The Inquirier on F17

["Jóhann B. Guðmundsson"]

On 05/31/2012 12:39 PM, 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.

Here we come to one of the core issues of Red Hat vs The Fedora 
community as in we ( the community ) do not view RHEL release being one 
function of the Fedora Project.

Red Hat certainly believes it to be one of the function the project 
however we ( the community ) certainly don't nor should we as an project 
allow any sponsor Red Hat or otherwise have any influence either 
directly or indirectly of the project and it's direction.

> 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.

So in essence here you say that all innovation that happen in the 
project is all thanks to Red Hat and the community members time is 
worthless compared to the time and money Red Hat sponsor the project with.

I would say that the above is a rather interesting response from a 
former project leader then again if memory serves me correct you 
actually did call Fedora "Beta" in one of the Red Hat summit during you 
time as our project leader so I cant say that I'm surprised by this.

>    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.
>

True but at the same time no other *sponsor* is allowed to essentially 
*sponsor* the project as you as the former projects leader are well 
aware of.

In the end from the communities point of view Red Hat is a sponsor no 
more no less, we Fedora have our own leadership, our own developer base 
and own priorities Fedora goes it's own way regardless of Red Hat or 
RHEL or any other contributor,sponsor or distribution downstream to us 
thinks.

Red Hat can continue to advertise to it's partners that we are some kind 
of testing/proving ground for RHEL and directly or indirectly try to 
influence the direction of the project and we the community will 
continue to do our best to shake that stamp off the project and stay 
firm at the steering wheel and try to prevent Red Hat from doing so and 
we will continue to do so until either one of the two possible outcome 
on how that will end will come to pass.

JBG