Hi all,
I would like to take the chance to try to convince on a last attempt the Fedora project to change its path. The problem starts if you try to find the right list to post such an article. There seems to be no list for discussing the Fedora project!?
There are the more or less readonly or readprotected lists, there is a general fedora-list, one for martketing,... - This list is the best guess I could make although I assume desktop means desktop enviroment. Anyway, I just want to post this now.
My general criticism is that Fedora is not a real community project. This can clearly be seen by the mailing list structure (as the future of Fedora can not really be discussed by the users). Fedora has stated to be a meritocracy ( http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAQ#head-b9eb81965c2ef7b97979c8b3a9ba587b52da4... ). There is a system of Ambassadors. Different from Ubuntu one can say that it is generally not wanted that users take the distribution into their own hands and make their own marketing. Who is ambassador? "Ambassadors program is a meritocracy, so the ones who have shown that they are actively doing the right thing will be best candidates."
The basic principle in Fedora is distrusting the users. Fedora is affraind that users would do marketing or do other things that hurt the organisation. The strange thing is that Fedora initially was ment to be a community project. If one would take this approach seriously we would have to start a community project for the community project, as Fedora contains of free software and take the power away from Fedora Foundations and Boards. I can not think of anything more stupid as to create a community project and than to try to destroy the community by separating them into different categories - also stating officially a meritocracy as wanted status. Where as community and meritocracy can not be combined. In the book "wisdom of the crowds" one can learn how intelligent masses can be. Fedora has managed to keep the positive influense of the crowds out effectively.
Some measures I (again) like to criticize are:
The wiki policies: * I think Fedora project is more or less the only wiki of all oepn source projects which does not allow anonymous contributions nor contributions by simple registered users. * Who every wants to contribute has to give Red Hat non-exclusive rights to relicense his or her content * Fedora chose to use the OPL which is deprecated by the invenstors of the license and has a bad reputation. Choosing this license does mean that content can neither be shared with other documentations or the Wikipedia who whose the GFDL nor with any new projects that use the successor licenses of OPL (Creative Commons). This in fact means that no one can use the content of fedoraproject.org in other projects, nor does anybody can import any conten from orher projects to fedoraproject org. So this means redundancy, that means less sharing. * The action that had taken place and the decision where intransparent and not discussed in the wiki, it was expected that people would read the mailing lists.
On the marketing approach I think Fedora has a very hard job against Ubuntu and that is not just because Ubuntu is giving live medias for free but also because it is unwanted that users show activity if they do not plan to become official ambassadors. This is why I have installed Ubuntu on many machines for private users although I myself like to use Fedora much more. My guess is that Fedora could easily have 10 or 20 times more users if it would change policy.
What I constantly asking myself is why Fedora does not want to eb successful? Do such policies come from Red Hat where one is used to exclude people because of company policy?
I think today in distributions or software is is all about communitities, the software itself, the companies do not matter. The software or distributions who gets the most attention and love from the community will succeed. Users and developers tend to switch their favourite software more and more often, so most people will not have one distribution that they advocate. They advicate what they use and like. I can also talk about myself: I would never become an official Ambassador of any distribution but I love to do all for the software I really like. Fedora does not trust people like me. Why should I trust Fedora? Why should I use Fedora? Right now I use it because it is technically the best Linux distro that I know. The community in Germany really is quasi non-existent and I am not allowed to make small corrections to the Fedora wiki that I know are there for months (and I do not want to search for anybody who has signed the CLA to inform him), That is just plain stupid.
Does Fedora Board want people to create a community project for Fedora? Does this make any sense? I mean Fedora was made out of Red Hat to allow easier contribution (as one goal) - actually I do not think it is easier to contribute to Fedora now as to contribute to RHEL. Fedora is very old school from its approach, distrusting its own users, not letting lose of control,... I think that it is sad to see such a good distribution sunken in organisational congealment.
