"What is the Fedora Project?"

[Josh Boyer]

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 10:17:45AM -0400, Paul W. Frields wrote:
>> I bring it up because I still honestly don't know your stance on this and
>> being the project lead it's pretty important to this discussion.  Are we
>> excluding people or are we including everyone?
>
>I'm sorry I haven't been clear enough, in that case.  "Everyone" is
>too broad and there's no way we can make release, QA, or any other
>criteria around that definition.  Any detail, no matter how small, is
>going to be important to somebody and for that person, might be a
>blocker on a release.  With that target we would have a hard time ever
>releasing something.  So:
>
>We should target computer-literate users who are making a conscious
>choice to switch to Linux, are willing to help a developer debug a
>problem if one occurs, and use their system to connect to the Internet
>and run a general set of productivity and communication tools (connect
>to network, update system if needed, browse Web, use our help venues
>including mail and IRC).  These users need not be developers,
>programmers, sysadmins, or tinkerers.  By targeting this type of user,
>and by fixing things we're not doing right for this type of user,
>we'll also fix a lot of other people's pain, including people in our
>core contributor audience.
>
>I would like to have a much longer and more detailed set of criteria
>for what this person needs to be able to do from the moment they boot
>the installation media, but that's a next step.  Mairin Duffy sort of
>started down this road and I think there's a lot we can add to her
>description of what the user should expect to be able to do.  
>
>If it helps you gain clarity at all, I think Bill Nottingham and I are
>in pretty good agreement.  If the above isn't clear to you please let
>me know how and I'll be happy to be more descriptive. 

Considering this pretty much matches the description of the target user
I sent out as my reply to the orginal email that started this thread, I
think you could count me as in agreement as well.

josh