On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 12:41 PM, Paul W. Frields <stickster@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 09:04:28AM -0700, Adam Williamson wrote: >> So, Zarafa is getting a lot of press attention: >> >> http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=6298 >> >> some of it is fairly unflattering: >> >> http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3877446/Fedora-13-Beta-The-Seen-and-Troubling-Unseen.htm >> >> I'm a bit uncomfortable with this myself; the availability of Zarafa in >> Fedora seems to be being read in ways in which we certainly didn't >> intend it (as an aspect of commercialization, as some kind of Red >> Hat-parachuted feature and hence an indication of RH's future >> directions, etc). >> >> I'm wondering if perhaps we should pull Zarafa's mention as a 'feature' >> of Fedora 13, or if not that, then certainly develop a more coherent >> story about its inclusion, what it's for, why it's in Fedora, and the >> whole 'open core' angle on it... >> >> What do people think? > > As some others noted, I think pulling the feature is unwarranted. At > least part of the compelling story around Zarafa is that it's included > because a volunteer took advantage of our open, community process to > get a cool piece of software into the distribution. This happens > quite a lot, and deja-dup is another good example. But that story > wasn't clear in the talking point, so I've corrected it for future > reporters who only read the talking point. > > Comparing Deja-Dup and Zarafa in Fedora to something like Ubuntu's > Ubuntu One music store is comparing apples to oranges. The Fedora > Project has no commercial agreements with these companies and receives > no money for them. They're provided because volunteers decided they > brought worthwhile solutions to users with 100% FOSS. What I find troubling about the article is that he's not - as we did, on the mailing list when discussing the Zarafa feature - talking about the "open-core" thing. He's basically talking about being troubled because Fedora is becoming "commercialized." This is akin to arguing with someone about whether or not a Wal-Mart should go into their neighborhood. Some people are for it - "new jobs! lower cost goods!"; some will be against it - "They'll put all the locals out of business!" Other people will just argue against it because.... hating Walmart is anti-establishment, and being anti-establishment is cool. In this case - no commercialization is "cool" - and he doesn't provide any significant underlying reasons why, other than he believes that open source should be a refuge from commercialization. The fact is - more and more companies are producing open source products. Personally, I could care less if a product going into Fedora is created by aliens from another planet, provided that the product itself - or in this case, the version/edition of the product - is adhering to Fedora's core values, has appropriate licensing, and so forth. We should not put ourselves in the practice of excluding features that would be valuable and useful to our user base - not to mention, products that had significant community effort, and are appropriately free and licensed - simply because $CompanyThatMakesMoney(orAtLeastSpendsMoney) put effort into it. I think we made the right call - and I don't think we should backtrack. > > Also, I've dropped a comment at the article site, pushed a change to > the BFO FAQ indicating clearly that BFO is not part of Anaconda > itself. That was the only location I could find that looked > potentially unclear. > > > > -- > 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 > -- marketing mailing list marketing@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
