Defining the target audience (Was Re: low-hanging fruit)

[Soeren Sandmann Pedersen]

Dave Jones <davej at redhat.com> writes:

> On Fri, Aug 17, 2007 at 11:56:56AM -0400, David Zeuthen wrote:
>  
>  > want to make a difference with this new derived distribution we need to
>  > have a target audience and optimize the experience for this audience
>  > instead of the rather direction-less "catch-all-audiences" thing we've
>  > been doing with Fedora so far. 
> 
> The problem I see with defining _a_ target audience is that it by
> nature, precludes other audiences.  We have to have at least some
> part of the 'catch all audiences' thing going on, or we lose a segment
> of our userbase to other distros which cater to their needs.

Fedora already excludes people, for example Gentoo users. They want to
compile everything with CFLAGS tailored to their system, and Fedora is
not helpful to them at all.

The desire to use ricer CFLAGS is a _legitimate_ one. You can argue
(and I'd agree) that it is largely a waste of time, but clearly some
people disagree, and placebo really does work. That doesn't mean
Fedora should support it. It's perfectly fine to say "Fedora is not
for you, maybe Gentoo or Slackware are better choices". If it means
Fedora can spend more time on things that actually matter to more
people, then it's a win for everybody involved.

If you agree that excluding Gentoo users is the right decision, then
the question is not "do we exclude people?", but "who do we exclude?"

If Fedora is the "fast-moving, innovative desktop" which is always
first with new, exciting technology, then you exclude people who don't
want to be guinea pigs. That is a fine decision, but people then need
to realize that the userbase is then *inherently* smaller than
Ubuntu's and "becoming more popular than Ubuntu" will not be possible.

On the other hand "Not computer expert" is not a target since it fits
99% of the world and basically only serves to exclude current
users.


Soren