Creating Drama, Fedora Style

One knows that a release is occurring soon in a software project by the amount of 'Drama' that occurs on mailling lists or inside of cubicles (if your software company is inclined to be old school like that). Soap opera's can be written on the things that happen as people try to release tension from bad packages, non compilable code, bugs that refuse to co-operate, and schedules that do not slide enough.

Now such problems do occur in all work-places but I think software people seem more like their Opera's are written by Gilbert and Sullivan than Wagner. The developer who sleeps with his co-workers wife somehow turns on the PA system in the closet and broadcasts it across the workplace. The top developer who goes into a tirade about poor coding practices and then finds out in the middle that he was the one who wrote the problem code. The manager who decides who will be let go after the release by throwing darts at the org chart.

In general the issue comes up because everyone finds themselves surrounded by alligators, a Predator or two, and a bad case of malaria.. and they aren't sure if they were supposed to drain or restore the swamp. Currently Fedora is going through that (like it has many times before and will happen again in the future most likely.) People are debating "What is the Fedora Project?" to which there is no real answer, but is probably less problematic for harmony than the PA system solution.

Ok so "What is the Fedora Project?" for me? It is a Project to push new technologies and concepts across the vast Chasm between Innovators/Visionaries and Pragmatists. Some of those technologies will go onto large scale and some will falter and have to go back or just wither away. This project's goal is not to focus on popularity, 'market penetration', or 'winning the desktop wars'. If something that Fedora does becomes an Ubuntu or Windows 8 standard.. thats ok. The goal is to get the various things from 20% to 66% completion... and maybe further.

Does this mean that I don't see Fedora as for being for newbies or not.. no I think it should be that way for people who want to focus on that (and if rules need to be changed to allow that.. make it so.)

[Edited 2009-10-09T00:04+0000 to add:] One should read the blogs with trance music... it makes the discussion much nicer to handle. My first reading was with Type-O Negative which had the opposite effect.]