Board efforts: scope, concept, and permission?

[Mike McGrath]

On Tue, 2 Feb 2010, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:

> 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.
>

Because there's a thousand of us, you and I alone would come up with
different ideas of what we're producing.  I suspect the same for everyone.

> 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.
>

So who says what that audience should be?  We as a group are failing, I
hope I'm wrong, but I really don't think I am.  We need leadership and
don't have it.

> 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.
>

This is an excellent example.  Ford has several audiences and several
products.  Now, imagine a world where Ford is forced to only produce one
product.  That's the world we're in right now.  Lots of different people,
lots of different needs yet we pretend we can produce something for all of
them.

	-Mike