y = an ecosystem around our platform Z = our community members and developers and users P = achieve their goals (i.e. building a new web app, running a university, building the best desktop&services platform for knitters, etc.)
I realize I am biased because I was part of the team that generated the original statement, but I still like the modified form of:
Fedora makes an innovative free/open platform available on hardware, clouds and in containers that enables our community, users, and developers to achieve their goals.
I realize that some people find "innovative" to be buzz-wordy, but I feel like we are actually innovating with initiatives like Modularity. I don't think we should lose that. We are a strong supporter of upstream, but we are also changing the world ourselves!
regards,
bex
(I prefer 'innovate' because I think the value of FOSS is as an innovation engine. I dropped the extra verb that "lights up" was there for, the verb 'build' is strong enough.)
Here's the same thing without specifying the tech flavor-of-the-month:
Fedora creates an innovative free/open platform for users, community members, and software developers to build on with modern technology.
Getting there ...
And I apologize for how this thread has almost completely changed the original proposal. OTOH, this is the main bikeshed, and all the other cool decisions and ideas you came to on your recent FAD can now slip through uncontested. :-D
Regards,
- Karsten
-- Karsten Wade Community Infrastructure Team Open Source and Standards, @redhatopen @quaid gpg: AD0E0C41
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On 20 April 2017 at 07:10, Brian Exelbierd bex@pobox.com wrote:
This structure seems to really change the meaning. We are now saying we build a thing for users, community members and developers to use to make hardware/container/cloud solutions. That reads to me like Fedora is a project that exists to enable hosting providers.
I think about the mission statement as a statement that says "We make X to cause Y to happen which enables Z to do P" X = our software platform for hardware/clouds/containers Y = an ecosystem around our platform Z = our community members and developers and users P = achieve their goals (i.e. building a new web app, running a university, building the best desktop&services platform for knitters, etc.)
I realize I am biased because I was part of the team that generated the original statement, but I still like the modified form of:
Fedora makes an innovative free/open platform available on hardware, clouds and in containers that enables our community, users, and developers to achieve their goals.
I still think it really is too long and trying to cover all the bases.. which is a problem a lot of mission statements have of trying to please as many people as possible. They start to look like middle aged people trying to recapture their youth by driving a red convertible and driving past the Silicon Valley startups on a slow cruise to see who will jump in.
This is a reason why people groan like they have groaned at every heavy worded mission statement in the past.. Remember all the ones that made sure that terms like Linux, Internet, or Web had to be in them in the 90's and early 2000's? They look too much like a three strand comb-over.
I apologize if this is coming across as highly negative. I know how hard writing a mission statement is.. I have had to do at least 10 in my career. Most of them were a LOT worse than the one presented here.. mainly because they were trying to square a circle. The ones that worked were always short, sweet and clearly pulled from the values to the vision as I said earlier.
Also since I got one Neil's case for not offering a patch, here is my current ones.
The Fedora Project creates innovative platforms built on Free and Open source software that allows our community build tailored solutions for their users.
The Fedora Project creates Free/Open innovative platforms that allows our community to build tailored solutions for their users.
I realize that some people find "innovative" to be buzz-wordy, but I feel like we are actually innovating with initiatives like Modularity. I don't think we should lose that. We are a strong supporter of upstream, but we are also changing the world ourselves!
I have no problems with innovative.
On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 11:11 AM, Stephen John Smoogen smooge@gmail.com wrote:
On 20 April 2017 at 07:10, Brian Exelbierd bex@pobox.com wrote:
This structure seems to really change the meaning. We are now saying we build a thing for users, community members and developers to use to make hardware/container/cloud solutions. That reads to me like Fedora is a project that exists to enable hosting providers.
I think about the mission statement as a statement that says "We make X to cause Y to happen which enables Z to do P" X = our software platform for hardware/clouds/containers Y = an ecosystem around our platform Z = our community members and developers and users P = achieve their goals (i.e. building a new web app, running a university, building the best desktop&services platform for knitters, etc.)
I realize I am biased because I was part of the team that generated the original statement, but I still like the modified form of:
Fedora makes an innovative free/open platform available on hardware, clouds and in containers that enables our community, users, and developers to achieve their goals.
I still think it really is too long and trying to cover all the bases.. which is a problem a lot of mission statements have of trying to please as many people as possible. They start to look like middle aged people trying to recapture their youth by driving a red convertible and driving past the Silicon Valley startups on a slow cruise to see who will jump in.
This is a reason why people groan like they have groaned at every heavy worded mission statement in the past.. Remember all the ones that made sure that terms like Linux, Internet, or Web had to be in them in the 90's and early 2000's? They look too much like a three strand comb-over.
I apologize if this is coming across as highly negative. I know how hard writing a mission statement is.. I have had to do at least 10 in my career. Most of them were a LOT worse than the one presented here.. mainly because they were trying to square a circle. The ones that worked were always short, sweet and clearly pulled from the values to the vision as I said earlier.
Also since I got one Neil's case for not offering a patch, here is my current ones.
The Fedora Project creates innovative platforms built on Free and Open source software that allows our community build tailored solutions for their users.
The Fedora Project creates Free/Open innovative platforms that allows our community to build tailored solutions for their users.
Platform. Singular. We are providing a Platform, not a variety of them.
That is part of the mission's focus. We need to provide a common platform across a variety of target environments so that end developers and users have something to consistently rely on to develop or tailor. If we provide multiple platforms it gives us no value, causes resource issues and confusion, and doesn't help us with marketing at all.
I'm not meaning to pick on you, and maybe you didn't even think about that aspect. I'm simply using this as an opportunity to highlight what we feel is a very key tenant of the new mission.
josh
On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 11:18 AM, Josh Boyer jwboyer@fedoraproject.org wrote:
Platform. Singular. We are providing a Platform, not a variety of them.
We are not, though. Modular Fedora, Atomic Fedora, and regular Fedora are all distinctly different platforms with different delivery mechanisms and core technologies. Unless you plan to take an axe to Modular and Atomic Fedora, we're providing multiple platforms.
On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 11:23 AM, Neal Gompa ngompa13@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 11:18 AM, Josh Boyer jwboyer@fedoraproject.org wrote:
Platform. Singular. We are providing a Platform, not a variety of them.
We are not, though. Modular Fedora, Atomic Fedora, and regular Fedora are all distinctly different platforms with different delivery mechanisms and core technologies. Unless you plan to take an axe to Modular and Atomic Fedora, we're providing multiple platforms.
Those are not platforms. Those are ways we compose Fedora, or artifacts of our release. The platform being defined is the set of services and APIs we provide to other things to consume. That is distinctly different than the artifacts they may choose to use.
