Fedora Board Strategic Working Group

[John Poelstra]

Toshio Kuratomi said the following on 01/12/2010 08:40 AM Pacific Time:
> On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 12:39:49AM -0500, Jon Stanley wrote:
>> On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 12:24 AM, Toshio Kuratomi<a.badger at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>> There are potential issues.  For instance, when the Desktop spin wanted to
>>> move to PolicyKit-1.0 and said that they'd veto a PoicyKit-compat package to
>>> allow KDE applications to work.  Or when zope was dropped from the
>>> repositories because it wasn't ported to python2.5 and we didn't want to
>>> have a python-2.4 compat package.  There have also been times when certain
>>> compilation options on one package were needed to allow other packages to
>>> function but, because of the dependencies that the compilation options
>>> brought in, that package didn't want to do so.
>>
>> Good points - but where and how do we draw the line between something
>> that's acceptable to be called Fedora and something that is not?
>>
> I like the line of "in the Fedora repositories" but I'm warning that
> sometimes we keep things (that are free software and legal to ship in the
> US) outside of the Fedora repositories and that limits what a spin can do.
> When we discuss a target audience we have to be careful that we continue to
> make it possible for other audiences to be addressed by having ways to
> mediate these differences.  Deciding that the default spin is more important
> than any other spin and that the default target audience is more important
> than any other audience is dangerous as we start making decisions based on
> the importance to the target audience instead of on how the decision enables
> more contributors to do the work that's important to them.
>

Why is it "dangerous" to have a focus?  What will be the consequences 
one year, two years, five years from now?

This has been raised a number of times in these threads.  It's making 
things too binary (one way or the other) to say that we cannot "Enable 
more contributors do the things that are important to them" AND be more 
focused in our default distro offering.  We can do both.

> I see things a bit differently from poelcat in that I think that having the
> Board define a target audience for Fedora is not beneficial.  In fact, it is
> detrimental to Fedora.  *Individual spins* (including the default spin)
> would definitely benefit from targeting specific audiences but the Board and
> FESCo's responsibility is to help all the sub-communities that make up
> Fedora be able to derive usable products from the Fedora Package Collection.
> This means mediating disputes, drumming up support for switching base parts
> of our architecture (like moving from SysVinit to upstart), and defining the
> absolute limitations that the Fedora Project will follow (free software,
> legality within the US).

It would be helpful to first state what you understand my position to be 
and to use more specific in your usage of "Feodra."

To be clear, I believe the Fedora Project needs to define a target 
audience for the Fedora Distribution which is currently understood to be 
the "default spin" or "Gnome desktop".

Just because I think we need to be clearer about who we create our 
default distro offering for does not mean I advocate neglecting other 
creations of the Fedora Project or stifling innovation.  The Fedora 
Project is a big place. :)

> If there's any audience that should be targeted for Fedora, the Project, it
> is the people who want to create a free software operating system.  Those
> people can then define audiences that their individual spins and SIGs will
> target.  The Board can mediate disputes because they're tasked with
> providing an environment in which people can build the free software
> operating systems that are right for them.
>

I'm not advocating continued discussion of the target audience for "The 
Fedora Project."  I understood that topic to be resolved a while back.

John