I think a huge switch in policy needs to be made. I know many Fedora users and Ex-Fedora users think the same. Maybe Fedora gets a little push from Novell that acts even more stupid, but in the long run I'd like to see Fedora moving differently
And: No, I don't want to be an Ambassador, I like to see less Meritocracy and more Anarchy to revive Fedora. In Germany Red Hat traditionally was weak and in my Linux group in my home town no one uses it and I also have never met anybody who uses it as well. And I really can not stand behind Fedora and recommend users to use it, till all those things will not be cleared up.
I wanted to get this post out for months and like to see if things will change or at least are discussed.
Thilo
see also http://vinci.wordpress.com/2006/06/06/frustrated-about-fedora-policies/
On Mon, Nov 27, 2006 at 06:01:13PM +0100, Thilo Pfennig wrote:
There are the more or less readonly or readprotected lists, there is a general fedora-list, one for martketing,... - This list is the best
You have to subscribe to the lists to post, yes.
guess I could make although I assume desktop means desktop enviroment. Anyway, I just want to post this now.
Okay.
My general criticism is that Fedora is not a real community project.
Depends on how you define those terms.
This can clearly be seen by the mailing list structure (as the future of Fedora can not really be discussed by the users). Fedora has stated to be a meritocracy (
Users can discuss all they want (and certainly do). You want to influence what happens, start *doing*. Meritocracy means exactly that.
On Monday, 27 Nov 2006, Thilo Pfennig wrote:
[...]
My general criticism is that Fedora is not a real community project. This can clearly be seen by the mailing list structure (as the future of Fedora can not really be discussed by the users). Fedora has stated to be a meritocracy ( http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAQ#head-b9eb81965c2ef7b97979c8b3a9ba587b52da4... ). There is a system of Ambassadors. Different from Ubuntu one can say that it is generally not wanted that users take the distribution into their own hands and make their own marketing. Who is ambassador? "Ambassadors program is a meritocracy, so the ones who have shown that they are actively doing the right thing will be best candidates."
You might be happy to know that Fedorasummit¹ will do to the future of Fedora.
Footnotes: ¹ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraSummit?highlight=%28fedorasummit%29
Leo schrieb:
You might be happy to know that Fedorasummit¹ will do to the future of Fedora.
Footnotes: ¹ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraSummit?highlight=%28fedorasummit%29
If things change, good. I will not be able to travel to USA, though to attend.
Thilo
On Monday, 27 Nov 2006, Thilo Pfennig wrote:
Leo schrieb:
You might be happy to know that Fedorasummit¹ will do to the future of Fedora.
Footnotes: ¹ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraSummit?highlight=%28fedorasummit%29
If things change, good. I will not be able to travel to USA, though to attend.
The summit has ended. That pages are something the developers trying to do for Fedora 7. There is no separation of core and extras any more.
Leo wrote:
On Monday, 27 Nov 2006, Thilo Pfennig wrote:
Leo schrieb:
You might be happy to know that Fedorasummit¹ will do to the future of Fedora.
Footnotes: ¹ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraSummit?highlight=%28fedorasummit%29
If things change, good. I will not be able to travel to USA, though to attend.
The summit has ended. That pages are something the developers trying to do for Fedora 7. There is no separation of core and extras any more.
Also there was people phoning in and participating via irc channel at #fedora-summit, the logs of which are available in the wiki. You can also look at proposals being discussed currently and get involved. So participation and contributions are not restricted to people with the ability to travel to the meeting place.
Rahul
Rahul Sundaram schrieb:
Also there was people phoning in and participating via irc channel at #fedora-summit, the logs of which are available in the wiki. You can also look at proposals being discussed currently and get involved. So participation and contributions are not restricted to people with the ability to travel to the meeting place.
Yes, but it is restricted to official contributors who have signed the CLA.
Thilo
Thilo Pfennig wrote:
Rahul Sundaram schrieb:
Also there was people phoning in and participating via irc channel at #fedora-summit, the logs of which are available in the wiki. You can also look at proposals being discussed currently and get involved. So participation and contributions are not restricted to people with the ability to travel to the meeting place.
