From Fedora Project Wiki
(answers from "suppose..." question got mixed between board and fesco)
Line 845: Line 845:


'''ajax:'''
'''ajax:'''
Default behaviours have to be evaluated along several axes.  Principle
<-- no answer -->
of least surprise.  It-Just-Works-ness.  Muscle memory.  Probably a few
more I'm forgetting.  Anyway, you evaluate it the same way you evaluate
anything: name the important axes, compute the length of the vector
along each, sum 'em up.
"It depends".  Not the kind of bombastic demagoguery one might hope for,
but then I always did like getting things done more than drama.


'''ctyler:'''
'''ctyler:'''
<-- no answer -->
Fedora is the community as much as it is the technology. Any issue that is significant to an "important fraction" of our community is of necessity significant to the board, and must be taken seriously. The board needs to act in the best interests of the entire project, and where possible, should make decisions that accommodate all of the significant needs within the community, but it must not shy away from making hard decisions which, if not made, will harm our community.


'''cwickert:'''
'''cwickert:'''
I would listen to both the contributor and the other fraction first in order to get a clear picture of the situation. When I think I have enough information, I'd try to middleman (some say I'm quite good in that) between the conflicting parties and suggest a compromise that is acceptable for everybody. If this is not possible because it's a technical decision that can only be yes or no, a decision needs to be made. I will decide what I think is right, but if there are other people in FESCO who are directly involved in the issue, their vote should have more wight than mine. Generally speaking I think people should only vote in things they really understand. I have seen people in FESCO voting on features although they didn't even bother to read the feature page in the wiki. I don't think this is particularly wise.
<-- no answer -->


'''djf_jeff:'''
'''djf_jeff:'''
Line 863: Line 857:


'''jforbes:'''
'''jforbes:'''
The real issue has very little to do with me and whether or not I am bothered.  As a member of FESCo I would be serving the needs of the community above and beyond my own little world.  The real question is why the default behavior is changing, and when this change is taking place.  Such a disruptive change really has no place as an update to a release, but may well have merit in working towards a new release.  Particularly if the default behavior change is inline with upstream, and can be justified by the packgers or developers involved.  The first step would be to find out why the default behavior has changed, and what are the overall impacts of the change outside of just what the users notice.
<-- no answer -->


'''ke4qqq:'''
'''ke4qqq:'''
Line 878: Line 872:


'''mdomsch:'''
'''mdomsch:'''
<-- no answer -->
Conversations about changing the default behavior of Fedora software
rarely make it to the Board level.  These are handled by FESCo, and
only in extreme circumstances would the Board be asked to review a
FESCo decision.
However, issues that bother an important fraction of the community
have happened on several occasions during my tenure on the Board.  One
specific example was the Trademark License Agreement text for the use
of the Fedora trademark in domain names.  In these instances, I have
spoken with the contributor one-on-one on IRC to more fully understand
their point of view, so that when the issue does surface for the Board
to make a decision, I can participate in those discussions and help
build a consensus decision.  I find email quite often does not lend
itself to such conversations as well as other more immediate forms of
communication.


'''mjg59:'''
'''mjg59:'''
FESCO should be making decisions based on an analysis of the technical
<-- no answer -->
aspects of the suggestion, not the extent to which individual members
are enthusiastic about the change. If I have no background knowledge
of the case in question then I'd dedicate some time to reading the
rationale for the change and any counterarguments, and also look into
why things are the way they currently are. If there's a valid
justification for the proposed change and it addresses any technical
concerns that would arise as a result, it should be endorsed.


'''pjones:'''
'''pjones:'''
Well, obviously it's better if such problems can be resolved without
<-- no answer -->
getting to the point that FESCo, as a group, must become directly involved.
So obviously that's the place to start.  If the point comes when the board
really must be involved, then this is basically a public policy question,
and needs to be evaluated as such. Which is to say, there are effectively
fixed steps here:
1) gather data on what the various parties' concerns are
2) try to understand each point of view
3) solicit solutions, both from the board and others (generally if you
get this far, there are plenty of opinions on possible solutions quite
readily available, so this is really a sorting exercise ;)
4) analyze benefits and drawbacks of each proposed solution, including
less tangible benefits such as the impact on maintainers of packages
in terms both of subverting their decisions and in terms of workload
generation.
5) hope like hell there's an obviously correct answer.  If so, use it.
6) if there's not, try to find ways to move forward in either
a) differentiating between the quality of the proposed solutions
or b) finding other ways to address the concerns.
I realize that this is a completely vague answer, and that's unfortunate,
but it's hard to answer a completely vague question any other way.


'''red_alert:'''
'''red_alert:'''
Line 917: Line 897:


'''rjune:'''
'''rjune:'''
I would approach it in the same fashion I handle support and consulting work. First I would try to connect him with the appropriate person that has an interest in the area and can address is complaint. Upon connecting him with that person, I would follow the proposal until it's resolution, whether he is happy with that resolution or not. If such a person could not be found, I would help him resolve it myself. If most users would not be bothered by either state, I push to make his proposal the default. If the proposed change was as painful to as many people as what was in place, I explain this to him and help him find a different solution.
<-- no answer -->


'''rsc:'''
'''rsc:'''
If somehow possible, I would try to understand the issue and try to get it solved. A steering commitee always should care about issues, even if the people on it don't have personal interests in that area. And if exactly that does not happen for some reason, the steering commitee unfortunately failed.
I am not running for the Board...


'''SMParrish:'''
'''SMParrish:'''
<-- no answer -->
I would ask the person to explain in detail the what and why of their proposal.  Then I would get the most vocal opposers and have them detail their objections.
Once we have all this we have a foundation we can build on to find some common ground.  In situations like this you can never please everyone and to attempt to do so will lead to failure.
Instead you have to encourage compromise and do what is best for the community as a whole.  And even if I have no personal interest in the topic as a board member I have to have an interest and
help to resolve the issue in a respectful and open-minded manner.


'''susmit:'''
'''susmit:'''
Line 929: Line 912:


'''tatica:'''
'''tatica:'''
<-- no answer -->
I'll ask everything that I can to find out what he/she is talking about, then I'll find people who'll be affected by these changes and make a meeting/poll/mail-thread to evaluate options. At this point I will only be a witness of what they are doing. If these changes help a substantial majority, I proceed to evaluate how these changes can be applied with minimal impact on those parts who doesn't want this change.
When a user want to change something that affects our people... it shouldn't matter if is interesting or not. We are here to make users and developers feel confortable, and is our task to care about people who make fedora possible.


