Best distribution for developers? (was Re: Board efforts: scope, concept, and permission?)

inode0 inode0 at gmail.com
Thu Feb 4 16:34:01 UTC 2010


On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 8:41 AM, David Malcolm <dmalcolm at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-02-03 at 20:51 -0600, Mike McGrath wrote:
>> On Wed, 3 Feb 2010, inode0 wrote:
>> > Sadly they don't have categories like the best linux distribution for
>> > developers there.
>>
>> Is that what we're doing?  If so would we win it?
>
> (Apologies for diving into this thread, this got me thinking)
>
> "best linux distribution for developer" seems too vague to me to be
> achievable.  I think there are different categories of developer.

Well, according to the above analysis it is achievable if linux.com
says we are. But even if we assume we are in fact the best linux
distribution for developers or for engineers or for graduate students
in scientific fields or for whatever it doesn't follow that we want to
have that group in mind for a target audience for any particular
product of the distribution (at least I find it inconceivable those
would be target audiences of the default desktop).

Even if we change the focus to identifying a target audience for the
project, which is where I think "developers" would rank very high on
the list your analysis is valid. We don't appeal to all developers as
a project either.

Do we focus on a narrow achievable target audience that it is
realistic for us to be the best for now? I bet that would result in a
worsening of the perceived crisis. Or should we focus on a group with
broad appeal that while perhaps not ever being achievable will lessen
the indicators of the crisis? Or do we go about our business
attracting, say, recreational FOSS python developers who as a
side-effect of adding cool feature X to the Fedora distribution also
add less visible things Y and Z to make the life of a python developer
using Fedora better?

I always, perhaps mistakenly, thought the point of the default spin
was to showcase the work of the developers, artists, documentation
writers, and others who are contributing so much to the Fedora
Project. Who is supposed to find that sort of showcase interesting? Or
is that just a quaint old notion of the output of a project in its
infancy? It probably is ...

John


More information about the devel mailing list