ambassadors "conflict of interest"

[Clint Savage]

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 4:47 PM, inode0 <inode0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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 also agree here with John, with a bit more to say.  The fight isn't
just for Fedora against other distributions, but it's that we want the
code to be free and Fedora most definitely embodies this spirit.
However, I think that many other Linux distributions accomplish this
task as well.

I think it comes down to a perception of what is reality and how we
expect Fedora ambassadors to act when not representing Fedora.   I
believe that representing Linux and free software is just as important
and representing more than one Linux distribution does not preclude
them from being Ambassadors for Fedora.  In fact, I would hope that
they would try to emphasize the benefits of Linux, Fedora and any
other distribution of Linux rather than disparaging others.  This is a
community where we have to work together to get free and open source
software everywhere and Fedora is just one way of providing that
environment.

-- snip --

Clint