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Defining the Fedora user base

It is no big secret that open source projects often wrestle with defining themselves—who their target users are, what roles the project should play, and so forth. Fedora recently examined those questions head-on in a Fedora Advisory Board IRC meeting. Specifically, the meeting addressed the Fedora user base definition, which is meant to describe the people that Fedora seeks to serve, as well as the project's related mission and vision statements. The current user base definition was written in 2010, which might not sound like that long ago, but the computing landscape has in fact changed quite a bit in the intervening years.

The board meeting took place on April 4. Prior to the meeting, Fedora project leader Robyn Bergeron posted a blog entry outlining the topic. In that post, she explained the rationale for starting the discussion:

A log of the IRC meeting is available, but Máirín Duffy also posted a more human-readable recap of the session on her personal blog. The crux of the discussion was whether the current user base definition is too limiting, either because it is out of date (and therefore out of step with current computing trends), because it is too narrow (thus leaving out important segments of the potential-user population), or because it does not adequately guide Fedora development (and thus does not advance the mission and vision statements).

2010, we hardly knew ye

The current definition is "a set of four characteristics that describe the minimum level of consumer for whom we'll design the default offering." The characteristics are being a "voluntary Linux consumer," being "computer friendly," being a "likely collaborator" with the Fedora project, and being a "general productivity" software user.

Bergeron kicked off the discussion asking those present what had changed since 2010 that might make the definition more or less relevant. Among the replies were the rise of cloud computing and virtualization, the rise of alternative Linux platforms like Android and Chrome OS, the popularity of GitHub as a software development site, and the growing importance of non-desktop hardware (including tablets and inexpensive ARM products like the Raspberry Pi).

From those suggestions, Bergeron highlighted the explosive growth of GitHub, which constitutes a major shift in how open source software development is done. GitHub has five million users, she noted, most of whom encounter open source software solely on GitHub, where they either do open source development for their day jobs or to scratch a personal itch. Consequently, they are not drawn toward participating in a desktop distribution like Fedora. Bergeron noted that these developers are often uninterested in packaging their software, and Bruno Wolff commented that they often do not understand open source licensing either.

That leads to a fundamental question: whether Fedora should help spread free software in a community like GitHub which does not find a Linux desktop distribution particularly relevant. Matthew Miller argued that the mission statement is clear on that point; leading the advancement of free software and free culture is the mission, and "producing a Linux distro is just one of the projects we happen to undertake." The trickier question, of course, is what if anything Fedora can do to advance free software in an external community like GitHub.

All user base are belong to Fedora

As to whether the user base definition establishes too narrow of a target user, the discussion addressed both cloud computing and Fedora sub-communities that do not work with the default GNOME-based desktop. Fedora is still perceived primarily as a desktop distribution, which may inhibit its use as cloud platform or in the server room. This is a bit of a paradox, as Miller pointed out, since Fedora is also widely perceived as a testbed for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)—which is predominantly a server distribution.

Nevertheless, cloud computing users constitute a distinct sub-community within Fedora, as are the sub-communities that prefer KDE or Xfce over GNOME. Duffy pointed out that there are also sub-communities centered around specific computing tasks, such as robot-building, and that those tasks are not well-served by "general productivity" software.

As a step in the right direction, Andy Price suggested that Fedora's current, single-person user base definition be replaced with a set of several "use cases" that cover a range of possible scenarios that the project would commit to supporting. Drawing up such a list of use cases would not be trivial, but the project could at least prioritize the use cases to focus development.

Naturally, development work is not the only facet of "supporting" a use case; Duffy commented that the distribution's messaging and marketing materials (starting with the web site), can help too—and the current messaging dates back to the Fedora 11 release cycle. The board can assist in messaging efforts, but John Rose argued that having the board select the use cases was a bad idea. Duffy agreed, suggesting instead that the project "take a look at what people are doing with Fedora now that is cool and elevate those things that are the most promising, call them out, and get them resources."

Platform blues

If Fedora does decide to target several use cases (albeit prioritized ones), as so many in the discussion seemed to feel it should, then the project will need to focus more on being a stable platform. That is a contrast with Fedora's current "bleeding edge" approach, but the fact that Fedora already serves as the base for RHEL shows that it is capable, and there are already several Fedora "spins" that target specific user groups. But neither RHEL nor a Fedora spin is quite a derivative distribution in the sense that (for example) Ubuntu is derived from Debian. A Fedora spin shares the same core as Fedora, and differs mainly in package and configuration changes.

Scott Williams suggested that the Android model might be a better fit, where the "vanilla" Android is perfectly usable as-is, but the project is still friendly toward the forks produced by device vendors. "Vanilla Android is both user friendly and easily customizable for forking." Others, however, were less enthralled by the prospect of encouraging the parallel development of several flavors of Fedora. Bob Jensen said: "The brand dilution that Ubuntu has experienced is our future if we as a community do not protect the Core and Foundations."

Of course, there is quite a big gap between replacing the current user base definition with several use cases and supporting the development of multiple Fedora derivatives driven by sub-communities. The latter may be a long-term possibility, but at the moment all that the IRC meeting seems to have established is that many in the Fedora project think a single definition is insufficient to completely describe the target audience for Fedora. But the conversation is ongoing. Duffy posted a follow-up message to the advisory board mailing list, suggesting brainstorming activities to revisit the topic in further meetings.

Where further meetings will go is anybody's guess at this point. One thing is for certain, though: by addressing the value and viability of the user base definition in the open, whatever Fedora ends up doing with it will more accurately reflect the will of the community. A telling side-note in the IRC discussion was Miloslav Trmac's observation that many of Fedora's current contributors simply ignore the user base definition. Perhaps it does not work for them, or perhaps they do not know it exists—an open and frank discussion will hopefully alleviate either problem.

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