Regarding re branded Fedora Remixes using Fedora community resources.

["Jóhann B. Guðmundsson"]

On 10/28/2010 11:38 AM, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> On 10/28/2010 04:39 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
>>
>> I'm not quite sure how wize it is for a person that uses or atleast used
>> [1] Fedora official channels to promote their own product over Fedora
>> itself should be included in the writing of best practises/guidelines or
>> having any saying in that matter in general unless of course the board
>> approves and thus in a sense promotes such activities.
>>
> I don't know whether you are intentionally doing it but your tone 
> appears to be condescending in many of these mails.

Be it because of my own language barrier or because I'm a very direct 
person by nature and I'm not as subtle as people often would like me to 
be which often make me appear very rude but assure you it's not my 
intention to do so and I apologize if did.

>    I have been involved in creating and maintaining many of the first 
> Fedora Spins and Fedora Remixes and don't view them as individual 
> products but part of the broader Fedora community.  I believe my 
> experience in doing all this puts me in a better position to write 
> such guidelines.   I would admit that I am biased since I did suggest 
> the word "remix" in the first place when the new trademark guidelines 
> were being drafted, but in the absence of any particular policy 
> regarding what should be announced via the Fedora announce list and 
> the long established practise of announcing third party repositories 
> via the same mailing list, I don't see a problem.

As I see it the same should apply to all here ( 3rd party repos 
unoffical remixes ).

> It is a moderated mailing list and if the project has anything against 
> such practises, document the policy and reject announcements that fall 
> outside that.

The policy/documentation/guidelines or lack there off is what's being 
discussed here and what the board needs to revisit review and to make 
sure the don't contradict the overall Fedora mission.

>   For what it is worth, the last release of my remix wasn't announced 
> using that mailing list so I don't particular care about it anyway at 
> this point.

You're action as in posting to the mailing list is only one form of the 
overall problem to deal with.

For instance image if we had 50 remixes out there all of them announcing 
their release to the Fedora mailing lists.

> We as a community cannot have it both ways.

No that's my point.

Where do we draw the line.

When does Fedora not become Fedora any more and those remixes be 
responsible for establishing maintaining their own ecosystem and user 
base and start contributing to the overall pool of open source?

One point is that when Fedora is re-branded to something else and the 
end user is introduced to that brand he will know it by that brands name 
not as Fedora ( That depends on how well or not so well the remix 
authors explain to the end user that he's running Fedora ) so he will 
focus his energy supporting that brand but not Fedora which he might be 
otherwise doing.

>   Fedora Remix as a secondary brand (along with other efforts like 
> generic-logos package) was established precisely to promote the 
> possibility of remixes having seen the value in them.

Could you elaborate which values was initially seen in them?

>   Unless there is evidence of actual problems in a mass scale, I would 
> suggest just establishing best practise guidelines and leave it at that.

To be able to do measurable assessment on how big of a problem this is 
we will need to distinguish unofficial remixes from Official Fedora and 
the only effective means as I see to do so is via updates channels and 
certainly action can be take after these measurements are in place.

>   Remixes are going to be created regardless of what you want to call 
> them.

Dont get me wrong here I'm not questioning the need for remixes their 
function or names for that matter.

They exist because there is a demand for them.

>   All you can possibly do is change the guidelines to withdraw the use 
> of "Fedora Remix" or put rigid guidelines around that which is going 
> to have the same result.

We can also do.

a) Force all remixes to rebuild packages from source as Red Hat makes 
Centos do instead of simply providing them the packages build and ready.
b) Refuse to update Remixes that do not contain the relevant trademark 
packages since they have become unofficial remixes at that point.
c) Setup some form of channel subscriptions where Fedora users where 
subscribed to one channel and unofficial remixes were subscribed to another.

And so on and so fourth.

So that's certainly not all that can be done as you imply.

I personally would like us to go for option c) that would allow Remixes 
to continue more or less as in the form they are but at the same time 
allow us to measure and study thus learn were they are succeeding and we 
are failing so we could gradually fix those issue they are solving by 
making the remix in the first place and hence obsolete the need for that 
remix in the first place.

JBG