Máirín Duffy said the following on 05/15/2007 01:10 PM Pacific Time:
Rahul Sundaram wrote:
"The Fedora Project is a collection of projects sponsored by Red Hat,
and developed as a partnership between the open source community and
Red Hat engineers. The goal of Fedora? The rapid progress of free and
open source software and content. Public forums. Open processes. Rapid
innovation. Meritocracy and transparency. All in pursuit of the best
operating system and platform that free software (link to
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html) can provide."
"Fedora is Linux based operating system and platform that showcases
the the best combination of robust and latest free and open source
software. Fedora is always free for anyone to use, modify, and
distribute. It is built by people across the globe who work together
as a community: the Fedora Project. The Fedora Project is open and
anyone is welcome to join.
"The Fedora Project leads the advancement of free and open source
software. By using Fedora, the best of software created by the Linux
and Free software community is in your hands."
The first paragraph is too long and too fluffy.
The top two things people are going to want to do from this page are
(well by my guess, which may be wrong, but):
1) Download Fedora.
2) Figure out what Fedora is, because they have no clue.
#1 people won't even read the text.
The #2 people are newbies and need things explained simply and
concisely. We don't want to scare off the #2 people because they are
potential users and contributors. For them, I think it's best to leave
the extended 'what is the Fedora community' discussion for behind the
'Learn More' link. We hint enough about it in the two paragraphs that
are on the site right now. Hopefully that bit is enticing enough that
they'll want to learn more.
I explain what Linux and Fedora are to my seatmates on planes all the
time, and I think if I started spewing off that first suggested
paragraph their eyes would glaze over and they'd put their headsets on,
not really understanding *what* I was talking about. Instead I start
with paragraphs #2 and #3 (an operating system is something solid,
something they use everyday. I have to make many comparisons to Windows
and Mac OS X before they 'get' it. An open community is not something
unfortunately that everybody is a member of and understands so it's
difficult to draw understandable parallels.), get them interested enough
to download, and if it doesn't seem like I'll make much progress
explaining the other stuff I let it be.
I completely agree. Less text is better. Post all of the detailed "what we are, how it all works, etc." in a sub-link. At the front page let people choose what they want to find out more about.
John
John
