[Mageia-discuss] Mageia logo proposals and selection

[Romain d'Alverny]

Hey everyone,

so, to re-frame a bit things and cool down.

First, thank you all for this conversation. That shows you care. And
that's great. At times, we may disagree with each other, we may not
manage properly yet how we say things, we may look or be a bit slow or
too fast. But we still can make something together - provided we aim
something in common, we trust and respect each other and we know how
to step down and apologize when needed.

That's not to say it's easy. It's probably the hardest part. We just
have to take it into account and build our way with it.


A quick note the about logo proposals thing. Right, we may pause it,
however everyone started to propose logos even before we talked about
it; so at least we reframe the proposals a bit without making a full
stop. That gives more info to graphic designers at this point and we
can refine the technical specs as well.


So...

#1 Yes, marketing has a say in how we do things in this project. So
does each team. We didn't listed all these teams without intending to
articulate their contributions.

One of the crucial points in this project is to make everyone respect
and understand each other; knowledge, feelings, opinions, unknowns are
all in the game and we all have to learn how to deal with this to go
forward.

Marketing, communication (and coordination/inclusion into the project
main decisions) are indeed, in our inherited culture, not quite known
& understood. Each team has its own culture, process. Without all
becoming experts of each others' specialties, we need to understand,
value and trust our reciprocal contributions to benefit the whole
project.

Of course we are in a Open Source project so it makes some teams more
in technical power of decision (because they don't approve or because
they don't deliver or because there are technical obstacles or...).
That's true and that makes even more important that all participants
acknowledge that we all have

So whether it takes more time, more discussion, an agreement or it's
up to the Council or the Board to decide in last resort. We will
strive to base our decisions on three things: project mission, values
and facts. Feelings are here as "warning signals" of dissonance and
understood as such; and should be resolved hopefully.

Disagreements may appear from diverse reasons; one may be that we've
not been specific enough about the direction (because we didn't or
because we still don't know well enough how to be specific enough;
that's something to refine as well).


#2. Mageia.org does not target desktop users especially. Well, we do;
as we do target servers and embedded devices. As well.

Nor does it compete with other Linux distributions or other operating
systems. Yes, we do compete in some way. But we don't see ourselves
like this at first.

The big difference we expect for Mageia.org is not to compete, but to
become a inter-disciplinary collaboration community of excellence for
free/libre projects; the Mageia Linux distribution is only one (huge,
central and first) "game" in this. As a project, as a platform, as a
product, as a showcase.

As a hint, two teams were not listed for now, because we thought that
we need to roll out our first working ISO first and because we didn't
explained how their role would fit: ergonomics/users study and
electronics/hardware devices.

The goal is not only to produce a ~horizontal Linux-based system that
will empower people; it's to create the conditions to build ~vertical
solutions with it, within or from the Mageia.org community.

Mageia.org is not a commercial project but a community project; where
people/companies will bring in and bring from. Both as users and as
contributors.

That does not prevent to design it through marketing, but that must be
aligned with the project direction.


So, to draw this in perspective now, here are the next big milestones
we have in sight for the coming months. That does not define long term
strategy (which is still buried in the announcement and in the
vision/mission statements being worked on) but I guess it will help:

 1. releasing a test drive ISO before the end of November; this is to
test drive four things:
   * packaging/translation/build system as a whole,
   * community council and teams work & coordination,
   * final product stability,
   * concurrent discussions for future plans.

 2. having December to cool down and prepare the next run; having end
of December free of any stress in this regard;

 3. preparing coming FOSDEM in February 2011; where we shall meet more
people to discuss future and hot topics.

Concurrent to these, Mageia.org community must form and learn on itself.

For the marketing team, for instance, the first step could to market
the project itself toward people that will _contribute to it_, first.

That's who we want to work with and who we want to be in love with the
product, the technology, the project and the processes first. That's
who we want to care about first. Then we will have to see how what we
love can be a fit for other people.

(and no, that doesn't exclude all users, but only users that don't
expect to contribute to the project directly)

That helps in three ways:
 - helping refine the whole project vision as whole and advocate it;
 - help contributors get a firmer grasp on who they are, and what
they're going to build;
 - inform users community of what it may be going to look like.

This, with time, will help to discuss targets with more data and more
perspective. For everyone. Notwithstanding that other teams have quite
a lot of work as well and may need to advocate it as well.

Yes, that's a short roadmap. We can expect to have a larger one later.
But that's what we have to focus on at this time.

We will dig into some of these points in dedicated meetings in the
next days (marketing/communication, roadmap and weekly progress).


Cheers,

Romain