[Ambassadors] Promoting other distributions and conflict of interest

[Paul Mellors]

Hello All

I'm a fedora mentor, and an ubuntu user as well, I'll support both
projects, there is no conflict of interest.  If you're representing Fedora
at an event, then you're there for Fedora, it's common sense not to speak
[too much] about ubuntu and vica versa.

I don't think it's a problem one little bit.  just my 2p

Paul [MooDoo]

On 25 February 2015 at 09:37, Sarup Banskota <sbanskota08 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 9:53 AM, Kushal Das <kushaldas at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Just wondering if promoting other distributions (in this case Ubuntu)
> > in public events should be considered as a conflict of interest? This
> > case the same person holds ambassador position in Fedora and similar
> > kind of position in Ubuntu too.
> >
>
> How I see it, promotions can take multiple forms - at times, you're
> doing a full-fledged talk at a conference, another time you're just
> answering questions by curious newbies at a small-scale nearby event
> over a snack. Assuming you're representing Fedora Project, a talk
> normally means you're going to be speaking about Fedora for most of
> it. That's direct promotion - something people expected you to do
> anyway at a Fedora talk. What seems to me as being more effective is
> when you're promoting it when you weren't expected to - you know, like
> at a personal choice discussion. That's the interesting bit to study.
>
> Often, when I'm done speaking at a FLOSS-oriented event about Fedora,
> the question I'm asked is, "Why Fedora and why not Ubuntu?" - or a
> variant of that. Note that this is a different question from "Why do
> *you* use/promote Fedora and not Ubuntu".
>
> Answering the second question is easy. They're asking about *my*
> opinion, so I can talk about what works for me, without worrying about
> whether I have crossed boundaries of promotion so much that I'm now
> demoting the other. It's my opinion after all.
>
> Answering the first is tricky, more so if you're representing a
> community. You want to highlight the distribution you just did a talk
> about (or you're generally known for talking about), but here you are
> comparing it with another distribution, which when you look at from
> the curious person's perspective, offers a reasonable set of similar
> features, shares principles, and probably has an intersecting
> community. The route I like to take is to first talk about the
> features I know that Fedorans are proud of, objectively. e.g. the four
> F's, communication with upstream, remixing capability, and some of the
> generic software Fedorans have had a significant role in driving. I
> _never_ say "Ubuntu doesn't have this", because for one, I don't
> really know, and two, it seems like demoting another competitor. And
> then (shh, don't tell anyone, ok?), I move the conversation to "Why I
> use Fedora" - which is probably a different set of reasons for
> everybody.
>
> Why am I bringing this up?
>
> Several times, there will be a troll in the crowd who wants to argue
> that something about Fedora I mentioned is present in their favorite
> (non Fedora) distribution, or how "Fedora copied this from Windows" or
> "You can game on Windows but you can't on Fedora". If I were to join
> that argument, it's going to be a mess - I'm only advocating why I
> support Fedora, not why everyone should, so why is the troll picking
> on me? In those scenarios, it helps when someone from each of those
> communities is present and speaks about why that kind of analogy isn't
> fair and mostly wrong.
>
> That's why, I feel that ambassadors across communities don't always
> have to be a negative phenomenon. But such an ambassador really needs
> to know what he/she is talking about, and the art of promoting the
> right thing at the right time. You can be an ambassador for Ubuntu and
> Fedora, sure; but you can't be always talking about why Ubuntu is the
> "best" distribution (or even Fedora, for that matter).
>
> Thanks! Sorry about the long one!
> --
> ambassadors mailing list
> ambassadors at lists.fedoraproject.org
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/ambassadors
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/ambassadors/attachments/20150225/4a47a894/attachment.html>