Trends - how to save Fedora ?

[inode0]

On Sun, Nov 13, 2011 at 1:50 AM, Thomas Cameron
<thomas.cameron at camerontech.com> wrote:
> On 11/13/2011 01:15 AM, JB wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> every Fedora release is going downhill ...
>
> Erm, no. Each Fedora release has brought in numerous technical
> improvements. Virtualization, clustering, directory services, more and
> more features and performance per release.

You are both correct but you are looking at the result from different
perspectives. Many technical improvements do happen and they are
admired by those who *later* use them in an enterprise distribution.
At the same time many of those same improvements are despised by
direct users of Fedora. Bringing value to the enterprise and bringing
value to the Fedora desktop user are two very different things.

This disconnect I see almost every day within the Fedora community
which has large groups of people from both camps. I've said it before
and I am going to say it again now - any definition of the target
audience of Fedora that doesn't include enterprise users is wrong as
it is clear to everyone looking that enterprise users are certainly an
important part of the target audience. Enterprise users need to
understand Fedora isn't just for them and Fedora users need to
understand Fedora isn't just for them either. It is a
corporate/community project, both parts of that relationship have a
stake and both need to see benefits and progress that affect them in
positive ways for the relationship to be sustained.

>> Time for Fedora to decouple from RH and become quality UNIX-like distro on
>> its own ?
>
> And what? All the engineers at Red Hat develop new tech in Fedora. Where
> do you propose those new technologies come from if Red Hat splits off?

While I am not agreeing with the suggested split, the Red Hat
developers won't stop working upstream as they do now if Fedora
doesn't exist as it does today. Red Hat's contributions of new
technologies really aren't Fedora specific. Those happen upstream and
are included in Fedora and other distributions as those distributions
choose. Trying to make them Fedora specific isn't a good way to make
contributions of new technologies.

>> Linux distros:
>> http://w3techs.com/technologies/history_details/os-linux/all/y
>
> Without knowing a *lot* about how this information was gathered, it's
> meaningless.
>
>> Fedora, Red Hat:
>> http://www.google.com/trends?q=fedora%2C+redhat&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
>
> These trends are pretty meaningless. Less searches on a technology don't
> necessarily mean the technology is on the wane. It could very well be
> that people are more comfortable so they're not Googling as much. Or
> that they know to go straight to the most popular Fedora sites or the
> Red Hat portal.

One thing that is meaningful is that the Fedora Project has many
people who believe Fedora is becoming less relevant to its defined
target audience. And those who believe this aren't just end users of
Fedora.

> Red Hat as a company is poised to be a billion dollar company this year
> (FY12). The FY 2006 earnings were $278.3 million.[1] That's a 4X
> increase in just 6 years. That's *amazing* growth.

What does this have to do with Fedora or the relationship between Red
Hat and Fedora?

> Look at things like http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics, which
> indicate that downloads and torrents are going up with each release, not
> down.

Maybe look at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legacy_statistics to see
that downloads and torrents are not going up with each release. While
these statistics don't really concern me one way or the other, we do
have periods of growth and decline that is evident in the available
statistics.

John