Status of the Free Media Program

[susmit shannigrahi]

Hi,


> At first I thought the program had ended (as in permanently terminated)
> because the pages I ended up said the program was closed.  This led me raise
> this as an issue the board should get status on.  Then Paul Frields told me
> privately that the program is very much alive and suggested sending my
> questions to a wider audience who might be interested and able to respond
> here.
>
> 1) What is the state of the Free Media program and how is it going?

It is going great. :)


> 2) Do you think the wiki page and the form are getting people to the right
> place effectively and giving them the right information?  I was little
> confused when I ended up at
> https://fedoraproject.org/freemedia/FreeMedia-form.html and it said "Fedora
> Free Media form is now CLOSED" but there was no mention of when it would
> open and there are 90 different people to contact in my country :-/  Do we
> really want random people emailing a random ambassador?

Please note, the page talks about getting availability information
from ambassadors, not disks. An ambassador knows where the events are
etc.But this is only a temporary solution.
I am working on getting an app ready for integrating the whole
distribution thing and the mockup is here
http://susmit.fedorapeople.org/freemedia/output.pdf. This will be
worked on at foss.in (12 days from now) and I hope to solve it once
and for all.


> I also wondered if it was a good idea to be pointing people to something
> they can't have or even request on our main "Day of Release" page:
> http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora ?

It is not, but the cycle is different. Freemedia opens at the
beginning of each month and this does not coincide with release.


> 3) Realizing that all the people giving their time and money to the Free
> Media program are doing this out of their own resources (which I think is
> amazing), do the Free Media project leaders feel that free media is getting
> to the right people--people that can't get it any other way?

The app I talked about can solve this problem to some extend. If
required, we sometime challenge some requests for verification, but
given the volume of the requests, we can not do it for each and every
request. We have to trust people to some extend, no other way and no
way to be cent percent sure about the media reaching right people or
not.


> 4) Lastly, how can the board help drive more participation and involvement
> in the great work that you do in the Free Media program?

Yes, thanks for bringing this up.

My initial though was to integrate freemedia with ambassadors project
and get it under FAmSCo. On a second thought, I think we can do well
with a elected body for exclusively distribution. Entry into
ambassadors group is no longer low-barrier and those who want to send
only two dvds/month need not go through all the formalities of it.

But notwithstanding the ease of job, we need dedicated people who can
take care of the freemedia and distribution process, get new vendors
and contributors signed up, work with LUGs and magazines to carry
fedora and work on other things to ensure availability. In short, I am
thinking of an elected body to take care of distribution process.
Also, we have started receiving donations[1]once again and I have
requested Max to take charge of the donations (only if he agrees). An
elected body will be able to decide on the best way to spend the
donations.

However, I am yet to take this discussion to the freemedia list, and
once that is done anf if the proposal is agreed upon, we can come up
with a formal proposal to the board. This we will talk about in
details after getting the app ready.

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Distribution/FreeMedia/Donation#Donation_History

Thanks.

-- 
Regards,
Susmit.

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http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/user:susmit
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