Board efforts: scope, concept, and permission?

[Robyn Bergeron]

On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 9:28 AM, Adam Miller
<maxamillion at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> Hello all,
>    I wanted to bring a few things up and I wanted to bring them up on
> devel at lists.fp.o because this is where most people spend their time.
>
>    First off: "Does letting thousands of contributors do what they
> want have a negative impact on our OS? (Mike)"[0]
> - I would prefer that this be rephrased to a quote I read that
> originated from John Rose (inode0) "isn't it amazing how thousands of
> contributors doing whatever they want created such a spectacular OS?"
> and I would prefer a focus be turned towards something like "Why was
> that the result of doing something that is essentially chaotic?" ....
> I guess my main question is: "Why are we fixing something that isn't
> broken?"
>
>    Second: "The Board has been working on defining a target audience
> for Fedora. In response to this, some people feel that Fedora should
> allow sub-groups to define their own target audience"[1]
> - I don't entirely understand this, don't SIGs or (sub groups)
> essentially exist purely because there is some target audience?
> Clarification on this not would be appreciated.
>
>    Now, we come to the part that I feel is going to be viewed as a
> touchy subject by many..... Why are there words like "letting" and
> "allow" being thrown around so often? I understand there are
> guidelines and policies for certain things of technical or legal
> nature in Fedora, but it feels a little like there is an attempt here
> to dictate how myself, as well as all others, spend their time
> contributing to The Fedora Project.

I don't think the goal is to dictate how the community spends their
time. I'd like to think of it as more of a starting point for
attracting new contributors; "here are our broader goals, how you can
help, and why you should invest your time in our community, rather
than elsewhere."

The open-source concept isn't exactly niche anymore; there is an
increasing number of people out there who want to contribute, but
unlike days long since past where people would contribute because
something was broken or non-existent, they're just here to contribute,
learn how community works.  Finding those potential contributors and
giving them a pathway to success is essential to Fedora's long-term
growth and reaching our goals (whatever those may be).

>
> [0] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Unfinished_Board_issues
> [1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Walters/SpinsSigsRemixes_TargetAudience
>
> I would just like to know other contributors thoughts on these topics.
>
> Thank you for your time,
> -AdamM
>
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