[FAmSCo] Agenda for 2011-1-29 meeting

Thu Jan 27 21:59:08 UTC 2011

Hi, Pierros --

I certainly hope my message was not perceived as a "volley" in a flame war
-- my intention was quite the opposite. But I do think discussing it out in
the open before the meeting might make things go quickly Saturday morning
(early Saturday morning for me :-) ).

You make a good point about the free/non-free issue, and perhaps there
should be some sort of guideline around how to represent Fedora if they are
involved in other communities. But again, as I said in my novel earlier, I
think we should respect people's choices.

I should point out that in the cases where folks in our area are Ambassadors
for multiple distros, they represent X at one event where necessary, Y at
the other event. I know of no situation where they represent both (or more)
at one event, but there is that potential for confusion if they represent
more than one distro (or FOSS program) at one event, I would think.

Anyway, I have a lot of time to think about it driving to Arizona (about 12
hours).

Larry Cafiero

2011/1/27 Pierros Papadeas <ppapadeas at gmail.com>

> On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 9:41 PM, Larry Cafiero
> <lcafiero at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> > 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.
>
> Thanks for the message Larry,
>
> Just for clarification : I *do not* believe it should be a problem to
> join other foss project (I myself is part of many other foss
> projects).
>
> I just think there is a blocker into being Fedora Ambassador and
> OpenSuse Ambassador (or related sub-project in other distro with
> *same* scope as fedora)
> This happens for the simple reason that you cannot represent and being
> recognizable as the "face" of Fedora and do that for OpenSuse (lets
> say) as well. This will cause confusion to the people you are
> addressing and will result in weird conflicts concerning software
> freedoms and other aspects of our project.
>
> Fedora is distinct from other Desktop oriented Distros for our
> adherence to 4 Fs. If other Desktop oriented Distros had our values
> then we would be one project.
> This is not the case obviously. For example if someone supports
> OpenSuse then it supports the shipping of non-free code (by default)
> which violates Fedora principles.
>
> I am not saying that we should start throwing people off the project.
> On the contrary. I would like to stress out the difference that we
> have from other similar projects and make sure our Ambassadors are
> actively persuading our principles (and not violating them).
>
> ps. As you may understand, I don't want this discussion to end up in a
> flame-war :) I am simply suggesting a stricter rule on enforcing our
> ideals. (solely on Ambassadors)
>
> Have fun at FUDCon :)
>
> ~π
>
> --
> Pierros Papadeas
> PGP key: 0x6130DBF8
> http://pierros.papadeas.gr
> pierros at papadeas.gr
> liknus @ GRnet , Freenode
> _______________________________________________
> famsco mailing list
> famsco at lists.fedoraproject.org
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/famsco
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/famsco/attachments/20110127/9bc88a0d/attachment-0001.html 