In the news: Zarafa

[John Poelstra]

Adam Williamson said the following on 04/20/2010 09:04 AM Pacific Time:
> So, Zarafa is getting a lot of press attention:
>
> http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=6298
>
> some of it is fairly unflattering:
>
> http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3877446/Fedora-13-Beta-The-Seen-and-Troubling-Unseen.htm
>
> I'm a bit uncomfortable with this myself; the availability of Zarafa in
> Fedora seems to be being read in ways in which we certainly didn't
> intend it (as an aspect of commercialization, as some kind of Red
> Hat-parachuted feature and hence an indication of RH's future
> directions, etc).
>
> I'm wondering if perhaps we should pull Zarafa's mention as a 'feature'
> of Fedora 13, or if not that, then certainly develop a more coherent
> story about its inclusion, what it's for, why it's in Fedora, and the
> whole 'open core' angle on it...
>
> What do people think?

Disagree.  Our feature process does not require a "coherent story for 
inclusion." :)

This feature was added to Fedora through a purely community process by a 
non-Red Hat person (someone correct me if I'm wrong).  There was no 
"driving force of Red Hat" behind it that I'm aware of and it should 
remain on the list.

This is not the first time the press has created alternate reality out 
of our feature list.  In Fedora 12 the news stories were all about 
Moblin (exceptioned in by FESCo after feature freeze, just like Zarafa, 
by another non-Red Hatter) and how this was Red Hat's attempt to 
"compete head to head with Windows 7 in the netbook space."  Considering 
that the owner doesn't work for Red Hat that would have been a little 
difficult :)

To me these stories show that we might need to do a better job 
explaining how our releases processes work and that *anyone* (regardless 
of employer) can submit a feature for inclusion in a Fedora release.

John

John