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

Jeff Spaleta jspaleta at gmail.com
Fri Feb 19 18:51:31 UTC 2010


On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 9:05 AM, inode0 <inode0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> But, as Greg pointed out in this thread (with my possibly completely
> wrong interpretation), contributors during discussions like these get
> a sense that the wind is changing direction and can feel that their
> efforts are being marginalized or that they are not as appreciated as
> they have been in the past.

I don't really see a direction change, what I am seeing across
multiple board time periods is a refinement on how to structure the
project to balance both technology breadth and user experience focus.
I see no evidence in a break in appreciation with regard to multiple
spin efforts or a change in direction. I think there needs to be some
historical perspective here concerning the long long road into
formalizing the role of alternative spins..even the longest lived one
the KDE spin.

Things are so much better now than 2 or 3 years ago.
spins.fedoraproject.org is a huge advance in making it possible for
dedicated spin creators to get their work out in front of people, tell
the story of their work and to get the recognition they deserve under
the banner of the Fedora project.

Can we do better at striking that balance? Always. I personally
believe the next step is to come back and to examine what the default
spin is and is meant to be. The discussion about the default user
experience focus is GOOD. It needs to happen.

And both Mo's and Greg's points about resource burn are important.
Yes we will be burning resources on the default spin that can not be
used by alternative spins as part of the focus. And yes those
resources are not completely transferable across technological
boundaries into the work the alternative spin contributors are doing.
But if we can make sure we build up processes and teams in the right
way we will have the ability to have a user experience team that we(as
a larger community) can then plugin additional technology experts into
to work with the alternative spins in a release or two.

User Experience and Design service expertise can grow outward to help
alternative spin developers based on demand and contributor
desire...once there's a good vision in place for what defines a Fedora
user experience. But its intractable to start trying to do impact
everything out of the gate.  We start by taking a really critical look
at what our default spin is meant to be and grow from there.


-jef"Any change in wind direction seems a big change when you start
with an isotropic wind"spaleta


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