On Sat, Feb 20, 2010 at 06:23:19PM +0000, Nelson Marques wrote: > > > 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. [...snip...] Nelson, you make some very good points in your email. So my next question is, how would you personally like to help us improve our communications around SELinux and FOSS drivers? I know there are other places we could improve communications, but since you pointed these two out, we have a good place to start. How would you propose to solve this problem, and can we count on your assistance to help make that solution a reality? -- 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 -- marketing mailing list marketing@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
