What are we doing wrong? WAS Re: ubuntu marketing

[Jonathan Roberts]

>  We fix the problem by
>   standing here and reminding people that Europe is not immune to this
>   threat. It's real damn easy to pretend the problem is just a US
>   issue...its not. Its a looming legal issue everywhere. We don't win
>   long term by ignoring it.  We'll have this same discussion every
>   single release cycle.. and I'm okay with that. Patents are the biggest
>   problem facing the open source ecosystem, and I'd rather have Fedora
>   stand here and be a beacon for rational, passionate, discussion on the
>   issue, than to just side step the issue for the sake of collecting a
>   few more users in our userbase.
>
>
>   I do not need to beat another linux distribution in terms of users for
>   Fedora to achieve is core goals of fostering open innovation.
>   I need 'enough' users... i need 'enough' upstream developers.. i need
>   'enough' maintainers.. I need 'enough' triagers... I need
> 'enough'
>   artists... I need 'enough writers...I need 'enough' translators....
>   and give them 'enough' open infrastructure by which to communicate as
>   partners in the process of open innovation.
>
>   What I don't need is proprietary software.
>
>   I don't need to be greedy for Fedora to reach its prime objectives. I
>   am perfectly okay with other distribution existing and being popular.
>   The future of ALL linux distributions runs through what is happening
>   as part of Fedora...and I'm perfectly happy with that. 
OK, how about we try and turn this thread into some positive energy!?

What's been said, that Fedora is here to take a stand and to help try
and change the legal issues that cause problems for those of us who
want to be creative and share with each other, is very true. I believe
that the majority of Fedora's contributing community are here and
taking part because they support this view. Jef's also said that this
conversation comes up during every release cycle - and even I've been
around long enough to see that this is true - so we must be doing
something wrong, somewhere, in communicating this part of our mission
to the outside world and newer members of our community.

The questions I now have are:

* Where are we going wrong currently?
* How can we make changes to improve this?

The best selling point, imho, for free software is the freedom's that
it affords us. Likewise, Fedora's strongest selling point is the stand
it takes to help defend and make these freedoms available to anybody
who wants them. So how can we promote this better? I might reply to my
own thread in a while with my thoughts on this!

Best wishes,

Jon

[Mohd Izhar Firdaus Ismail]

On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 12:15 AM, Jonathan Roberts
<jonathan.roberts.uk(a)googlemail.com&gt; wrote:
>  > We fix the problem by
>   >  standing here and reminding people that Europe is not immune to this
>   >  threat. It's real damn easy to pretend the problem is just a US
>   >  issue...its not. Its a looming legal issue everywhere. We don't win
>   >  long term by ignoring it.  We'll have this same discussion every
>   >  single release cycle.. and I'm okay with that. Patents are the biggest
>   >  problem facing the open source ecosystem, and I'd rather have Fedora
>   >  stand here and be a beacon for rational, passionate, discussion on the
>   >  issue, than to just side step the issue for the sake of collecting a
>   >  few more users in our userbase.
>   >
>   >
>   >  I do not need to beat another linux distribution in terms of users for
>   >  Fedora to achieve is core goals of fostering open innovation.
>   >  I need 'enough' users... i need 'enough' upstream developers.. i
> need
>   >  'enough' maintainers.. I need 'enough' triagers... I need
> 'enough'
>   >  artists... I need 'enough writers...I need 'enough' translators....
>   >  and give them 'enough' open infrastructure by which to communicate as
>   >  partners in the process of open innovation.
>   >
>   >  What I don't need is proprietary software.
>   >
>   >  I don't need to be greedy for Fedora to reach its prime objectives. I
>   >  am perfectly okay with other distribution existing and being popular.
>   >  The future of ALL linux distributions runs through what is happening
>   >  as part of Fedora...and I'm perfectly happy with that.
>
>   OK, how about we try and turn this thread into some positive energy!?
>
>   What's been said, that Fedora is here to take a stand and to help try
>   and change the legal issues that cause problems for those of us who
>   want to be creative and share with each other, is very true. I believe
>   that the majority of Fedora's contributing community are here and
>   taking part because they support this view. Jef's also said that this
>   conversation comes up during every release cycle - and even I've been
>   around long enough to see that this is true - so we must be doing
>   something wrong, somewhere, in communicating this part of our mission
>   to the outside world and newer members of our community.
>
>   The questions I now have are:
>
>   * Where are we going wrong currently?
>   * How can we make changes to improve this?
>
>   The best selling point, imho, for free software is the freedom's that
>   it affords us. Likewise, Fedora's strongest selling point is the stand
>   it takes to help defend and make these freedoms available to anybody
>   who wants them. So how can we promote this better? I might reply to my
>   own thread in a while with my thoughts on this!
>  
updates on -stable branch goes too fast! :P (well, at least thats the
complain which I hear quite frequent). This caused regression
problems. Things work at first, but breaks after an update. Being in
fedora stable to them feels like being in -devel branch of other
distros.

