This came up in our Council meeting yesterday¹. Specifically, the suggestion: "Growth Model for the Fedora Project. What is it? Do we have one? There was a fair amount of feedback stating that without specifcs. There is NO plan"² So, there *is* a plan, with several components. Since the first Flock in Charleston, much of it has been under the "Fedora.next" umbrella.³ I feel like we've talked about it quite a lot, but I'm definitely happy to do more. The _basic_ strategy FESCo and the (pre-Council) Board chose is what we now call "Three Editions". Rather than pushing Fedora as an amorphous operating system which doesn't necessarily fit any purpose specifically but which can be good for anything, we decided to intentionally create three targetted editions. This doesn't mean that the Fedora OS we're all familiar with is anything less, but to concentrate our marketing and "selling"⁴ efforts around specific areas. We don't give up on everything else — but we *really* win in these places, and then grow out from there. At and after Charleston, the rough idea was that we needed something technical-user desktopy, something servery, and something emerging-modely (which, in 2013, definitely meant _cloudy_). We asked volunteer groups with interest in these particular areas to identify a target subset of that area to aim for. And from that, we arrived at: * Fedora Workstation: Here, the target is software developers — not of Fedora, but as end-users.⁵ * Fedora Server: Linux server with push-button deploy of preconfigured best-practices setups for specific tasks.⁶ * Fedora Cloud: a base platform for building scale-out cloud computing applications (as opposed to the many other buzzwordy uses of "cloud").⁷ We're probably going to replace Fedora Cloud with Fedora Atomic Host, because we _weren't_ really succeeding in growth with that one. (Fedora Cloud base image won't go away; it just won't be the focus from this "growth plan" perspective.) So, Three-Editions is the basic strategy for the OS we produce — which is the primary activity through which we aim for our mission. But it's not all on the making-an-OS side. We also have two other "Objectives"⁸ on deck which are related to growth. The first is the University Involvement Initiative⁹, which didn't get much traction this year but which Remy is planning to revitalize for the next one. This calls for user and contributor growth specifically on campus. The second is in draft form — and has basically been waiting for us to work through the budget stuff to give us time to talk more. This is Fedora Python Marketing¹⁰. While Fedora Workstation focuses on developers, this idea is to aim some resources even more narrowly and to promote Fedora specifically as the distro-of-choice in the Python community over the next year. Again, the goal isn't for Fedora to end up as Python-specific, but to build that base (and to build on the already strong Python connections we have) to grow from. And, here is perhaps the most important thing. The Council has slots for 2 to 4 objectives like this at a time. Sometimes these will be technical (like Modularization¹¹), but I think it's good for us generally to have at least one focused on user and/or contributor growth at all times. Each objective comes with a 12-18 month lifespan, so we can judge how each worked, and figure out something even better for the next time. So, we don't just have some short-term plans, but also an engine for continuous reexamination and mid-range planning. Notes and links: 1. https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting/2016-05-09/council.2016-05-09-18.00.html 2. From Mark Terranova (Hi Mark!), but this message isn't really to him only 3. From 2014, see: https://fedoramagazine.org/fedora-present-and-future-a-fedora-next-2014-update-part-i-why/ 4. In the metaphorical sense — we're absolutely not and will not be literally selling anything. 5. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Workstation/Workstation_PRD 6. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Server/Product_Requirements_Document 7. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Cloud/Cloud_PRD 8. What's a capital-letter-O "Objective?" see http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Council#Objective_Leads 9. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Objectives/University_Involvement_Initiative 10. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Objectives/Fedora_Marketing_Python 11. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Objectives/Fedora_Modularization,_Prototype_Phase -- 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.
