10:42 a.m.
Hi
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20070910#feature
"The first step would be for Spevack (and other distribution project
managers) to admit that Ubuntu has done something right. The second
would be to recognise that popularity isn't "fanboyism." It's all very
nice to say in an interview that "our distribution is the best and that
people will eventually notice." The uneasy truth is, however, that
people aren't choosing Fedora, Mandriva or openSUSE, they are choosing
Ubuntu. And while it's great to see so much enthusiasm for a Linux
distro, I feel uneasy about the growing dominance of one sole project,
no matter how good, user-friendly or innovative it is."
Rahul
11:18 a.m.
On Mon, Sep 10, 2007 at 09:12:09PM +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
This bugs me:
"ThinkPads booting into Ubuntu, and not Fedora, might soon be available from
the computer stores near you. If that does not make Spevack at least mildly
jealous, then I don't know what does."
Why do so many people seem to want the distros to be jealous of each other?
Ubuntu is doing their thing. Fedora is doing their thing. Those things
aren't really the same thing. They each have their niche in the Linux
ecosystem, and the successes and contributions of each distro are on the
whole good for all the other distros too.
If Fedora's user base never grew by a single additional user, but the
project continued to make valuable contributions to the Linux community, and
continued to push the development of quality open source software forward,
then the project would still be a resounding success. Ubuntu's numbers have
absolutely nothing to do with Fedora's success.
- Paul
--
Paul Stauffer <paulds(a)bu.edu>
Manager of Research Computing
Computer Science Department
Boston University
11:24 a.m.
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Paul Stauffer wrote:
If Fedora's user base never grew by a single additional user, but
the
project continued to make valuable contributions to the Linux community, and
continued to push the development of quality open source software forward,
then the project would still be a resounding success. Ubuntu's numbers have
absolutely nothing to do with Fedora's success.
Oh Lord !! I love this statement. Well said and encore...
:Sankarshan
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2:15 p.m.
Its not about jealousy in between distros.
It's about what making Ubuntu different that it reach lot more people than
Fedora. Obviously, they have done something good in their distro and with
their marketing that they are getting such acceptance.
I don't want to see Fedora being a niche distro, I want to see people using
it on their desktop.
Browsing, emailing, watching movie, listening to songs, playing games etc.
Ofcourse, different distros will contribute in different level and I have no
doubt Fedora makes significant contribution.
But when new people are not coming to Fedora or Fedora is choice of very
small amount of user, then I would say that project have some problem. Also,
it means that project was successful but not at that moment.
Your current success does not stay much long. We always need to do something
better to even keep that success level.
And from marketing point of view its a disaster that you are getting new
client and losing market share.
We must be inventive and find new ways to make Fedora reach lot more people.
With new people, you get stronger, fresh minds interested in you invest
their time and money in you.
I hope always remember this and its always what people thinks about matters,
how they perceive you.
Cheers,
Imtiaz Rahi
On 9/10/07, Paul Stauffer <paulds(a)bu.edu> wrote:
On Mon, Sep 10, 2007 at 09:12:09PM +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20070910#feature
This bugs me:
"ThinkPads booting into Ubuntu, and not Fedora, might soon be available
from
the computer stores near you. If that does not make Spevack at least
mildly
jealous, then I don't know what does."
Why do so many people seem to want the distros to be jealous of each
other?
Ubuntu is doing their thing. Fedora is doing their thing. Those things
aren't really the same thing. They each have their niche in the Linux
ecosystem, and the successes and contributions of each distro are on the
whole good for all the other distros too.
If Fedora's user base never grew by a single additional user, but the
project continued to make valuable contributions to the Linux community,
and
continued to push the development of quality open source software forward,
then the project would still be a resounding success. Ubuntu's numbers
have
absolutely nothing to do with Fedora's success.
- Paul
--
Paul Stauffer <paulds(a)bu.edu>
Manager of Research Computing
Computer Science Department
Boston University
--
Fedora-marketing-list mailing list
Fedora-marketing-list(a)redhat.com
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list
4:20 p.m.
