[Ambassadors] Proposal: Fedora European Infrastructure

[Thomas Canniot]

Le jeudi 08 mars 2007 à 22:56 +0100, Chitlesh GOORAH a écrit :
> On 3/6/07, Kermorvant Armel wrote:
> > I agree with you and I discust about this point with Chitlesh 3 weeks ago and we have the
> >same point of view.
> > But, after a short discussion with himm we share the same point of view about this
> > subjet is :
> 
> > 1st Step : Creation of a legal entity in your country (Exemple Fedora-FR in France)
> > 2nd Step : After the 1st step I OK
> 
> I disagreed having Europe moving in that direction.
> 
> Hello, though, I don't remember when that discussion took place, I
> think I made it clear that :
> - the real work should be done at the Fedora Ambassador's project
>   i.e in the other terms Fedora Ambassadors/Marketing Mailing Lists
> and its meetings
> - Fedora-fr is for "donations" and the "shop". However, I'm NOT for
> Fedora-fr being independent from Fedora Ambassador Project.

Just keep in mind that Fedora-fr first steering committee has *only*
Fedora Ambassadors in it. Is this enough to reassure you ?

> 
> In general, I don't want local communities to be independent of Fedora
> Ambassador Project. I understand that language is a problem. But
> should we take language as a blocker for working together ?

As its president, I don't wish it either. We share the same goals than
Amb. Project : promoting the distro.

> 
> We have seen in the past:
> - FAD (Fedora Ambassador Day)
> - FOSDEM2007
> where we had ambassadors and fedora contributors from different
> countries. Sure we had at some point converged to english as the
> language for communication, but at the same time Fedora isn't a
> language contest, but about open-source.
> 
> Fedora said and will be saying working "the upstream model" is the
> where progress will be.
> We have to make sure that Fedora Ambassadors does his job!

It is doing well I think. We were encouraged to create stuff locally,
and as no people wanted / could not to pay in advance schwags, we had to
create a legal organisation. That is as simple as that. 

> 
> And at the same time have a look at our Fedora Ambassador Meeting, it's dying !!
> Meetings have loss its sense and ambassadors don't take part on the
> project but ready to criticized whenever they feel like.

I agree and I admit not attending Meeting any more. I have a new fresh
eyes about it since FOSDEM. But I really tend to *forget* them. We used
to have a mail reminder, where has it gone ?

> 
> Having legal entity for each country will lead to :
> - everyone will concentrate on his/her country only under the name of
> Fedora but not for Fedora

I don't agree with this statement. Working localy is a good start to
then work as a whole project. We have to stay close to our user base.

> - Fedora Marketing and FAMSCo won't know what is happening in your
> country hence our infrastructure that we are working on will not be
> useful and someone has to :
>   - tell Max that we are not ready for the infrastructure.
>   - bear all the critics and flame wars that Red Hat is giving up on
> Fedora or whatever because local communities are too weak to be
> operating on their own.
>   - agree that he/she refused the infrastructure that will make
> his/her fedora community better that any other linux project has done
> or can do. I know many in this list compare fedora projects to
> ubuntu's, but won't you like not to say/do anything and everything is
> praising fedora ? Now is the time.
> 
> The  different Fedora Projects operate independently and
> automatically. But unfortunately each project can't listen and satisfy
> each contributor. It is the case of the Fedora Ambassadors project
> where contributors want to do things, but unfortunately to do so for
> this particular project a minimum budget is required.
> 
> A Fedora Ambassador is someone who spread the word for Fedora. But
> unfortunately that Fedora Ambassador is weak without infrastructure
> and budget to make things for Fedora's advantage.

In any extent, it seems to be as well a problem we are trying to solve
through Fedora-fr.

> 
> To make that Fedora Ambassadors' life better in terms of
> infrastructure and budget, there are different ways to do so:
> - creating local communities and legal entities
> - sit and cry
> - sit and wait
> - use some of the infrastructure and budget that Fedora Marketing has.
> 
> The last item in our case today is that Max proposed an extra budget
> for Europe and the question is how can that budget be shared and used
> appropriately among European Ambassadors ?
> 
> Eventually, everyone can opt for the _ultimate_ solution[2], i.e "sit and wait".
> 
> MirjamWaeckerlin, ThomasCanniot, GeroldKassube and I proposed "Fedora
> European Infrastructure" which is a set of guidelines on what kind of
> Executive we are looking for.
> 
> But this ultimate solution[2] will lead to someone needs to do that
> job and that job will be done according to his/her way. Of course one
> or two months, some will "sit and cry" because the guidelines :
> - aren't in their favour
> - give credit to how hard they worked
> - ....
> 
> I'm quite sad that those who said that the actual Fedora Ambassador
> infrastructure sucks and their requests aren't processed or rejected,
> that they didn't step in to propose new but concrete ideas.
> 
> Or perhaps you think that MirjamWaeckerlin, ThomasCanniot,
> GeroldKassube and I have already done everything. Believe me, we
> haven't!
> 
> Things like:
> - how and on what circumstances the Executive will reimburse a fedora ambassador
> - can any ambassador be reimbursed ?
> - is the Executive the one who will provide tshirts or dvds to other
> european ambassadors
> - the delay of reimbursed and how
> - ....
> needs to be discussed and write as guidelines so that in the future,
> we know who has what kind of rights.
> 
> Before we all get confused in unrealistic ideas/suggestions for the
> future of the "Fedora European Infrastructure", take a short break and
> look at the picture from an objective point of view.
> 
> Hai it's is all about money !
> - If one country has a way to make money ("see RH legal) for
> sponsoring their Fedora events, so perhaps don't need that "Fedora
> European Infrastructure" we are building.

I do think we need it. Red Hat would prefer giving it to an
organisation / infrastructure towards it can be accountable. I don't
think they would give money to individuals in every European countries.
Here, it is a question of credibility.

Thomas
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