Fedora AI Developer Desktop Objective

[ffmancera (Fernando F. Mancera)]

I’ve taken a week to let my thoughts settle regarding this post, and now I’m ready to reply more carefully.

@jspaleta

I have zero evidence in front of me that users are being driven away from Fedora because of AI. If you want to bring that language into discussion, please show me the metrics.

I agree that we should use more data in our decision-making process. However, this should apply consistently to both positions. Otherwise, we risk holding different arguments to different standards.

@jspaleta

I’m looking around at the distribution space.. and I’m not seeing distributions being punished by providing a coherent AI developer desktop environment. We have to take care in how we as a project uses AI yes.. but providing AI desktop to developers.. the only controversial part of that is the NV hardware enablement.

As I remarked on my previous reply, this is mixing two different things. Please, let’s avoid the package-deal fallacy here. We can provide an AI developer desktop without making this a Fedora objective. We already do this for multiple things, e.g Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop is widely used but AFAIU, it is not a Fedora Objective to provide/support a Fedora KDE spin to users/developers.

@jspaleta

Gaining philosophical distance in the space of developer desktops is how Fedora becomes irrelevant… because like it or not… the people starting their software develepment journey right now are using these tools.

Not sure if this is your intention, but this reads as prioritizing relevance and adoption over ethical considerations. Since Fedora is a community-driven project rather than a corporation, it seems like an appropriate space to bring in those ethical and philosophical aspects.

@jspaleta

I’m not here to side-step problems. I’m here to lean into them and get to a better future. I think some people are generally concerned about the ethical use of AI and are loudly pushing back on a future they feel is coming for them that is outside of their control. Saying no to everything AI related in the places where they have agency to do so feels like a way to take a stand and take back control. I think that’s exactly the wrong thing to do.

I don’t think anyone in this discussion is rejecting everything AI-related. Others and I just raised concerns about the reputation impact of making AI a Fedora Objective.

@jspaleta

You personally don’t have to agree to the goal of this output. This output will be successful or not based entirely on whether it attracts enough people to be long term sustainable.

I don’t agree that success would be driven entirely by organic user interest. Adoption of technologies is often influenced by broader ecosystem pressures such as corporate investment.

@jspaleta

As the Fedora Project Leader, I am absolutely not concerned about the reputational damage to this project that comes with setting up an entirely new output attractive to developers who want to make use of Ai tools. If this were proposing re-orienting Workstation, which is a mature project output, I would be pushing back as well as a skeptic on the value of the AI stuff. That approach would be materially changing the character of an existing output that users rely on..and that’s probably not appropriate and would result in watching users drop out. This approach deliberately sets up a separate output to avoid that. This will either be attractive and grow or it will not.. based entirely on individual interest. This approach is not disruptive to existing outputs nor asking for users or volunteer contributors relying on those outputs to be coopted into putting work into an output that do not want to contribute to.

I’ve spent some time thinking about this paragraph, and I’m struggling with it. As Fedora Project Leader, expressing no concern about potential reputational impact could be interpreted as dismissing an issue that some contributors clearly care about. Even if the change is non-disruptive in a technical sense, it can still influence how the project is perceived and what it signals about Fedora’s priorities. I think that concern deserves more consideration.