Board efforts: scope, concept, and permission?

[John Poelstra]

Adam Miller said the following on 02/02/2010 08:28 AM Pacific Time:
> 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.

Please consider that most of the things you are referring to have not 
been finalized.

>      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?"

We are attempting to address that question too: 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Poelstra/Importance_of_strategy

>      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.

These are *working drafts and in process documents* all the in spirit of 
transparency.  It would be more helpful to these discussions to get 
clarification on advisory-board first rather than conclude that the 
board has run off the rails by using words like "letting" and "allowing" 
in documents that are brainstorming and unfinished.

I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that we've posted all meeting 
recaps to advisory-board list and there has been ZERO discussion or 
inquiries there.  We specifically asked for feedback to the original 
list of "unanswered questions" on advisory-board. Is there a particular 
reason you did not respond there?

http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/advisory-board/2010-January/007886.html

I feel like you are discounting the board's efforts and misdirecting a 
lot energy by launching a new thread here with your "concerns" before 
first getting clarification on advisory-board.

>      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.

Great questions.  Why not ask the original authors first what their core 
motivations and intentions are and if these are their final conclusions 
in the original forum they were presented?  This would be more 
constructive for everyone involved.

John