ambassadors "conflict of interest"

[inode0]

On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 7:41 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 think there are some assumptions here that don't really apply in
most cases. We do have ambassadors that also have similar roles in
other distributions. To my knowledge they do not do what you are
describing. While representing Fedora at an event they act
appropriately for that role. At other events they represent other
groups. Whether the philosophies of the groups are similar enough to
allow them to sleep at night I'm happy leaving to their consciences to
decide.

> 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 consider myself an ambassador for both Fedora and for RHEL. I do,
when I think it is appropriate, suggest RHEL as something a person
might want to look into when I think it fits their needs as I
understand them better than Fedora can. Is that problematic?

John