On Sat, 2010-02-20 at 11:53 -0500, Paul W. Frields wrote: > On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 03:18:03PM -0500, David Nalley wrote: > > On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 3:07 PM, Nelson Marques <07721@xxxxxxx> wrote: > > > From what I could understand, two goals to reach: > > > > > > - Increase the number of Fedora users > > > - Increase the number of Fedora contributors > > > > Well I'd say that's a misconception. > > Fedora is concerned with growing it's contributor base and advancing > > the state of free software. > > > > Fedora isn't at all concerned with the "getting mindshare above all > > else" type of mentality that most orgs have. While we want and like > > users, I don't think that we actively try and seek out what people > > want as driving our decisions. > > At the same time, though, we're trying to identify places where we are > actually *driving away* users. Through more attention to these > problems and the many easy fixes we could put in place, we can do > better on both of the goals Nelson mentions. > > Our aim is not to carpet-bomb the planet with CDs, nor to just > accumulate fans. We prefer to define and follow more sustainable > practices, aided by strong engineering and good upstream partnership > with the projects creating important and innovative software. > My idea is not to change how Fedora operates neither boss people around. I shouldn't go technical on this one but this is important to mention, and it's about segmentation. It is important to segment your audience (doesn't mean you need to change your product). Keep in mind that Fedora is aimed for a international community, and that very community has different goals and perceives value (from Fedora) in a different way from individual to individual. You need to segment your communication, else it won't work. There are other things that Fedora has that need some work, I'll point two of them that need a lot of work at communication level: - SELinux (being rivaled by Novell's AppArmour) - Red Hat FOSS drivers (check the output of several communities about this news, ex: slashdot threat). The last one points clearly for several types of users, those who don't really need outstanding 3D performance, and those who explore this subject on a more technical point of view and show different advantages. Threads like the one on Slashdot could be avoided if there was good communication around that topic. Another disruptive fight is going around GNOME and gnome-shell vs gnome-panel. All of this could be sorted out by marketing. Those who believe that Marketing is a sales force, are completely wrong. Marketing has the most powerful diagnose tools at it's service for issues like this one. See it this way: If you are sick, you search for a doctor for a diagnose and then you get a set of conditions to fulfill in order to improve your situation. An organization should use Marketing not only to support sales, advertising and so on, but to diagnose as well itself and it's product in order to achieve it's goals. Marketing might provide a good set of procedures to improve it. Everyone forgets a single point, Fedora at some point promotes the technology created by it's sponsor Red Hat. If you fall back in users related to other distributions supported by Red Hat competitors, eventually in a 10/15 year time frame, all this users that are currently using other distro's will hit the market, and they will flavour as their tools those they work for a long time. I might have a degree on Marketing and not on Engineering, which doesn't mean I've worked years packaging software the former Center of Telecommunication Studies in Portugal (nowadays Portugal Telecom Innovation S.A.). I used SuSE back then at home, and was forced to work with Red Hat, and since then I'm far more comfortable with Red Hat/Fedora than with SuSE itself. If I needed to choose between distro's taking productivity in mind, I would go Red Hat for sure because of the strong background I have with it. This will apply to the users that somehow people want to neglect. Eventually the Industry and it's professionals at a later stage will reflect what we do today. The higher the number of users, the better it will serve Fedora and it's sponsors in the future. I might be wrong on this. To finish, people can't expect to keep a community if we don't provide them challenges and if we don't incentivate them to cooperate. By statements like: "I don't think that we actively try and seek out what people want as driving our decisions." We are doing exactly what we shouldn't, marginalizing the users. We don't have to be driven by what people want, but we should try to understand their needs and provide the right communication segmented for them in order that we can offer them a product that they recognize value on it. Expectation > Satisfaction = Loose situation Satisfaction > Expectation = Win Situation (and you can only achieve this if you don't neglect your users and if you understand then, and most important of all, if we can answer to their needs). From the marketing point of view, Quality is not achieved by security, stability or whatever, it comes as easy as: Quality = Expectation - Satizfaction Positive = Quality Negative = No Quality This is how users perceive Quality. If we can asnwer them accordingly, I would believe that everyone has something to win, Fedora as a community, Fedora as a Product, Red Hat as a sponsor and technology enabler and above all, all users. Keep in mind the following as it is always true: Organization Goal: Profit (might come in different flavours, capital/finantial profit, social profit, etc), for Fedora community I would recon it would translate better into social profit. Organization Means: Product/Service (always) Organization Target: People (always) People/Consumers/Users, whatever is always the key element. Neglecting their role on this "symbiotic ecosystem" is not wise. There is no point in being a King without people to rule. NM PS: This is a personal opinion, nothing more, nothing less. > -- > Paul W. Frields http://paul.frields.org/ > gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717 > http://redhat.com/ - - - - http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/ > Where open source multiplies: http://opensource.com
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