> > Fedora has grown big, and it has become harder to set a shared vision > and common goals, communicating between groups too. What about our > relations with the broader community, the downward trend of distros ? > > I'm fine with a "supreme court" like board but something is missing in > our current organization. > What we're trying to fix is not the board per se, but Fedora's > leadership (what is supposed to be one of the board missions) > > I grant Fedora needs to have a shared vision though I don't understand exactly what that entails. I am guessing a shared vision might include such things as not wanting patent encumbered software, some statement on ease of use, some statement on ease of installation, some statement on ease of management. Please note, my view of shared vision and strategy is from the user point of view. Ambassadors may have different visions, FESCo different visions. May I ask why the board should be the only ones to share a vision or try to influence common goals? Anyone should be able to share a vision and a set of common goals in an anarchy. Perhaps Fedora needs to set up mechanisms so anyone, be it the board, be it some ambassadors, be it some developers, be it some packagers, can share a vision and strategy where Fedora should go. I expect most of the visions and strategies to be discarded one way or another. A few, a very few, might make it through to becoming implemented. Do I believe sharing a vision or offering a strategy will be easy for the board or users or anyone? No. One must prepare slides for each intended audience. The work involved is huge. I don't expect many people can share a vision successfully, without help. One must state a problem or reason why a change is needed. One must show the proposed solution. One must show the proposed solution is feasible, solves the intended problem, doesn't have undesirable consequences. One must market one's solution. Perhaps the board should set up a mechanism whereby groups, be those groups the board, ambassadors, developers, and even users, can contribute to a shared vision and strategy. I will suggest one of the biggest problems in this shared vision is deciding if Fedora itself is the correct audience for implementing this vision. Perhaps the vision needs to be implemented upstream for all of Linux. Let me offer a real example of a shared vision for the desktop if I may to help with this point. Desktops are getting faster and faster. Desktops have microphones, cameras, speakers. On smartphones, I can talk to the smartphone to compose email, text messages, even do Google searches. My vision is to have all these features on the desktop so the keyboard and mouse become optional. Humans are used to communicating by voice, not by typing at a keyboard or moving a mouse. Google has made great strides in voice recognition as have other companies on smartphones. Is Google and the other companies done with their voice recognition software? They may think they are, but they most definitely are NOT! First, they must teach the software to recognize voice and do things, but second, and just as important or more important, they must teach the software when NOT to do things. Let me give a few examples involving my smartphone to illustrate my point. I am composing a text message using voice recognition. Susan starts to talk. Suddenly, my text message includes my words and her words. The software needs to recognize my voice, understand I am the one composing the the text message, and ignore her voice while I am composing a text message. Let me give another example. I might be talking to myself or another person. Suddenly, Okay Google Now, what Google sometimes calls its voice recognition software, thinks I am talking to it. I am not talking to it. It needs to know when I am talking to it and when I am not. My examples are simple, baby step examples. I could foresee security software using a camera to identify who is talking, doing voice recognition to identify my voice as opposed to Susan's voice, unlocking or locking doors because I say so or Susan says so, but doing nothing if a stranger says so. This vision will happen in the future. How would I pitch this vision to Fedora? I admit Fedora is the wrong target for this vision. This vision belongs upstream, not in Fedora, but let''s say I want to pitch this vision to Fedora. What mechanisms are in place for pitching such a vision? Are there webpages in the Fedora Project for proposing such a vision? Are there guidelines suggesting if Fedora is the right target, and if so, telling how one might pitch such a vision? Examples of guidelines might be youtube videos, Power Point presentations. Mechanisms might include question and answer Google+ hangouts, the ability for anyone to post comments asking questions or offering criticisms. What is the screening process? When does a vision become more than a pipe dream to be an idea the board, some developers in FESCo, some ambassadors, some users might champion? When would a vision reach the point where time is set aside at a Fedora conference for the vision and other visions that make it to a certain point in the screening process to be presented, discussed, agreed to or finally rejected? When you say the board needs to promote a vision in an anarchy, you need to first have a vision, and then you need to sell that vision. I don't see why the board should be the only ones able to sell a vision. As I say, very few visions will make it through the screening process. One needs to be upfront about the chance of failure to set expectations. One needs to direct visions upstream or downstream if that's where they belong. The board, in this regard, can set up the mechanisms for sharing visions. The board can act as coordinator, manager, over the sharing of visions. I would even give the board veto power to block a vision that conflicts with Fedora core values. > > I agree with all above, and no matter how we change the governance > model, that won't change. > What we're trying to fix is to get the right people onboard able to > drive the project and having a representative board of the project. > > We can't force anybody to do anything, we can only persuade them. This > proposal is trying to build a leadership body, not a manager-like > committee. Nobody believe that the latter could even work. > > And I'd like to insist that what I'm trying to advocate is the result > of a collective process, there were much more people involved that > just Toshio and I, that's why we shared a transcript (made by Adam and > various folks during the workshop) so you could get as much > informations as possible. > > Is there some particular vision people wish to promote that is not being promoted now? > Regards, > H. > > _______________________________________________ board-discuss mailing list board-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/board-discuss
