F15 elections questionnaire/FAmSCo questionnaire

The role of FAmSCo appears to be changing, what do you think FAmSCo's future is?

Larry Cafiero (lcafiero)
This question starts off with an unclear, and probably invalid, assumption that the role of FAmSCo "appears to be changing." Having been an Ambassador since Fedora 9 and a mentor for over a year, I don't see the role of FAmSCo or the Fedora Ambassadors program changing at all.

But what I do see is a bright future for FAmSCo and the Fedora Ambassadors program continuing as it is going now, with an increase in Ambassadors and worthy mentors who bring an increased awareness of Fedora to the general public. Naturally, there will be tweaks along the way to address whatever unforeseen issues arise in the future, but on the whole FAmSCo has always been up to the task and will continue to do so.

I want to echo something I wrote in my statement as a candidate for this position: The Fedora Project's Ambassador program is the standard by which other distros use to promote themselves. Our Ambassadors are the best of any distro or FOSS project, and others projects, like OpenSUSE, clearly recognize this by copying our methods. In large part, both the work of the Ambassadors and the work of FAmSCo have been responsible for this, and I'd like to help maintain that high standard going forward.

Regardless of whether I am elected, I continue to be proud of participating in the Fedora Project, proud of the Ambassadors program, and proud of the work we all do on different facets and levels in the project.

Marcus Moeller - FAmSCo
As ambassadors are the ppl promoting Fedora, their role is very important to the project. FAmSCo should define goals and processes, allowing ambassadors do their work in a best possible way.

Zoltan Hoppar (zoltanh721)
FamSCo future is what already was, and a bit more with each cycle. What is clear, we are good enough to anybody else outside of the community pay attention to us. Also our decisions, and our efforts are affecting not only to our future, else to the community too. Knowing this, to be an ambassador is responsibility, and along with mentors, we could ensure the ambassadors unity, and if we are strong - our community will be also. This is one of our future task, to find the proper contributors, and ambassadors - with transparency, and clear membership rules - we could strenghten our community groups.

Joerg (kital) Simon
Yes, FAmSCo has enhanced since the last years and besides all the "old" proper roles we already stated in our Candidate Statement we can improve and grow by making other Groups inside Fedora aware that there is a ressource and budget management already in FAmSCo together with Comm-Arch, which is in transition right now and we should work together, so all can rely on here in the future. We should strenghten the Ambassador Group as a kind of Fedora-Group-HR and help to recruit the right contributor for the right task by enhancing the liaisonship to other groups - as example working on a process where Groups can announce open positions in their team, so Ambassadors can focus on their recruitment. And we should share our achievements of our improved policies and Membership Management.

Rahul Sundaram(mether)

I was a FAmSCo member when Ambassadors effort was launched and at that time, we just approved whoever applied to be an ambassador and the committee's role was limited to approving budgets for various events. The discussions happened in a private mailing list and a private IRC channel and a lot has changed after that to this day. The mentor process has raised the bar in the terms of quality of the people representing Fedora and we hope we can calibrate the process to bring in more transparency and document the expectations. We also need to play a active role in defining the leadership and be welcoming of people interested in being Ambassadors. We have some gaps in that at this point with some people genuinely expressing concerns about mentoring and we need to fix that. FAmSCo reports and public mailing lists have added a unprecedented level of transparency and we need to bring that amount of clarify into the past, present and future of Fedora.

Guillermo Gómez S.(gomix)
As ambassadors are esentially promoters, FAmSCo should propose milestones and facilitate tools and council on ways to achieve those goals. FAmSCo should unleash ambassadors potential through guidance, training and proper budget expending. Language barrier for expenditures procedures and aprovals are also an issue that needs to be addresed.

Ambassador Group should strenght its position on recruiting new contributors for different Fedora tasks improving its liaisonship with other Fedora groups that are responsible for such those tasks, for example packaging group.

