Empowering Fedora sub-communities

[Matthew Miller]

On Thu, Apr 03, 2014 at 04:58:51AM -0400, Christian Schaller wrote:
> I actually like this idea a lot, although what I would have us do in such
> a scenario is make 'Fedora' the output of the Base working group.
> 
> And then have any products set themselves up with a new brand and identity
> and just have a 'powered by Fedora' subline or something like that.

I think this is an interesting possibility as a final state, and I don't
think it would be bad for Fedora to go in this direction. However, in the
big picture right now, I think fragmentation and lack of cohesive
communication across the project are much bigger issues than individualized
branding. We have to get that in order, and guarantee that we still feel
part of a common cause. When we have a solid foundation there, this becomes
more of a possibility without risk of everything falling apart.

Mind you, I'm not saying the foundation is terrible, but, you know, it's 120
years old in Internet years, some cracks are showing, and it needs some
investment. And, practically speaking, my concrete (sorry, pun kind of
intended — I haven't been getting enough sleep) recommendation is to make
sure that the community hub Máirín and Ryan and web team are working on gets
the resources needed to really succeed. That's not a magical solution on its
own, but is a huge missing piece.


> Basically every product becomes a remix at that point which to me actually
> would make a lot of sense. Of course we could have certain products do
> some kind of brand clustering, but that would be solely up to each
> individual project of course, because such decisions wouldn't really be
> any of 'Fedoras' business anymore.

That last part doesn't sound positive at all. Maybe it's just the phrasing,
but this sounds like the _opposite_ of what Matthew Garrett just said about
Fedora-the-community being much larger than Fedora-the-product. I don't
think we benefit from shrinking the Fedora name.

-- 
Matthew Miller    --   Fedora Project    --    <mattdm at fedoraproject.org>
                                  "Tepid change for the somewhat better!"