Maybe revise the update policy?.

>   Best wishes,
>
>   Jon
>
>   --
>   Fedora-marketing-list mailing list
>   Fedora-marketing-list(a)redhat.com
>   https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list
>  


-- 
Mohd Izhar Firdaus Bin Ismail
Amano Hikaru
天野晃 「あまの ひかる」
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MohdIzharFirdaus
http://blog.kagesenshi.org
92C2 B295 B40B B3DC 6866  5011 5BD2 584A 8A5D 7331

[Michael Beckwith]

Welcome to the bleeding edge.

Mohd Izhar Firdaus Ismail wrote:
>  On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 12:15 AM, Jonathan Roberts
>  <jonathan.roberts.uk(a)googlemail.com&gt; wrote:
>    
> >> We fix the problem by
> >>       
> >  >  standing here and reminding people that Europe is not immune to this
> >  >  threat. It's real damn easy to pretend the problem is just a US
> >  >  issue...its not. Its a looming legal issue everywhere. We don't win
> >  >  long term by ignoring it.  We'll have this same discussion every
> >  >  single release cycle.. and I'm okay with that. Patents are the biggest
> >  >  problem facing the open source ecosystem, and I'd rather have Fedora
> >  >  stand here and be a beacon for rational, passionate, discussion on the
> >  >  issue, than to just side step the issue for the sake of collecting a
> >  >  few more users in our userbase.
> >  >
> >  >
> >  >  I do not need to beat another linux distribution in terms of users for
> >  >  Fedora to achieve is core goals of fostering open innovation.
> >  >  I need 'enough' users... i need 'enough' upstream developers..
> i need
> >  >  'enough' maintainers.. I need 'enough' triagers... I need
> 'enough'
> >  >  artists... I need 'enough writers...I need 'enough'
> translators....
> >  >  and give them 'enough' open infrastructure by which to communicate as
> >  >  partners in the process of open innovation.
> >  >
> >  >  What I don't need is proprietary software.
> >  >
> >  >  I don't need to be greedy for Fedora to reach its prime objectives. I
> >  >  am perfectly okay with other distribution existing and being popular.
> >  >  The future of ALL linux distributions runs through what is happening
> >  >  as part of Fedora...and I'm perfectly happy with that.
> >
> >  OK, how about we try and turn this thread into some positive energy!?
> >
> >  What's been said, that Fedora is here to take a stand and to help try
> >  and change the legal issues that cause problems for those of us who
> >  want to be creative and share with each other, is very true. I believe
> >  that the majority of Fedora's contributing community are here and
> >  taking part because they support this view. Jef's also said that this
> >  conversation comes up during every release cycle - and even I've been
> >  around long enough to see that this is true - so we must be doing
> >  something wrong, somewhere, in communicating this part of our mission
> >  to the outside world and newer members of our community.
> >
> >  The questions I now have are:
> >
> >  * Where are we going wrong currently?
> >  * How can we make changes to improve this?
> >
> >  The best selling point, imho, for free software is the freedom's that
> >  it affords us. Likewise, Fedora's strongest selling point is the stand
> >  it takes to help defend and make these freedoms available to anybody
> >  who wants them. So how can we promote this better? I might reply to my
> >  own thread in a while with my thoughts on this!
> >
> >     
>
>  updates on -stable branch goes too fast! :P (well, at least thats the
>  complain which I hear quite frequent). This caused regression
>  problems. Things work at first, but breaks after an update. Being in
>  fedora stable to them feels like being in -devel branch of other
>  distros.
>
>  Maybe revise the update policy?.
>
>    
> >  Best wishes,
> >
> >  Jon
> >
> >  --
> >  Fedora-marketing-list mailing list
> >  Fedora-marketing-list(a)redhat.com
> >  https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list
> >
> >      
-- 
~Michael
http://ridleytx.structed.net (for now)
http://michaelbox.net (eventually)

