The Inquirier on F17

[Robyn Bergeron]

On 05/31/2012 05:39 AM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
> On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 08:29:30AM +0200, Gianluca Sforna wrote:
>> On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Nicu Buculei<nicu_fedora at nicubunu.ro>  wrote:
>>> But I think we all agree the linked article is really bad written and it
>>> would he useful to "help" those news sources to improve their reporting.
>> In addition, I'd love to hear some sort of official word about the
>> "Fedora project serves as the proving ground for new features that
>> eventually end up in the firm's Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
>> operating system" part. I mean, is this a concept Red Hat is actively
>> marketing?
>>
>> If so, as an ambassador I'd love to know it because I am constantly
>> fighting against this "Fedora is a beta (or worse) level package and
>> its users are just Red Hat's guinea pigs" attitude in press, blogs and
>> users of other distros.
>>
>> If that's not true, it would be really useful to have some words from
>> a @redhat spokesperson to back a different point of view on the Red
>> Hat/Fedora relationship
> There's a big difference between "Fedora is a beta and users are
> guinea pigs," and "Fedora is a place where *any contributor* can work
> on new technical features and put them in front of millions of users
> as part of a free and open source software development process."  Red
> Hat is only part of our community and we've had plenty of other
> contributors over the years put new software into the distribution for
> people to use.
>
> Being the proving ground for new technology that might be in a future
> RHEL release is only one function of the Fedora Project.  Of course
> that function is quite important to Red Hat, and a reason why Red Hat
> continues to put substantail resources into Fedora.  But it's not the
> only thing the Fedora Project does, and as you know lots of
> contributors have their own reasons to participate as well.

While there is, of course, a definition of proving ground 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proving_ground ) ... I have always thought 
of proving grounds as the place where car manufacturers put hundreds of 
thousands of miles on their new vehicles, really putting them through 
endurance testing and so forth.

Paul pointed out that there may be some of that going on (not only by 
Red Hat, but by many people), but I think that the phrase really skips 
this detail: If you continue to use the metaphor, we're not simply 
"driving cars" in Fedora.  We're inventing them, and designing them, and 
continually pushing that technology forward -- collaboratively, as a 
community.
> Another way to think about it is like this... Any dedicated
> contributor has the potential to contribute features and technology to
> integrate into Fedora the distribution, just like Red Hat does.  It
> just so happens that Red Hat dedicates people, time, and money to
> that creation and integration effort, and as a result each release has
> lots of innovative new features.  As the Fedora community (and indeed
> the wider FOSS community) essentially "elects" the best stuff over
> time, Red Hat can use that crowd wisdom to help decide what pieces
> make the most sense for its enterprise product.  Any other contributor
> can do the same thing, at whatever scale makes sense for them.
>