ambassadors "conflict of interest"

[Paul Frields]

On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 8:41 AM, Michael Tiemann <tiemann at redhat.com> wrote:
> Gianluca Sforna wrote:
>>
>> Please accept my apologies if this is not the proper place to ask.
>>
>> I've never read anything against this, so I'm wondering if it was ever
>> brought up at all.
>>
>> Are Fedora ambassadors allowed to also be <put your alternate distro
>> name here> ambassadors?
>>
>
> I think it's problematic.  I think that Fedora ambassadors should
> high-value, trusted opinion-leaders, and should embody the energy and
> excitement of the Fedora project.  Somebody who tries to act as a higher
> authority of why one would want to use Distribution X or Y for a given
> situation, instead of encouraging people outside the community or inside of
> it to make Fedora the best distribution for the task in question, are not
> being true ambassadors.
>
> I see no conflict whatsoever for somebody to be both a Fedora Ambassador and
> also an ambassador for GNOME or KDE or Emacs or PostgreSQL or MySQL, etc.
>  But I think that somebody who has a fistful of distribution ambassadorships
> isn't providing the kind of differentiated boost to Fedora that I'd expect
> to come from a Fedora Ambassador.

I have to agree with Michael Tiemann about this.

The Fedora Project is not just "an example of a free software
project."  The Fedora Project also embodies a specific set of core
values that are not only different from some other projects, but
sometimes even incompatible. It's impossible to believe
whole-heartedly in two mutually incompatible things.

So to some extent, doing other promotional work as a Fedora Ambassador
would probably depend on that compatibility -- kind of like
compatibility in free software licensing. For instance, promoting an
upstream that Fedora ships would seem to me to be compatible.
Promoting a different project that doesn't share our values doesn't
seem workable to me.

I always try to keep in mind that being a Fedora Ambassador is neither
a fan club, nor a merit badge. It's a position of trust used to spread
the word about how our Project and its values and methods work, and to
encourage other people to get involved in their own way. I'm all for
people using that position to work with other groups to establish
better, more sustainable practices for FOSS, but I don't think you can
do that wearing a different philosophy for whichever group you happen
to be representing at the time.

Paul