Marketing
In this section, we cover Fedora Marketing Project.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Marketing
Contributing Writer: Pascal Calarco
ScreenCast on Miro updates
The ScreenCast thread from last week continues to advance, with ScreenCast samples now available on Miro as Fedora TV. This past week, Lucas Saboya (1) and his folk have started a web form for contributors to upload entries. Jeff Spaleta [2] and others continue to work through the remainder of defining editor workflow for these submissions
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00162.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00173.html
Fedora 9 Falls a Little Short
Rahul Sundaram shared a LinuxPlanet review of Fedora 9 [1]. The writer was a bit disappointed with the stability of this release.
[1] http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/6492/1/
FedoraLife Concept update
Discussion on the "fedoraLife" concept continues. Valent Turkovic pointed to some of the work that had been done on Diva, which is applicable here, with background [1], Valent's screencast of Diva with additional links [2], and pointed out two other projects, saya-videoeditor [3] and myvideoeditor [4]. Anybody with coding experience is encoraged to joint those projects. Rick Garcia, Project Lead from the saya videoeditor project added [5] that saya will work with a any decoding library, so that this effort need not be encumbered by patented software codecs. Discussion continues!
[1] http://www.mdk.org.pl/2006/12/7/state-of-diva [2] http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/archive/index.php/t-184428.html [3] http://saya-videoeditor.blogspot.com/ [4] http://myvideoeditor.blogspot.com\ [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00187.html
Student partnership program
Susmit Shannigrahi suggested [1] an idea originating on the AFEC Fedora Ambassadors meeting to begin a programme to allow students to contribute to the Fedora project [2] Grady Laksmono noted [3] that something like what was proposed is already in place at California State-Los Angeles [4] Jonathon Roberts added [5] that this general idea has come up a few times recently. Francesco Ugolini also expressed support for the idea [6] and suggested that FAmSCo might be able to help with this effort, with some planning.
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00177.html [2] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora-Student_Mentor_Programme [3] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00178.html [4] http://www.calstatela.edu/ [5] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00182.html [6] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00201.html
Page for tracking local Media (CD/DVD) requests
Susmit Shannigrahi offered [1] a wiki page [2] to help track local media requests.
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00192.html [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Distribution/FreeMedia/India/LocalContacts
Fedora 9 How to in Spanish
Diego Escobar offered [1] a Fedora 9 how-to page in Spanish [2], and invited those who might find this useful to download it.
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00203.html [2] http://suservidorwp.googlepages.com/fedora9.pdf
[2] http://www.pcw.co.uk/personal-computer-world/features/2218856/hands-secrets-fedora
Distrowatch: From Fedora 9 to OpenSUSE 11
Pascal Calarco forwarded [1] a recent post [2] by the editor of Distrowatch, a popular meta-Linux distribution news and reviews site. They had been using Fedora 9 since its release, and were now moving to try out SUSE 11.0. In doing so, he made a few comments about the stability of the Fedora 9 release in comparison with Fedora 8:
"It seems to be a trend among Linux distributions that an excellent release is often followed by a mediocre one. It's as if the distribution developers became complacent after one or two successful versions, thinking that nothing could possible go wrong six months down the line. As such, they get more adventurous, make wrong decisions, and add experimental features, the combination of which is often disastrous. With Fedora 9, I feel that the developers have negated all the great work they had done with previous 2 - 3 releases and went overboard with bleeding-edge software and features."
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00212.html [2] http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20080623#feature
Kernel Developers Release Statement on Closed-Source Drivers & Commentary
Rahul Sundaram forwarded [1] a position statement from a group of 160 kernel developers [2] on closed-source kernel drivers:
"We, the undersigned Linux kernel developers, consider any closed-source Linux kernel module or driver to be harmful and undesirable. We have repeatedly found them to be detrimental to Linux users, businesses, and the greater Linux ecosystem. Such modules negate the openness, stability, flexibility, and maintainability of the Linux development model and shut their users off from the expertise of the Linux community. Vendors that provide closed-source kernel modules force their customers to give up key Linux advantages or choose new vendors. Therefore, in order to take full advantage of the cost savings and shared support benefits open source has to offer, we urge vendors to adopt a policy of supporting their customers on Linux with open-source kernel code."
James Bottomley of The Linux Foundation provided some editorial commentary on this issue, with respect to graphics drivers [3], using Fedora as a recent example:
"In essence this is because binary drivers totally negate the shared support and maintenance burden which is what makes Open Source so compelling. Additionally, there is also a drag effect these binary drivers have on the rest of the ecosystem: for instance, Fedora was under enormous pressure not to release Fedora 9 until there was a solution that allowed it to run with the Nvidia binary driver (Fedora chose to ship with a pre-release of the X windows system which Nvidia refused to support and because the driver was binary Fedora couldn't simply fix the problems and ship anyway)."
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00214.html [2] https://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Kernel_Driver_Statement [3] https://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Linux_Graphics_Essay
Fedora Contributor Stories
Ricky Zhou suggested that it might be good to try to collect some of the stories of Fedora users talk about informally at FUDCon, as an effort to encourage new contributors to the Fedora Project, and suggested this could be a component of the various Fedora video efforts under discussion. This generated much discussion in support from several people. Jonathan Roberts mentioned [2] that efforts are underway to establish this based on WordPress MultiUser.
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00225.html [2] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00260.html
PackageKit Finds Sweet Spot
Rahul Sundaram forwarded [1] a posting about Fedora's PackageKit from Linux.com [2] and some history, current status, and future prospects behind the project from Richard Hughes, who developed PackageKit while interning at Red Hat and now maintains it.
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00233.html [2] http://www.linux.com/feature/137115
Recruiting Students: Campus Ambassadors
Jack Aboutbol shared [1] that he has been working on a new effort, Campus Ambassadors, "... something similar to what Mozilla does with the Firefox Campus Rep program--to have someone who can speak to the student body about Fedora and represent Fedora at relevant campus events." He plans to present the idea formally at a Community Architecture meeting next week in Raleigh.
[1] https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-marketing-list/2008-June/msg00255.html