"What is the Fedora Project?"

[Jesse Keating]

On Thu, 2009-10-08 at 12:06 -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
> On 10/08/2009 10:40 AM, inode0 wrote:
> > On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 8:11 AM, Mike McGrath<mmcgrath at redhat.com>  wrote:
> >> Upstream developers regularly come to me (as the Infrastructure Lead)
> >> Looking for additional resources to do X or Y.  I'd like to start
> >> providing that.  This comes both in terms of just guests to do testing, as
> >> well as infrastructure for clients on our installed userbase to do
> >> reporting back for various information.
> 
> > I'm still struggling to understand what sorts of real problems are
> > made easier to solve by the "What is Fedora?" framework. The default
> > spin keeps coming up so I guess either the board isn't happy with how
> > that is working now or thinks additional guidance is needed by those
> > creating it currently? To help alleviate new user/contributor
> > confusion about what Fedora is?
> 
> Knowing what Fedora (or just the default spin) is meant to be and who is 
> it for is really essential for the design team to produce top-notch 
> designs and artwork in a productive and efficient manner.
> 
> E.g., the redesign work we've been doing on the fedoraproject.org 
> website [1] at times has been pretty stressful because there are at 
> least 2 main and oppositional views on what Fedora is and who is it for, 
> and people from the different camps give (at times exceedingly harsh) 
> feedback and criticism of the designs. The problem is, there is no way a 
> design can satisfy one camp without seriously compromising the needs and 
> goals of the others. As a designer, this places me in a very 
> uncomfortable situation.
> 
> The 2 views as I would summarize them are:
> 
> - Fedora is a beautiful, usable desktop for everyone (or at least, we're 
> getting there.) Pandas are okay! We're ready to push to the masses.
> 
> - Fedora is a menagerie of equal spins for highly-technical folks and 
> FOSS developers. Don't you dare insult our intelligence with pandas. Go 
> back to Sesame street.
> 
> Don't get me started on the amount of stress the lack of answers to the 
> fundamental questions here have caused with respect to the Fedora 
> artwork & theming. :)
> 
> The main issue from a design perspective is that if no target is 
> defined, then the target becomes 'everybody' - and I personally feel 
> it's impossible to make a top-notch, beautiful design when trying to 
> please everybody. You need the focus of a specific set of target users' 
> context to be able to make the right decisions in the design process to 
> come up with a good design.
> 
> > I know I probably sound like I'm set against this business, I really
> > just don't see so much of the upside to it as I think you do and I'd
> > like to really understand what its purpose is intended to be.
> 
> I hope the above explanation helps? :/
> 
> ~m
> 
> [1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Website_redesign_2009
> 
> _______________________________________________

I think this accurately sums up many of the conflicts we've been having
over the past many years.  Everything to Everybody == failure.


-- 
Jesse Keating
Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature!
identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/advisory-board/attachments/20091008/a0061f12/attachment.bin