'''walters:'''
'''walters:'''
<-- no answer -->
I think the general principle here is "rough consensus and working code".  Now, in this case we presumably have working code (or at least working enough to prompt debate), so the question becomes - who are the owners and stakeholders that need to come to a rough consensus?  The term "Fedora" is used here in a concrete way, but that's the project, not a consumable thing.  Further presuming that we're discussing a high-impact issue on a high-profile consumable (for example, the default IM client in the Fedora desktop), then in that case I think that, as the Fedora desktop has owners, they get to decide.  I certainly don't think there's any voting involved, for example.
If we can't agree on who the owners of the problem space are, then that's a meta-issue for the Board to resolve first, before resolving the issue.  Now since this issue was raised to the Board, there was some disagreement about that.  But regardless of whether or not I have a personal interest in the issue at stake, I think the path to resolving an issue is the same, as above.


== Committee specific questions:  FAmSCo ==
== Committee specific questions:  FAmSCo ==
Line 1,218: Line 1,203:


===  Suppose a user/contributor brings up an issue that bothers an important fraction of Fedora community and he proposes a change in the default behavior of Fedora; but either you don't have personal interest in that area, or (as a user) the issue doesn't bother you. How would you approach the problem? ===
===  Suppose a user/contributor brings up an issue that bothers an important fraction of Fedora community and he proposes a change in the default behavior of Fedora; but either you don't have personal interest in that area, or (as a user) the issue doesn't bother you. How would you approach the problem? ===


'''ajax:'''
'''ajax:'''
<-- no answer -->
Default behaviours have to be evaluated along several axes.  Principle
of least surprise.  It-Just-Works-ness.  Muscle memory.  Probably a few
more I'm forgetting.  Anyway, you evaluate it the same way you evaluate
anything: name the important axes, compute the length of the vector
along each, sum 'em up.
"It depends".  Not the kind of bombastic demagoguery one might hope for,
but then I always did like getting things done more than drama.


'''ctyler:'''
'''ctyler:'''
Fedora is the community as much as it is the technology. Any issue that is significant to an "important fraction" of our community is of necessity significant to the board, and must be taken seriously. The board needs to act in the best interests of the entire project, and where possible, should make decisions that accommodate all of the significant needs within the community, but it must not shy away from making hard decisions which, if not made, will harm our community.
<-- no answer -->


'''cwickert:'''
'''cwickert:'''
<-- no answer -->
I would listen to both the contributor and the other fraction first in order to get a clear picture of the situation. When I think I have enough information, I'd try to middleman (some say I'm quite good in that) between the conflicting parties and suggest a compromise that is acceptable for everybody. If this is not possible because it's a technical decision that can only be yes or no, a decision needs to be made. I will decide what I think is right, but if there are other people in FESCO who are directly involved in the issue, their vote should have more wight than mine. Generally speaking I think people should only vote in things they really understand. I have seen people in FESCO voting on features although they didn't even bother to read the feature page in the wiki. I don't think this is particularly wise.


'''djf_jeff:'''
'''djf_jeff:'''
Line 1,232: Line 1,224:


'''jforbes:'''
'''jforbes:'''
<-- no answer -->
The real issue has very little to do with me and whether or not I am bothered.  As a member of FESCo I would be serving the needs of the community above and beyond my own little world.  The real question is why the default behavior is changing, and when this change is taking place.  Such a disruptive change really has no place as an update to a release, but may well have merit in working towards a new release.  Particularly if the default behavior change is inline with upstream, and can be justified by the packgers or developers involved.  The first step would be to find out why the default behavior has changed, and what are the overall impacts of the change outside of just what the users notice.


'''ke4qqq:'''
'''ke4qqq:'''
Line 1,247: Line 1,239:


'''mdomsch:'''
'''mdomsch:'''
Conversations about changing the default behavior of Fedora software
<-- no answer -->
rarely make it to the Board level.  These are handled by FESCo, and
only in extreme circumstances would the Board be asked to review a
FESCo decision.
However, issues that bother an important fraction of the community
have happened on several occasions during my tenure on the Board.  One
specific example was the Trademark License Agreement text for the use
of the Fedora trademark in domain names.  In these instances, I have
spoken with the contributor one-on-one on IRC to more fully understand
their point of view, so that when the issue does surface for the Board
to make a decision, I can participate in those discussions and help
build a consensus decision.  I find email quite often does not lend
itself to such conversations as well as other more immediate forms of
communication.


'''mjg59:'''
'''mjg59:'''
<-- no answer -->
FESCO should be making decisions based on an analysis of the technical
aspects of the suggestion, not the extent to which individual members
are enthusiastic about the change. If I have no background knowledge
of the case in question then I'd dedicate some time to reading the
rationale for the change and any counterarguments, and also look into
why things are the way they currently are. If there's a valid
justification for the proposed change and it addresses any technical
concerns that would arise as a result, it should be endorsed.


'''pjones:'''
'''pjones:'''
<-- no answer -->
Well, obviously it's better if such problems can be resolved without
getting to the point that FESCo, as a group, must become directly involved.
So obviously that's the place to start.  If the point comes when the board
really must be involved, then this is basically a public policy question,
and needs to be evaluated as such. Which is to say, there are effectively
fixed steps here:
1) gather data on what the various parties' concerns are
2) try to understand each point of view
3) solicit solutions, both from the board and others (generally if you
get this far, there are plenty of opinions on possible solutions quite
readily available, so this is really a sorting exercise ;)
4) analyze benefits and drawbacks of each proposed solution, including
less tangible benefits such as the impact on maintainers of packages
in terms both of subverting their decisions and in terms of workload
generation.
5) hope like hell there's an obviously correct answer.  If so, use it.
6) if there's not, try to find ways to move forward in either
a) differentiating between the quality of the proposed solutions
or b) finding other ways to address the concerns.
I realize that this is a completely vague answer, and that's unfortunate,
but it's hard to answer a completely vague question any other way.


'''red_alert:'''
'''red_alert:'''
Line 1,272: Line 1,278:


'''rjune:'''
'''rjune:'''
<-- no answer -->
I would approach it in the same fashion I handle support and consulting work. First I would try to connect him with the appropriate person that has an interest in the area and can address is complaint. Upon connecting him with that person, I would follow the proposal until it's resolution, whether he is happy with that resolution or not. If such a person could not be found, I would help him resolve it myself. If most users would not be bothered by either state, I push to make his proposal the default. If the proposed change was as painful to as many people as what was in place, I explain this to him and help him find a different solution.


