[Ambassadors] Going passive

[Matthias Kranz]

On 11/09/2010 12:23 PM, Sascha Thomas Spreitzer wrote:
> Dear Fedorians,

Sascha.

> as I feel frustration about my work in Fedora and I do not agree with
> todays Fedora governance and ruling system I am hereby taking the
> logical step of stopping all my active contributions to this project.

Fedora's "governance and ruling system" was mostly developed based on a
community-driven process. It was initiated by Red Hat, yes, but in the
meantime, the Fedora community is further developing its rules and
policies.

> One major point is that I feel exploited by RedHats installation of
> the Fedora Project and I do not feel it is ok to contribute for a
> companys benefit that is not equal to its project investment.

I wrote similar questions to Jonathan but do you know how much Red Hat
spends for Fedora? Of course, it will become quite difficult to come up
with a mathematical equation but I wonder if anyone of use is really
able to oversee all the investment done by Red Hat.

Fedora is free to use for everybody. For individual people as well as
commercial organizations. Nobody restricts the usage of Fedora. Red Hat
only takes care of certain trademarks and maybe in some cases of
copyrighted material. According to trademark laws Red Hat is enforced to
do it. Otherwise Red Hat would obviously risk to loose the trademark
rights.

I have the feeling that you are frustrated because other members of the
community do not agree with your ideas or the way you are trying to
deploy them. This is how a community works. If you are not able to
convince people then you either have to accept it or you need find a
compromise. Stepping back is like running away. It might be seen by
others as if you were never interested in contributing to the project
but instead were using the project just for your personal development.
Don't get me wrong, contributing to an open source project *and*
personally benefitting from it is not wrong at all. But at the same not
accepting that other people might disagree with you is a contradiction
then.

> Thats why I am saying goodbye, with the following sentence;
> "Microsoft is the evil we know. Novell and Oracle is the evil we got
> to know and Canonical and RedHat is the evil we will get to know."

Sorry, but how can Software companies, companies who employ hundreds of
thousands of people be "evil"? I mean, if you really completely question
the world in economic and political regards then of course, you might
see Fedora and Red Hat as being evil. But then you should stop working,
wasting your time by using evil computer, powered by evil hardware,
powered by evil energy.

> The duties I am leaving open and which will be impacting are;
>
> - EMEA media production (F14 still open?)
> - Dual layer DVD approach
> - some packages
>
> Thank you for the friends I met and made and thank you about the
> lessons I learned about OpenSource and capitalism.

It can't be that bad. Try to overcome your personal frustration. Think
big(ger). Work on personal stuff where you are convinced that you and
hopefully also others value your work. We need people discussing and
arguing about things. We do not need people who step down every time
they think that they lost a battle.

> For the sake of freedom I will be shifting my spare time to projects
> which are ruled by the poeple for the people.

Fair enough if you really think so.

Matthias