[FAmSCo] Agenda for 2011-1-29 meeting

[Larry Cafiero]

Hi, all --

I am going to be traveling to FUDCon all day Friday and expect to get
into Tempe around midnight, Arizona time. I hope to be up early enough
for the meeting, which I think will be starting at 6 a.m. in Arizona :-)

In case I'm not, I wanted to weigh in on the issue below, which is one
which is very important and one in which I feel very strongly:

On Thu, 2011-01-27 at 17:29 +0200, Pierros Papadeas wrote:

> 
> Ambassadors Conflict of Interest. I want to discuss on the possible
> conflict of Interest between Ambassadors and similar sub-projects of
> other distros (namely OpenSuse Ambassadors etc)
> I believe we need to have a clear position on that and take (or not)
> action upon it.

When promoting Free/Open Source Software, I would find it hard to see
where a Fedora Ambassador being a member of another community would be a
"conflict of interest." Also, I think it is wrong for us to say, "You
can be a member of our community, but you're not free to join any
community you wish" -- it is contrary to the "freedom" we espouse in our
four foundations.

There are a number of ambassadors in my area who are FOSS advocates
first and then distro advocates second. As such, they are members of
various communities and work with all of them with the intention of
uplifting FOSS as a whole and not just promoting one distro at the
expense of all the rest (which, in my opinion, is the direction Ubuntu
is taking, but I could write volumes about that so I'll spare you all). 

That includes me, too. To my knowledge, I am still a member of the
Ubuntu Local Community (LoCo) in California, which predates my
involvement with the Fedora Project (though I am no longer active,
obviously). Also, since I had a hand in helping the OpenSUSE Ambassador
Program start -- we should feel honored that they've copied our methods
to promote their distro, and I am proud and honored to have been asked
to help them when they started -- I am also probably still a member of
that Ambassador program even though I am not active there as well. 

I'm no longer involved in any other community other than the Fedora
Project -- it takes up most, if not all, of my free time :-) -- but I
don't see being involved with another community as a conflict. If
anything, from my own personal experience, it confirms my commitment to
what works best, and that would be Fedora. When we at Fedora improve,
everyone else improves with us. The same can be said for other distros
-- when they improve, we improve as well. We all rise up together, like
a boat floating in a rising tide.

So what I hope to see -- if we do find the need to take a position on
this (and, my position would be to take no position) -- would be to keep
this in mind: Ambassadors who happen to work with other communities do
so on their own free will and, unless their work in other communities
hinders the Fedora Project (and in my opinion, it would be hard to
imagine how that would occur), they should be allowed to work with
whomever they wish in promoting Free/Open Source Software.

That was a long message, and for those who stayed awake, thank you.

Larry Cafiero