Yes, but it is restricted to official contributors who have signed the CLA.
No. Its not. Everyone was open to join the fedora summit channel and send feedback. Fedora devel list is also open to everyone.
Rahul
Rahul Sundaram schrieb:
No. Its not. Everyone was open to join the fedora summit channel and send feedback. Fedora devel list is also open to everyone.
But the wiki is not. And as summit is over no irc contributions. I know that I may post emails to most fedora lists, but thats not much. I can also do this on every open mailing lists for any proprietary software.
On Wed, Nov 29, 2006 at 01:17:57PM +0100, Thilo Pfennig wrote:
But the wiki is not. And as summit is over no irc contributions. I know that I may post emails to most fedora lists, but thats not much. I can also do this on every open mailing lists for any proprietary software.
Sign the CLA.
Matthew Miller schrieb:
On Wed, Nov 29, 2006 at 01:17:57PM +0100, Thilo Pfennig wrote:
But the wiki is not. And as summit is over no irc contributions. I know that I may post emails to most fedora lists, but thats not much. I can also do this on every open mailing lists for any proprietary software.
Sign the CLA.
So everybody in the world should sign the CLA and give Red Hat non-exclusive rights to do with the content what they want? I would not use a license if this would be my direction. In fact if we do this with software (do all software developers have signed the CLA?) this would in fact mean that Red Hat has the choice to relicense every bit that is contributed and distribute it proprietary. You mighth say: They will not. But as Red Hat does not trust me as a free man if I do not sign a CLA, why should I trust Red Hat?
In my opinion free software and free content should be based on two components: 1) free licenses 2) free communties
And they should never ever try to enhance the licenses in order to give one party (in this case Red Hat) more control than anybody else.
Also think about that: If I would like to contribute to lets say 50 projects (which may in fact he case on my part) like Apache.org, Wikipedia.org, etc.etc. - does it make sense to sign 50+ license agreements only to give one party more rights than I have?
Sorry, but if this point is not going to be changed I rather leave Fedora and rather fight its distribution, because it restricts the rights of its users and goes a path that goes away from the freedom that made free software great.
Fedora sees the world from the view of its own organisational problems, but the future of free software should be free contribution. A distributions should be there for the free software, the developers and the users and not the other way round: the users, software and developers must follow the rule oif a distribution.
For me it is ok if Fedora REALLY wants to go the path and then I will not bother any more, but I want to make that clear for me of this is what the directions really are going to be. I am involved in many projects and I rather invest my time in real free software projects , then, although I sure would love to hear from somebody that things indeed will change, because so far I like much of Fedora.
Thilo
On Wed, 2006-11-29 at 15:33 +0100, Thilo Pfennig wrote:
Matthew Miller schrieb:
On Wed, Nov 29, 2006 at 01:17:57PM +0100, Thilo Pfennig wrote:
But the wiki is not. And as summit is over no irc contributions. I know that I may post emails to most fedora lists, but thats not much. I can also do this on every open mailing lists for any proprietary software.
Sign the CLA.
So everybody in the world should sign the CLA and give Red Hat non-exclusive rights to do with the content what they want? I would not use a license if this would be my direction. In fact if we do this with software (do all software developers have signed the CLA?) this would in fact mean that Red Hat has the choice to relicense every bit that is contributed and distribute it proprietary. You mighth say: They will not. But as Red Hat does not trust me as a free man if I do not sign a CLA, why should I trust Red Hat?
Please read the CLA. Section 2, the Contributor Grant of License, is a grant to both Red Hat and to _every_ Fedora user. It states that you are making your works available to the above-mentioned parties in perpetuity, and that you have the right to do so (patent and otherwise). It does _not_ specify the license under which you do so, merely that it must have the properties of allowing derivative works, public display and performance, and distribution; Red Hat, and the Fedora Project, must still respect the license of the work being contributed. Neither is it a statement of assignment of copyright.
