Fedora vision & more specific goals

[Máirín Duffy]

On Tue, 2010-11-16 at 23:19 +0100, Christoph Wickert wrote:
> How do you want to attract people with the right skillset when you are
> at the same time trying to attract people that are not even able to
> understand simple descriptions in the update viewer?
> 
> I mean, if this [1] is your target audience, where do the skilled people
> come from?

Some of the bubbles in the diagram you reference were meant to be funny.
That being said, I personally see the vast majority of that PackageKit
screenshot as useless information that in many cases I honestly don't
understand. E.g., I really don't know what glib-packagekit does, nor do
I feel I should have to. That does not mean I am not a skilled person,
nor does it mean people annoyed by the flood of information are
unskilled either.

"Glib libraries for accessing packagekit" <= this is a "simple"
description, sure, in that in tells me nothing practice or useful about
what it is for or why I would want to bother updating it.

"Device rebind functionality for PackageKit" <= I honestly have no clue
what this means. I don't understand what devices have to do with
PackageKit. Maybe it has something to do with HW drivers. In that case,
a better description would be, "Enables automatic device driver
installation via PackageKit" or some such.

That being said, I think this is a tangent. You unfortunately used a
reference to a personal opinion on my personal wiki page. It is not a
reference to any official Board statement or decision. So I would like
to suggest putting this example to rest as continuing to hash on it in
this discussion is not going to be productive.

> Please don't get me wrong: I like the ideas you outlined, but as Jesse
> said we need developers to make them happen. Recently the board has
> defined a new target audience that IMHO is not compatible with what you
> are proposing here.

I feel a little frustrated because it seems like folks interested in
expanding our reach to more desktop users seem to feel our target
audience statement only caters to 'techies,' while folks who would like
to see Fedora focus on more technically-sophisticated users feel the
target audience statement focuses too much on 'newbies.' So let's take a
look at what the statement the board came up with [1]:

"Our contributors are numbered among this user base. This class is not a
statement of our present Project membership, but is rather a goal we are
instituting for the Fedora distribution in the future.

    * Voluntary Linux consumer
    * Computer-friendly
    * Likely collaborator
    * General productivity user 

The Board considers these aspects applicable to the work of the entire
Fedora Project. The Board will encourage process changes where
appropriate to ensure we are meeting the needs of as many members of
this class as possible."

Someone who is voluntarily using Linux and who is a likely collaborator
describes a lot of the developers I work with.

~m

[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User_base