The beginning of a the new year is a good time for reflection... (even if it is in the last few hours of January). Over on the new CommOps team, there's a great initiative for all our various Fedora subprojects to look back at successes for 2015 — see https://communityblog.fedoraproject.org/share-your-year-in-review-with-fedora/ Here, I'd like to discuss what we want to do _this_ year. What would the ideal 2016 look like for Fedora? What do we collectively want to accomplish, both in the big picture and in specific areas which will have big impact? I have some ideas for things I think are important, but most of all I'd like to have a discussion of all our thoughts as a community, and then the Council can work on a short summary of the top points which we can refer to throughout the year (and reflect back on once we've made it to 2017). -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here's what I'm thinking about: Fedora Hubs (or, Up from the Depths of the Internet!) ===================================================== For several years, I've been talking about Fedora's online presence as a like the proverbial iceberg — it's mostly lurking beneath the surface. Our primary engines for interaction are email and IRC (and we use a _lot_ of both... stay tuned for some future posts on metrics around these things!). Both tools are awesome and productive, but we also need a modern, visible online "home". I want it to feel like the excitement and recharging energy of Flock or FUDCon, all the time. So, enter the "Fedora Hubs" concept. If you haven't heard about this before, read more at: * https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Hubs * https://pagure.io/fedora-hubs * http://blog.linuxgrrl.com/2015/07/01/fedora-hubs-update/ This year, let's see it become reality. Initiatives for Project Growth ============================== I'm working on a "State of Fedora" talk for DevConf.cz, and one of the things that I'm happy to report is that our metrics are showing a lot of real growth over the past year. Fedora 20 was a very successful release — one of our most popular ever. But, the early numbers didn't really show an overall increase in popularity — more, a flat line with the popularity maybe explained by people upgrading from early releases. But the numbers for F21, F22, and now F23 show continuing growth. For 2016, let's take that and run with it. First, we need to really step up our active marketing. Hitting the tables at traditional Linux events isn't bringing in new users and contributors like it might have in the early days. With the Three Editions strategy, we have the beginning. Each edition has a target market and userbase defined. This year, let's go beyond just making an awesome OS release and hoping people will notice. Let's find where we can solve real problems people have with their existing developer's workstation, small server environment, and in cloud computing - bring real problems back, solve them, and get a real cycle of feedback and growth. Let's make sure that at key conferences and meetups, we have people talking about great things that Fedora enabled them to do - not just about Fedora itself. We have an initiative for better university involvement, and while that's still getting off the ground, it has a lot of potential and can fit right in, since student developers are part of the Workstation target, and it's important to get the next generation of developers doing _their_ cool stuff with Fedora. Read more on this in the "PRDs" for each edition: * https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Workstation/Workstation_PRD * https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Cloud/Cloud_PRD * https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Server/Product_Requirements_Document and this on the University Involvement objective: * https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Objectives/University_Involvement_Initiative Making Fedora Atomic "Primary" ============================== Continuing on the Editions marketing strategy... when we came up with that idea, cloud computing was one of the key strategic areas we identified. The idea of the Cloud Base image as it stands was to provide a minimal platform on which people deploying to the cloud could add various software stacks and create their own solutions. I think we did a fine job with that technically, but it wasn't exciting enough to make anyone who didn't want to use Fedora already take notice. It's good, but there's nothing _really_ compelling to make someone make it their first choice. With Atomic, though, I think we now have that. So, as a tweak to the Editions strategy, I want to replace Cloud with Atomic. This addresses the same scale-out commodity computing area, but does it in new, interesting ways with technology that is really breaking new ground. (For people who want the traditional cloud image, we can still keep making that as basically something akin to a Spin, and if people are interested enough possibly provide a Fedora Server variant of that as well, for easy launch of more "pet-like" servers into public cloud providers.) We talked about this at the last Flock - and in 2016, let's do it. More about Project Atomic, Fedora Atomic's current every-two-week releases, and a longer version of what I just said above: * http://projectatomic.io/ * https://getfedora.org/en/cloud/download/atomic.html * https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/cloud@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/message/5QGBXM4GSQYCHOCIJXPVWUCXBHVPT3RE/ Making Modularization Mean Something ==================================== And finally, also in the category of "something I've been talking about for a while, but now let's do something"... this idea of a more modular Fedora. My "Fedora Rings" talk at Flock in Charleston two and a half years ago proposed that a more loosely-coupled system would allow for better growth into the next decade. It's one of those things that's easier said than done. A more modular construction of the Fedora package collection, rather than one big unified repo, would provide a number of advantages. We could consider a longer lifecycle for select configurations of Fedora Server. Fedora Workstation releases might be synchronized with upstream GNOME releases, without either blocking other changes or being blocked on them. In cases where size matters, we could have better management of the hundreds of megabytes (literally!) of constantly-churning metadata. And we could better provide multiple versions of software stacks, without the massive duplication of effort this requires now. I've started to see some people with concrete ideas of what this might look like. This year, let's see some actual prototypes for these ideas. They might not all work, and some might be terrible - but others could be great. Let's find out! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- These are things I'm thinking about. But of course it's not all about me. What do *you* want for Fedora this year? -- Matthew Miller <mattdm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Fedora Project Leader _______________________________________________ council-discuss mailing list council-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct http://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/council-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx The Fedora Project's mission is to lead the advancement of free and open source software and content as a collaborative community.