[Jesse Keating]

On Sat, 23 Feb 2008 12:49:38 -0600
Michael Beckwith <michael.d.beckwith(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

>  Welcome to the bleeding edge. 
That's the problem.  Rawhide is the bleeding edge, not our stable
releases.  I've brought this up many times before that we do way too
many updates to our stable releases.  Unfortunately I get daggers
thrown at me by the maintainers.

-- 
Jesse Keating RHCE      (jkeating.livejournal.com)
Fedora Project          (fedoraproject.org/wiki/JesseKeating)
GPG Public Key          (geek.j2solutions.net/jkeating.j2solutions.pub)

[Michael Beckwith]

I can see your frustration now that I think about it. I'm more used to 
thinking of "Fedora" as bleeding edge, but you're drawing a line saying 
that "Fedora Rawhide" should be the more bleeding edge one and "Fedora 
$version_number" being a bit less consistently updated. *throws daggers 
at Ubuntu*

Jesse Keating wrote:
>  On Sat, 23 Feb 2008 12:49:38 -0600
>  Michael Beckwith <michael.d.beckwith(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>
>    
> > Welcome to the bleeding edge.
> >     
>
>  That's the problem.  Rawhide is the bleeding edge, not our stable
>  releases.  I've brought this up many times before that we do way too
>  many updates to our stable releases.  Unfortunately I get daggers
>  thrown at me by the maintainers.
>
>     

-- 
~Michael
http://ridleytx.structed.net (for now)
http://michaelbox.net (eventually)

[Brian Pepple]

On Sat, 2008-02-23 at 15:16 -0500, Jesse Keating wrote:
>  On Sat, 23 Feb 2008 12:49:38 -0600
>  Michael Beckwith <michael.d.beckwith(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  
>  > Welcome to the bleeding edge.
>  
>  That's the problem.  Rawhide is the bleeding edge, not our stable
>  releases.  I've brought this up many times before that we do way too
>  many updates to our stable releases.  Unfortunately I get daggers
>  thrown at me by the maintainers. 
Totally agree with you.  Unfortunately, we seem to be in the minority.

/B
-- 
Brian Pepple <bpepple(a)fedoraproject.org&gt;

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BrianPepple
gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 810CC15E
BD5E 6F9E 8688 E668 8F5B  CBDE 326A E936 810C C15E
>

[Rahul Sundaram]

Brian Pepple wrote:
>  On Sat, 2008-02-23 at 15:16 -0500, Jesse Keating wrote:
> > On Sat, 23 Feb 2008 12:49:38 -0600
> > Michael Beckwith <michael.d.beckwith(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
> >
> >> Welcome to the bleeding edge.
> > That's the problem.  Rawhide is the bleeding edge, not our stable
> > releases.  I've brought this up many times before that we do way too
> > many updates to our stable releases.  Unfortunately I get daggers
> > thrown at me by the maintainers.
>  
>  Totally agree with you.  Unfortunately, we seem to be in the minority. 
Draft up a good generic update policy and pass it via FESCo?

Rahul

[Jesse Keating]

On Sun, 24 Feb 2008 03:13:49 +0530
Rahul Sundaram <sundaram(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; wrote:

>  Draft up a good generic update policy and pass it via FESCo? 
Won't do much good if such a policy evokes a revolt by the maintainers.

