fedora cloud/server/workstation terminology request
Hi everyone. I have a terminology request.
Red Hat often has to field questions from customers, partners,
analysts, and the public at large about whether Red Hat offers support
for community projects they underwrite, such as Fedora. We in Fedora do
our best to make our community supported model clear to all. [1]
An important part of Red Hat's way of explaining this is to make a
distinction between "products" — sold and supported — and upstream
*projects*. When we in Fedora talk about "products" for the new,
separate Cloud, Server, and Workstation builds, we're not referring to
something sold and supported. Instead, we mean something focused and
more intentionally planned and targeted than before. We obviously have
no designs on the commercial marketplace. But while *we* know that, Red
Hat's product management (see, there's that word) folks are telling me
that casual use of the word "product" by the Fedora team is really
making their job harder and, more importantly, is confusing the
marketplace. We recognize that a great deal of energy over many years
has gone into distinguishing RH's products from community (including
Fedora) projects. It's not our intention, of course, to undermine that
distinction. As a result, I'd like to ask us all to avoid using the
word "product" in Fedora marketing and communications, such as in the
upcoming F21 GA announcement.
We're not, by the way, being asked to expunge the word "product" from
our vocabulary in an Orwellian kind of way — it's okay if it comes up
naturally in internal discussion. But it would be helpful if we stay
mindful of the possible confusion such a word creates in communications
outside the project.
So what should we use instead? I suggest we use the word "flavor" for
our separate builds. This fits nicely in Fedora's (English)
alliterative lexicon. We might also use "variant" or "target" or
"development platform" or whatever where appropriate.
Translators might (rightly) ask how "flavor" would be translated. The
"flavor" idiom may not make sense in every language in the sense of
food. I suggest in case of difficulties, this be translated in the same
way as the term "flavor" is translated when used in particle physics to
describe categories of the subatomic particles called quarks. This is
the same sense we're using, and these categories also have nothing to
do with flavor as it describes food, so the translation should work
fine.
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicating_and_getting_help
--
Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org>
Fedora Project Leader