'''rsc:'''
'''rsc:'''
I am not running for the Board...
If somehow possible, I would try to understand the issue and try to get it solved. A steering commitee always should care about issues, even if the people on it don't have personal interests in that area. And if exactly that does not happen for some reason, the steering commitee unfortunately failed.


'''SMParrish:'''
'''SMParrish:'''
I would ask the person to explain in detail the what and why of their proposal.  Then I would get the most vocal opposers and have them detail their objections.
<-- no answer -->
Once we have all this we have a foundation we can build on to find some common ground.  In situations like this you can never please everyone and to attempt to do so will lead to failure.
Instead you have to encourage compromise and do what is best for the community as a whole.  And even if I have no personal interest in the topic as a board member I have to have an interest and
help to resolve the issue in a respectful and open-minded manner.


'''susmit:'''
'''susmit:'''
Line 1,287: Line 1,290:


'''tatica:'''
'''tatica:'''
I'll ask everything that I can to find out what he/she is talking about, then I'll find people who'll be affected by these changes and make a meeting/poll/mail-thread to evaluate options. At this point I will only be a witness of what they are doing. If these changes help a substantial majority, I proceed to evaluate how these changes can be applied with minimal impact on those parts who doesn't want this change.
<-- no answer -->
When a user want to change something that affects our people... it shouldn't matter if is interesting or not. We are here to make users and developers feel confortable, and is our task to care about people who make fedora possible.


'''walters:'''
'''walters:'''
I think the general principle here is "rough consensus and working code".  Now, in this case we presumably have working code (or at least working enough to prompt debate), so the question becomes - who are the owners and stakeholders that need to come to a rough consensus?  The term "Fedora" is used here in a concrete way, but that's the project, not a consumable thing.  Further presuming that we're discussing a high-impact issue on a high-profile consumable (for example, the default IM client in the Fedora desktop), then in that case I think that, as the Fedora desktop has owners, they get to decide.  I certainly don't think there's any voting involved, for example.
<-- no answer -->
If we can't agree on who the owners of the problem space are, then that's a meta-issue for the Board to resolve first, before resolving the issue.  Now since this issue was raised to the Board, there was some disagreement about that.  But regardless of whether or not I have a personal interest in the issue at stake, I think the path to resolving an issue is the same, as above.


=== Why are you a member of the Fedora project? ===
=== Why are you a member of the Fedora project? ===

Revision as of 20:15, 24 November 2009

Main questions

What is The Fedora Project to you?

ajax: It's a fiction, a granfalloon, the name we give to the collective madness. It is Maxwell's Demon, or at least a fair facsimile. It also happens to be a way of producing a Linux distribution, the tools to make that happen, and the people who participate in it, most of whom are entirely pleasant and do not make me want to weep in the corner, pausing occasionally to throw things or take pulls from the bottle of bourbon.

ctyler: I see Fedora as three things: First, a global community of people with many different interests, skills, and needs, who enjoy productively collaborating on open source technology. Secondly, a vast collection of open source software, packaged, integrated, and tested by our community. Someone cares enough about each package to maintain it, and everyone is welcome to add to the collection. Third, a set of live and installable operating system environments built by our community out of our package collection. These spins serve a wide range of needs, and their diversity creates a productive challenge for us. I think our strength lies in all three aspects of Fedora.

cwickert: A community of great people who strive for a common goal: Make the best Linux distribution out there. But the goal is not only about Fedora, it's about making Linux better and easier to use. Redefine the way computers work and how people work with computers. Personally it's part of my everyday life. I spend a lot of time on Fedora: Packaging, reviews, guiding new contributors, promoting Fedora as an ambassador and much more. Using free software and being a member of the Fedora community is part of my attitude towards life.

djf_jeff: First, I want to start saying that English is not my native language. I try to do my best but it's hard to not make some mistakes. So, pardon me in advance ;) For me, The Fedora project represents a community of people working together on a multitude of projects sharing the same goals : writing free softwares, having some fun, sharing knowledge, etc. It's a central place, regrouping people all around the world, with different goals and interests.

jforbes: Simply put, "The Fedora Project" is a great example of how the community can work together to create the best general purpose operating system available.

ke4qqq: The Fedora Project is an incubator for F/LOSS innovation, and includes the Fedora linux distributions, amond other things.

kital: A important part of my life! And the best and perfect place for any Open Source Contributor!

lfoppiano: The "Fedora Project" to me is the Community. Fedora is the people, not only the software. The software is a consequence, a result of the people working together for passion, job, hobby but sharing some common principles about freedom; summarized under the free and open source software philosophy.

mbuf: Chocolate ice cream, but, blue in colour.

mdomsch: The Fedora Project is first and foremost a gathering of talented people, each with disparate personal goals and interests, who work together to collectively produce the finest Free and Open Source Operating System and applications available.

mjg59: A community of people working together to create a high quality free (in both senses) operating system.

pjones: To me it's really the best Linux distribution yet to exist. I know there are places it can be better, and we're striving towards that all the time, but there's no other distro with such high commitments to affecting real changes to make it better, to making a distro of high quality, and to maintaining and expanding freedoms in the way we make and use software.

red_alert: The possibility to work together with great people (who eventually become fine friends) in a unique community to achieve a common purpose that is useful to everyone.

rjune: Fedora's greatest contribution to F/OSS is the availability of maintained projects. Unlike other distributions with a lot of "dead" projects. Fedora prunes packages that do not have an active maintainership. As long as somebody is willing to package the software and ensure new versions are kept up, it gets included.

rsc: Latest, newest, best in software and people - bleeding edge including all the trouble such a leadership costs. Fedora nearly always leads, nearly never follows and usually wants to get all the trouble with freedom, friends, features as first distribution.

SMParrish: The Fedora Project is the community, its all of us who put our time and effort into it. No matter what our individual roles may be, together we are "The Fedora Project"

susmit: An entity which provides me works, challenges, friends and confidence (not to mention the trips and business cards).

tatica: Fedora is a family to me. I have spent 3 years helping the fedora community and this has given me the oportunity to meet some awesome people, learn great new stuff about technological issues, to develop plans and to make them happen and to share my professional experiences with people who can actually understand them. If you are looking for professional support, a team based on people who not only want to use, but also learn and teach what they know... fedora is the place. A distribution is nothing without a solid community who support it and I really believe that the fedora community is based on a true concept of growing everyday and giving our users a solid solution to their daily routine in front of their pc.

walters: The Fedora project provides a Free Software general purpose operating system, a large collection of additional Free Software, and a vibrant community of contributors working to improve both.