E.g.:
- A time synchronization service and API is defined in the platform - An implementation of that might be ntpd. Or chrony. Or some systemd thing. As long as the API and service remains consistent, the platform is consistent. - Modularity is a mechanism to define these services an APIs at a higher level than per package. It lets us set the platform at "we provide a webserver", not "we provide apache and nginx and lighttpd. take your pick". You can still choose specific webservers, but the module definition for each will hopefully fulfill the platform API. That's one of the goals.
- The platform will be delivered in a number of different artifact types - Atomic images consumable by cloud, embedded - qcow2 consumable by virt - traditional isos and RPMs
In all of those artifacts, the platform is the same.
josh
Josh Boyer (jwboyer@fedoraproject.org) said:
We are not, though. Modular Fedora, Atomic Fedora, and regular Fedora are all distinctly different platforms with different delivery mechanisms and core technologies. Unless you plan to take an axe to Modular and Atomic Fedora, we're providing multiple platforms.
Those are not platforms. Those are ways we compose Fedora, or artifacts of our release. The platform being defined is the set of services and APIs we provide to other things to consume. That is distinctly different than the artifacts they may choose to use.
E.g.:
- A time synchronization service and API is defined in the platform
- An implementation of that might be ntpd. Or chrony. Or some
systemd thing. As long as the API and service remains consistent, the platform is consistent.
- Modularity is a mechanism to define these services an APIs at a
higher level than per package. It lets us set the platform at "we provide a webserver", not "we provide apache and nginx and lighttpd. take your pick". You can still choose specific webservers, but the module definition for each will hopefully fulfill the platform API. That's one of the goals.
I think that might be the issue here - it's likely to be seen by most as a change in how we describe the platform that is delivered. For better or worse, even in the Atomic & Workstation & Spin & so on days, the Fedora 'platform' is likely seen as "a collection of packages, including three web servers, five desktops, and as many as twenty IRC clients".
I know the rings -> modularity -> ??? discussions are about changing this idea/perception, but as we've still only ever produced the same set of artifacts ('a big repo turned into images and isos and variant repos'), I don't know that the public perception has changed. We need to get everyone on the same page as to whether it's a bikeshed or woodshed before we can talk about what color it is.
Bill
On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 2:17 PM, Bill Nottingham notting@splat.cc wrote:
Josh Boyer (jwboyer@fedoraproject.org) said:
We are not, though. Modular Fedora, Atomic Fedora, and regular Fedora are all distinctly different platforms with different delivery mechanisms and core technologies. Unless you plan to take an axe to Modular and Atomic Fedora, we're providing multiple platforms.
Those are not platforms. Those are ways we compose Fedora, or artifacts of our release. The platform being defined is the set of services and APIs we provide to other things to consume. That is distinctly different than the artifacts they may choose to use.
E.g.:
- A time synchronization service and API is defined in the platform
- An implementation of that might be ntpd. Or chrony. Or some
systemd thing. As long as the API and service remains consistent, the platform is consistent.
- Modularity is a mechanism to define these services an APIs at a
higher level than per package. It lets us set the platform at "we provide a webserver", not "we provide apache and nginx and lighttpd. take your pick". You can still choose specific webservers, but the module definition for each will hopefully fulfill the platform API. That's one of the goals.
I think that might be the issue here - it's likely to be seen by most as a change in how we describe the platform that is delivered. For better or worse, even in the Atomic & Workstation & Spin & so on days, the Fedora 'platform' is likely seen as "a collection of packages, including three web servers, five desktops, and as many as twenty IRC clients".
Yes, it's a change. Yes, "platform" is a very overloaded word in the industry in general. There's no better word though.
I know the rings -> modularity -> ??? discussions are about changing this idea/perception, but as we've still only ever produced the same set of artifacts ('a big repo turned into images and isos and variant repos'), I don't know that the public perception has changed. We need to get everyone on the same page as to whether it's a bikeshed or woodshed before we can talk about what color it is.
Modularity has been a Council Initiative for a long time now, with literal modules being created today and a Fedora Server being composed from them (Boltron). The rings/core discussions came before that and are a direct ancestor. This is becoming very real, very quickly. If it takes changing the Fedora mission statement for people to start paying attention to the direction we've been headed, that's kind of unfortunate but also I'll take it. Any crack in the door to get that messaging and discussion started.
josh
On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 2:23 PM, Josh Boyer jwboyer@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 2:17 PM, Bill Nottingham notting@splat.cc wrote:
Josh Boyer (jwboyer@fedoraproject.org) said:
We are not, though. Modular Fedora, Atomic Fedora, and regular Fedora are all distinctly different platforms with different delivery mechanisms and core technologies. Unless you plan to take an axe to Modular and Atomic Fedora, we're providing multiple platforms.
Those are not platforms. Those are ways we compose Fedora, or artifacts of our release. The platform being defined is the set of services and APIs we provide to other things to consume. That is distinctly different than the artifacts they may choose to use.
E.g.:
- A time synchronization service and API is defined in the platform
- An implementation of that might be ntpd. Or chrony. Or some
systemd thing. As long as the API and service remains consistent, the platform is consistent.
- Modularity is a mechanism to define these services an APIs at a
higher level than per package. It lets us set the platform at "we provide a webserver", not "we provide apache and nginx and lighttpd. take your pick". You can still choose specific webservers, but the module definition for each will hopefully fulfill the platform API. That's one of the goals.
I think that might be the issue here - it's likely to be seen by most as a change in how we describe the platform that is delivered. For better or worse, even in the Atomic & Workstation & Spin & so on days, the Fedora 'platform' is likely seen as "a collection of packages, including three web servers, five desktops, and as many as twenty IRC clients".
Yes, it's a change. Yes, "platform" is a very overloaded word in the industry in general. There's no better word though.
I know the rings -> modularity -> ??? discussions are about changing this idea/perception, but as we've still only ever produced the same set of artifacts ('a big repo turned into images and isos and variant repos'), I don't know that the public perception has changed. We need to get everyone on the same page as to whether it's a bikeshed or woodshed before we can talk about what color it is.
Modularity has been a Council Initiative for a long time now, with literal modules being created today and a Fedora Server being composed from them (Boltron). The rings/core discussions came before that and are a direct ancestor. This is becoming very real, very quickly. If it takes changing the Fedora mission statement for people to start paying attention to the direction we've been headed, that's kind of unfortunate but also I'll take it. Any crack in the door to get that messaging and discussion started.
An aside: where are the current modules? Google doesn't seem to be helping me find them (although there's lots of interesting stuff on Pagure)
josh _______________________________________________ council-discuss mailing list -- council-discuss@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to council-discuss-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org
On 20 April 2017 at 14:23, Josh Boyer jwboyer@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 2:17 PM, Bill Nottingham notting@splat.cc wrote:
Josh Boyer (jwboyer@fedoraproject.org) said:
We are not, though. Modular Fedora, Atomic Fedora, and regular Fedora are all distinctly different platforms with different delivery mechanisms and core technologies. Unless you plan to take an axe to Modular and Atomic Fedora, we're providing multiple platforms.