It's really just a statement of good faith, written in the same reciprocal spirit as GPLv2, and it explicitly does not grant Red Hat any special exclusive powers. I appreciate your caution in legal matters, but you're attributing properties to the CLA that just aren't there.
- ajax
Adam Jackson schrieb:
Please read the CLA. Section 2, the Contributor Grant of License, is a grant to both Red Hat and to _every_ Fedora user. It states that you
I did exactly that, often. "You hereby grant to Red Hat, Inc. .... a perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide, fully paid-up, royalty free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute your Contribution and such derivative works; and, "
So in my words I would say I grant Red Hat an irrvocalbe copyright license. Why all this CLA thingy? read the words of karsten Wade:
"[reason] Why am I in favor of the CLA for all contributors (code and content)? Because then we _never_have_to_do_this_again_. " -- source: http://www.spinics.net/lists/fedora-docs/msg03640.html
What does that mean? The experience was that because there was no CLA the users had full copyrights. Now if people contribute under CLA&OPL Red Hat can relicense this stuff, because they not only have the content licensed under OPL, but they also do have the full copy right. So they can relicense under different free licenses or do what they want with it.
And about the OPL - The Wikipedia says: "The OPL is now largely defunct, and its creator suggests that new projects not use it. " -- source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Publication_License
The OPL is the predecessor of the Creative Commons licenses and it is not understandable why anyone chooses this licenses today if this means making incompatibel content (neitehr GFDL nor CCL)
I understand that the CLA has no effect on what I can do with my contributions, but it has a great effect on what others can do with my works. Everybody can take the content in the wiki and use iot by that license, but Fedora and Red Hat can take the content and make it proprietary.
The thing is, that licenses always were there to clarify the intellectual property. So I am asking me why the CLA states "In order to clarify the intellectual property license granted with Contributions from any person or entity, Red Hat, Inc. ("Red Hat"), as maintainer of the Project, must have a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) on file that has been signed by each Contributor, indicating agreement to the license terms below."
If I publish a content under a specific license I exactly do this: I clarify what right I do give to those who use my content. Why on earth does Red Hat and Fedora are the only free software contributors who need an additional agreement? Whats so special about Fedora that they add something to the licenses?
I think that the OPL was chosen because it allows to extend the license by adding options. Well, the CLA not really is an option as I would understand it, but OTOH I think evry other license would have been made clearly invalid, becausefree licenses often include statements like this:
"You may not offer or impose any terms on the Work that alter or restrict the terms of this License or the recipients' exercise of the rights granted hereunder. You may not sublicense the Work" -- source: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/legalcode (CC-BY-2.5)
Or "Any other attempt to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Document is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. " -- source: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.txt (GFDL)
So this is very essential for most licenses other than the OPL: Do not allow any further terms and restrictions. So for me it is abolutely clear that Fedora does have a problem with those licenses that aim to protect the rights of contributors solely with their terms in the way that they make it impossible to add something like a CLA. Fedora thinks that free licenses are not enough to give the community the rights they need - or better the project the rights that it thinks it needs.
It's really just a statement of good faith, written in the same reciprocal spirit as GPLv2, and it explicitly does not grant Red Hat any special exclusive powers. I appreciate your caution in legal matters, but you're attributing properties to the CLA that just aren't there.
We have free licenses that give us all the rights we need. The Wikipedia works like that, also. There is no other reason for the CLA as to have the possibility to impropriate the content of the contributors.
What then would you see is the main purpose of the CLA and why do you think it is now not enough to publish my content under a free license? What's next? The kernel developers sign a CLA to Linus Torvalds so he can republish the kernel under whatever conditions he thinks are good? Just think about what will happen if we see projects like GNOME, KDE, Apache,.... doing the same and all under different conditions. This in fact makes contributing a mess. If somebody says Fedora needs a CLA this must eb true for every other major distribution or project. And I fear that once this this starts and is not being stopped as a new fashion things will get extremely weird.