Neville A. Cross (yn1v)
I think that the role is not changing as a whole, it is focusing on the current trends and issues at hand. I will think will be futile to be in a committee that is mostly checking what it role should be, instead of enabling ambassadors to do its work. FAmSCo should serve ambassadors and address whatever is blocking ambassadors' work. So the role is not changing. But as blockers may change, the approach and the actions may change. Ambassadors are guides to newcomers, helping them how they can interact with the project and hopefully helping newcomers to find a way to collaborate. I think that FAmSco should build better bridges among teams to enable ambassador do this main task.

Igor Soares (igorps)
The FAmSCo members are changing but I don't think that we should change the role of the Committee and push it to a completely different direction. What we need is to improve the way things work right now, doing it in a continuous and persistent manner, so we can leave a better Committee for our community and also for the next FAmSCo members.

FAmSCo should work closely to our ambassadors but the members of the Committee should have a wide understating about Fedora Project and its objectives and goals. For instance, FAmSCo should facilitate the communication between ambassadors, as well as between Ambassadors and other teams, making sure that we are all working together spreading our core values.

Pierros Papapdeas (liknus)
In my opinion there is no apparent change in FAmSCo. FAmSCo is formed by its people so, if there is any change it will reflect the ideas its people have. My personal goals for FAmSCo can be abbreviated as consolidation, focus in financing, working closely with CWG to ensure peaceful Ambassadors' environment and promote experimenting with practices (swag, booth etc)

Gerard Braad (gbraad)
I don't think FAmSCo's role has changed a lot over the years, just the way it was expressed. FAmSCo aid ambassadors in realising what they need. They provide a supporting roll to aid local/regional ambassadors to get funding or resources. Ambassadors have two major roles besides their other contributions; foremost they act as regional marketeers and second they voice what matters to the local users. Translations and milestones from the marketing team can be more targeted and aligned.

For example I have mentioned earlier on the Ambassador list that localized groups/networks should be promoted to have their mailinglist as part of the Fedora Project. Ambassadors play a role in being the voice on these lists as a user group representative. This relates to my earlier statement that we should provide the resources to organize a local community.

Do you think it's important to have more people vote in Fedora elections? If so, how would you encourage that?

Joerg (kital) Simon -
Yes! Elections are a right to choose and nothing that should be enforced - elections are the way to change things and not questioning all and everything all the time without having a solution. This should be pointed out more! If people are elected, we gave them our trust and therefore we should trust them in their doing. I do!

Larry Cafiero (lcafiero) -
Yes, it is important to have the community vote in Fedora elections. But first and foremost, it's a matter of personal responsibility for those in the project -- people have to care enough about the direction of the Fedora Project to take the time to vote. Those who take the time to vote and those who take the time to contribute recognize the importance of participation. Those who don't vote and/or participate? I can't speak for them. I'm not sure there's one way to encourage voting other than to make people realize it's in their best interest, and in the best interest of a better Fedora, to vote.

Zoltan Hoppar (zoltanh721) -
Yes, it is. I think we could encourage the whole community with presence of an campaign. If the community doesn't know about the elections almost nothing, and no pointing out that every ACTIVE member (CLA, or non CLA) has an say, right, and a vote - they will not care. But, if there are some marketing - and an longer introduction, and the mentioned campaign - we will receive more and more vote.

Rahul Sundaram(mether)
I have always voted in Fedora elections and believe it to be a valuable part of our governance process. We have more members participating than ever before and we need to continue to have new leadership and strong agendas to drive people to make the right choices according to the direction they want Fedora to take.

Neville A. Cross (yn1v)
Of course participation is important. To encourage more contributors to participate in elections, they need to feel that their votes count, that votes make a difference. This is really tricky, if we all are going in the same direction does not makes much difference who steers the boat. So we need to find ways to constructively challenge the 'status quo' by leaders than can focus the upcoming energy into good actions.

Igor Soares (igorps)
Yes, having more people voting in Fedora elections is the best way for giving legitimacy to the Committee. We can encourage that by involving more our community in elections. For this election we have a significant number of candidates what means that elections are drawing more attention what is great. Now we need to encourage more voters and we can do that by contacting our local communities spreading the word about the importance of elections for the whole project.