Those are not platforms. Those are ways we compose Fedora, or artifacts of our release. The platform being defined is the set of services and APIs we provide to other things to consume. That is distinctly different than the artifacts they may choose to use.
E.g.:
- A time synchronization service and API is defined in the platform
- An implementation of that might be ntpd. Or chrony. Or some
systemd thing. As long as the API and service remains consistent, the platform is consistent.
- Modularity is a mechanism to define these services an APIs at a
higher level than per package. It lets us set the platform at "we provide a webserver", not "we provide apache and nginx and lighttpd. take your pick". You can still choose specific webservers, but the module definition for each will hopefully fulfill the platform API. That's one of the goals.
I think that might be the issue here - it's likely to be seen by most as a change in how we describe the platform that is delivered. For better or worse, even in the Atomic & Workstation & Spin & so on days, the Fedora 'platform' is likely seen as "a collection of packages, including three web servers, five desktops, and as many as twenty IRC clients".
Yes, it's a change. Yes, "platform" is a very overloaded word in the industry in general. There's no better word though.
The issue is that you need to clearly define these terms before you can have the conversation... and make sure that people are all on board with how you see the difference between platform and platforms. Because if next week Workstation, Server, ostree or arm use the word platform in the old version.. you are back to square one.
If you wrote code and started using a variable without properly giving it a zero.. and it works for your initial test you are going to be in a world of hurt when running it outside of that machine. Different compilers or architectures may not zero out variables when they are allocated. You may end up with whatever the mmo last had in its grasp. People aren't much different. We need to have zeroed out variables when we are trying to get new distinct definitions even if it take up a ton of extra instructions and clock cycles because wetware is crap.
I know the rings -> modularity -> ??? discussions are about changing this idea/perception, but as we've still only ever produced the same set of artifacts ('a big repo turned into images and isos and variant repos'), I don't know that the public perception has changed. We need to get everyone on the same page as to whether it's a bikeshed or woodshed before we can talk about what color it is.
Modularity has been a Council Initiative for a long time now, with literal modules being created today and a Fedora Server being composed from them (Boltron). The rings/core discussions came before that and are a direct ancestor. This is becoming very real, very quickly. If it takes changing the Fedora mission statement for people to start paying attention to the direction we've been headed, that's kind of unfortunate but also I'll take it. Any crack in the door to get that messaging and discussion started.
josh _______________________________________________ council-discuss mailing list -- council-discuss@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to council-discuss-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org
On 20 April 2017 at 11:18, Josh Boyer jwboyer@fedoraproject.org wrote:
The Fedora Project creates Free/Open innovative platforms that allows our community to build tailored solutions for their users.
Platform. Singular. We are providing a Platform, not a variety of them.
That is part of the mission's focus. We need to provide a common platform across a variety of target environments so that end developers and users have something to consistently rely on to develop or tailor. If we provide multiple platforms it gives us no value, causes resource issues and confusion, and doesn't help us with marketing at all.
I'm not meaning to pick on you, and maybe you didn't even think about that aspect. I'm simply using this as an opportunity to highlight what we feel is a very key tenant of the new mission.
I understand, but I don't see it in how we have done things. Mainly this is because we aren't clear on the definition of platform. To me a platform is what you use to stick things together.. so ostree, old releases are 2 different platforms. containers and flatpack are different platforms, aarch64, arm, s390, ppc, i386 and x86_64 are all different platforms. workstation, server, and whatever 3rd wheel we are trying for this release are different platforms.
So I can see where you are coming from.. but you need to define that somewhere to be clear so I can switch my definition of the last 20 years to this one :).
josh _______________________________________________ council-discuss mailing list -- council-discuss@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to council-discuss-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org
On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 12:25 PM, Stephen John Smoogen smooge@gmail.com wrote:
On 20 April 2017 at 11:18, Josh Boyer jwboyer@fedoraproject.org wrote:
The Fedora Project creates Free/Open innovative platforms that allows our community to build tailored solutions for their users.
Platform. Singular. We are providing a Platform, not a variety of them.
That is part of the mission's focus. We need to provide a common platform across a variety of target environments so that end developers and users have something to consistently rely on to develop or tailor. If we provide multiple platforms it gives us no value, causes resource issues and confusion, and doesn't help us with marketing at all.
I'm not meaning to pick on you, and maybe you didn't even think about that aspect. I'm simply using this as an opportunity to highlight what we feel is a very key tenant of the new mission.
I understand, but I don't see it in how we have done things. Mainly this is because we aren't clear on the definition of platform. To me a platform is what you use to stick things together.. so ostree, old releases are 2 different platforms. containers and flatpack are different platforms, aarch64, arm, s390, ppc, i386 and x86_64 are all different platforms. workstation, server, and whatever 3rd wheel we are trying for this release are different platforms.
ostree, isos, rpms, flatpaks, containers are all build artifacts. That's actually true today too.
aarch64, armv7hl, s390x, ppc64le, x86_64 are all hardware architectures. Some call them platforms, but 95% of the OS we provide is identical on all of them so the OS is still the platform on top of these architectures. Where the OS differs due to architecture requirements, we'd try to make sure that is hidden below the level of the platform Fedora is looking to provide.
Workstation, Server, Cloud/Atomic, Spins are actually a great examples of consumers of the platform and directly relate to the "tailored solutions" aspect of the mission. They are all using the Fedora platform to build something that addresses a specific user base.
So I can see where you are coming from.. but you need to define that somewhere to be clear so I can switch my definition of the last 20 years to this one :).
This is where I would look very hard at Langdon to step in and speak up. <stares at Langdon>
However, I gave an initial overview in another reply. It's very high level, so I'm sure we'll be having more discussions around it.
josh
I'll take a second try at it then.
Here I'll repeat what I already said. I see Fedora as already great Linux distribution for regular user, with an awesome selection of spins and labs making it really simple and comfy. I like the new mission statement, because it exactly describes my contribution to Fedora, enabling .NET Core. I would like to see Fedora as a friendly environment for dotnet developers, with all the tools necessary to write and run C# code.