-- 
Jesse Keating RHCE      (jkeating.livejournal.com)
Fedora Project          (fedoraproject.org/wiki/JesseKeating)
GPG Public Key          (geek.j2solutions.net/jkeating.j2solutions.pub)

[Rahul Sundaram]

Jesse Keating wrote:
>  On Sun, 24 Feb 2008 03:13:49 +0530
>  Rahul Sundaram <sundaram(a)fedoraproject.org&gt; wrote:
>  
> > Draft up a good generic update policy and pass it via FESCo?
>  
>  Won't do much good if such a policy evokes a revolt by the maintainers 
You wouldn't know unless we tried. Here is what we tried last time and 
dropped long back.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/UpdatesPolicy

Rahul

[Jef Spaleta]

On Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 7:15 AM, Jonathan Roberts
>   * Where are we going wrong currently? 
that is too open a question...
did you mean what are we doing wrong in terms of marketing.
If you dont narrow the scope of the question this is just going to
become a gripefest.
You want to get something positive out of this... be narrow...minded.

-jef

[Michael Beckwith]

I basically think we keep going back to the idea of catering to the 
newest of users without bothering to explain as much as possible why 
Fedora does it this way, instead of looking to and asking the users to 
realize that the way they've thought about computers and the software 
they use isn't as simple and easy as it really is, and thus ask them to 
learn, do some research, and perhaps change the way they think.

On a lot of the earlier arguements, which I have been reading through. 
Fedora out-of-the-box provides NOTHING but FREE AND OPEN AND LEGAL 
software. It stays like that until it hits the DVD/CD drive of the user. 
After that, it's up to the user to install what codecs, libraries, 
software, etc they want. There are people out there who do their best to 
encourage sticking to just the FOSS stuff for that, but there are ways 
out there to get them, and people who will give some bit of help. After 
that, it's up to each user to actually go through with it. If people 
want nothing but easy 1-click installation for all the proprietary 
formats they want, then maybe Fedora isn't for them.

Jonathan Roberts wrote:
> > We fix the problem by
> >  standing here and reminding people that Europe is not immune to this
> >  threat. It's real damn easy to pretend the problem is just a US
> >  issue...its not. Its a looming legal issue everywhere. We don't win
> >  long term by ignoring it.  We'll have this same discussion every
> >  single release cycle.. and I'm okay with that. Patents are the biggest
> >  problem facing the open source ecosystem, and I'd rather have Fedora
> >  stand here and be a beacon for rational, passionate, discussion on the
> >  issue, than to just side step the issue for the sake of collecting a
> >  few more users in our userbase.
> >
> >
> >  I do not need to beat another linux distribution in terms of users for
> >  Fedora to achieve is core goals of fostering open innovation.
> >  I need 'enough' users... i need 'enough' upstream developers.. i
> need
> >  'enough' maintainers.. I need 'enough' triagers... I need
> 'enough'
> >  artists... I need 'enough writers...I need 'enough' translators....
> >  and give them 'enough' open infrastructure by which to communicate as
> >  partners in the process of open innovation.
> >
> >  What I don't need is proprietary software.
> >
> >  I don't need to be greedy for Fedora to reach its prime objectives. I
> >  am perfectly okay with other distribution existing and being popular.
> >  The future of ALL linux distributions runs through what is happening
> >  as part of Fedora...and I'm perfectly happy with that.
> >     
>
>  OK, how about we try and turn this thread into some positive energy!?
>
>  What's been said, that Fedora is here to take a stand and to help try
>  and change the legal issues that cause problems for those of us who
>  want to be creative and share with each other, is very true. I believe
>  that the majority of Fedora's contributing community are here and
>  taking part because they support this view. Jef's also said that this
>  conversation comes up during every release cycle - and even I've been
>  around long enough to see that this is true - so we must be doing
>  something wrong, somewhere, in communicating this part of our mission
>  to the outside world and newer members of our community.
>
>  The questions I now have are:
>
>  * Where are we going wrong currently?
>  * How can we make changes to improve this?
>
>  The best selling point, imho, for free software is the freedom's that
>  it affords us. Likewise, Fedora's strongest selling point is the stand
>  it takes to help defend and make these freedoms available to anybody
>  who wants them. So how can we promote this better? I might reply to my
>  own thread in a while with my thoughts on this!
>
>  Best wishes,
>
>  Jon
>
>     

-- 
~Michael
http://ridleytx.structed.net (for now)
http://michaelbox.net (eventually)