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

inode0 inode0 at gmail.com
Fri Feb 19 19:18:05 UTC 2010


On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 12:51 PM, Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

This is really the hard part. The people doing this work don't see
this change and can't understand why other people do because they
understand what the work is intended to accomplish and how that work
fits into a much bigger picture. Someone heavily involved in a
favorite Fedora Project cubby hole who reads a blog about this one day
and reads a mailing list discussion another day sees little snippets
of the work without perhaps much or any of the background and gets a
sense of something that isn't happening. Explanations like you give
below I think should go a long way to dispelling misperceptions like
these if they reach the affected audience.

I'll leave it quoted in hopes another hit-and-run pair of eyes might
come across it.

> 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.

John


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