And now to add to that, I would like to suggest not including FOSS in the mission statement. It is within the core values, which is where it belongs. I've been met with massive amount of FOSS extremism and hostility to anything remotely associated with non-free/os software. I would like to change that, for the sake of others who are to come, for the sake of having inclusive, diverse and friendly community around Fedora. Let me explain where I'm coming from. I already said what am I working towards, enabling C# and .NET Core in Linux. I receive a lot of hate for the association with the old .net framework, which was closed microsoft product, even though I am promoting open source, and effectively trying to steer the whole C# community towards open source, from my contribution, through articles, to talking at conferences. I think that I'm doing a good thing for FOSS and yet all I ever receive is hate. Please take this into consideration when looking at the mission statement and how it might influence the way people interact with each other about open source development. Forcing FOSS to the extreme is not the right way either, it's our core value, it doesn't have to be what we focus on 100%
Best regards, Radka
------------------------------ *Radka Janeková* .NET Engineer, Red Hat *radka.janek@redhat.com radka.janek@redhat.com* IRC: radka | Freenode: Rhea
On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 6:54 PM, Josh Boyer jwboyer@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 12:25 PM, Stephen John Smoogen smooge@gmail.com wrote:
On 20 April 2017 at 11:18, Josh Boyer jwboyer@fedoraproject.org wrote:
The Fedora Project creates Free/Open innovative platforms that allows our community to build tailored solutions for their users.
Platform. Singular. We are providing a Platform, not a variety of
them.
That is part of the mission's focus. We need to provide a common platform across a variety of target environments so that end developers and users have something to consistently rely on to develop or tailor. If we provide multiple platforms it gives us no value, causes resource issues and confusion, and doesn't help us with marketing at all.
I'm not meaning to pick on you, and maybe you didn't even think about that aspect. I'm simply using this as an opportunity to highlight what we feel is a very key tenant of the new mission.
I understand, but I don't see it in how we have done things. Mainly this is because we aren't clear on the definition of platform. To me a platform is what you use to stick things together.. so ostree, old releases are 2 different platforms. containers and flatpack are different platforms, aarch64, arm, s390, ppc, i386 and x86_64 are all different platforms. workstation, server, and whatever 3rd wheel we are trying for this release are different platforms.
ostree, isos, rpms, flatpaks, containers are all build artifacts. That's actually true today too.
aarch64, armv7hl, s390x, ppc64le, x86_64 are all hardware architectures. Some call them platforms, but 95% of the OS we provide is identical on all of them so the OS is still the platform on top of these architectures. Where the OS differs due to architecture requirements, we'd try to make sure that is hidden below the level of the platform Fedora is looking to provide.
Workstation, Server, Cloud/Atomic, Spins are actually a great examples of consumers of the platform and directly relate to the "tailored solutions" aspect of the mission. They are all using the Fedora platform to build something that addresses a specific user base.
So I can see where you are coming from.. but you need to define that somewhere to be clear so I can switch my definition of the last 20 years to this one :).
This is where I would look very hard at Langdon to step in and speak up. <stares at Langdon>
However, I gave an initial overview in another reply. It's very high level, so I'm sure we'll be having more discussions around it.
josh _______________________________________________ council-discuss mailing list -- council-discuss@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to council-discuss-leave@lists.fe doraproject.org
On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 11:11 AM, Stephen John Smoogen smooge@gmail.com wrote:
The Fedora Project creates innovative platforms built on Free and Open source software that allows our community build tailored solutions for their users.
I mostly like this one. To me, it's important that we talk about "Free and Open Source Software" because "free/open platforms" can be proprietary, too. Many people consider the Apple iOS and macOS platforms to be "open" but it's still proprietary and doesn't give you the expected freedoms. Platforms beget ecosystems, so you can have an open platform without Free Software.
There are a couple of grammar tweaks to make, so here's what I propose as a slight improvement on Stephen's:
~~~~ The Fedora Project creates innovative platforms built on Free and Open Source Software that allows communities to build tailored solutions for their users. ~~~~
That statement changes the wording slightly to emphasize FOSS and also to remove the exclusion of communities not affiliated with Fedora directly. There are plenty of downstreams from us that use Fedora to build something greater.
However, I would not be opposed to the following either:
~~~~ The Fedora Project creates innovative platforms built on Free and Open Source Software that allows our community to build tailored solutions for their users. ~~~~
What do you think?
Is there a reason behind removing the "open source software" part?
Would there be anything wrong with saying "Fedora creates an innovative open source platform", or something similar?
I feel like the open source part is a core value of the project, so it seems odd to me to removed it.
“Fedora creates an innovative platform that lights up hardware, clouds, and containers for software developers and community members to build tailored solutions for their users.”
I know that creating mission statements is hard, but this wording is hard to understand. ‘platform that lights up’ didn’t make sense. And where am I in this mission? Am I a community member building tailored solutions? Or am I very last, a user? This wording order makes it sound like users ask bespoke coders for solutions with Fedora lighting up hardware.
I think the mission statement and the explanation about tailored solutions emphasizes distance between Fedora and users.
Fedora → platform → hardware → developers → tailored solutions → users
Is this the model that we want? Is this Fedora’s mission? I don’t think Fedora should distance itself from users, as users become community, become developers. What is the measure of success for this mission statement? What initiatives will be launched in support of this mission?
I think the Fedora model and the mission statement should be reordered. This more closely matches the needs expressed in the statement.
Fedora → platform → community → solutions → hardware
**Fedora creates an innovative platform for users, community members and software developers to build tailored solutions that lights up hardware, containers and clouds.**
I believe open-source should be part of the mission and solutions shouldn’t be limited to tailored.
**Fedora creates an innovative open platform for users, community members and software developers to build solutions that lights up hardware, containers and clouds.**
This isn’t to make the language tighter, it is to clarify that Fedora is for users. The discussions about “for software developers and community members to build tailored solutions for their users”, seems to indicate that Fedora isn’t for users, just tailored solution builders. "Their users" sounds offensive to me like "those people". I hope that isn’t the case, but this mission statement could lead to a closed source developer focused platform.
Thanks,
Jeff Sandys
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 6:55 AM, Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
Background
Way back in 2003, the original Fedora Project mission statement¹ was straightforward — “to work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from open source software.” This has some virtue: it's clear and concrete, and it encodes the values of community and open source. But, it's also rather small; arguably this was _already done_, so, you know, “good job everyone” — backslapping ensues, nothing more needed, right?
After 6½ years, the Fedora Board (the precursor to our current Fedora Council) decided it was time for a refresh, and put a lot of work into coming up with our current mission² (as well as a vision and objectives). That mission is “to lead the advancement of free and open source software and content as a collaborative community.”
This has many virtues too — it's ambitious, and again keeps those key values front and center. But, it's also very broad. If we were to start a project with a clean slate today to do what the mission says, I don't think we'd even _think_ of creating a Linux distro. There are plenty of other activities that could consume an entire large pro-free-and-open-source project.
When we started Fedora.next, we decided to work underneath the mission as it stood. This has worked out well enough, but we're coming up to what feels like the limit. This is clear in the "Budget.next" process — it's one thing to say that spending is to be determined in public based on clear objectives and measurable results, but for it to really work, those objectives need to be attached to a goal with a more clear scope.
It's now been another 6½ years, and it’s the perfect time to revisit the mission — to look at who we are, what we do well, what we really want to do, what we say we do but actually don't, and so on.