El mar, 11-09-2007 a las 01:15 +0600, Imtiaz Rahi escribió:
Its not about jealousy in between distros.
It's about what making Ubuntu different that it reach lot more people
than Fedora. Obviously, they have done something good in their distro
and with their marketing that they are getting such acceptance.
+1
I don't want to see Fedora being a niche distro, I want to see
people
using it on their desktop.
Browsing, emailing, watching movie, listening to songs, playing games
etc.
+1
But I'm afraid that, inside the developers group and old gurus, the
current against that is the majority one, if you had some doubts, please
have a look at the interesting thread that comes from several days in
the main fedora list (users).. This issue isn't treated directly, but
is in the background, if you read some comments carefully.
Your current success does not stay much long. We always need to do
something better to even keep that success level.
True
And from marketing point of view its a disaster that you are getting
new client and losing market share.
We must be inventive and find new ways to make Fedora reach lot more
people.
110% agree
With new people, you get stronger, fresh minds interested in you
invest their time and money in you.
I hope always remember this and its always what people thinks about
matters, how they perceive you.
Cheers,
Imtiaz Rahi
Daniel
4:09 p.m.
El lun, 10-09-2007 a las 12:18 -0400, Paul Stauffer escribió:
This bugs me:
"ThinkPads booting into Ubuntu, and not Fedora, might soon be available from
the computer stores near you. If that does not make Spevack at least mildly
jealous, then I don't know what does."
Why do so many people seem to want the distros to be jealous of each other?
Ubuntu is doing their thing. Fedora is doing their thing. Those things
aren't really the same thing. They each have their niche in the Linux
ecosystem, and the successes and contributions of each distro are on the
whole good for all the other distros too.
If Fedora's user base never grew by a single additional user, but the
project continued to make valuable contributions to the Linux community, and
continued to push the development of quality open source software forward,
then the project would still be a resounding success. Ubuntu's numbers have
absolutely nothing to do with Fedora's success.
- Paul
--
Paul Stauffer <paulds(a)bu.edu>
Manager of Research Computing
Computer Science Department
Boston University
:-))) :-)))
Clouds, clouds, clouds, ...
Daniel
11:33 a.m.
On 9/10/07, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Am I stupid ?
This article doesn't talk about any feature introduced by any projects at all.
Where's the email of the writer ?
Chitlesh
--
http://clunixchit.blogspot.com
11:47 a.m.
Chitlesh GOORAH wrote:
On 9/10/07, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20070910#feature
Am I stupid ?
This article doesn't talk about any feature introduced by any projects at all.
My understanding is that it is an attempt to emphasize on the value of
popularity. I don't necessary agree with the view point but it is a
valid perspective and a common one.
Where's the email of the writer ?
ladislav(a)distrowatch.com
Rahul
11:59 a.m.
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Rahul Sundaram wrote:
My understanding is that it is an attempt to emphasize on the value
of
popularity. I don't necessary agree with the view point but it is a
valid perspective and a common one.
It is a valid perspective and a common one and since the past 3 months
we have been doing this hoop on a regular basis - so, is it worth
spending so much time upon ? From what I understand, we plan to
"contribute value" irrespective of popular press going ga-ga or
lamenting our perceived (?) lack of popularity. Sure we don't get
preloaded on Dell/HP boxen, sure we are not part of UMPC, sure we don't
seem to be on the lips of every oh-so-cool aspiring user - but we
contribute and we value that more. Let's step back - accept that and
move on.
The alternative is MAD
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12:42 a.m.
Rahul Sundaram wrote:
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20070910#feature
"The first step would be for Spevack (and other distribution project
managers) to admit that Ubuntu has done something right. The second
would be to recognise that popularity isn't "fanboyism." It's all very
nice to say in an interview that "our distribution is the best and that
people will eventually notice."
There is one thing about Fedora and its lack of fanboyism: do you
realize the fanboy of today is the potential developer or decision maker
of tomorrow?
This is why I think a distro should not reject but embrace fanboys.