So I would say in the sense that you wrote "I appreciate Fedoras caution to legal matters, but I really think they have overdone it"
Fact is: I do not contribute any more and many people do not so, either. Enforcing the CLA ment favouring legal concerns above user contributions. And again: Why Fedora and no other project I know? (if somebody can point me to others I like to look into their issues, too) http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&p=/gQPU.&search=impropriate Thilo
On Wed, 2006-11-29 at 17:17 +0100, Thilo Pfennig wrote:
What does that mean? The experience was that because there was no CLA the users had full copyrights. Now if people contribute under CLA&OPL Red Hat can relicense this stuff, because they not only have the content licensed under OPL, but they also do have the full copy right. So they can relicense under different free licenses or do what they want with it.
Without the CLA, there is no guarantee that a user will not subsequently attempt to revoke Fedora's permission to use their contribution. This may or may not work in court, but it's certainly been tried elsewhere (cough, SCO) and it's a hassle we don't really feel like dealing with.
The CLA is a very small contract to ensure that the contribution to free software is non-revokable, and that the contributor actually has the right to contribute the things they contribute.
As for your other assertion:
I understand that the CLA has no effect on what I can do with my contributions, but it has a great effect on what others can do with my works. Everybody can take the content in the wiki and use iot by that license, but Fedora and Red Hat can take the content and make it proprietary.
No. We. Can't.
Grant of license does _not_ mean assignment of copyright. Microsoft grants you a copyright license to use Vista in exchange for some quantity of currency; they do not give you ownership of the code. The parallel here should be obvious.
What then would you see is the main purpose of the CLA and why do you think it is now not enough to publish my content under a free license? What's next? The kernel developers sign a CLA to Linus Torvalds so he can republish the kernel under whatever conditions he thinks are good?
The irony here is that the kernel has a corresponding mechanism to Fedora's CLA. It's called Signed-Off-By: and it accompanies _every_ changeset. Fedora just does it once up front.
- ajax
email@pfennigsolutions.de wrote:
Adam Jackson schrieb:
Please read the CLA. Section 2, the Contributor Grant of License, is a grant to both Red Hat and to _every_ Fedora user. It states that you
I did exactly that, often. "You hereby grant to Red Hat, Inc. .... a perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide, fully paid-up, royalty free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute your Contribution and such derivative works; and, "
So in my words I would say I grant Red Hat an irrvocalbe copyright license. Why all this CLA thingy? read the words of karsten Wade:
You're not reading the full CLA. Your ellipsis in the quote omits some important text: "[...] You hereby grant to Red Hat, Inc., on behalf of the Project, and to recipients of software distributed by the Project: [...]"
This means that anyone who receives a copy of the software or content that is by someone's contributions to the Fedora Project receives these full copyleft permissions (to redistribute and/or modify, et al.)
[...] Now if people contribute under CLA&OPL Red Hat can relicense this stuff, because they not only have the content licensed under OPL, but they also do have the full copy right [sic]. So they can relicense under different free licenses or do what they want with it.
Red Hat does not own copyright to the code or content which is contributed to Fedora. They, like all other redistributors, have only a *license* to redistribute and/or modify it under these copyleft terms.
We have free licenses that give us all the rights we need. The Wikipedia works like that, also. There is no other reason for the CLA as to have the possibility to impropriate the content of the contributors.
We have these Free licenses, yes. However, signing the CLA ensures that every contribution one makes to the Fedora Project is Free and legal.
Fact is: I do not contribute any more and many people do not so, either. Enforcing the CLA ment favouring legal concerns above user contributions.
Unfortunately, Red Hat and the Fedora Project are both based in the United States, a country which is huge on litigations and legal implications and infractions. Therefore, great legal care must be taken when dealing with matters of copyright, trademark, and patent law.
Thilo Pfennig wrote:
Rahul Sundaram schrieb:
No. Its not. Everyone was open to join the fedora summit channel and send feedback. Fedora devel list is also open to everyone.