Our Thinking
At our in-person activity days at the end of March, the Fedora Council did just that. We spent some time discussing those questions and worked on lists of strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities. We talked about the Fedora Foundations as well, and agreed that we do want to keep these as statements of our core values. We wanted something which would answer:
What do we do?
How do we do it?
Who do we do it for?
and, what unique value do we bring?
After a long and productive working discussion, we decided to break for dinner, and come back the next morning to actually draft a new statement to bring to the community for discussion, adjustment, and approval. Brian scribbled down a quick idea in the evening, and in the morning we started bright and early at adding to, subtracting from, rewording, deconstructing, and reconstructing, until we came up with something that everyone on the Council felt good about.
The New Mission Draft
So, here it is:
Fedora creates an innovative platform that lights up hardware, clouds, and containers for software developers and community members to build tailored solutions for their users.
Let's Break It Down
We decided to not write a new vision statement at this point. The Four Foundations³ — Freedom, Friends, Features, First — both state our core values and illustrate our overall goals and objectives. However, we do want to make sure that some of the various parts of the mission are explained.
- Creates an innovative platform — at the operating system level, we don’t just integrate.We do new things. This is what makes us a platform and not just a distribution. And, “innovative” is just a buzzword. Current examples include solving the “too fast / too slow” problem with Modularity, exploring ostree for delivery and updates, and the Layered Image Build Service, where containers become a first-class part of the OS.
Lights up hardware, clouds, and containers — We want to be specific about a primary focus as an enablement layer for environments people want to use.
For software developers to build tailored solutions for their users — this includes both upstream software developers and downstream communities who want to build on what we create.
For community members to build tailored solutions for their users — Fedora isn’t just the toolkit. Many of our contributors are here to collaborate to create solutions for specific user problems, ranging from Fedora Workstation to Fedora Robotics Suite. We have lots of ways to do this within the project, from Editions to Spins and Labs to the upcoming Fedora Playground concept. The core emphasis, though, is on enabling this collaboration.
Next Steps
We really hope our proposed mission statement makes sense to all of you and tries to capture what we want to be for the next three to five years. We would be very interested in feedback from the community, not just in how to make the language tighter but, truly, on the goals of the project and how we can better capture the ethos of Fedora.
at.com/about/ 2. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Overview#Our_Mission 3. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Foundations
-- Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org Fedora Project Leader _______________________________________________ council-discuss mailing list -- council-discuss@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to council-discuss-leave@lists.fe doraproject.org
I also think "free" shouldn't be dropped from the mission statement. The "lights up hardware, clouds, and containers" part seems unnecessary to me, if the mission statement needs to be shortened.
Perhaps something like this: "Fedora creates a free and innovative platform for software developers and community members to build tailored solutions for their users."
Even with those changes, I feel like the current mission statement does a better job of emphasizing the values of freedom, innovation, and community with fewer words.
On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 7:17 AM, Josh Cox jcox@fedoraproject.org wrote:
I also think "free" shouldn't be dropped from the mission statement. The "lights up hardware, clouds, and containers" part seems unnecessary to me, if the mission statement needs to be shortened.
Perhaps something like this: "Fedora creates a free and innovative platform for software developers and community members to build tailored solutions for their users."
Even with those changes, I feel like the current mission statement does a better job of emphasizing the values of freedom, innovation, and community with fewer words.
A mission statement's purpose is not to describe a project's values. It is to describe what the project is doing or working towards. It should be measurable and finite, not open ended and impossible to measure.
Fedora has the four foundations to describe our project values.
josh
On 04/18/2017 01:23 PM, Josh Boyer wrote:
On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 7:17 AM, Josh Cox jcox@fedoraproject.org wrote:
I also think "free" shouldn't be dropped from the mission statement. The "lights up hardware, clouds, and containers" part seems unnecessary to me, if the mission statement needs to be shortened.
Perhaps something like this: "Fedora creates a free and innovative platform for software developers and community members to build tailored solutions for their users."
Even with those changes, I feel like the current mission statement does a better job of emphasizing the values of freedom, innovation, and community with fewer words.
A mission statement's purpose is not to describe a project's values. It is to describe what the project is doing or working towards. It should be measurable and finite, not open ended and impossible to measure.
Fedora has the four foundations to describe our project values.
josh
I think what might be confusing is the differentiation between the technical and measurable aspects of the mission and the more open-ended values ascribed to the community.
My guess as to why there has been a strong input to this specific point about the inclusion of language about free and open source software is that these things aren't mutually exclusive to our values or the mission alone. In the case of free software, I see it from this angle:
* Software freedom is an important part of our community values that motivates contributors to participate in the Fedora community.
* In achieving our technical goals and lighting up these platforms, it's equally important to build the tailored solutions as it is to lead these efforts to benefit a wider open source audience.[1]
I've avoided commenting on this thread so far to take time to think on it, and now I do think including language that explicitly connects Fedora's technical and strategic mission for growth and innovation to the wider free and open source software world is important. From my perspective, Fedora contributors have always embraced philosophies like "upstream first" and promoting collaboration that goes beyond just our community. This philosophy impacts our project goals and what we're working on because it demonstrates that it's not just about Fedora, it's about building better software, period.
Even though my guess is that "hardware, clouds, and containers" is hoping to get at that point that it's beyond our own community and also about building better software, these platforms aren't exclusively built on FOSS, which is why the input is coming up about this specific point.
Even if it's difficult or challenging to figure out what we're supposed to measure by including language to clearly establish a connection to FOSS, it's something that I think both contributors and outside viewers look for in Fedora's technical and strategic goals. And maybe this is something you measure long-term too. Examples that stand out to me are Wayland, systemd, and GNOME 3, to name a few… :)
To sum it up, I do see a benefit to clearly connecting Fedora's mission statement to the wider free and open source software mission, because this feels like something that's valuable from a technical standpoint as much as it is to our core values as a community.
Just my 2¢.
~~~
[1] Even if this is what the intent behind the current proposed draft is (which I think it is), I don't think it's interpreted that way universally, and including language that establishes the connection to free and open source software removes doubt.
On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 8:35 AM, Justin W. Flory jflory7@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/18/2017 01:23 PM, Josh Boyer wrote:
On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 7:17 AM, Josh Cox jcox@fedoraproject.org wrote:
I also think "free" shouldn't be dropped from the mission statement. The "lights up hardware, clouds, and containers" part seems unnecessary to me, if the mission statement needs to be shortened.
Perhaps something like this: "Fedora creates a free and innovative platform for software developers and community members to build tailored solutions for their users."
Even with those changes, I feel like the current mission statement does a better job of emphasizing the values of freedom, innovation, and community with fewer words.
A mission statement's purpose is not to describe a project's values. It is to describe what the project is doing or working towards. It should be measurable and finite, not open ended and impossible to measure.
