Meeting:Board meeting 2007-07-31

= Fedora Project Board Meeting :: Tuesday 2007-07-31 =

Roll Call

 * Attendees: Max Spevack, Seth Vidal, John Poelstra, Matt Domsch, Jef Spaleta, Karsten Wade, Jesse Keating, Dennis Gilmore Bill Nottingham, and Chris Aillon


 * Regrets: Steve Dickson, Chris Blizzard

Fedora 8 Test 1

 * Special report from Fedora Release Engineering--Jesse Keating
 * Going to slip
 * mostly due to ongoing kernel issue with booting
 * fix has been found
 * Pulling updated kernel code along with fix for booting
 * PPC
 * IDE support is not in good shape
 * must run with SELinux disabled
 * Lost a few days of rawhide due to changes in anaconda at last minute
 * Be a little stricter with freeze next time--trying to be lenient to accommodate people returning from Guadec.
 * If all goes well by Friday, will release to mirrors and go live with test release on Tuesday

Virtual FUDCon

 * Have nine sessions listed so far--hope to have as many as twelve
 * Waiting for Red Hat IT to open ports to allow Asterisk so that audio can be provided

fedoraproject.org email

 * Report from Max's meeting with Legal
 * fedoraproject.org email aliases are okay from a legal standpoint
 * Because only used as an alias and mail is forwarded to another address, Fedora is not required to archive mail.

ACTION: Max to summarize the current multimedia issue from recent mail thread and take to Legal for review.

Target Market
1. Make a package providing non-{fedora,Red Hat} system logos 1. Include a set a pictures that do not include Red Hat or Fedora in them 1. Put package in a repo 1. Fix everything that relies on existing logos
 * More discussion on fedora-advisory-board thread "Who is our target market?"
 * Our current documented strategy is to "Be the most innovative, open, and freely available Linux distribution".
 * Are there any professional marketing people that would be interested in helping that we know?
 * Could some internal Red Hat resources help with Open Marketing?
 * How can Fedora do better marketing and bring good attention to the projects?
 * Is fedora-marketing-list a good first place to send people?
 * Where do people go to find out current or upcoming Fedora events?
 * For example, Fedora events coming up at Linux World next week.
 * Is Fedora a Desktop or a Server?
 * Fedora is often classified as a desktop by default because it is not typically used as a server (support life-cycle is too short).
 * We are a "working environment" distro--you can slice it into many different purposes.
 * Would we want to enable something during firstboot to determine if you are installing a "server" or "desktop"?
 * To have a cutting edge desktop you have to carry your patches for a while sometimes that are not already upstream.
 * Could a future release be planned well in advance and targeted with a particular purpose in mind: "Fedora X will be targeted at being the best desktop possible" while focusing much less on server features.
 * Where in Fedora are we possibly favoring or protecting the server versus the desktop? Where are we doing work on the server where we could instead devote those resources to the desktop?
 * Network manager is not enabled by default
 * Why are people choosing Fedora?
 * Past familiarity with Red Hat and/or Fedora
 * For whatever reason they favor a Red Hat versus Debian based distribution
 * If we are banking on "past familiarity" then how we can we really reach new people?
 * We need to do a better job of explaining the relationship between Red Hat and Fedora?
 * Both need each other
 * Fedora tends to try and distance itself from Red Hat and stand on its own.
 * For Fedora 7 we built tools for people to spin their own distro--why hasn't this caught on more?
 * It isn't fun
 * It is difficult because of artwork and logo trademark issues
 * Maybe the tools are not as easy to use as we thought
 * If we want people to spin distros that are based on Fedora, but don't run into trademark issues, we need to:

ACTION: For Fedora 8, is it possible to modify fedora logos and the packages that depend on to excluded the words "Fedora" or "Red Hat" everywhere (in the graphics and file names themselves). Who will do it?
 * Delegate to FESCo or Art Team?
 * Bill and Seth volunteered to take an initial look