But the wiki is not. And as summit is over no irc contributions. I know that I may post emails to most fedora lists, but thats not much. I can also do this on every open mailing lists for any proprietary software.
Summit had a IRC channel. #fedora-summit as I have already pointed out in a previous message. What more do you need?
Rahul
Rahul Sundaram schrieb:
Thilo Pfennig wrote:
Rahul Sundaram schrieb:
No. Its not. Everyone was open to join the fedora summit channel and send feedback. Fedora devel list is also open to everyone.
But the wiki is not. And as summit is over no irc contributions. I know that I may post emails to most fedora lists, but thats not much. I can also do this on every open mailing lists for any proprietary software.
Summit had a IRC channel. #fedora-summit as I have already pointed out in a previous message. What more do you need?
Direct access to the wiki with different license and without the need to sign a CLA. So my options really are:
* Build a community version of Fedora or * Just leave the project.
hm...
Thilo
Thilo Pfennig wrote:
Rahul Sundaram schrieb:
Thilo Pfennig wrote:
Rahul Sundaram schrieb:
No. Its not. Everyone was open to join the fedora summit channel and send feedback. Fedora devel list is also open to everyone.
But the wiki is not. And as summit is over no irc contributions. I know that I may post emails to most fedora lists, but thats not much. I can also do this on every open mailing lists for any proprietary software.
Summit had a IRC channel. #fedora-summit as I have already pointed out in a previous message. What more do you need?
Direct access to the wiki with different license and without the need to sign a CLA. So my options really are:
- Build a community version of Fedora or
- Just leave the project.
We are very unlikely to drop the CLA. It is a well recognized process that is used by several community projects with clear benefits. A quick sample:
http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/20050325novalis.html http://www.fsf.org/licensing/assigning.html http://www.apache.org/licenses/icla.txt http://www.openoffice.org/FAQs/faq-licensing.html#jca1 http://www.opensolaris.org/os/about/sun_contributor_agreement/
Rahul
email@pfennigsolutions.de wrote:
What more do you need?
Direct access to the wiki with different license and without the need to sign a CLA. So my options really are:
- Build a community version of Fedora or
- Just leave the project.
Perhaps the second is more appropriate for you then. There is no "community version" of Fedora, because Fedora is inherently a *community* project. The CLA is there to ensure the legality and proper copyright of contributions; that's all.
Peter Gordon schrieb:
version" of Fedora, because Fedora is inherently a *community* project. The
I never felt that. But you really feel that in Ubuntu. Maybe it feels a bit different if in your environment more people use Fedora? Here in Germany I ' d say we have 50% (decreasing) SuSE 40% Ubuntu (and rising) 8% Gentoo and maybe Fedora is part of the last 2 percent. Just my impressions, no statistics.
Thilo Pfennig wrote:
Peter Gordon schrieb:
version" of Fedora, because Fedora is inherently a *community* project. The
I never felt that. But you really feel that in Ubuntu. Maybe it feels a bit different if in your environment more people use Fedora? Here in Germany I ' d say we have 50% (decreasing) SuSE 40% Ubuntu (and rising) 8% Gentoo and maybe Fedora is part of the last 2 percent. Just my impressions, no statistics.
Impressions based on arbitrary numbers and random hunches are not very useful. We are looking at collecting more concrete stats instead.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/Metrics
Rahul
Rahul Sundaram schrieb:
Impressions based on arbitrary numbers and random hunches are not very useful. We are looking at collecting more concrete stats instead.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/Metrics
Well absolute numbers are not very useful, especially when counted worldwide. You get a better sense of a distribution if you know what people think. We have also thoought about those problems at GNOME marketing list http://live.gnome.org/CountingUsers The problems is the quality of the data. I think it would make much more sense if this would be a combined effort that would be led by freedesktop.org, because anyway we need measures that mist distributions or desktops accept. If all do it differently you wil not have any relations you can count on.
