expanding Fedora user base

[Rahul Sundaram]

rerushg at homexpressway.net wrote:

> 
> Now to turn to my marketing and sales experience:
> I've got a pretty good idea of what Fedora is. Question is: Where's it
> going? Here are some observations from listening here and hanging around
> the forums.
> 
> 1. Fedora will remain developmental. Seems to be fundamental to
> management's mission.

What do you mean by "developmental"?

> 2. Fedora is not "warm and fuzzy" to newbies. I really love the parrot but
> efforts toward a masot may lead to a sense of "misrepresentation" by
> newcomers. Not a good long-term strategy.

A parrot has not been decided as a mascot nor have we even decided that 
e need a mascot at all. Your comment on it seems premature.

> Further, I think the marketing team has done a great job of
> differentiating Fedora from the rest of the distros. You don't want to
> give that away.

We don't really have much of a marketing team so I don't think we done 
the differentiation. It happened elsewhere.

> 3.  What's happening in Linux is fantastic and important. I know of no
> other international, cross-cultural effort that's produced such positive
> results. All involved should be proud and work to preserve it.

There are certainly other efforts but I think ours is a good example 
too. So thanks.

> 4. It's probably going to explode across the world. You've been "under the
> radar" so far. As you get larger you'll likely attract a lot of intention
> from big business that tries to own everything. Staying legally "clean" is
> imperative.

That isn't optional. Red Hat is the legal entity behind Fedora and it 
always makes the conservative choices which we do get flamed every now 
and then.

> 5. With expansion things will change. The newer folks on the team want to
> run with that. Maybe some of the older guys are not so sure; maybe they're
> content that it stay in their private world.

As long as we understand the objectives and retain the same culture we 
can continue growing and accommodating newer contributors.

> Perhaps you could split off FC6 (or FC7) as a separate entity. It's
> clearly powerful enough as it stands. Freeze the kernal. Give it its own
> site, documentation, and forum. Make it simple. Make it clean. Make it
> work all the time.

I don't we have enough contributors to split off versions into its own 
entity and maintain it for long period of times at this point.

> Find community members who are willing and able to support the concept.
> Turn them loose on the "warm and fuzzy" stuff and the tools that newer
> users want and need. Make it sort of an "entry level Fedora" (bad choice
> of words but you get the idea).

I don't know what "warm and fuzzy" means her. If we are making any 
changes to increase usability it should be part of the main codebase 
instead of a sub branch or derivative. Usability enhancements is not a 
category like server/desktop or gnome/kde to be created as derivatives.

Rahul