Reasons for hall monitoring

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 2:48 AM, Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com> wrote:
> That's the wrong argument. We all know why we _can't_ make it just work,
> but that doesn't excuse us.

You are right. The answer is clearly to export US legal rules to the
rest of the world so we can have an equally unfriendly playing field.

> Sorry to take a well-worn analogy, but if
> two guys are trying to sell you cars, and one doesn't have an engine,
> would the fact that the guy selling the car with no engine has a *really
> good and inarguable reason* why it doesn't have an engine make you buy
> that car? Hell no. You'd buy the car with the engine.

1) Are we talking about purchased products.. where money changes hands?

2) There are laws concerning the purchasing of illicit goods..stolen
engines are no different.

3) OEM Ubuntu customers _are_ _paying_ licensing fees for the stuff
that end users can find for free in Ubuntu preinstalls.
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Canonical-clarifies-its-H-264-licence-993182.html

The reality is Canonical's customers are not end-users. Canonical's
customers are OEMs. general Ubuntu interest, and the media hype that
can produce in places like twitter, are leveraged to entice the target
audience..the OEMs...to contract with Canonical.


> Just because we have a *really good reason* we can't ship this stuff
> doesn't mean we are excused from the fact that it's a distinct negative
> for the use of our operating system as a general-purpose desktop
> operating system

Yes, principled approaches to product production can look like a
negative in the short term.
You want an analogy.... proprietary media is the computing equivalent
of ready to eat,mass marketed processed convenience food.  Its the
software version of junkfood and soda and pizza rolls and dinosaur
shaped chicken nuggets. It's unsustainable, and unhealth....and tastes
sooooo very good. So even though sugary salty brightly colored
food-like cubes are clearly popular and in demand.. is catering to
this in the best interest of anyone?  Some people don't think so and
choose to support a better way to produce and distribute food...going
as far as to limit what they choose to consume in supporting an
overall more sustainable pattern of behavior.

Fedora is that better, sustainable way. It's not elitist, everyone is
welcome to participate with the understanding that part of making that
choice can involve the giving up some conveniences in the short term
in the commitment to the larger goals of a sustainable free software
ecosystem. If your not comfortable with that expectation, then we'll
warmly let you pass through on your way to another community that will
better cater to your desires. But we aren't going to cater to
unsustainable convenience food.

And if that principled approach is not the most popular.. it doesn't
mean its worth giving up. We need to shake loose the idea that being
the most popular matters. What I want is contributor targets to shoot
for. I want a clear vision by which we can recruit contributors...not
users.  Maybe Mike is right and we are going to see a big dip in users
when RHEL 6 comes out and people junk to that stable offering. And
where he sees a negative. I see success.

We position this project as leading edge. If people have been using
Fedora as a forerunner to RHEL 6 and now find they want long term
stability...then great. We did exactly what we said we would do for
those people and now their needs are such that a stable base makes
mroe sense. We are NOT all things to all people. Its GOOD to see
people who need stability moving to RHEL instead of asking us to be
that as well as leading edge.

And since we don't promise to provide everything to everyone then I
fully expect to see a cyclic process in our contributor and user base.
I expect to see periods of die-off as well as growrth. I expect that
in any system which aims to be sustainable.

The issue for me is are we prepared for the cycle of renewal. Are we
prepared to recruit contributors into participating into new leading
edge directions?

-jef"Would you like fries with that?"spaleta