--
nicu :: http://nicubunu.ro :: http://nicubunu.blogspot.com
Cool Fedora wallpapers: http://fedora.nicubunu.ro/wallpapers/
Open Clip Art Library: http://www.openclipart.org
my Fedora stuff: http://fedora.nicubunu.ro
1:39 a.m.
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Nicu Buculei wrote:
There is one thing about Fedora and its lack of fanboyism: do you
realize the fanboy of today is the potential developer or decision maker
of tomorrow?
This is why I think a distro should not reject but embrace fanboys.
Pertinent point - so what would you be doing to embrace the developers
of tomorrow ?
:Sankarshan
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3:17 a.m.
Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote:
Nicu Buculei wrote:
> There is one thing about Fedora and its lack of fanboyism: do you
> realize the fanboy of today is the potential developer or decision maker
> of tomorrow?
> This is why I think a distro should not reject but embrace fanboys.
Pertinent point - so what would you be doing to embrace the developers
of tomorrow ?
And here I think lies the mistake: don't focus on future developers,
focus on enthusiastic users (don't dismiss them as 'fanboys'), the large
majority will remain users and this is fine, they may deploy Fedora or
RHEL in their workplace if they are familiar with it and this is all,
other will become (directly or indirectly) contributors: developers,
documentation writers, artists etc.
A contribution to Fedora can be as small as an addition to a Wikipedia
article, a screencast on YouTube, a small how-to posted in an obscure
forum or a link on Digg front page - those are the things "fanboys" do
and they are useful for the project.
--
nicu :: http://nicubunu.ro :: http://nicubunu.blogspot.com
Cool Fedora wallpapers: http://fedora.nicubunu.ro/wallpapers/
Open Clip Art Library: http://www.openclipart.org
my Fedora stuff: http://fedora.nicubunu.ro
4:31 a.m.
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Nicu Buculei wrote:
And here I think lies the mistake: don't focus on future
developers,
I thought you had written that today's fanboy is tomorrow's potential
developer, however leaving that aside - what do you think would be a
compelling reason for new users to choose Fedora or existing users (from
other distributions) to shift to Fedora ?
focus on enthusiastic users (don't dismiss them as
'fanboys'), the large
majority will remain users and this is fine, they may deploy Fedora or
RHEL in their workplace if they are familiar with it and this is all,
other will become (directly or indirectly) contributors: developers,
documentation writers, artists etc.
The Ambassadors normally emphasize the message that "no contribution is
too small, even *you* can contribute" - however, as you pointed out this
is not getting as much impact as it should have been. Given that we
spend inordinate amounts of time going over "Fedora is losing ground
..." threads, there has to be either a truth to it or a perception bias.
We have had Max (among others) saying that Fedora's contribution is
projected to be more of a torchbearer and not the users per country
kind. In short, we might need to look at the definition of popularity
when it comes to Fedora. Accepting all that, how do you think we can
also push the users/contributors per country count up since that appears
to be how various external Linux sites claim to measure popularity ?
A contribution to Fedora can be as small as an addition to a
Wikipedia
article, a screencast on YouTube, a small how-to posted in an obscure
forum or a link on Digg front page - those are the things "fanboys" do
and they are useful for the project.
ACK
- --
You see things; and you say 'Why?';
But I dream things that never were;
and I say 'Why not?' - George Bernard Shaw
www.linkedin.com/in/sankarshan
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4:54 a.m.
Le Mar 11 septembre 2007 11:31, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay a écrit :
We have had Max (among others) saying that Fedora's contribution
is
projected to be more of a torchbearer and not the users per country
kind. In short, we might need to look at the definition of popularity
when it comes to Fedora.
Fedora is a very technically oriented distribution. It makes hard
choices which are difficult to convey to users without technical
understanding. That means the job of a Fedora ambassador is *harder*
than in other distributions.
That being said it's no reason to redefine popularity. We've chosen a
harder road but will fail as much as any other distribution if we
can't grow our userbase, and attract talents in countries which are
ignoring Fedora today.
IMHO Fedora ambassadors need to coordinate more closely with the
distribution technical teams, which communicate in English. That means
deputising people to hang on the tech lists, and then figure how to
present what the tech people are working on.
