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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.