Fedora print magazine

Introduction

This is a proposed project for a print Fedora magazine, published by Linux Pro Magazine (liason: Rikki Kite) and funded by Red Hat (holder-of-the-pursestrings: Max Spevack). The balance of how content creation/editing/design would be distributed between the Fedora community (perhaps with help from the Red Hat Brand team) and Linux Pro Magazine remains to be worked out.

This page is where we try describe the current state of discusions (please contribute!) and solicit feedback (please add your thoughts to the talk page!) Nothing is set in stone. It's a nifty idea - but can it happen? And if so, how? That's what we're trying to figure out right now. Please help!

Summary

• Linux Pro Magazine (LPM) can print a special Fedora issue around the launch of F12. (We can do this for later versions of Fedora as well, but we're looking at the possibility of an F12 issue right now. If F12 doesn't work out, we'll look at F13.)
• This would cost money, which Red Hat would provide (this budget would have to be approved by Max).
• * We are trying to work out the #Contribution balance to figure out who would be involved and what they would do. Right now, the players are "members of the Fedora community," "LPM," and possibly "RHT Brand" - Max is checking with Red Hat's Brand team (who are away in Chicago and busy at the Red Hat Summit right now) to see if they would like to help. If you are interested in helping, please #Volunteer!

Contribution balance

LPM's first proposal explored how easy LPM could make it for Fedora to do this (how much of the writing/editing/layout etc can LPM handle?) and the proposed game plan was for RH to do nothing but contribute funding, for Fedora to contribute a couple technical articles, and for LPM to do the rest, which would be great if our goal was to get a great magazine out while minimizing the burden on the Fedora community. (This is probably what most projects would want to do.) However, our

• This would ideally look like "Fedora Insight: The Print Version" (we'd want the content to be community-contributed rather than hiring outside writers, because Fedora already has awesome writers) * If we want it for F12, we have to decide by the end of this week and somebody has to step up to lead/drive/edit/etc. this project (a somewhat monumental task) * We can do this for a later release too, there's nothing particularly special about right now * Right now, unless a miracle happens and somebody *really* wants to do this, we do not have the bandwidth to do it well for F12, but it would be awesome to do it for a later release, so we should talk with Rikki to see what the timing for an F13 or F14 print issue would look like.

<mchua> tw2113: and we're trying to turn it around and explore how much Fedora community members can really get involved and take ownership of this <tw2113> so we want it done by fedora people as much as possible instead of RH people? <mchua> tw2113: so "how much of the writing/editing/layout etc can Fedora handle, given the chance to work with Really Smart People who are Very, Very Good at Making Magazines?" <tw2113> k <mchua> tw2113: s/RH/LPM, but yes <tw2113> trying to think of what LPM stands for, linux pro magazine? <mchua> tw2113: yep, sorry, should expand my acronyms on first usage <tw2113> k <mchua> tw2113: right now, the plan calls for

We would like to

Timeline

• Wednesday, September 2:
• Thursday, September 3:
• Friday, September 4:
• Sometime during the week of September 6: LPM needs the go/no-go from Fedora (and funding from Red Hat) for an F12 issue. The timeline for everything else would be worked out at this point; for some idea of what this might look like, see Fedora print magazine proposal#Important Dates

The proposal

LPM's Rikki Kite is being absolutely awesome about transparency for this entire process, and has given us permission to share LPM's proposal document with the community - financial details and circulation numbers have been removed, but otherwise, this is literally everything they (and we) have. Please help us edit it!

See and edit the proposal at Fedora print magazine proposal.

History

• Wednesday, September 2, 2009: David Nalley pings Mel Chua in #fedora-mktg and gives a basic overview of the LPM proposal.
• A few minutes later, Mel sends notes from the conversation to the Fedora Marketing list, and David emails Rikki to let her know what's happening.
• 1 hour later in #fedora-mktg, Karsten Wade suggests asking Red Hat's Brand team if they'd like to partner with Fedora on this. Max Spevack begins to contact Red Hat's Brand team; this is tricky, as they are in Chicago and ridiculously busy at the Red Hat Summit.
• 1 hour later, Rikki Kite joins #fedora-mktg and catches up with David, Mel, Max, and Karsten on what's going on. (Sadly, Mel Chua has no logs for this.)
• The next day (Thursday, September 3, 2009), the proposal from LPM is published, this wikipage is created to summarize the discussion, and various Fedora team

That's it so far.

Questions

Please add your questions here - we'll do our best to get through them in the Friday 2009-09-04 call, and will publish answers here. We know this is short notice and will also try to find a way to deal with questions posted after the call.

• What license will the magazine materials be released under?
• Will they be available online? Where? Who would be able to access them?
• Would preexisting open-licensed content (such as material from the Design or News teams be published in this issue?

Volunteers

One of the things we need to figure out is how much the Fedora community wants to get involved with this, so that we can make sure we'll have the opportunity to do so. If you're interested in participating, please add your name below.

• Rahul Sundaram has offered to write an F12 overview; he did this for Linux Identity magazine for F11.
• Mel Chua offers to write a "Join the Fedora Project!" piece, fix the http://join.fedoraproject.org page to work with it, and make sure the resulting influx of new contributors are given a warm welcome.