--
Nicolas Mailhot
5:06 a.m.
Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote:
Nicu Buculei wrote:
> And here I think lies the mistake: don't focus on future developers,
I thought you had written that today's fanboy is tomorrow's potential
developer, however leaving that aside - what do you think would be a
Yes, but it should have been "contributor" instead of "developer"
compelling reason for new users to choose Fedora or existing users
(from
other distributions) to shift to Fedora ?
To put it bluntly, for the most part people are sheep, they go with the
herd. Usually a new user will look at the most popular distro and go
with it, being afraid to be in the minority (you can argue, using Linux
you already are in the minority, but you may not want to be in the
smallest minority).
Another thing is to increase visibility. All of us should write more
about our successes and accomplishments.
And we should not avoid competition. How we can expect users to come
from other distros when our message is "we don't compete"? Competition
is not war or a bad thing, she should be proud to say "we are better
than distro X because our advantages are Y and Z"
The Ambassadors normally emphasize the message that "no
contribution is
too small, even *you* can contribute" - however, as you pointed out this
is not getting as much impact as it should have been. Given that we
spend inordinate amounts of time going over "Fedora is losing ground
..." threads, there has to be either a truth to it or a perception bias.
We know for a fact the install count for F7 is about 80% compared with
FC6, so far we have only these two counted, will be able to see a trend
some time after the F8 release when we get more data.
We have had Max (among others) saying that Fedora's contribution
is
projected to be more of a torchbearer and not the users per country
kind. In short, we might need to look at the definition of popularity
when it comes to Fedora. Accepting all that, how do you think we can
also push the users/contributors per country count up since that appears
to be how various external Linux sites claim to measure popularity ?
The thing is, usually developers follow the users. If the user base is
shrinking, then proportionally the number of developers will shrink.
Here is an anecdotal example: recently on the Inkscape development
mailing list recently was a talk about the date for the next release.
The *only* distro that mattered in this talk was Ubuntu and when to
release to get in Ubuntu (one or two years ago it was not the same).
Why? my guess is: because developers are users too and the majority of
Inkscape developers migrated from other distros to Ubuntu.
--
nicu :: http://nicubunu.ro :: http://nicubunu.blogspot.com
Cool Fedora wallpapers: http://fedora.nicubunu.ro/wallpapers/
Open Clip Art Library: http://www.openclipart.org
my Fedora stuff: http://fedora.nicubunu.ro
5:20 a.m.
In response to this thread, and the question of how best to advertise
the good work that Fedora is doing, how about a series of interviews
(e-mail/VoiP/whatever) with individual developers who are working on
key features planned for Fedora 8? It would be a great way to promote
key features of Fedora (why it's better than $distro), the work people
are doing to contribute back upstream, and the cool people who make
this community so good...
We could submit them to Digg/FSDaily/Slashdot and try and get a bit of
publicity from them.
Thoughts?
Jon
5:24 a.m.
Jonathan Roberts wrote:
In response to this thread, and the question of how best to
advertise
the good work that Fedora is doing, how about a series of interviews
(e-mail/VoiP/whatever) with individual developers who are working on
key features planned for Fedora 8? It would be a great way to promote
key features of Fedora (why it's better than $distro), the work people
are doing to contribute back upstream, and the cool people who make
this community so good...
We could submit them to Digg/FSDaily/Slashdot and try and get a bit of
publicity from them.
Sure, excellent idea. I think the best format is text or video.
It could be a series of weekly interviews starting this week and going
until the release day, to build up momentum.
--
nicu :: http://nicubunu.ro :: http://nicubunu.blogspot.com
Cool Fedora wallpapers: http://fedora.nicubunu.ro/wallpapers/
Open Clip Art Library: http://www.openclipart.org
my Fedora stuff: http://fedora.nicubunu.ro
5:32 a.m.
Sure, excellent idea. I think the best format is text or video.
It could be a series of weekly interviews starting this week and going
until the release day, to build up momentum.