What do you consider to be Fedora's raison d'etre?

ajax: Fedora exists to build products, plain and simple. Raw clay doesn't just form itself, and it's not very useful unless you stick it in a furnace for a while. The primary failing here is that there's only one (generally recognized as) successful product built from Fedora, and that's RHEL. RHEL is lovely, don't get me wrong, I work on it too and it buys me dinner, but it's not all things to all people. There's a lot of people in and near Fedora that would like to build other things with it, and they can't for one or more of two reasons: they lack the tools, or they lack a vision.

ctyler: Fedora really does exist to rapidly advance the state of open source. This doesn't just mean new features -- it also means advancing the state of the art in usefulness, in stability, in resource utilization, and in innovative community processes.

cwickert: Fedora is a platform for rapid development and innovation. The technologies and standards we develop become the next generation of Linux. This is a great chance but also a big responsibility. We must face this responsibility with every Fedora release and try to get the latest and greatest software into the new version so it can be used, tested, enhanced by a wider audience.

djf_jeff: The Raison d'être of Fedora for me is basically the four foundations : provide free softwares, drive a big community of users and developers forward, provides many features and innovate in many areas.

jforbes: I believe that Fedora exists as a reflection of its community. Fedora provides a way for the general community, and Red Hat as a member of this community, to work together and create a general purpose Linux distribution that is exciting, current, and stable. Fedora is a great collaboration that both takes from its community, and gives a lot back to the Fedora community and Linux community in general.

ke4qqq: To encourage further development and showcase the best of what's currently being developed in the F/LOSS world.

kital: For me it is clear written in the 4 Foundations.

lfoppiano: I consider as Fedora raison d'etre the upstream innovation fedora bring to the FOSS world, but also the opportunities Fedora give to people to improve skills, relationships and being part of a big and world wide community.

mbuf: It has a platform to spread its wings across the community, and also be a means to support commercial needs.

mdomsch: To provide a rapidly evolving, yet fully functional "it just works" operating system from the best that Free and Open Source software can provide.

mjg59: Producing the aforementioned operating system and getting it into the hands of as many people as possible. In the process we'll be developing new and exciting software, improving what we have already and advancing the state of Linux as a whole -- but fundamentally, if we're not producing a usable OS then I don't think we're functioning as a project.

pjones: To further free software and linux by making a first-class linux distribution, as well as other projects that further our goals and beliefs.

red_alert: To enable users to free their computers while taking advantage of the latest and greatest software as well as to enable contributors to accomplish their ideas in a team with other skilled people.

rjune: Fedora represents the latest and greatest in F/OSS, a proving ground for new ideas. Rather than always taking the safe route, it explores what can be done with technology.

rsc: We are because we are? :)

SMParrish: The Fedora Project exists to foster a community in open source development and to spread the open source philosophy.

susmit: I don't fully understand the question. If it means the purpose, then it is there as an operating system, to act as a social network of a number of very smart people from all walks of life.

tatica: I consider that Fedora is a response to the specific needs of a professional community and environment based on OS tools. When we talk about linux distributions we have to share what they represent to us daily, and you only get a great response when the answer is "almost everything". I truely believe that Fedora is a tool for everyone and for everything, you just need to use it and ask enough questions in order to find a solution to your task and a new way to aproach your work/study/leisure routine.

walters: The general purpose operating system market has been mostly a tri-opoly for about nine years now, where the other two are Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Linux is unfortunately extremely fragmented, but most consumers can overlook the divisions and see it as one thing. Now, we have our areas where we're behind, and our areas where we shine. But regardless, the world needs a Free Software operating system; without us, it would have been significantly harder to imagine something like OLPC, and on the high end, the supercomputing market would have been much farther behind. Thus, we have a raison d'etre, and it's a good one.

Where do you see the project in one years?

ajax: With better tools for building things, and at least one or two well-articulated product visions (and even realizations of those visions) beyond what we have now.

ctyler: In one year -- two releases -- I picture our project having advanced significantly in its processes. Fedora Community, Fedora Insight, AutoQA, and other current initiatives will have come to fruition and will significantly change the way we work, for the better.

cwickert: Two years ahead of all other Linux distributions.

djf_jeff: On the community side, I would like to see the continuation of recruiting and facilitate the contribution of more people. On the technical side, I would like to see Fedora continue it's push on the virtualization front (virt-manager, kvm, integration) and on the many management tools (PolicyKit, DeviceKit, PackageKit, etc).

jforbes: Fedora is constantly improving, I expect to see a large number of new features as we approach a well integrated and tested Fedora 14 release. I hope to see even more community involvment in setting the direction and maintaining the quality of the distribution.

ke4qqq: I see Fedora continuing to set the pace for Linux distributions. I think it will more solidly become the hub for future development with more upstream projects because of our record of welcoming innovation.

kital: cementing Fedora as the reference for educational institutions, more specialized Collections/Spins - Medical-, Security-, Bio-, Physics...labs to attract new sectors to contribute First choice for poor Countries where the digital revolution just starts.

lfoppiano: <-- no answer -->

mbuf: To have its presence in places that don't yet have it.

mdomsch: I see emerging new use cases, such as netbooks, Fedora on ARM processors, and targeting services providers (Fedora as Guest OS) expanding the reach and visibility of the Project, and serving as a gateway to new users and contributors.

mjg59: Receiving glowing reviews that are no longer just small boxes underneath Ubuntu release announcements.

pjones: Releasing F14 to great fanfare ;)

red_alert: Two years further than all the others.

rjune: I would like to see some other interesting projects such as some of the new user interfaces such as the one for Moblin and Ubuntu's Netbook Remix brought into Fedora.

rsc: At the same or at a very similar point as before? Maybe or hopefully we've made the world a bit better than one year before.