Fedora has the four foundations to describe our project values.
<snip>
To sum it up, I do see a benefit to clearly connecting Fedora's mission statement to the wider free and open source software mission, because this feels like something that's valuable from a technical standpoint as much as it is to our core values as a community.
To be clear, I am not opposed to adding an "open source" qualifier to the mission statement. I believe I can speak for all of us that came up with this draft when I say we very much thought that was so foundational to Fedora that it would immediately be implied and required. My comment above was more intended to delineate the role of a mission statement as something specific and separate from the values we adhere to in the way we go about that mission.
josh
On 18 April 2017 at 07:23, Josh Boyer jwboyer@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 7:17 AM, Josh Cox jcox@fedoraproject.org wrote:
I also think "free" shouldn't be dropped from the mission statement. The "lights up hardware, clouds, and containers" part seems unnecessary to me, if the mission statement needs to be shortened.
Perhaps something like this: "Fedora creates a free and innovative platform for software developers and community members to build tailored solutions for their users."
Even with those changes, I feel like the current mission statement does a better job of emphasizing the values of freedom, innovation, and community with fewer words.
A mission statement's purpose is not to describe a project's values. It is to describe what the project is doing or working towards. It should be measurable and finite, not open ended and impossible to measure.
Fedora has the four foundations to describe our project values.
I believe the disconnect you are seeing is that we have values but people don't see them reflected in the mission statement. From previous exercises in this, you have two important things:
you start with Shared Core Values (SCV) you end up heading towards your Vision Statement (VS).
A mission statement is how you take/use/recognize those values to get towards your vision. The
We have a bunch of core values in our 4 F's.
Freedom, Friends, Features, First
We have a vision statement ( https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Vision_statement ):
The Fedora Project creates a world where free culture is welcoming and widespread, collaboration is commonplace, and people control their content and devices.
The mission statement (taken from https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Overview) is connect those two together:
Old: The Fedora Project's mission is to lead the advancement of Free and open source software and content as a collaborative community.
New: Fedora creates an innovative platform that lights up hardware, clouds, and containers for software developers and community members to build tailored solutions for their users.
The old one does the verbal connecting by taking bits from each of the values and vision and stitching them together. The new one seems less of a match and so people are wondering if it needs new values or a new vision.
On 04/14/2017 09:55 PM, Matthew Miller wrote:
Background
Way back in 2003, the original Fedora Project mission statement¹ was straightforward — “to work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from open source software.” This has some virtue: it's clear and concrete, and it encodes the values of community and open source. But, it's also rather small; arguably this was _already done_, so, you know, “good job everyone” — backslapping ensues, nothing more needed, right?
After 6½ years, the Fedora Board (the precursor to our current Fedora Council) decided it was time for a refresh, and put a lot of work into coming up with our current mission² (as well as a vision and objectives). That mission is “to lead the advancement of free and open source software and content as a collaborative community.”
This has many virtues too — it's ambitious, and again keeps those key values front and center. But, it's also very broad. If we were to start a project with a clean slate today to do what the mission says, I don't think we'd even _think_ of creating a Linux distro. There are plenty of other activities that could consume an entire large pro-free-and-open-source project.
When we started Fedora.next, we decided to work underneath the mission as it stood. This has worked out well enough, but we're coming up to what feels like the limit. This is clear in the "Budget.next" process — it's one thing to say that spending is to be determined in public based on clear objectives and measurable results, but for it to really work, those objectives need to be attached to a goal with a more clear scope.
It's now been another 6½ years, and it’s the perfect time to revisit the mission — to look at who we are, what we do well, what we really want to do, what we say we do but actually don't, and so on.
Our Thinking
At our in-person activity days at the end of March, the Fedora Council did just that. We spent some time discussing those questions and worked on lists of strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities. We talked about the Fedora Foundations as well, and agreed that we do want to keep these as statements of our core values. We wanted something which would answer:
What do we do?
How do we do it?
Who do we do it for?
and, what unique value do we bring?
After a long and productive working discussion, we decided to break for dinner, and come back the next morning to actually draft a new statement to bring to the community for discussion, adjustment, and approval. Brian scribbled down a quick idea in the evening, and in the morning we started bright and early at adding to, subtracting from, rewording, deconstructing, and reconstructing, until we came up with something that everyone on the Council felt good about.
The New Mission Draft
So, here it is:
Fedora creates an innovative platform that lights up hardware, clouds, and containers for software developers and community members to build tailored solutions for their users.
Feeling the new mission focuses more on technical and less about community that the previous one.
Let's Break It Down
We decided to not write a new vision statement at this point. The Four Foundations³ — Freedom, Friends, Features, First — both state our core values and illustrate our overall goals and objectives. However, we do want to make sure that some of the various parts of the mission are explained.
- Creates an innovative platform — at the operating system level, we don’t just integrate.We do new things. This is what makes us a platform and not just a distribution. And, “innovative” is just a buzzword. Current examples include solving the “too fast / too slow” problem with Modularity, exploring ostree for delivery and updates, and the Layered Image Build Service, where containers become a first-class part of the OS.
Lights up hardware, clouds, and containers — We want to be specific about a primary focus as an enablement layer for environments people want to use.
For software developers to build tailored solutions for their users — this includes both upstream software developers and downstream communities who want to build on what we create.
For community members to build tailored solutions for their users — Fedora isn’t just the toolkit. Many of our contributors are here to collaborate to create solutions for specific user problems, ranging from Fedora Workstation to Fedora Robotics Suite. We have lots of ways to do this within the project, from Editions to Spins and Labs to the upcoming Fedora Playground concept. The core emphasis, though, is on enabling this collaboration.
As there are community members who do more promoting than engineering, I feel that "build tailored solutions for their users" can be improved. Think like this, are the contributors matters? And are we a FOSS community, or a company-style community focus on products? With the wording above, I feel it is too much product focused, rather than working as a FOSS community. For me I don't feel like joining a community cares about product more than FOSS.
Next Steps
We really hope our proposed mission statement makes sense to all of you and tries to capture what we want to be for the next three to five years. We would be very interested in feedback from the community, not just in how to make the language tighter but, truly, on the goals of the project and how we can better capture the ethos of Fedora.
On 04/18/2017 08:02 AM, Zamir SUN wrote:
Feeling the new mission focuses more on technical and less about community that the previous one.
As someone who is less technical, just wanted to point out that the mission is what those less technical work to support and don't necessarily have to do directly.
As there are community members who do more promoting than engineering, I feel that "build tailored solutions for their users" can be improved. Think like this, are the contributors matters? And are we a FOSS community, or a company-style community focus on products? With the wording above, I feel it is too much product focused, rather than working as a FOSS community. For me I don't feel like joining a community cares about product more than FOSS.