In that case I'd recommend text - e-mail interviews so to speak? Happy
to help with this as I've got some experience doing a few for FSM...
Jon
--
nicu :: http://nicubunu.ro :: http://nicubunu.blogspot.com
Cool Fedora wallpapers: http://fedora.nicubunu.ro/wallpapers/
Open Clip Art Library: http://www.openclipart.org
my Fedora stuff: http://fedora.nicubunu.ro
--
Fedora-marketing-list mailing list
Fedora-marketing-list(a)redhat.com
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list
6:48 a.m.
Jonathan Roberts wrote:
> Sure, excellent idea. I think the best format is text or video.
> It could be a series of weekly interviews starting this week and going
> until the release day, to build up momentum.
In that case I'd recommend text - e-mail interviews so to speak? Happy
to help with this as I've got some experience doing a few for FSM...
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/8/FeatureList. Contact the spec
owners for the all the major features and start interviewing them. Some
of them like the new system-config-firewall are not on that list but we
can get to them slowly.
Also see https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Interviews for a couple of
earlier ones. Use FWN and blogs to spread them.
Rahul
7:12 a.m.
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Rahul Sundaram wrote:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/8/FeatureList. Contact the
spec
owners for the all the major features and start interviewing them. Some
of them like the new system-config-firewall are not on that list but we
can get to them slowly.
Let's focus beyond the developers too towards the i18n and l10n teams
and how they think their work makes Fedora "the" OS
- --
You see things; and you say 'Why?';
But I dream things that never were;
and I say 'Why not?' - George Bernard Shaw
www.linkedin.com/in/sankarshan
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7:17 a.m.
Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote:
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Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/8/FeatureList. Contact the spec
> owners for the all the major features and start interviewing them. Some
> of them like the new system-config-firewall are not on that list but we
> can get to them slowly.
Let's focus beyond the developers too towards the i18n and l10n teams
and how they think their work makes Fedora "the" OS
It isn't just development. Transifex is one of the features that helps
L10N for example but if you are having a series of interviews for Fedora
8 features then most of it is bound to be new development.
Rahul
7:20 a.m.
Let's focus beyond the developers too towards the i18n and l10n
teams
and how they think their work makes Fedora "the" OS
Cool idea :D Perhaps expand this to docs people etc as well - though I
guess we need to be careful not to spread too thinly?
Would be good for interviews about features to be accompanied by
screenshots/casts demonstrating the feature in use too. Thinking back
to time with FSM, interviews never make the most popular articles, but
if we could add the twist of "previews" to them it might help...
I'm sending e-mails to owners of the first three features on the list
now asking if they'd be happy to be involved. Will need some help
working through the rest of the list though, if anybody is game?
Jon
7:29 a.m.
What sort of help? I am available.
Well, if we could divide the list up between a group of us so I didn't
have to do all 23+ would be useful :D
I'm fairly happy to do this whatever, but I have been pulling back on
any long term commitments as I'm on the verge of loosing a lot of time
in about 3 weeks; I guess if I get lots of the interviews done in the
next few weeks it shouldn't be a problem...
Jon
2:59 p.m.
On Mon, 10 Sep 2007, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20070910#feature
"The first step would be for Spevack (and other distribution project
managers) to admit that Ubuntu has done something right. The second
would be to recognise that popularity isn't "fanboyism." It's all very
nice to say in an interview that "our distribution is the best and
that people will eventually notice." The uneasy truth is, however,
that people aren't choosing Fedora, Mandriva or openSUSE, they are
choosing Ubuntu. And while it's great to see so much enthusiasm for a
Linux distro, I feel uneasy about the growing dominance of one sole
project, no matter how good, user-friendly or innovative it is."
For better or worse:
http://spevack.livejournal.com/26654.html
--Max
6069
days inactive
6070
days old
marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org
24 comments
10 participants
participants (10)
-
Chitlesh GOORAH -
Imtiaz Rahi -
Jonathan Roberts -
M Daniel R Magarzo -
Max Spevack -
Nicolas Mailhot -
Nicu Buculei -
Paul Stauffer -
Rahul Sundaram -
Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay