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This page is based on notes made by Gerard Braad and and Mel Chua, mostly during 2010.  It's been put here to capture ideas about long and short term goals for the Chinese Fedora community in the Fedora wiki.
This page is to loosely describe some ideas about how to grow the Chinese Fedora community into a self-organizing and healthy one. The page might serve as a basis to forming some firm targets to aim for over the coming months and years. The overarching goal is to enlarge the Fedora Community and to seek new talents to contribute to the mainstream development. The ideas here were compiled by Nik Lam (nlam) based on notes made by [https://docs.google.com/View?id=dd34x85_265d6nn53fr Gerard Braad] and [http://openetherpad.org/fedora-zh Mel Chua].


==Chinese Fedora community (Gerard's Google Docs notes)==
== Mirrors ==
Increasing the number of mirrors is one way of improving accessibility to Fedora and increasing its profile. According to the [http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/publiclist/Fedora/14/ mirror list], at the time of writing, there are six mirrors with a .cn domain (two with .edu.cn domains), two with .hk (both with .edu.hk domains) and seven with .tw (three with .edu.tw domains).


N.B. Originally from notes taken by gbraad on [https://docs.google.com/View?id=dd34x85_265d6nn53fr Google Docs].
Hosting within universities is particularly desirable in terms of the potential for student involvement in managing the mirror.  


Growing the Chinese community into a self-organizing and healthy community. The main goal is to enlarge the Fedora Community and to seek new talents to contribute to the mainstream development. We pursue a very good involvement with and from the western Fedora Community and having a yearly FAD and/or possibility of hosting a FUDcon ... (Is this sentence complete? - nlam)
== MIPS port of Fedora ==
The effort to port Fedora to MIPS is an excellent opportunity for collaboration between the Chinese Fedora contributors and contributors from the rest of the world. Computer systems with hardware which is open enough to easily run 100% free software (including firmware) are rare. A Chinese company, Lemote, produces such systems, using MIPS-based Loongson CPUs.


===Activities===
There are currently several China-based contributors to this effort, including gbraad and LoneStar who lead the effort.
====Mirror possiblities====
=====Target=====
Get at least 2 (or more) additional mirrors before the release of Fedora 13
This is to provide a better basis to start growing our userbase
=====Status=====
Contact with mirrors lead to exposure and better performance of the mirrors
One additional mirror is available; syncing with mirrormanager at the moment of writing (F12, F13)
=====Recent actions=====
Posting on LinuxTOY
new mirror at BJTU; waiting for the finished sign.
=====Tasks=====
Chen Lei (supercyper) can assist universities in setting up internal mirrors


====MIPS port of fedora====
To help attract more contributors, improved build infrastructure is desired. Some progress has been made by individuals working on their own equipment. It would be ideal if members of the Chinese community could eventually work within the Fedora Infrastructure team to provide the needed resources.
The port will be mentioned in this document as being part of the Chinese Fedora Community, but is in fact a separate project with their own timeline. Currently the team is mostly comprised of Chinese team members. The ultimate goal is to have Western developers involved (as part of the vision of Fedora-ZH).
=====Target=====
Have the MIPS port promoted to the status of official 2nd architecture.
Currently Gerard has the project lead to jumpstart the project. Xin Zhen (LoneStar) performs the role of co-lead and will hopefully Xin Zhen take the lead of the project (Gerard will move to co-lead). Before this can happen, more developers/packagers need to be attracted to maintain the port.
=====Status=====
Testing stage for F12. Currently being build.
Package patches need to be tested for quality and compatibility
=====Recent actions=====
Maintained contact with the ARM port about general information; how they dealt with the kernel RPM as the built Infrastructure.
Had talks with MIPS Technologies and are offered evaluation boards for compatibility testing.
=====Tasks=====
* Follow the 2nd architetcure guidelines more closely
* Koji build infrastructure
* Qemu build environment
* Creation of F12 rootfs
* QA testing of Fedora 12 on MIPS
* Patches submission
* Hosting


====Package sponsors====
== Package maintainers ==
=====Target=====
Packaging is a fundamental part of producing Fedora, and getting more contributors from the Chinese community is a good way to transfer knowledge into the wider Chinese community.
Currently the development of Fedora is lead by people mostly with a Western background. Our goal is to have one and hopefully two sponsored packagers with a Chinese background.
=====Status=====
Caius Chance (kaio) and Chen Lei (supercyper) are the two appointed candidates.
Kaio agreed on wanting to review one package a day.
=====Tasks=====
* Translation of the packaging guidelines to the Chinese language.


====Organizing a Fedora event====
The translation of the packaging guidelines into Chinese is a good first step in getting more Chinese-speaking contributors to this part of the project.
To get a better feeling for the community, it would be wise to create a Fedora Activity Day or having a more general Fedora Users and Developers conference. As a short-term solution it would be advisable to target a FAD since it allows us to better organize our activities and focus.
=====Target=====
Having this alongside a larger event to exploit the opportunity of marketing exposure. Currently investigating the idea of bringing the LOAD (Linux Open Administration Days) to China. A large event will probably take place in Beijing, Shanghai or HongKong, but for the FAD it would be more convenient to also target cities like Nanjing or Xi'an, etc.


====Creating a better platform for the community====
== Organizing a Fedora event ==
Fedora-ZH now uses a webserver at http://fedora-zh.org/ which hosts a forum and acts as a general hub for the Chinese Community. It should be noted that this server is having issues with performance. It would be advisable to discuss hosting alternatives with the Fedora Infrastructure team.
Holding a Fedora Activity Day or a more general Fedora Users and Developers conference would help to establish a sense of community.


Mailinglists have already been moved from Google to the Fedora Infrastructure.
In the short term, a FAD would be easier to organise. Possible ideas include QA FAD in Beijing, or something for the MIPS porting effort.


== Creating a better platform for the community ==
The community has recently migrated the mailing lists from Google to Fedora's own mailman server. How many list members are there? The Fedora Project's Zh wiki pages are also currently being refreshed after no changes being made in more than a year. The #fedora-zh IRC channel appears to be relatively well attended in the evenings (Beijing time) with 20 people present during the meeting on 2010-12-10.


====Marketing====
In addition to these resources, there's a need to create a strong web presence with web-based forum capabilities. There are currently four sites support these things:
Fedora-ZH does currently not have any options to use marketing material; like flyers, banners and Fedora shirts.
=====Tasks=====
* Translation of flyers and the Fedora goals
* Try to get a budget for marketing material
* Take care of shirts for Fedora Ambassadors


* [http://www.fedorachina.org/ http://www.fedorachina.org/] or [http://bbs.fedora-zh.org/ http://bbs.fedora-zh.org/] - vBulletin forum
* [http://news.fedora-zh.org/ http://news.fedora-zh.org/] - wordpress?
* [http://www.fedorachina.cn/ http://www.fedorachina.cn/] - Simple-machines forum
* [http://fedora.tw/ http://fedora.tw/] - drupal???


There has been a request and discussion on the Fedora Advisory Board mailing list (in [http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/advisory-board/2010-June/008576.html 2010-June] and [http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/advisory-board/2010-August/008843.html 2010-August]) to make use of a sub-domain of fedoracommunity.org. As yet, the sub-domain has not been established. The request was for zh.fedoracommunity.org, which would at the very least provide a link to the other sites.


==Mel's & Gerard's Etherpad notes==
There was also discussion about Fedora Infrastructure providing services for fedoracommunity sites, e.g. Drupal with the mailing list integration module installed to form a bridge between mailing lists and web forums. Drupal is the platform that has been chosen for the Fedora Insight site.
Based on notes originally made in [http://openetherpad.org/fedora-zh Etherpad].


=== Ambassadors ===
== Marketing ==
* Blog about Ambassadorship and make sure it gets translated into Chinese and sent to the zh planet - stress  the importance of contributing to another team first
Fedora-ZH does currently not have any options to use marketing material. Materials such as flyers, banners, stickers, t-shirts etc would be a goal associated with any on-the-ground events.
* Get  Tatica's blog post on Ambassadorship + languages translated into  Chinese and sent to the zh planet
* Pursue my  mentorship candidacy with FAmSCo
Someone needs to be proposed for this, besides Mel. This needs to be someone who is well accepted in the community
* Get someone  (Harish? Joerg? Gerard? Nik?) to investigate the swag/resources  situation in FAmAPAC (or whatever we call it) and offer to be their  credit-card-unblocker if needed


=== Beijing QA team ===
[[Category:Zh]]
 
* Thank-you email to AWESOME Fedora  QA engineers Liam Li and Rui "Hurry" He, and their intern Mingtao Niu  from James Laska's team in Beijing
* Point them  towards the FUDCon and FAD documentation, encourage them to run a QA FAD  (live Test Day) in Beijing - hand off to adamw if possible
Did get in touch with AdamW before, but no reponse to my email.
*  Look to see what FUDCon events are coming up in APAC and whether Beijing  would make a good host location for the next one that's not set; send  to Chinese Fedora mailing list, blog to Planet (en/zh)
*  Help Liam, Hurry, and Mingtao write down their ideas for fedora-zh  community growth (they have a lot of good ones) and get them out to the  Chinese list, and blogged about on Planet (zh and en)
*  Talk with James about potentially getting the three of them a little  "20% time" to work on building up local community, which they'd really  like to do but have no time for (not necessarily immediately, but in the  future)
 
===  Shanghai crew ===
 
*  Get Nik started with Infrastructure team, hand-off to mdomsch or someone  there and make sure he introduces himself as someone working in China
*  Email Zhen re: resources for ARM work and ask him to forward it to the  rest of his team and to ask if they've got questions or requests for  resources
- Get him in touch with some ARM people I know
* Blog about dinner, with pictures
 
=== Individuals to follow-up with ===
 
* gbraad (Gerard, Beijing)
* kaio (Caius, Brisbane) - Let's make an appointment sometime at your morning, my midnight.
* xennik (Nik, Shanghai)
* LoneStar (Xin Zhen, Shanghai, MIPS team member)
* jlaska (James, Beijing ?)
* rhe (Rui He, Beijing, see what we can do to strengthen ties for Fedora in China)
* Newgle
* lili
* lovenemesis (Tommy He, Xian)
 
 
=== Outstanding issues ===
* Application for cn.fedoracommunity.org (hk., tw., etc.)
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/advisory-board/2010-June/008576.html
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/advisory-board/2010-August/008843.html
* Hosting of Community websites by an external party (as part of the Fedora Infrastructure?). Quaid had proposed the idea of getting 3+ people to join the Infra team. Would be willing to join as part of maintaining the fc.o website and for helping with new mirrors.
 
=== Software Freedom Day ===
* Saturday 18th of September: softwarefreedomday.org
* Registration for
http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2010/Asia/China/Beijing/Chinese%20Fedora%20Community

Revision as of 09:00, 13 December 2010

This page is to loosely describe some ideas about how to grow the Chinese Fedora community into a self-organizing and healthy one. The page might serve as a basis to forming some firm targets to aim for over the coming months and years. The overarching goal is to enlarge the Fedora Community and to seek new talents to contribute to the mainstream development. The ideas here were compiled by Nik Lam (nlam) based on notes made by Gerard Braad and Mel Chua.

Mirrors

Increasing the number of mirrors is one way of improving accessibility to Fedora and increasing its profile. According to the mirror list, at the time of writing, there are six mirrors with a .cn domain (two with .edu.cn domains), two with .hk (both with .edu.hk domains) and seven with .tw (three with .edu.tw domains).

Hosting within universities is particularly desirable in terms of the potential for student involvement in managing the mirror.

MIPS port of Fedora

The effort to port Fedora to MIPS is an excellent opportunity for collaboration between the Chinese Fedora contributors and contributors from the rest of the world. Computer systems with hardware which is open enough to easily run 100% free software (including firmware) are rare. A Chinese company, Lemote, produces such systems, using MIPS-based Loongson CPUs.

There are currently several China-based contributors to this effort, including gbraad and LoneStar who lead the effort.

To help attract more contributors, improved build infrastructure is desired. Some progress has been made by individuals working on their own equipment. It would be ideal if members of the Chinese community could eventually work within the Fedora Infrastructure team to provide the needed resources.

Package maintainers

Packaging is a fundamental part of producing Fedora, and getting more contributors from the Chinese community is a good way to transfer knowledge into the wider Chinese community.

The translation of the packaging guidelines into Chinese is a good first step in getting more Chinese-speaking contributors to this part of the project.

Organizing a Fedora event

Holding a Fedora Activity Day or a more general Fedora Users and Developers conference would help to establish a sense of community.

In the short term, a FAD would be easier to organise. Possible ideas include QA FAD in Beijing, or something for the MIPS porting effort.

Creating a better platform for the community

The community has recently migrated the mailing lists from Google to Fedora's own mailman server. How many list members are there? The Fedora Project's Zh wiki pages are also currently being refreshed after no changes being made in more than a year. The #fedora-zh IRC channel appears to be relatively well attended in the evenings (Beijing time) with 20 people present during the meeting on 2010-12-10.

In addition to these resources, there's a need to create a strong web presence with web-based forum capabilities. There are currently four sites support these things:

There has been a request and discussion on the Fedora Advisory Board mailing list (in 2010-June and 2010-August) to make use of a sub-domain of fedoracommunity.org. As yet, the sub-domain has not been established. The request was for zh.fedoracommunity.org, which would at the very least provide a link to the other sites.

There was also discussion about Fedora Infrastructure providing services for fedoracommunity sites, e.g. Drupal with the mailing list integration module installed to form a bridge between mailing lists and web forums. Drupal is the platform that has been chosen for the Fedora Insight site.

Marketing

Fedora-ZH does currently not have any options to use marketing material. Materials such as flyers, banners, stickers, t-shirts etc would be a goal associated with any on-the-ground events.