So I would rather recommend to discuss such things on freedesktop-promo ( http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/FreedesktopMarketing).
Thilo
Thilo Pfennig wrote:
Rahul Sundaram schrieb:
Impressions based on arbitrary numbers and random hunches are not very useful. We are looking at collecting more concrete stats instead.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/Metrics
Well absolute numbers are not very useful, especially when counted worldwide. You get a better sense of a distribution if you know what people think.
Counting users, collecting hardware information etc is *very useful* exercise in itself that is different from surveys etc. Basic information that we collect currently is purely anonymous server side infrastructure. Analysis of these metrics can almost be completely automated.
We have also thoought about those problems at GNOME
marketing list http://live.gnome.org/CountingUsers The problems is the quality of the data.
Yes, the metrics page discusses the pros and cons of different approaches in detail.
I think it would make much more sense if this would
be a combined effort that would be led by freedesktop.org, because anyway we need measures that mist distributions or desktops accept. If all do it differently you wil not have any relations you can count on.
So I would rather recommend to discuss such things on freedesktop-promo ( http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/FreedesktopMarketing).
Our current efforts on collecting metrics is not limited to the desktop and is not just a marketing effort. The particular list seems to be all about coordination between promoting desktop environments like GNOME, KDE etc which is important but doesnt seem very related to what we are trying to do here.
Rahul
Rahul Sundaram schrieb:
Our current efforts on collecting metrics is not limited to the desktop and is not just a marketing effort. The particular list seems to be all about coordination between promoting desktop environments like GNOME, KDE etc which is important but doesnt seem very related to what we are trying to do here.
The motivation might be different, but it is all about collecting data: How much instances of a distribution or desktop are installed and actively used? Debian also tries to count data. If many distributions would count in similar ways and many desktops also we also could put this data in relation. All face the same problems in counting: What about a Debian user using a Fedora X11-server via network? What about a Fedora user using OpenSuse in Xen and accessing the internet? What about people who dual-boot? There are many possibilities how to use Linux and also there are many users who install a Linux distribution and never come back to it (but could be counted as installed basis). I think it is redundant if every desktop and every distribution is starting from scratch to do analysis on its own.
At best one only can estimate usage and it only makes sense if you can relate that data with other distributions. I think that the Fedora statistics can be a starting point but that it would be important to develop information strategy to make the best out of the data.
Thilo Pfennig schrieb:
I would like to take the chance to try to convince on a last attempt the Fedora project to change its path. The problem starts if you try to find the right list to post such an article. There seems to be no list for discussing the Fedora project!?
Well, there are to many lists these days and here it there is a bit chaos. This will probably cleaned up sooner or later (it was discussed on fedora-advisory-board slightly already). Someone just has to work out a scheme what to do, but nobody stepped up to work out something in detailed yet.
There are the more or less readonly or readprotected lists,
Only fedora-advisory and fedora-maintainers have a readonly variants IIRC. Most other lists are open iirc.
there is a general fedora-list, one for martketing,... - This list is the best guess I could make although I assume desktop means desktop enviroment. Anyway, I just want to post this now.
fedora-devel would have been the better place probably. I'd suggest you send it there again.
My general criticism is that Fedora is not a real community project. This can clearly be seen by the mailing list structure (as the future of Fedora can not really be discussed by the users). Fedora has stated to be a meritocracy ( http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FAQ#head-b9eb81965c2ef7b97979c8b3a9ba587b52da4... ). There is a system of Ambassadors. Different from Ubuntu one can say that it is generally not wanted that users take the distribution into their own hands and make their own marketing. Who is ambassador? "Ambassadors program is a meritocracy, so the ones who have shown that they are actively doing the right thing will be best candidates."
There is work underdone to change this -- your were pointed to the Summit-Pages already. A lot will change and we can need any help with it.
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CU thl
desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org
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Adam Jackson -
Leo -
Matthew Miller -
Peter Gordon -
Rahul Sundaram -
Thilo Pfennig -
Thorsten Leemhuis