Guidelines for commercial posts and company accounts?

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The post Fedora Slimbook raises a couple of questions we haven’t really dealt with on Fedora Discussion, before…

Commericial Posts

The mailing list guidelines say:

When using the mailing list for commercial purpose, please prefix the subject line with “COMMERCIAL”. This is not an invitation to post general commercial messages to the mailing list. Any such posts must still be directly topical and relevant to the specific mailing list. If there is no clear Fedora relevance, please do not post. If there is Fedora relevance but any chance that that relevance might be missed by readers, please take care to explain the direct connection in your post.

… but, a) I am not sure that’s really the best policy for this site, since it works differently from a mailing list, and b) I don’t think that has ever really been followed on the mailing lists.

I don’t think putting COMMERCIAL in thread titles is really very friendly to anyone. If anything, a tag or category might be right.

For this post in specific, it’s not really something like a sales advertisement, but practical work on a collaboration. So in this specific case, I think it’s probably just fine as a regular topic. But we should probably have a policy. Suggestions?

Company accounts

This has raised a new issue, because I don’t think we have a Fedora Discussion policy on company or team accounts. We should work something out there. In the meantime, @slimbookteam, could you please create individual (human-level!) accounts and interact using with those? And please introduce yourselves, in that topic and perhaps also in Introduce yourself! (2023 Q2). This fits the Fedora “friends” foundation. :classic_smiley:

The bigger question here (should there be company accounts?) seems like a @council issue.

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A post was split to a new topic: Compatible hardware list discussion

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I think my first question is “What is a commercial post?”. For example, here are a bunch of examples:

  • A company promotes their product: “We are selling a new product, please check it out”
  • An individual promotes a commercial product: “I love using this commercial product/software, have you tried it?”
  • An individual has a question about a commercial product: “I am having trouble getting this commercial product to work with Fedora”
  • Someone promoting a service which they get revenue from: “I made a video on Fedora, here is the link to the youtube video”
  • Promoting products made with Fedora: “I used Fedora and open source tools to create this music”(includes link to to where the music is being sold)

There are countless more but these are just some examples to think about.

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We can create ‘partnership’ category which helps build user base by mutual interest.

  • Joint development of use cases with private/public institutions and education
  • Early adopter program for Enterprise adoption of Fedora-based distributions and EPEL
  • Collaboration with standards organization (like a11y, ISO) and other FOSS communities
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Of these, only the first are what we should be worried about in this context. The second one could sneakily be the first if it becomes a pattern.

Agreed with this specific case. In general, I think we want to allow for limited commercial posts that are:

  1. Relevant to our community
  2. In line with our community values and norms
  3. Limited in frequency

I don’t particularly love the idea of requiring a Council ticket, but I don’t know if there’s a better venue at this point. I do think it should get pre-approval unless we can come up with very clear rules (and honestly, it’s probably not worth the effort because I expect this will be pretty infrequent)

There should not, but maybe badges or other “I am actually affiliated with Funnel FiasCorp” indicators would be good, especially if the company representatives are participating on the Ask side of the site.

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I agree with this statement regarding the question of whether we should have Company accounts. While I wholeheartedly will indulge a company using the Fedora Platform as a system to run on their hardware OOTB, I don’t think Fedora the Project should become tied to any particular Vendor product(s) in the minds of many by the ease of use implied by such an offering.

Badges are a good idea on this forum, to provide a way of differentiating/identifying/openess. And I like the idea of the “Team” or “Company” members just joining the community, it feels more right and I think will provide better quality interaction all around.
I also don’t think it’s bad or self-indulgent of the Fedora Project to want to highlight where it is being used, and who wants to use it on their hardware.

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Hello everyone, first of all I would like to say that this is not an introductory post, although I am very excited to participate in this wonderful community. I will introduce myself later in Introduce yourself! (2023 Q2)

My question is directed to Matthew about the following quote:

Is it possible to change the user name or is it necessary to create a new account? Since this account was created as a company account.
Best regards.

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I can change the name the post belongs to, if you like — or just leave it. And the company account can sit on the sidelines until we come up with a policy. How does that sound?

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Thanks for the response Matthew, no need to change the post, we’ll just leave it on the sidelines until you guys come up with a policy like you said.
I also created a new personal account :slight_smile:

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