The Inquirier on F17

[Paul W. Frields]

On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 02:22:05PM +0000, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
> 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 people who contribute to Fedora are community too.  There's
not a dividing line with the community on one side, and Red Hat on the
other.  We have some community members who are volunteers, some who
work for Red Hat, some who do paid work for other companies, etc.

> 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.

Community members all have influence over the project, and that
doesn't exclude members who work for Red Hat.

> >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.

No, this is not what I said.  I said "Any dedicated contributor" can
do this.  Any many do.  I mentioned features that Red Hat creates
specifically, but I did not exclude those created by people not at Red
Hat.  Please don't twist my words.

> 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.
[...snip...]

I don't remember saying any such thing, so apparently our memories
differ.  If someone can show me where I did, I'll gladly own up to it
as a mistake, though, because that's not what I believe.

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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