SMParrish: A year from now the project will have just released F14, but more importantly we will have grown our community. Adding new contributors who bring with them not only a wealth of knowledge, but a fresh perspective that can only serve to make us better.

susmit: Two more releases, a few hundred new contributors, and a lot of changes in all aspects of the project.

tatica: I see Fedora being used in several schools/colleges, some government institutes and I also envisage a strong educational program to teach both regular and professional people how to become more productive using tools provided by the fedora enviroment. I'm already working on this issue in: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Tatica/ToDo#Proyecto_Educativo:_Fedora_en_las_aulas I think that the fedora community has enough potential to create a "fedora lab" , where students, engineers, regular people and anyone who has the will, can develop new ideas and put them into practice to improve our effectiveness and efficiency.

walters: In one year I don't see the project as likely to be dramatically or fundamentally different in any way. We're producing something that people want, and all we need to do is execute better on it.

Where do you see the project in two years?

ajax: With a healthy variety of derived products, and a reputation for quality and ease of consumption that make it the preferred choice for people looking to build a Linux product.

ctyler: Two years out -- four releases -- I want to see us continue to push the boundaries of a "Linux distribution". We're going to have less legacy technology (as much as I'm a diehard greybeard who loves the traditional Unix way of doing things) and will have a distribution that is a lot more intuitive, more secure, and which has better self-healing capability.

cwickert: Five years ahead of the other distros, so we increased our lead.

djf_jeff: I see Fedora continue to be at the bleeding edge of innovation, always the first to deliver the technology and always the one pushing it into new boundaries.

jforbes: I expect that Fedora will evolve to make it even easier for the community to get involved. I believe that we will be a more agile community, with stronger focus on testing and qa.

ke4qqq: I envision a Fedora that has become the true centerpiece for development for a number of communities. I see the further refinement and 4 additional iterations to the release process making things far more predictable, and documented, and thus far easier to participate in.

kital: Please ask me in one year ;)

lfoppiano: <-- no answer -->

mbuf: I don't make long term plans, so can't predict much here.

mdomsch: I would hope for more contributions from people in countries that Fedora has traditionally not served well, for various reasons. There are huge segments of the global population which Fedora completely misses. Transifex has already had an impact on the Project, pulling in contributors we would otherwise have missed. We're starting to see localized spins happen, but could expand on this greatly. We've added mirrors in quite a few countries to make it easier to get Fedora software. These are enablers to help us scale to a wider contributor base.

mjg59: Running on laptops sitting on tables next to me in a coffee shop, being used by people I've never met before and never will again.

pjones: I think this is better answered below.

red_alert: Five years futher than all the others!

rjune: I would like to see most packages not only have a package maintainer, but at least one person actively helping improve it upstream by contributing code fixes, documentation, artwork, or other help. This helps Fedora by ensuring included packages work, rather than having a lot of packages suffering from bitrot.

rsc: At the same or at a very similar point as before? Maybe or hopefully we've made the world a bit better than two years before.

SMParrish: I want to have a growing and vibrant community of people who consistently push not only their own boundaries, but the projects as well. The Fedora Project is known for publishing a top notch Linux distribution, but more importantly we need to foster an environment where members can grow their knowledge, and at the same time help others to achieve their own goals.

susmit: Too long a period to comment....

tatica: After taking a good new team of people from our school projects (Fedora-school), we could use those efforts to develop new tools and reach new frontiers. A good example could be medical care. We could start to make some hardware combined with software tools to help people (monitors, triage systems,...) I'm already working on this issue in: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Tatica/ToDo#Proyecto_Educativo:_Aulas_Fedora and: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Tatica/ToDo#Fedora-Medical:_Triage_medico_con_herramientas_Fedora Also I think we could undertake some special trips (or video conferences) to locations where we still haven't reached people. Maybe some special meetings with communities from africa and latam. I'm already working on this issue in: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Tatica/ToDo#Fedora_Video-Learning

walters: In two years it's harder to say what might happen; it depends on how well we address some of our weaknesses. Even over a two year timescale though, I still don't expect a fundamental difference in terms of say market share. The question is more will it go up, or down? The operating system market is certainly as competitive as it's ever been.

Do you see a long-term goal or a "target audience" Fedora should strive for?

ajax: Have you ever tried sugar, or PCP? Really. Ask one question at a time please. There's a tension here in that Fedora really only has one primary output product, and it's _also_ called Fedora, and boooo to that. "Spins" are too whimsical and half-assed to actually count as derived works, and there's no good branding story for anything truly _derived_ in the sense of having changed things. But neither of those things really matters yet because it's also, mechanically speaking, really really hard to make a real derived work. You basically have to be OLPC to do it. I kind of gave the "long term goal" answer already, in the last two questions. The "target audience" thing is a red herring though. Anyone begging the target audience question is doing so as a conversational gambit, in which you can shift at will between the target of the project and the target of the distro, whichever unsteadies your opponent most. (Apologies, Mitch Hedberg, for stealing your joke.)

ctyler: I'm starting to shudder when I hear the phrase "target audience". I think that limiting Fedora to a particular small set of use-cases will stifle innovation and drive away contributors. The spins process has been very constructive; I think our long-term goal should be a Fedora that is used in an even wider range of situations.

cwickert: Basically Fedora is for everybody, especially for people interested in Linux. From a strategic POV I'd say our target audience are mainly early adopters and developers, but that does not mean that we should limit our focus to those groups because I have seen many people with different knowledge and skills using Fedora without problems. And maybe one of them is the next Linux coding superstar, who knows?

djf_jeff: I think that the foundations of Fedora are so solid that we already have this long-term goal : bring innovation, fast and easy to the more people we can! I don't personally think we should pick a target audience and let the others down. One thing that I like of Fedora is the multitude of usage that people make of it. Everyone can find something unique in Fedora, we don't stick with something ignoring the rest.

jforbes: While I tend to agree with the target audience as it was discussed by the board recently, I do see a couple of long term goals. First and foremost, Fedora should continue making it easier for community members to get involved. This is not just for developers, but there are real contributions that the community can make in testing and QA, documentation, and "evangelism".

ke4qqq: The target audience that I think Fedora should strive for is contributors. I don't necessarily mean contributors to the Fedora Project, but contributors to the F/LOSS ecosystem. We've all seen the two pyramids of that show the class of users. Fedora's focus should be on making it easy to innovate, making innovation welcome, and giving contributors a solid base on which to build and display their work.

