fedora mission (was Re: systemd and changes)

[James Hubbard]

On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 7:52 PM, Bob Arendt <rda at rincon.com> wrote:
> On 08/27/10 16:09, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
>> On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 2:47 PM, Bob Arendt<rda at rincon.com>  wrote:
>>> Actually I think Fedora *should* articulate who the users are, basically
>>> design and express who and what Fedora is designed for.
>> <snip>
>>> I think it would be much better for Fedora to decide what it *should* be,
>>> specifically what the Fedora userspace should be, and excel at that.
>>
>> You have contradicted yourself a little bit here. And maybe its a
>> language barrier so I'll be explicit.
>>
>> Who the users are now and who our users should be are not necessarily
>> the same group. Polling our current user-base doesn't necessarily help
>> us define who are users should be. And similarly polling our current
>> user-base doesn't necessarily help us identify what we need to do
>> better to better find and serve the users who should be using Fedora.
>> Nor does it necessarily help us focus on the needs on any particular
>> group that currently exists. We have some users who want A. We have
>> some users who want B. That's what a survey will tell us, it won't
>> help us judge the value of A relative to the value of B as a focus.
>>
>> -jef
>
> My first statement was poorly phrased.  Fedora should state it's principles,
> properties, use-cases, plant it's flag, and call for users that are
> interested in these characteristics to rally around it.  Fedora seems to do
> this from time to time;  My point is that it  should continue to do this.
> The real people who should decide that direction are the contributors - it's
> where the project's strength and energy comes from.  Developers, testers, etc.
> Poll your contributors - polling the userbase adds noise. Fedora should
> stick with it's Meritocratic roots.

Isn't this what you're asking for?  Seems like this same discussion
happened last year and this was the result.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User_base

Polling your users, via a posting on one of the lists isn't going to
work.  Most of the people that I work with that are using Fedora don't
even bother to follow the mailing lists.   The best bet is to put
polls on the start page of the browser and that only works if they've
not changed their homepage. Market research firms get paid lots of
money to try to do this. Their results for measuring the community in
general is pretty weak.

For my part I think the User Base is a reasonable expectation for new
users and that might be as good as it gets.  Of course, I don't have
too many issues with wha'ts happening.  Even though there are a lot of
updates, I expect to be on the edge and I'm okay with that.