Pierros Papadeas (liknus)
I would love to see more people involved in the election processes (voting and voted) as this is one major way to form the future of fedora. I would suggest that anyone part of a non-CLA group should vote, but in SCo elections votes from the same group should count more. Finally, on encouraging side, we can have small prices for those who vote (like a t-shirt on an upcoming event)

Guillermo Gómez (gomix)
Yes, voting is a basic exercise of freedom and participation, promotes inclusion. Anyone should vote, maybe members of the group can be weigthed higher. To encourage people to vote, first they have to know, FAmSCo should start a campaign backed by the candidates, on the planet, on the wiki, on the new main pages of Fedora Project.

Gerard Braad (gbraad)
Voting is a natural process. When people see they their voice matters/influences, they will vote. Mentors are responsible in voicing this to new ambassadors and I would consider this part of the initial introduction to a potential new ambassador... And hopefully ambassadors will voice this to users and future contributors in how they can take part in shaping our project/distribution/community.

Do you think Fedora should focus on the Desktop? Or someplace else? If so, where?

Joerg (kital) Simon -
A more polished Desktop would bring more users, but i am not so sure also new contributors in Areas where we really need them - if we follow that community Pyramid this could be a way to grow. But as long as we have a good symbiosis with our sponsors and can have benefit on doing things together on a more functional level i love Fedora exactly because i can do things in all areas. So i think focus the desktop only would be a fail.

Larry Cafiero (lcafiero)
I am not sure this is a relevant question for FAmSCo, but be that as it may, "focus" is too narrow a word to describe what the Fedora Project should be doing regarding the desktop. Should the Fedora Project continue doing what it is doing regarding being a leader in the development of the Linux desktop? Yes. Should the Fedora Project also expand into other digital environments, for example, small platform and cloud (to name just two)? Absolutely. Is there a conflict between doing both? No.

Zoltan Hoppar (zoltanh721)
We should focus on the beginnings, the first steps into our world - if somebody want to contribute. We should keep the status quo about that we are leaders on user experience, and between all of the distributions. For that, we should provide the latest Fedora experience, and quality - with showing that our upcoming features is the vital for next generations of Linux.

Rahul Sundaram(mether)
Yes, Fedora should excel on the desktop and since I use it on my own desktop, day in and day out, I have a vested interest in making sure it is a viable option and a delightful experience. I have tried to play my part by (co)maintaining a few important desktop packages (gnote, transmission, pino, shotwell...) and taking part in desktop related discussions and this is the part of Fedora that gets a lot of attention from end users as well as the press and we need to make sure it represents the best of Fedora. Having said that, as part of my work at Red Hat, I have experienced the pain from lack of granular dependencies in some cases resulting in a fairly bad experience for minimalistic systems including thin clients and servers and we do need to step up our participation and focus in those areas. We must strive to provide the best platform for new contributors to have their own agenda, pursue a different direction and apply their unique talents to enhance Fedora in many ways, whatever their choice is.

Neville A. Cross (yn1v)
One of the user base focus is Voluntary Users. I think that focusing on the desktop will address that group nicely. But Fedora is more that a desktop, it is a scalable platform, so narrowing down will not really help the main objective of advancing the free software. If there is a place where Fedora should work better is to show examples of how everybody can contribute. Point which tasks can be accomplished with little time, and still be helpful for the project. I think that lately the web presence have been improved a lot which is the result of many people among several teams. We should keep up this.

Igor Soares (igorps)
In my opinion Fedora should focus on community. This is the starting place for a better operating system and then back to a better community, building a virtuous cycle. Many people contribute to Fedora because they want to give something back, but they will only give something back if they use and enjoy the operating system. However, the word "Desktop" might be tricky nowadays because the traditional model of desktop is changing. Since we are looking to the future I think that Fedora should build the community as well as the operating system around cloud computing services. The EC2 feature for Fedora 14 and the Fedora Community website point to a good direction. On the end user side I think that the GNOME Online Desktop had some great ideas that still are valuable for the future. I believe that FAmSCo could help thinking the community in way that Fedora could take advantage of new computing and business models.