kital: Target audience should be technically minded people from all sectors with the potential to evolve and contribute and who know what the "show desktop" button is ;)

lfoppiano: Both, but I see more a long-term goal because the "target audience" sometimes press us to make decisions that are good to enlarge the target audience but in fact are compromises against free and open source principles. The truth is, once you agreed with a compromise is really hard to come back. I believe the most important long-term goals Fedora should strive for are contained in the 4 foundations manifest: First, Friends, Features, Freedom.

mbuf: The student community is an audience that I strive for.

mdomsch: First, let me address the "target audience" aspect. The Board has been trying to answer this question for the better part of a year, and while we've made progress, it's been difficult. Personally, I hate this question, as it becomes all to easy to fall into the polarization trap - either you're included in the target audience, or you're not. How do we treat people and ideas that don't cleanly fit into what we finally define as the target? Fedora's strength lies in the people who participate in the Project, a diverse set of individuals worldwide, each with something to contribute, and each with their own reasons for using Fedora. In trying define a target audience, either we take the approach of "Everyone is" - an impossible goal to achieve which doesn't provide direction when there are multiple competing objectives as there always are, or we begin to impose meaninful limits which necessarily exclude people who may already be a part of Fedora, and we just don't know it. This question also tends to come from a mindset of managing a scarce resource. If we have limited resources, how can we most efficiently direct the resources we have to get the maximum good for the minimum effort? But when dealing with a worldwide volunteer organization such as Fedora, there is no central command-and-control directing the activities of the contributors, nor can there be. Contributors 'scratch their itch'. It's the task of Fedora leadership to recognize when there are several contributors working towards the same goals, but who might not be aware of each other, make those connections, encourage them to work together, and then get out of their way. Additionally, highly motivated contributors have been successful in obtaining the resources necessary to accomplish their goals, sometimes with the help of Project leadership, but often times on their own. Rather than look at it as "who is our target" (as if there can be only one), I prefer to come at it as an additive process, not an exclusionary one. The Spins exemplify this perfectly. Each Spin contributes to the Fedora Project as a whole, while providing for a more tailored environment (collaborative and and software-wise) for a subset of the Fedora user and contributor base. Furthermore, nothing forces people into a single Spin audience - Game enthusiasts may also be hardware engineers that benefit from the work of the Fedora Electronics Lab SIG. I love how the number of Spins has grown over the past couple years, and encourage this wholeheartedly. The long-term goal of Fedora must be to showcase, and bring the power of FOSS to bear to solve end user problems we can't even imagine today.

mjg59: Fedora should always be usable by everyone. That's something of a cop-out answer, but I think it's massively important that it be true. The obvious followup answer is whether everyone will /choose/ to use it, and that's less obvious. Recent releases of Fedora have made it easier for inexperienced users to run it without a local expert, but in the process we've alienated some of our traditional users by changing how things work. It's easy to say that this doesn't matter or that it's an inevitable tradeoff that we have to make, but there's nothing fundamentally stopping any of these "advanced" users from using Fedora - we're simply failing to market the improvements or not letting people know why changes have been made.

pjones: I think our current work with multiple spins is a good direction for us, and allows us to work around limiting questions like this one. We need to work towards being able to produce a linux distribution with more than one target audience, and even one with /conflicting/ target audiences, so that slavish adherence to our views on who the target of a particular feature doesn't limit work on other features. Multiple spins is part of one way forward with this kind of strategy, and we should develop more techniques to help avoid this kind of constraint.

red_alert: Become and stay the most advanced open source platform available (for free). The target audience should clearly be contributors. The more contributors the more we can achieve. Users should only be targeted in order to convert them to contributors.

rjune: Fedora's target audience should be people who want to see what's upcoming. I believe this is consistent with where the community has thus far taken the distribution.

rsc: There is a target at Fedora? And when there is a real "target audience". Nothing and everything is the "target audience" of Fedora. The journey is the reward.

SMParrish: My long term goal is to see us involved more in education. I don't just mean having Fedora running on school computers, which is always a good thing, but to have us more involved in getting open source into the schools. Current efforts like POSSE and the Teaching Open Source initiative need to be a focus of the project. Not only do schools benefit from the cost savings of using open source, but we have a hand in grooming the next generation and future Fedora Project contributors

susmit:

  • Release day ISOs should be as bug free as possible. There will be bugs no doubt, but NO bug should be there which will affect a *number* of people in a *major* way. (Like it was in 10 and 11)

tatica: I still believe we could start a "fedora school" for summer vacations or even special programs (including people from all ages) so they could experience what it's like to be part of fedora devel (in all areas) and share their ideas and experiences with people who can actually improve our environment based on user experiences and not based on a developers view of "how might a user think or what can a user expect from fedora" Already working on this issue in: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Tatica/ToDo#Proyecto_Educativo:_Aulas_Fedora

walters: The agreed on target audience seems fine to me, though I'd like to flesh it out with some example personas, so discussions can be more concrete. The goal I see as simply executing on our raison d'etre.

What part of the Fedora project would you change, given total power to do so?

ajax: I would like it if fedora-devel-list@ was a mailing list about Fedora development.

ctyler: I think the rapid growth of both our community and our package set is our biggest current and future challenge. Our package review, QA, and testing practices have served us well to this point, but are in danger of being overwhelmed by our growth, and there is increasing potential for significant security, quality, or policy problems to go undetected until they surface as major issues. The recent PackageKit-command-not-found controversy was a wakeup call: an opportunity to focus on QA, testing, and policy issues to head off larger issues that could arise.

cwickert: I would invent a round table for all the different groups within Fedora. I know it's important that the people can focus on their individual projects, but some decisions require a to broaden one's horizon. For example if we had a round table with representatives from say the Gnome, KDE, Xfce and LXDE SIG, I'm sure the interoperability of the different desktops would be way better. The same can and should be done for other projects as well. Communication is vital!

djf_jeff: I would not like to have total power over something, that's completely contrary to the philosophy of Fedora.

jforbes: Increase community participation in the testing process. I think the Fedora test days have been a great success, but I would like to see more of them, and an even better turn out when we do have them. Developers cannot fix bugs that they do not know exist, and testing is what makes them visible. The more peopel involved in testing, the more use cases we see, and the more bugs can be found and squashed before release.

ke4qqq: I'd like to see enough bandwidth and capacity so that each sub-project and SIG could mentor new people and make the on ramp to contributing much less painful.

kital: There is nothing that not can be solved together. The way - and the learned lessons - to make a change, is often more important than the change itself!

lfoppiano: <-- no answer -->

mbuf: Documentation.

