Board efforts: scope, concept, and permission?

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On Tue, Feb 02, 2010 at 04:16:30PM -0600, Mike McGrath wrote:
> On Tue, 2 Feb 2010, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> >
> > > Not to reduce the debate to too much of a soundbite, but it almost
> > > seems like attempting to decide whether we want Fedora to be Debian,
> > > or to be something useful for users of it. I'd always pick the latter...
> > >
> > The problem with this sound bite is that Fedora Project and Fedora product
> > get mixed up.  Users use a Fedora product.  The Fedora Project attracts the
> > contributors who make various Fedora products.  You can't continue to be an
> > attractive place for people wanting to experiment with creating different
> > visions that don't necessarily appeal to the target audience if they're
> > always going to be a second class citizen.
> >
> 
> These are 3 if's and they're impossible to say for sure right now but over
> time we'll know:
> 
> If we don't have a coherent vision for what our products are and who they
> are for..
> 
Let's cut this off right at the top :-)  If a vision for what our products
are is a problem why don't we have the people producing the products explain
their vision?  I keep saying that vision for products needs to come from the
people producing those products, not from the Board or FESCo.

I agree with things like Robin's statement of how having a target audience
helps to market a product.  What I think is wrong is to have the Fedora Board
define the target audience that then constrains all of the products that
Fedora produces.

I know we're all sick of car analogies but let's try one on for size.
If Ford mandated that the target audience for the Ford brand should be
soccer moms and anytime a conflict arose the decision that was friendlier to
soccer moms was chosen we'd have a lot of people who weren't satisfied with
the next generation of trucks, muscle cars, or economy cars.

-Toshio
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