Totally get your point. I agree with others who've said the four F's cover the community aspect, though. Traditionally we've rallied around Fedora as an OS, which is just as product-y as this one. The promoting was to promote that OS. Now those of us who work on things like marketing and design and ambassadors - we're promoting something just slightly different. I don't think this changes the focus on community or what we do except for the thing we promote.
~m
On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 9:24 AM, jeffrey.rollin@gmail.com wrote:
Dear oh dear. What buzzworld-infested tripe.
That's not helpful. If you don't intend to actually contribute by discussion or suggestions, please keep your comments to yourself.
josh
On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 9:24 AM, jeffrey.rollin@gmail.com wrote:
Dear oh dear. What buzzworld-infested tripe.
That's not very Friendly to the people who worked hard on this positioning, no matter how you may feel about it.
Fedora creates an innovative platform that lights up hardware, clouds, and containers for software developers and community members to build tailored solutions for their users.
I share the view of a few others here on a few things.
It would seem to me that there's a distinction that's very clear about a 'platform' and an 'open platform', although it might be said elsewhere, if you were just just say the statement, an innovative open platform is specific and very clear in its goal. Where as the proposed isn't that clear.
I wouldn't bother with "free and open source" as suggested as that's not as clear in my opinion, open platform is clear in that its tones of freedom of the platform, free and open source could come across as no cost and code.
Jeff Sandys makes a very good point about the placement of the latter words (hardware, clouds, containers, for software developers and community members to build tailored solutions for their users). It comes across as putting a great distance between Fedora and its users, more as if the goal for Fedora is to aim just for developers of larger platforms specifically, it comes across a little as if users wouldn't use Fedora to do those things (exclusionary i think is the word i'm looking for). Most of us I would imagine are users of Fedora first.
I do think his slight restructure fits far better and still gets the original message across while also putting all users of Fedora at the front line of Fedoras user base.
**Fedora creates an innovative open platform for users, community members and software developers to build solutions that lights up hardware, containers and clouds.**
Apart from that, 'lights up' and 'innovate' are pretty meaningless buzz words these days so don't (for me at least) convey any additional meaning to the statement. Something to replace them might be worth at least throwing around?
On 04/18/2017 01:45 PM, Alan McGeoch wrote:
**Fedora creates an innovative open platform for users, community members and software developers to build solutions that lights up hardware, containers and clouds.**
Apart from that, 'lights up' and 'innovate' are pretty meaningless buzz words these days so don't (for me at least) convey any additional meaning to the statement. Something to replace them might be worth at least throwing around?
My $0.02: "innovative" seems fine, but "lights up" is an American colloquialism which will translate poorly. Heck, as an American English speaker, I'm not sure what it means.
I did wonder where the phrase came from. I tried to imagine what it might be trying to convey and came up with Fedora software making the engines in the machine turn on and start working. But lights up doesnt bring that thought instantly, I had to give it thought.
(First thing it did actually bring up was fairies ..)
Thank you everyone for your thoughtful feedback. Since I was on vacation last week, I didn't keep up with the thread in real time, and rather than going back and commenting on individual messages, this is a wrap-up of points I saw.
Putting Free Software and Open Source in the mission statement directly. ========================================================================
The first thing that got a lot of discussion is a request to put something about free software and/or open source in the mission statement itself. I want to stress again that this wasn't omitted to pave the way for some movement away from our commitment to this. Quite to the contrary: in our discussion, the Council considered this a basic fundamental rather than something that we thought needed to be repeated in the mission. Some of the response worrying about this is my fault, I think, because this thread presented the mission and background for it mostly on its own, rather than as we are expecting to show it: in a revised version of the Fedora overview wiki pages which show the Foundations and Mission together.
In the discussion, I noticed a *lot* of different terminology being thrown about: free and open source, free software and open source, open source, open, free, free software, FOSS, free/open. I'm glad that we didn't have any long vi/emacs war debates about the various political philosophies embodied, but I think we do all know that there *is* a lot behind each particular wording. Fedora has always tried to stay above that — bridging as best we can without conflict — and it's important to me that we continue to do so. And, I *definitely* don't want to use acronyms like FOSS or FLOSS — that immediately limits understanding to a very niche in-club.
So, I think that if we *do* include some wording about this in the statement, it needs to be a longer form, with "free software and open source" the bare minimum. But, I also think we're plenty wordy already, so my preference really remains with making a prominent Freedom foundation as our banner for this, and leaving it as granted in the mission.
It's also worth noting that we had one comment from a contributor who felt her (all open source / free software!) contributions were attacked because of association with a proprietary software company, and that having this in the mission would further embolden that behavior. I certainly hope that wouldn't be true (following our commitment to Friends, after all), but I can see the concern.
Also, there was a commenter who felt that not having free software in the statement meant that we would reduce our focus on upstream first — our relationships with the rest of the open source world and, basically, our software supply chain. Again, I think this is actually best addressed by the Foundations — specifically, the Features foundation talks about this directly.
In any case, I remain open to inserting a "free software and open source" clause if it's the community consensus that we *need* to — but I personally hope that we can see it as deep in our DNA already, and showcase it through the Foundations.
"Lights up" ==========
People reacted strongly to this. I'm not surprised — but, personally, I still kinda like it. Sure, it's jargon, but I don't think the metaphor is hard to understand. And, I didn't hear an alternative better than "enables", which feels particularly weak to me. This isn't the hill I plan to die on, though, if everyone hates it. I'd still love to hear something more interesting than "enables".
Ordering of the statement, and particularly, distance from users ================================================================
There was some discussion on reordering the statement to change the emphasis. This relates, I think, to discussion here and also on LWN.net with concern that there's no focus on desktop/laptop users specifically. Some of the commentary seemed to assume that this was accidental and sent a message other than intended.
No, actually, we put it this way on purpose. But, it shouldn't be scary.
As I said in the intro message, the Council built this draft from a discussion of Fedora strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. And, while we have an awesome user and community, catering to that community directly has never really been our strong point at the core of our project. That's why we decided that we wanted the focus on building the Fedora platform *for* developers and for our own contributor community, and to help that community to engage users with user- and use-case focused solutions.
This *doesn't* mean that we're abandoning the desktop, or anything else. As I said on LWN, the mission statement is *not* an end-user marketing message. It's meant to help guide the project itself (as well as potential collaborators and contributors). In fact, we don't really want to market the Fedora platform to end users at all. Instead, we want to have stronger distinct marketing around Fedora Workstation, Fedora Atomic, Fedora Server — and all the various Spins. Many of these *do* have a direct end-user focus. We've seen a marked increase in various metrics since we started this organizational and marketing split with Fedora.next, and we want to build on that.
I'm not entirely opposed to the general idea of putting the "for community members and software developers to build" part *before* the "lights up" (or whatever) part — but I _don't_ want to move "users" into the platform target directly.
