As you may be aware, the Fedora Project Board is trying to set a more clear vision for what Fedora is, and should be going forward. One aspect of this conversation is Fedora's target audience. As Spins and Remixes specifically seek to use Fedora to reach a particular audience or cater to specific use cases, we seek your input to help guide our thinking.
Your responses to these questions would be appreciated. Fellow Board member Colin Walters and I have agreed to poll the Spins SIG and report back to the Strategic Working Group and the Board as a whole.
Board-level Question: Can Spins/SIGS or Fedora remixes define their own target audience?
Background
The Board has been working on defining a target audience for Fedora. In response to this, some people feel that Fedora should allow sub-groups to define their own target audience. Or even more strongly that Spins/SIGs should be the only groups defining target audience; in other words, the Board should not be defining one. An example mail supporting this position is this mail from Toshio [1].
However, the potential conflict between a Board target audience and a SIG target audience is still theoretical. No SIG appears to have explicitly disagreed with the "working" target audience proposal.
Possible Solutions
1. Board sets target audience broadly, spins tailor to a subset thereof.
2. Board sets target audience broadly, spins tailor to either a subset thereof, or to additional audiences outside that scope so long as there are no conflicts.
3. Board does not set target audience, leaves it to each Spin to set their specific target audience. 1. requires spins to be much more than consumers of Fedora content. 2. audience of some spins may overlap. That's OK. 3. audience of some spins may technically conflict. How to resolve conflicts? Spins SIG -> FESCo -> Board.
As members of the Spins SIG, how do you view the above, and how would you like to see Spins interact with the larger Project with respect to defining target audiences?
Board-level Question: Can Spins/SIGS or Fedora remixes change the code enough to meet their goals?
Background
In the present situation, Spins must take all of their content from the official Fedora repositories. Remixes may take content from wherever, and modify as they see fit, but may not use the primary Fedora trademarks.
Questions for Spins and the Spins SIG
Given the present situation:
1. Has any Spin found the present situation unduly restrictive? 1. If so, how specifically? 2. Has any Spin found they cannot address their target audience properly? 1. If so, in what way? 2. Is the root problem that all packages must be in the official repositories? 3. How are you addressing this today? 4. How would you like to address this in the future? 5. Are the resources you would need readily available? 1. If not, what would you need to properly address this? 6. Is the transition from "Spin" to "Remix" onerous? 1. If so, what can be done to make it less so?
[1] http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/advisory-board/2009-October/007430....
Thanks, Matt & Colin
On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 20:46:30 -0600, Matt Domsch matt@domsch.com wrote:
Your responses to these questions would be appreciated. Fellow Board member Colin Walters and I have agreed to poll the Spins SIG and report back to the Strategic Working Group and the Board as a whole.
We can probably take this up at our Monday meeting.
But I would like it clarified if you are looking for a consensus response from the SIG or if you are soliciting individual responses from the Spin owners?
On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 09:14:27PM -0600, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 20:46:30 -0600, Matt Domsch matt@domsch.com wrote:
Your responses to these questions would be appreciated. Fellow Board member Colin Walters and I have agreed to poll the Spins SIG and report back to the Strategic Working Group and the Board as a whole.
We can probably take this up at our Monday meeting.
But I would like it clarified if you are looking for a consensus response from the SIG or if you are soliciting individual responses from the Spin owners?
I would hope there would be consensus from the SIG as a whole, but could fully believe there not to be. I'd like the SIG to respond, but to also note, where consensus is not achieved what those differences are.
If individual members would care to respond on the spins@ list, I think that would be an appropriate vehicle for coming to consensus.
On Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:46:30 -0600 Matt Domsch matt@domsch.com wrote:
As you may be aware, the Fedora Project Board is trying to set a more clear vision for what Fedora is, and should be going forward. One aspect of this conversation is Fedora's target audience. As Spins and Remixes specifically seek to use Fedora to reach a particular audience or cater to specific use cases, we seek your input to help guide our thinking.
Your responses to these questions would be appreciated. Fellow Board member Colin Walters and I have agreed to poll the Spins SIG and report back to the Strategic Working Group and the Board as a whole.
Board-level Question: Can Spins/SIGS or Fedora remixes define their own target audience?
I would think so.
Background
The Board has been working on defining a target audience for Fedora. In response to this, some people feel that Fedora should allow sub-groups to define their own target audience. Or even more strongly that Spins/SIGs should be the only groups defining target audience; in other words, the Board should not be defining one. An example mail supporting this position is this mail from Toshio [1].
However, the potential conflict between a Board target audience and a SIG target audience is still theoretical. No SIG appears to have explicitly disagreed with the "working" target audience proposal.
Possible Solutions
- Board sets target audience broadly, spins tailor to a subset
thereof.
This would stifle a spin that had a audience that happened to be outside whatever the target was set to, for no real gain, IMHO.
- Board sets target audience broadly, spins tailor to either a
subset thereof, or to additional audiences outside that scope so long as there are no conflicts.
I perfer this one.
