On Sep 11, 2013 9:33 AM, "Matthew Miller" <mattdm@fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>
> Hello design people! It looks like Fedora.next is going to be A Thing --
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora.next/boardproposal
>
> With the integration of Stephen Gallagher's three-target-products idea, I
> think this has moved beyond the previous visualization (which involved me
> drawing concentric circles). And the link above is only the board-level
> view; when we get down to the technical details it gets even more
> complicated. Can you help me paint a picture (and maybe through doing that
> refine how everything really fits together)?
>
I had been thinking about this last week and came up with a different metaphor that was more accurate. I think it's too unwieldy but maybe it can be a starting point.

If we go to basic (and a bit stylized, forgive me professor macadough) geology, fedora core is similar to the earth's core. It's the center, the base, the essentials that make up fedora. 

The rest of Fedora's current packageset ( which we've been calling fedora commons ) is like the earth's crust.  It depends on the core, wraps it in a layer that people are going to find more usable, adds more diversity, and provides an environment for further things to be built.

Stacks and environments are like volcanoes and hot springs.  They change the packageing landscape around them, sometimes radically.  The area around them is often more fertile because of the changes they've wrought.  The changes can penetrate the crust and tap into things in the core.

The three products are like ecosystems on top of this landscape.  They make use of the resources provided by the core, crust, and volcanoes and in turn are the location where life really starts to live and grow. Ecosystems each have their own flavor when viewed separately and yet they overlap with each other when looked at on a map, sharing the core, crust, and certain volcanoes with their neighbors.

Okay there it is.  Some of the metaphors are a bit of a stretch but hopefully I've explained the salient features of each element there.  So maybe someone else can find a different framework that better captures the relationships here or just classified this one.

(And Matt can correct me if any of these elements don't fit together the way he was imagining)

-Toshio