Platform vs. Platforms / "Supports an Ecosystem" ================================================
There was some discussion about whether we build _a_ platform or multiple platforms. And, related, some of the earliest comments were about an ecosystem emphasis. I think the above section actually addresses this — a platform with an ecosystem is exactly the intent, and I really think the draft as proposed carries that well. I'd very much welcome help with additional supplemental and explanatory material, though.
So, next? =========
Again, thank you everyone for the good discussion. As a next step, I'm going to file a Council ticket with the original draft and several of the proposed tweaks and rewrites from the thread. Let's keep non-Council-member discussion going here on this list, rather than splitting it to the ticket.
Thanks for the great summary.
On Apr 28, 2017 10:40, "Matthew Miller" mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
Thank you everyone for your thoughtful feedback. Since I was on vacation last week, I didn't keep up with the thread in real time, and rather than going back and commenting on individual messages, this is a wrap-up of points I saw.
Putting Free Software and Open Source in the mission statement directly.
The first thing that got a lot of discussion is a request to put something about free software and/or open source in the mission statement itself. I want to stress again that this wasn't omitted to pave the way for some movement away from our commitment to this. Quite to the contrary: in our discussion, the Council considered this a basic fundamental rather than something that we thought needed to be repeated in the mission. Some of the response worrying about this is my fault, I think, because this thread presented the mission and background for it mostly on its own, rather than as we are expecting to show it: in a revised version of the Fedora overview wiki pages which show the Foundations and Mission together.
In the discussion, I noticed a *lot* of different terminology being thrown about: free and open source, free software and open source, open source, open, free, free software, FOSS, free/open. I'm glad that we didn't have any long vi/emacs war debates about the various political philosophies embodied, but I think we do all know that there *is* a lot behind each particular wording. Fedora has always tried to stay above that — bridging as best we can without conflict — and it's important to me that we continue to do so. And, I *definitely* don't want to use acronyms like FOSS or FLOSS — that immediately limits understanding to a very niche in-club.
So, I think that if we *do* include some wording about this in the statement, it needs to be a longer form, with "free software and open source" the bare minimum. But, I also think we're plenty wordy already, so my preference really remains with making a prominent Freedom foundation as our banner for this, and leaving it as granted in the mission.
It's also worth noting that we had one comment from a contributor who felt her (all open source / free software!) contributions were attacked because of association with a proprietary software company, and that having this in the mission would further embolden that behavior. I certainly hope that wouldn't be true (following our commitment to Friends, after all), but I can see the concern.
Also, there was a commenter who felt that not having free software in the statement meant that we would reduce our focus on upstream first — our relationships with the rest of the open source world and, basically, our software supply chain. Again, I think this is actually best addressed by the Foundations — specifically, the Features foundation talks about this directly.
In any case, I remain open to inserting a "free software and open source" clause if it's the community consensus that we *need* to — but I personally hope that we can see it as deep in our DNA already, and showcase it through the Foundations.
"Lights up"
People reacted strongly to this. I'm not surprised — but, personally, I still kinda like it. Sure, it's jargon, but I don't think the metaphor is hard to understand. And, I didn't hear an alternative better than "enables", which feels particularly weak to me. This isn't the hill I plan to die on, though, if everyone hates it. I'd still love to hear something more interesting than "enables".
Ordering of the statement, and particularly, distance from users
There was some discussion on reordering the statement to change the emphasis. This relates, I think, to discussion here and also on LWN.net with concern that there's no focus on desktop/laptop users specifically. Some of the commentary seemed to assume that this was accidental and sent a message other than intended.
No, actually, we put it this way on purpose. But, it shouldn't be scary.
As I said in the intro message, the Council built this draft from a discussion of Fedora strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. And, while we have an awesome user and community, catering to that community directly has never really been our strong point at the core of our project. That's why we decided that we wanted the focus on building the Fedora platform *for* developers and for our own contributor community, and to help that community to engage users with user- and use-case focused solutions.
This *doesn't* mean that we're abandoning the desktop, or anything else. As I said on LWN, the mission statement is *not* an end-user marketing message. It's meant to help guide the project itself (as well as potential collaborators and contributors). In fact, we don't really want to market the Fedora platform to end users at all. Instead, we want to have stronger distinct marketing around Fedora Workstation, Fedora Atomic, Fedora Server — and all the various Spins. Many of these *do* have a direct end-user focus. We've seen a marked increase in various metrics since we started this organizational and marketing split with Fedora.next, and we want to build on that.
I'm not entirely opposed to the general idea of putting the "for community members and software developers to build" part *before* the "lights up" (or whatever) part — but I _don't_ want to move "users" into the platform target directly.
Platform vs. Platforms / "Supports an Ecosystem"
There was some discussion about whether we build _a_ platform or multiple platforms. And, related, some of the earliest comments were about an ecosystem emphasis. I think the above section actually addresses this — a platform with an ecosystem is exactly the intent, and I really think the draft as proposed carries that well. I'd very much welcome help with additional supplemental and explanatory material, though.
So, next?
Again, thank you everyone for the good discussion. As a next step, I'm going to file a Council ticket with the original draft and several of the proposed tweaks and rewrites from the thread. Let's keep non-Council-member discussion going here on this list, rather than splitting it to the ticket.
-- Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org Fedora Project Leader _______________________________________________ council-discuss mailing list -- council-discuss@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to council-discuss-leave@lists. fedoraproject.org
On 28 April 2017 at 10:39, Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
"Lights up"
People reacted strongly to this. I'm not surprised — but, personally, I still kinda like it. Sure, it's jargon, but I don't think the metaphor is hard to understand. And, I didn't hear an alternative better than "enables", which feels particularly weak to me. This isn't the hill I plan to die on, though, if everyone hates it. I'd still love to hear something more interesting than "enables".
I personally like enables. The reason being that we are going to use this phrase for 5 years.. every day and jargon rarely ages well. [As of 2 weeks ago "lights up" seemed to mean this meme when I asked some people http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/expanding-brain which was "old" by the time I asked it.] But in any case jargon that lights up the neurons usually becomes the "Oh my lord, that old chestnut?" {to use my edwardian jingoism} soon after. Using plain boring language of enables makes sure that if lights up goes from brains expanding to burning down projects in 6 months.. we aren't scrambling to say "no no we don't mean we want to kill all baby kittens because that is what you think it means today"
Platform vs. Platforms / "Supports an Ecosystem"
There was some discussion about whether we build _a_ platform or multiple platforms. And, related, some of the earliest comments were about an ecosystem emphasis. I think the above section actually addresses this — a platform with an ecosystem is exactly the intent, and I really think the draft as proposed carries that well. I'd very much welcome help with additional supplemental and explanatory material, though.
My love of platforms is no hill to die on either.. so I can go with that term :).
Thank you for the counter-feedback.
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