- Board does not set target audience, leaves it to each Spin to
set their specific target audience. 1. requires spins to be much more than consumers of Fedora content. 2. audience of some spins may overlap. That's OK. 3. audience of some spins may technically conflict. How to resolve conflicts? Spins SIG -> FESCo -> Board.
I guess this one is ok too.
As members of the Spins SIG, how do you view the above, and how would you like to see Spins interact with the larger Project with respect to defining target audiences?
Each spin should define their audience. It shouldn't be anything opposed to Fedora's goals (ie, should be free software, etc).
Board-level Question: Can Spins/SIGS or Fedora remixes change the code enough to meet their goals?
Sure.
Background
In the present situation, Spins must take all of their content from the official Fedora repositories. Remixes may take content from wherever, and modify as they see fit, but may not use the primary Fedora trademarks.
Questions for Spins and the Spins SIG
Given the present situation:
- Has any Spin found the present situation unduly restrictive?
- If so, how specifically?
Not here.
- Has any Spin found they cannot address their target audience properly?
official repositories?
- If so, in what way?
- Is the root problem that all packages must be in the
Not here.
- How are you addressing this today?
- How would you like to address this in the future?
- Are the resources you would need readily available?
- If not, what would you need to properly address this?
- Is the transition from "Spin" to "Remix" onerous?
- If so, what can be done to make it less so?
I don't do any remixes, and I think anything called Fedora should use it's pool of packages.
In the event of a conflict between spins/groups, they should discuss a technical solution, if none can be worked out they can bring it to fesco, if nothing can happen there it can be taken to the Board. I think the number of such cases is very small and not worth worrying about. :)
kevin
On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 20:46:30 -0600, Matt Domsch matt@domsch.com wrote:
Board-level Question: Can Spins/SIGS or Fedora remixes change the code enough to meet their goals?
One thing that would be useful to have a few of the games packages split out. There are two cases for this, bundles where I only want select games from the bundle (e.g. mahjong from kdegames-minimal) and games that are very large where have a demo with a scenario or two would allow me to showcase the game without tying up too much space on the image. I haven't bugged people about this too much as I have other areas for improvement on the games spin and other things Fedora related, that I don't have time to help make that happen and it's a low priority. Still it might serve as an example of a case where packaging needs are different for a specific spin than Fedora as a whole.
On 02/15/2010 03:46 AM, Matt Domsch wrote:
As you may be aware, the Fedora Project Board is trying to set a more clear vision for what Fedora is, and should be going forward. One aspect of this conversation is Fedora's target audience. As Spins and Remixes specifically seek to use Fedora to reach a particular audience or cater to specific use cases, we seek your input to help guide our thinking.
Your responses to these questions would be appreciated. Fellow Board member Colin Walters and I have agreed to poll the Spins SIG and report back to the Strategic Working Group and the Board as a whole.
Board-level Question: Can Spins/SIGS or Fedora remixes define their own target audience?
Yes, they can now, and the Spins SIG would want the Spins to be able to define such target audiences for themselves in the future.
Spins are specifically aimed at one or more target audiences, which may or may be a niche target audience.
If you look at the Appliance OS spin, then obviously the target audience is less broad then with, say, the XFCE Spin. The very same goes with the Design Suite Spin, the Electronic Labs Spin, etcetera.
The liberty for each Spin to define its own target audience is key to the success of having Spins as part of the Fedora Project in general, and a Spin's success particularly.
To match any target audience of a Spin with the target audience(s) of the Fedora Project as a whole would just be added overhead and bureaucracy, especially since we're unaware of any existing or definitive target audience(s) as of yet.
Board-level Question: Can Spins/SIGS or Fedora remixes change the code enough to meet their goals?
The Spins are not allowed to change code in terms of patching. Either the spin uses what is available in Fedora, or the spin is not accepted (and might go the Re-Mix route). If fixes need to be performed, the proper way is through "bugzilla.redhat.com" and "cvs.fedoraproject.org".
Questions for Spins and the Spins SIG
Given the present situation:
- Has any Spin found the present situation unduly restrictive?
- If so, how specifically?
Up and until now, no genuine Fedora Spin has ever had trouble with the technical requirements and semantic restrictions set forth in the Spin Guidelines.
- Has any Spin found they cannot address their target audience properly?
I've not heard of a Fedora Spin that has had any problem reaching their target audience, related to the Fedora Project. The new spins.fp.o website has helped spin maintainers and enthusiasts reach their respective target audiences way better then ever before, though.
- How are you addressing this today?
- How would you like to address this in the future?
- Are the resources you would need readily available?
- If not, what would you need to properly address this?
- Is the transition from "Spin" to "Remix" onerous?
- If so, what can be done to make it less so?
Remixes are completely out of our purview. The sole purpose of the Spins SIG is to facilitate, maintain and develop the Spins processes, from mainly a technical point of view (kickstart and test cases).
Kind regards,
Jeroen van Meeuwen
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Bruno Wolff III -
Jeroen van Meeuwen -
Kevin Fenzi -
Matt Domsch