Response to "Getting Fedora Out of the If-Then Loop"

Máirín Duffy duffy at fedoraproject.org
Thu Feb 18 15:59:59 UTC 2010


Hi John,

On Wed, 2010-02-17 at 12:24 -0600, inode0 wrote:
> I hope no one believes this is anyone's intention or a certain outcome
> of setting the target audience. This is not my argument against
> setting a target audience but it is something I think might result
> from doing so. It also might not result from it, we are all guessing
> in this hypothetical what if we do this world currently but we bring
> different experiences and instincts to the table. The advocates of
> setting a target audience are guessing using their best judgment that
> this and that will happen as a result and those outcomes are good.
> Others see different outcomes in the future. We won't ever know until
> we try it and see what really happens. We can discuss it until we are
> Fedora blue in the face but we won't know until we do it.
> 
> I do want to make my argument against it more clear. I think of the
> Fedora Project structurally something like an inverted pyramid with
> the contributors at the top and the steering committees and the board
> at the little point at the bottom. This picture of our structure isn't
> intended to marginalize the roles of those sitting at the bottom
> point. They are critical to keeping the pyramid from tipping over. But
> it is intended to convey the importance to the project of all those
> other contributors above them in the pyramid.
> 
> What is the role of those at the top of the pyramid? Is it only to
> scratch personal itches? I see it as much more than that. A large
> group of people each with their own peculiar interests, having shared
> core beliefs and values, as a whole provide direction in a way that
> doesn't happen in other organizations. They might not write down a
> mission statement for the organization, but they do *have* a mission.
> I expressed the exact same concern I have now when the board was
> writing the mission statement. I asked the board if they were writing
> *their* mission statement for the project of if they were trying to
> capture the actual mission that existed already and was told it was
> the latter. So I think the board recognized then that the mission was
> defined by those above them in the pyramid and the board did the work
> of figuring out what that mission actually was and wrote it down.

I think one issue here, is that at least from where I stand as an
interaction designer concerned about the user experience of Fedora
end-product of the community's efforts, I believed in my work on the
target-audience project that we are seeking to define the target
audience of 'Fedora, the end-product we put together as a community and
make available to the world outside of our community to draw folks in.'
I do not think the project was ever meant to (and someone please correct
me if I'm wrong) define the target audience for 'Fedora the community.'

The two are quite different, and I think the communication breakdowns
that have happened around the project is due to their being treated
synonymously.

The Fedora community necessarily has a very different target audience
than Fedora the thing you boot up on your computer. For one, the latter
target audience is much more expansive than the former - as it should
be. Let me know if this sounds completely out-of-line, but I had thought
part of the Fedora mission statement was:

"The Fedora Project consistently seeks to create, improve, and spread
free/libre code and content." [1]

Do we mean only to spread free/libre code and content to folks who are
in the target audience for becoming contributors? That seems wrong to
me. We limit ourselves to folks who have the skills or time to learn the
skills and time to put into contributing back, which honestly is quite a
filter on top of the potential body of folks who could potentially use
Fedora. Do we want a very high ratio of Fedora users : Fedora
contributors - 

1) Do we want it to be 80% of Fedora users are Fedora contributors but
the total number of people involved is 100,000?

2) Do we want it to be 8% of Fedora users are Fedora contributors but
the total number of people involved is 1,000,000?

Here's the thing. In scenario #1 we would have 80,000 contributors. In
scenario #2, we would have 80,000 as well, yet we would have spread
free/libre content to 900,000 more people - 10x the number as in
scenario #1. And consider some of the

It we want to pursue scenario #2 (which I desperately want to do since
my personal life mission is to spread free/libre code and content) we'd
have 920,000 folks using Fedora who would be much more likely due to
Fedora culture to perhaps not contribute back to Fedora itself, but
perhaps contribute back free/open content into a wider global community
of people.

> In the same way there is already a target audience defined by the
> project. In the same way it isn't written down and in the same way
> that our mission may have been unclear to some our target audience is
> unclear. The difference this time is that the board is *defining* it
> as they want it to be rather than figuring out what it is and writing
> that down. This is my perception at least of what is happening.

Target audience for the project != Target audience for the end-product
the project puts out.
> 
> The board has reasons for doing this and has identified a wide variety
> of positive benefits that can flow from doing it and I don't dispute
> those although I don't know if this is the only way to accomplish
> those ends. What I fear though is that this distorts the natural
> growth and direction that the project would take in the future. And I
> have more faith in the existing source of that direction than I do in
> a small board that changes composition every 6 months.

If we only stare at our own navels though and put out an end-product
primarily focused towards catering to ourselves, how will we meet our
mission of spreading free/libre code & content?

Thank you for the very thoughtful response, John. I think the organic
nature of Fedora-the-project, Fedora-the-community is fine and I don't
want to threaten that in any way. I do think, though, as an interaction
designer and user experience practitioner, we need to get more serious
about the end-product (or at least, the 'premiere' or 'main'
end-product) we use as a vehicle to spread free/libre content to folks
who, for various reasons, would greatly benefit from free code & content
but just cannot contribute back or become part of the
'Fedora-the-project' community. Moving forward, I think communications
about the 'target audience project' should be more specific in defining
the project as 'the target audience of Fedora the end-product' and NOT
interfere with any notions of the target audience for the community
itself.

Does any of this make sense?

~m



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