Who's moderating this forum?

[Marcel Rieux]

On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 11:08 PM, Rahul Sundaram <metherid at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>  Governance in Fedora is rather light weight and board in particular does
> not interfere in day to day routine work which is led by contributors.
>

Sometimes, the problem is not what they do but what they don't do. There is
no instructions to install nvidia drivers on Fedora's site. Normal, since
Fedora doesn't encourage the use of proprietary software. So, a place like
FedoraFaq provides instructions, instructions that don't work (at least
until lately). I know by experience.  I know too that wrong instructions are
all over the place.

When something like this happens, maybe somebody of the Fedora board, or on
request from the board, should ask FedoraFaq to either modify or remove the
information. Once again, you'll say it's not Fedora's problem since the info
on Fedora's site is, it also seems to me, fairly accurate and Fedora doesn't
support proprietary software.

The problem is some people -- gamers and 3D users -- need the Nvidia driver
and, since the site that provides instructions has Fedora in it, they
believe it's a most official source they can get instructions from. If they
don't get correct instructions they're pissed off at Fedora, wrongfully, of
course, but pissed off nonetheless.

Steven Ballmer himself could be running FedoraFaq, he could bash the users
for not understanding his instructions, what would the Fedora board do?
People from the board or formerly from the board apparently read this list.
I expressed my concerns about FedoraFAQ, I said the FF guy doesn't answer
messages, doesn't correct the misinformation. Nobody ever said the info was
correct. What did the board do? If, as a simple user, I know about such
problems, how come the board doesn't?

Have you ever seen sites such as microsoftfaq, applefaq... or redhatfaq, or
even centosfaq? There are sites with Mac, such as macrumors or macworld. I
don't know these sites. They might be just some kind of Apple subsidiaries,
but maybe not(1). In such a case, if I was Apple, I wouldn't even allow
this. You could put Apple or Mac in the headers or the title of the page,
but not use apple or mac as a domain name... that is if the law allows this
interdiction.

(1) Here, Mac magazines just don't question how, with 100 millions of
equipment, Apple was never able to detect such a fundamental antenna
problem.:

http://www.macrumors.com/ (this page , of course, will eventually change).
Here's an excerpt for eventually searching:

"While the new section of Apple's site provides an interesting glimpse into
the company's $100 million investment in antenna design and testing labs,
Apple went one step further and invited 11 members of the media on a brief
tour of the previously-secret labs following today's event."

and here: http://www.macworld.com/article/152771/2010/07/wireless_lab.html

=============

A copyrighted name is very important, not only for proprietary software but
for open source software too, I would say even more, because of the
resources multinational companies have at their disposal to set blogs, lists
or forums awry. I don't say if it's the case now, but I know it could
happen. In a word, if Linux can't be bought, it can be subverted easily by a
lack of regulation.

Where can I read the board's position on the name copyright? Last time I
enquired, I was told there there is no Fedora constitution or statuses
because, in the US, Fedora can't be considered as a separate entity from Red
Hat. Still, there could be internal regulation rules. Just having a way to
elect a board doesn't seem sufficient to me.

Geeks, like the all-programmers team of the board, think the less
regulation, the better. But it's when you write regulation that the
possibility of conflict of interests arises. Of course, as long as there's
no regulation, things can go on "as is" for a long time but, one fine day,
the rotten conflict blows out in the open and it's too late to fix it.

This is Red Hat's board of directors:

http://investors.redhat.com/directors.cfm

>From their biography, how many do you believe are programmers? Not too many
I would think. So, how come there are so many programmers on Fedora's board
and so little on Red Hat's. I'm sure, clever as programmers are, you noticed
this at first sight. So what is needed to run a software company or...
project, administrators or programmers?
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