Fedora Board Strategic Working Group

[Luke Macken]

On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 03:03:13PM -0500, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 11:29:06AM -0600, Mike McGrath wrote:
> > On Tue, 12 Jan 2010, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> > 
> > > 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.
> > >
> > > 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.
> > 
> > Pretend you're on the desktop team.  You've got lots of people working
> > with you and are going to spend the next 3 years on something.  Is it
> > going to be features or usability?  Sure it's a mix of both, but when an
> > issue comes up that that will either sacrifice usability for a feature,
> > or will sacrifice a feature for usability what do you do?  You can't
> > answer that question without a target audience or what is Fedora (the OS).
> > 
> > At the moment though we seem to be sacrificing usability for features,
> > that may be right or it may be wrong for Fedora.  I have no idea and
> > neither can anyone else without some focus.
> > 
> I absolutely agree that there should be a target audience for a SIG to
> effectively decide what to work on.  However, that definition should be
> decided on by the individual SIGs, not by the Board.  The Board's job should
> be to balance the needs of the various SIGs since they share the package
> collection and therefore need to figure out how to work together in that
> space.
> 
> The Board should be an enabler, a servant leader, for those who are doing
> the work and driving their pieces of the overall Fedora Project forward.
> Defining a target audience for the whole Fedora Project limits the people
> who feel they can provide vision to the Project.

Well stated, Toshio.  I completely agree.

> >   *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).
> > >
> > 
> > The funny thing here is I think spins are a detriment to Fedora.  We
> > pretend they're useful and interesting but they're really not.  If we
> > describe them as "a subset of what is in the Everything/ directory" which
> > is what they are, they're not at all compelling.
> > 
> Spins aren't best described as a subset of the packages in the Everything
> repo.  A better description is that they are a particular group of
> contributors' vision of what an operating system should look like.  This
> seems like a compelling way of filling that niche.

Right, spins are much more than just a subset of packages.  Sure, you
have the base desktop spins like xfce, lxde, gnome, moblin, sugar, kde,
but you also have higher level spins built on top of those.  These
spins, such the electronics lab, security lab, or the design suite, are
custom molded operating systems designed to lower the bar for
accomplishing a common subset of tasks, by not only providing custom
menus and defaults, but ideally by fostering a community of contributers
and users that are passionate about using Fedora to solve many different
types of problems.

I don't see spins as being a detriment to Fedora, actually quite the
opposite.  I see them as helping us cultivate a variety of
sub-communities that help to make it easy to do incredible things with
Fedora.  With these these sub-communities each with their own clearly
defined goals, the question of our unified "Target Audience" disappears,
as we now have many.

luke