Docs Project colleagues, The following thoughts come out of the sessions we had at FUDCon about doing a better job involving new contributors in Fedora. I'm going to start out with the summary, so if you don't want to read all of this you can skip it and immediately make comments. Those of you who want a larger picture can read more after the summary. Please keep in mind that I am not yet paid by Red Hat, and this message comes from me as a fellow contributor, and not the FPL. As always, it will be up to each of us to evaluate what effort we want to give to Fedora, and where we put it. I hope the following will give you some inspiration about Fedora's future.... * * * * * THE PUNCHLINE: For its size, the Docs Project has done great things thanks to the energy and generosity of its members. But in the post-F9 era, we need to get off the treadmill of simple user/admin documentation, which is duplicated many times over in both the free and for-pay spheres, and move to goals that are more contributor-oriented. * * * * * THE LONG VERSION: Originally I suggested a "Developer Guide Reboot" session and hackfest, a document that would support entry of developers into the project. It would give a tour of some important packages and online resources so they wouldn't have to navigate a metric boatload of wiki pages to get started. Over time, though, it became clear that this wasn't just an issue about developers, but about contributors of all flavors. Part of our "lowering barriers" mission has to be about encouraging and educating people who aren't doing just coding jobs, but website/infrastructure folks, artists, documentation writers, coding and non-coding packagers, ambassadors, and just plain friends. Historically, the Docs Project has concerned itself mainly with helpful user/administrator level guides, but by focusing on the trees, we may be missing the mark on the forest, so to speak. There are a huge number of existing guides and tutorials on the web -- not all of them authoritative -- and a full selection of dead-tree books to be had at any bookstore. Is it really worth our time to be competing on that level? I say this not to call into question the excellent work that's being done by contributors, but to get people thinking about the post-F9 Docs Project, and where we should be focusing our sights. If Fedora does not grow and extend its contributor base, it will wither over time. We cannot demand that the same people do the same work in Fedora for extended periods; people change and grow, and naturally move on to other Fedora tasks, the same way they move on to other jobs, homes, or ways of thinking. Instead, we should focus on bringing new entities into the project and giving them the resources they need to contribute to the project. Note that I say "entities" and not "people," because Fedora also stands to gain if we bring in additional commercial or other non-individual contributors who themselves gain from a contributory partnership in Fedora. Fedora needs to grow also beyond just its partnership with and sponsorship by Red Hat. By doing that, we secure the health of the project in a more sustainable way. The idea of the Developer Guide for these reasons was transformed during our working sessions at FUDCon into a "Get Involved Guide" (GIG). This sort of documentation allows us to escape the treadmill of trying to update countless pages of advice on how to perform end-user tasks that do not necessarily help people contribute to Fedora (and thus help it grow and thrive). Michael Tiemann stated in his speech at FUDCon that the future of IT commerce is in "the communities that [companies] build." If we want to position Fedora at the forefront of open source in the 21st century, we must think larger than simply showing people how to run Fedora -- we need to show people how they can *get involved*, not just in Fedora documentation, or packaging, or feature development, but in the many fields of endeavor this project covers. I would also make the point that what you read above is not the end of the whole Fedora vision, but just a facet of a larger idea which I am still fleshing out with other Fedora leaders. As always, we will be talking about this much more in the future with as much openness and transparency as possible, to encourage community input, awareness, and enthusiasm. * * * * * As you all know, I am not one for long, rambling emails when I can avoid them. They try my patience too! But nevertheless, there are many positive messages in the above ideas. I have a huge amount of respect for the work everyone is doing, and I hope you will not find the above to be a criticism, but rather a "leap-ahead" vision for where we should set our sights for goals after Fedora 9. "DOCS ROCKS!" -- Paul W. Frields, RHCE http://paul.frields.org/ gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717 Fedora Project: http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/ irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug
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