The Forgotten "F": A Tale of Fedora's Foundations

[Michael Scherer]

Le lundi 21 avril 2014 à 13:19 -0400, Stephen Gallagher a écrit :
> On 04/21/2014 01:08 PM, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 12:37:57 -0400, Stephen Gallagher
> > <sgallagh at redhat.com> wrote:
> >
> >> But I think that trying to actively discourage (read: prevent)
> >> users from installing such software is harmful to our Mission of
> >> advancing Free Software. In my view, it's okay to occasionally
> >> embrace closed-source as a means to expose more people to
> >> open-source. Failing to do so has a tendency to leave us labeled
> >> as zealots, which are often ignored.
> > 
> > Does Fedora need to be that gateway OS? Maybe Ubuntu would be a
> > better intermediate step?
> 
> If Fedora isn't that gateway OS, why are we bothering? What makes it
> likely that any user would switch to us if they've entered the FOSS
> community via Ubuntu? (Don't get me wrong, this is a question we also
> need to answer, but I don't think it's wise of us to be recommending
> that Ubuntu handles gathering our new users for us.)
>
> So yes, if we want Fedora to have any mindshare at all (and therefore
> users) I assert that we /do/ need to be the gateway OS.

Following your pattern of switching people to cross platform software
then to Fedora, why not then start to invest into that, with for
example :
- distributing software for Windows in the same version that can be
found for Fedora, following the same release schedule. Potentially
having a updater.
- have some easy way to switch back and forth ( something like anaconda
creating a specific sharing partition, with software using it by
defaults )
- partnership with user group for that, shipping them on the DVD we
distribute.

I am sure we can find lots of way, and that some of them have been
already tried.

And that seems perfectly aligned with Fedora mission and much closer to
the way people convert users.

-- 
Michael Scherer