mdomsch: Larger than Fedora, I would like to see the elimination of patents that restrict the interoperability of and production/consumption of media through encumbered file formats (the proprietary codec problem). It's hard enough to create compelling open content, it's a double whammy to then be restricted from using popular file formats. For Fedora itself, we need to do a better job of converting interested _users_ into active _contributors_. While our join.fedoraproject.org pages suggest ways to get involved, and individual teams and SIGs solicit for new contributors regularly, it takes quite a bit of organization and leadership, and personal time to discover a new interested contributor's strengths, direct them to a suitable small project on which to start, and mentor them through to completion. To me, this is even more critical than writing code, but being so time-intensive, is daunting. But I wouldn't need total power to do so - just a desire on the part of leaders across Fedora to mentor several people, and grow the process organically. With total power, I would stop every argument from degenerating into a choice within a false dichotomy. The world and our audience is far more nuanced than that.

mjg59: Our stable update policy. It's great that Fedora gets updates during its lifecycle - it's upsetting that this causes user-visible regressions in behaviour so frequently. We can argue that Fedora's meant to showcase the best and newest in the free software world, but if the only people that can reasonably run stable releases of Fedora are already experienced Linux users then we're doing a poor job of showcasing it. In an ideal world there'd be less churn in stable, compensated for by a Rawhide that's expected to be installable and usable at any given point. People who want bleeding edge code could run Rawhide - updates to stable would be expected to have spent some time in Rawhide first.

pjones: Well, for a great many things right now we're heavy on process, and it seems to unduly restrict individual contributors - developers and otherwise - from getting things done.

red_alert: Have the community to elect the Fedora Project Leader.

rjune: I would make LDAP better supported. Currently none of the user's administration utilities really support it. It's required for proper integration with SMB. And as a proving ground for new technologies, that support is *LONG* overdue. I would like to see a system management utility as well. Many members of the community have multiple machines, and while Fedora really shouldn't be used for production work, that's exactly the kind of testing ground needed to hone these utilities for use in production environments.

rsc: Why should I only change a single part of Fedora? I assume there is more than one task to do, so I would give me the possibility to perform even more and unlimited single-handedly changes at Fedora ;-) Seriously, my main issue with Fedora right now is still the Fedora trademark protection by Red Hat, Inc. Our trademark owner wants to enforce the US trademark law worldwide and is not interested in respecting non-US differences and less strict handlings. I am talking here about my concerns regarding fedora.de with the non-liberal trademark license agreement and about the naming issue of Fedora EMEA e.V. where Red Hat asked the non-profit organisation to rename because of the Fedora in its name. But even with the total power at Fedora, I assume, I would not be able to change that, as it is a Red Hat-only thing where the Fedora community has been clever and completely excluded.

SMParrish: I want to see us do more community building and outreach. We have a great group of Fedora Ambassadors and we should leverage that asset at every opportunity.

susmit:

  • The release schedule is too frequent. Much of the energy of Fedora's devoted towards getting it out every six months. This should be a bit more longer IMO.
  • There should be a better way to coordinate among the mailing-lists. With so many lists, it is just not possible to monitor all the interesting discussions.

tatica: I wouldn't change anything, just improve how we listen to our users. Sometimes developers, artwork, translate and everything, make developments based on what we think should be more effective... we should conduct more polls (even if it's boring or too much work), collate user statistics (not contributors), organise some special events and get regular people to test betas... Essentially, try to get a bigger perspective of who we aren't reaching with fedora and then reaching out to them. Already working on this issue in: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Tatica/ToDo#IRC_Fedora-newbies

walters: Power (per se) doesn't make much sense in a meritocracy like Fedora; I don't think it's possible or desirable to directly control what people work on. Our main blocker is person-time. However, I do really wish that of the people we have, more time was focused on the end user experience, and less on the individual components like package scripts.

Please name three things you plan to work on and realize while being on the Committee you run for!

ajax: I assume this means in the context of that committee? I think AutoQA, as a general effort, sounds pretty important. I assume it's usable - and intended to be used - for automatic regression and quality tests. Things like "can I upgrade from F12 to rawhide today", or "how much bigger did the live media get and why". I think we could use more of those. I think bodhi could use some more love. I think there's a general need to look at the front-to-back workflow for various contributors and kick down roadblocks. Developers in particular, although I'm clearly biased there.

ctyler: I look forward to working on: Building smoother, wider, and deeper on-ramps into the Fedora community. We have done a good job of encouraging more people to create Fedora accounts; the challenge now is to turn more users on the edge of the community into core contributors. Supporting and encouraging efforts to deepen QA and testing, including existing initiatives such as AutoQA and new efforts to encourage more participation in the testing of Rawhide and Alpha, Beta, and candidate releases. Encouraging the growth of the Fedora community in geographic areas and computing scenarios where it is not yet widely used.

cwickert:

  • The most important thing is to improve communication between the different projects within Fedora. There are many people involved and all of them are working hard, but sometimes they are not really working together. Think of the PackageKit changes or other things the the desktop SIG did in the F12 development cycle. If these changes had been announced more clearly, the damage would be much smaller than it is now. And even in perfect Fedora without any problems there will be areas, that are hard to understand for outsiders.
  • Improve workflows so all processes and decisions are transparent to the people in the project. Some processes are just too bureaucratic, which delays development and scares off contributors. Especially the feature process and the model of (co-)maintainership for upstream developers must be simplified.
  • Improve the packaging quality be improving the packaging guidelines, review quality and QA. Programs should be packaged more fine grained in order to cut down the dependency bloat.

djf_jeff: - Setting up a Canadian Event Box with all that represents - Create a well defined workflow to help Canadian Ambassadors represent Fedora - Represent Canada in FAmNA and FAmSCo meetings

jforbes: - Increase focus on QA and testing of changes and features brought before FESCo - Improve community involvement and feedback from the FESCo process. - Improve focus on community goals for Fedora.

ke4qqq: Further refinement and better documentation around the Ambassadors mentoring program. A more open and transparent FAmSCo Making growing Fedora's contributor base a major tenet of the Ambassador's purpose

kital: - further, enhance Fedora´s presence in underrepresented Regions of the world - concrete: a translation marathon in Kyrgyzstan in 2010 and more focus on Africa! - improve the Membership and regional Mentoring Process and establish measurability not only for Membership also for Success of Events! - ongoing - Establish liasons to other subprojects! - especally to marketing, artwork, docs, websites but also to bring back more technical training(classroom) for Ambassadors from the tech-groups

lfoppiano: - Improving communication within and outside FAmSCo - Improving the way people are involved in the ambassador community - Improving the FAmSCo presence and support to the Ambassadors

mbuf: 1. Helping newbies and wannabes into Fedora. 2. Marketing to regions that need Fedora presence. 3. Streamline Fedora, F/OSS documentation to scale down the learning curve.

mdomsch: I have only one goal: Encourage more ways for our millions of users to become active contributors and evangelists. To me, this is what the Board is about - ensuring the ongoing success of the Project by simplifying how we bring new people in as users and contributors to the Project, expanding the set of what is possible.

mjg59:

  • Ensuring that FESCO does not impede useful contributions to the

distribution

  • Encouraging short meetings that only spend time on an issue when

there's genuine controversy over whether it's a useful contribution to the distribution or not. These should be the exception, not the common case.

