User:Poelstra/Importance of strategy

This page is a draft only
It is still under construction and content may change. Do not rely on the information on this page.

Background

This page came out of the Strategic Working Group meeting on 2010-01-25

Ideas

• BRAINSTORMING: not to be taken as set policy
• Background: lay out reaons why the Board (and this workgroup) are pursuing these issues and the benefits that will result to Fedora from doing so
• Colin: The board work doesn't necessarily have to be negative or create restrictions on groups inside Fedora; instead one could think of it as finding commonality and providing a framework.
• Paul: Perception of Fedora carrying the torch of free software needs to strongly match the reality
  • Contributors fully recognized for their work and progress in the free software community
  • We want Fedora to be successful, understood by more people, and we want it to prosper. This happens by:
    • Attracting more contributors
    • Making sure we are putting effort into the right areas--cannot attack everything equally
    • Work hard to collectively/collaboratively solve these problems
    • Making sure support and resources are going to the key areas that help us blaze a trail forward
    • Continuing to implicitly allow and encourage groups and personal initiatives that fall outside of the key areas, provided that they do not impede progress in the key areas
• John: We want to be clear about why we are creating the default spin and who it is for so that we can measure our success or failure
  • This helps to build sustainable, achievable release processes because we have a clear sense of what must work and for whom
• Mike: We need to have current goals for why we exist and what our purpose is so that outside and inside people have a sense where Fedora is going and what its direction is
  • John: this gives them something to grab onto and belong to vs. people showing up to a massive sand box with lot of people doing their own thing where it is unclear where to get involved, what is most important, what the critical mass of people is working on.

Distillation?

• http://marilyn.frields.org:8080/~paul/wordpress/?p=2974

To advance free software, we need to provide a well thought out integration of free software without corner-cutting. A positive user experience when using, and after installing, a product is our best possible advertisement in the absence of a bottomless wallet for marketing. To provide that experience, and be able to evaluate our success at doing so, we must focus our finite resources on a limited target that also captures the basic needs of the largest majority of our contributors. At the same time, it is incumbent upon us to provide opportunities for exploration to all contributors within the framework of our core values and without impeding progress. (This is just my attempt to distill. Editing appreciated. --pfrields 01:54, 28 January 2010 (UTC))