Guillermo Gómez (gomix)
Yes, in general Linux needs a boost on the desktop. My opinion is we own the datacenter and the server side, and we must keep this position, but to gain more users and supporters worldwide, we must face this challenge. If we dont, our competitors could invade the datacenter someday in the future and then Linux will just disapear, we must go out and fight on this arena.

Gerard Braad (gbraad)
Having a focus is important. Fedora is in my sense the continuation of RedHat's desktop effort. In my opinion the simple answer is: we represent the user experience for what RHEL is the server experience. So yes, however this does not take away that the base distribution can't be used in other ways. We can benefit from efforts to make it more embeddable or perform better in a virtualized environment. Sugar is an example how Fedora is used in a different way as I can't call the Learning Environment a full desktop experience, but having this is very important. MeeGo is another example how our distribution gets used in different ways than a desktop.

Do you run Fedora on the computer you use most often? If so what Desktop? If not, why not?

Larry Cafiero (lcafiero)
Yes. I have been using Fedora since Fedora 7. My primary desktop and my laptops (yes, plural) all run Fedora, using both GNOME and KDE desktops. At my computer lab in Felton, California, we run a variety of distros, but most of the boxes run Fedora (both Intel and PowerPC), and the desktop with which we run the business (correspondence, billing, etc.) runs Fedora 10 because it works well and I didn't want to upgrade it.

Guillermo Gómez (gomix)
Yes. I have been using Fedora since Fedora Core 1. All my home machines, desktop machine (1), home server (1) and my personal laptop, all runs Fedora since FC1. I'm a Fluxbox user making the transition to Gnome thanks to Gnome Shell :)

Joerg (kital) Simon
Yup - gnome and lxde depends on the tasks - and i use it as a platform for my work on Security Testing - this is the reason why i maintain the Fedora Security Lab. Ah, and i love guake.

Zoltan Hoppar (zoltanh721)
Yes. Mostly gnome, because of this is the most integrated desktop, and of course, because of I love it. However, mainly I'm love that sets where the size is tiny, and most effective - that's why my eeepc netbook runs LXDE version with standalone programs.

Rahul Sundaram(mether)
Yes. On pretty much every computer I have ever used for over five years and I have run GNOME, KDE, Xfce, LXDE and even dabbled in awesome and many other smaller window managers as well. I like to keep an eye on the changes in new releases and try to be familiar to answer questions from end users when I do my booth duties, attending events or speaking at conferences.

Neville A. Cross (yn1v)
I do run Fedora on all my computers... home, office, laptop, repo server for events ... and also on all other computers on my house ... mom, wife... Most of them run GNOME, I have one old computer running XFCE. This is because when I first try Red Hat in 1998 I installed GNOME and KDE, then installed StarOffice and the menus did not come right on KDE, so I started learning Linux with GNOME and get stuck ever since. Not really a well thought decision. I have tried other desktop for fun but always go back to GNOME. OK... Yes! I am boring, so what? I do not even change desktop background. Thanks Design Team, your backgrounds are so wonderful that helps my way of life!

Igor Soares (igorps)
I run Fedora both on my desktop and laptop. I have been using Fedora since Fedora 3. I used a sort of different distributions before but Fedora was the only one that remained as my primary operating system. I use Fedora for all kind of activities and now I have been using GNOME Shell on my laptop while I work with a traditional GNOME desktop on my home box. From time to time I test different desktop environments in order to see what's new on other projects beyond GNOME.

Pierros Papadeas (liknus)
Fedora 14 on desktops and laptops, default Gnome Installation. I also have various Design Suite images on virtual machines and one in a live USB. Finally, occasionally I play around with KDE (to catch up with the changes) and with LXDE (sooo lightweight!)

Gerard Braad (gbraad)
I use Linux as my primary desktop, but have been doing system administration and development in a mixed environment, so Windows and Mac OS X are not strange to me. If needed I run a Windows desktop in KVM.

My desktop is Gnome, but often use tools which are meant for other environments like xfce or lxde. Now and then I try KDE as some of my friends push me to try stuff ;-). Often I already read about it due to Frank or Aaron's messages on the net. Personally it does not matter which environment you use as long as you get your stuff done. I like it when events as Desktop Summit line up to have a combined Gnome and KDE event.