question for board members

[Jesse Keating]

On Thu, 2010-05-06 at 16:18 -0500, Mike McGrath wrote:
> I joined the board on the platform that I wanted to bring focus to the
> project.  I felt and still feel that our lack of a unified vision has
> caused anyone and everyone to join the project.  Now that they're here and
> have conflicting views on what Fedora should be, we're seeing lots more
> in-fighting because of it.
> 
> In pushing for this unified vision I think I've accomplished just the
> opposite.  The more we as a project thought about the whole "what is
> fedora" "Who is it for", the more divisive a subject it became.  Everyone
> thought their version of Fedora was the right one.  We went in the
> opposing direction of unity.
> 
> We've seen the project continue to grow but scale poorly.  Our packagers
> used to be able to do anything they wanted, now have to follow a process.
> People don't like being told what to do, regardless of if its better for
> the whole or not.  Our processes have gotten more complex and difficult to
> follow, especially for causal packagers while some needed processes still
> don't exist. 

To add to this, it seems to me that we as a project and as project
leaders are too afraid of turning away those that joined under the
'anything goes' time, or rather the time without direction.  When trying
to decide on a direction and goal and vision, we seem just too unwilling
to tell people that what you wanted out of the project just isn't what
we want, and just isn't where we're going.  We're too afraid to turn
people away.

People say that Linux is about choice, and that Fedora should be about
choice and anybody should be able to do anything they want with Fedora.
I pretty strongly oppose this view point.  To paraphrase Adam Jackson a
bit here, Linux is absolutely about choice.  You can choose to build
your own distro, or to use and participate in one of the existing ones.
Fedora does not and should not be about that level of choice.  Fedora is
but one choice in the vast sea of options.  And if you don't like them,
but like some of Fedora, we make it very easy for you to take Fedora and
make your own thing out of it, outside of the project.  I strongly feel
that in order for Fedora as a project and community to continue to
scale, we need some hard direction and real ability to say no, and to
put certain goals above all else.  We may lose some people, and that's
OK, there will be somewhere else for them.  What we will gain is shared
vision, a common goal, and much less infighting about the little things.

When we continue to try to be all things to every person, we continue to
deliver poorly and disappoint everyone nearly equally.

-- 
Jesse Keating
Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature!
identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating
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