  • Working on ensuring that policies are interpreted as pragmatic

statements, not dogma.

pjones:

  • enable individual contributors to make the changes they need
  • further various groups' ability to do what they need without detriment to others.
  • generally stay out of the way, while at the same time help individual contributors to make progress.

red_alert: - Increase the total number of contributors in the world, particularly in parts where we're weak yet - Have a public merchandise store for Europe established - Help organize great FUDCons (particularly EMEA) and lead them to great success

rjune: 1. LDAP integration and support, as the author of a GUI utility to manage DHCP, I will work on a GUI utility to setup an LDAP server. and work on making the other utilities LDAP aware. 2. System management, RHQ may not be the ideal project for Fedora, but I have worked with Active Directory, Zenworks, and cfEngine, I would like to see something that allows a central point to manage multiple systems easily. It doesn't have to do everything, but it would be nice to do the basics. 3. I recently purchased some bluetooth adapters. They do not work in F11, if they continue to not work in F12, I will make them function.

rsc: I think, I would repeat myself here, so my nomination statements already contains tasks and plans.

SMParrish: [1] Expand our contributor base in all areas. [2] Get Fedora more involved in education [3] Foster communication between the many groups that make up the Fedora Project

susmit:

  • During last term most of my attention and energies were directed towards India. This time I am planning to work on APAC more.
  • Enabling ambassadors. The ideal work-flow should be: Ambassadors put forward requirement -> We work on ensure they have what they require.
  • Better co-ordination among ambassadors and other teams and recruit people (specially students) from ambassadors to those teams which are in need.

tatica:

  • Fedora school (NOT fedora AT schools): I'd like to start a summer program where we run small workshops and teach people how to do stuff, and in exchange, we get developments for them. I'm already doing this in Venezuela... I'm going to be running a workshop with some friends (artwork, package and datastore services) and the idea is (in my case) to teach people how to create artwork, and everything that they come up with, include into fedora-latam artwork pool. Also, in the package workshop, they will learn how to make rpm's with apps that haven't been packaged yet, thus increasing our local repository.

Ideas: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Tatica/ToDo#Proyecto_Educativo:_Aulas_Fedora Schedule: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_12_release_latam#Venezuela Progress: http://proyectofedora.org/wiki/Arte http://proyectofedora.org/wiki/Mercadeo

  • Begin meetings to figure out how can we help places who haven't got any marketing support for fedora. We need to help people in foreign countries to spread fedora and not just in NA, some EMEA countries and APAC. I live in a country which has only received help once (marketing related) and that was because I brought stickers and dvds on my trip. We need to get new sponsors in places where is difficult for Red Hat to help us. If we collect the statistics and count how much our ambassadors pay for marketing stuff... we should get worried. So I'd like to start a "give to give" plan with countries that have difficult access. Maybe provide some services from our ambassadors in exchange for marketing materials.

Expenses Rate in LATAM per ambassador per year (based on 5 ambassadors' feedback): 800us$ per year Divided per 12 months, it's around 1/4 of a month's salary.

  • We are free, because we let you choose: I'm part of the FSF and I'm worried about the new campaigns they are running. We should teach people that using FOSS is to have the power of choice in your hands. Maybe provide a list of what we have and what we still need to be completely free... but also make fedora accessible to everyone.

walters: 1. I will get more involved in the AutoQA efforts, and concretely have some sort of testing of the liveinst install path, and add some runtime checks. 2. Continue to be actively involved in Fedora at a technology level and a higher design level. Specifically for the latter, I'd like to get more of Fedora to look at the Mozilla project's organization and execution. 3. Raise the quality of communication in the community, both by setting a personal example and by helping to resolve issues in a positive way.

How would you measure your success as an elected member?

ajax: Fedora contributors should be able to look at the action of contribution as being More Fun Than Before.

ctyler: I will consider my time on the board a success if the Fedora community is healthy: if it has grown in terms of active contributors, if the tools and processes have evolved well, and if we have dealt effectively with issues that have arisen.

cwickert: On how many of the thinks listed above I can put into action. Recently somebody on the marketing list suggested to benchmark Fedora Ambassadors, but I don't think this is desirable. We cannot benchmark our community by it's size, the number or updates or the commits. But we can measure satisfaction of

djf_jeff: If in two years, Canada, and maybe other less represented regions, have a bigger Fedora visibility, I will consider my goals achieved!

jforbes: Success as a FESCo member can be measured in how effectively we evaluate the issues at hand, ensure that due diligence is evaluated on the changes we consider, and how well we work to meet the community needs versus our personal desires.

ke4qqq: I'd measure whether the above listed items actually get accomplished. I'd also check to insure that as an individual, I am not critical to any process.

kital: reaching this three - and my other - goals

lfoppiano: I will verify directly the goal I planned to do for my election.

mbuf: If I can make people interested in using and working with Fedora and F/OSS, then their success is my success.

mdomsch: High. This isn't an activist Board, which primarily thinks big and directs big efforts within the Project. The Board is primarily an oversight and obstacle-clearing body, approving and revising proposals brought to us (drafted by contributors and/or Board members), and bringing resources to bear to resolve focused issues. I've participated nearly every Board meeting for the past 3.5 years, and worked toward consensus on the issues brought before us.

mjg59: If I'm not reviled or commonly believed to be incompetent at the end of a term, I think I'll have been successful.

pjones: Are individual contributors more able to improve Fedora than they were beforehand?

red_alert: By the ambassadors satisfaction with the work I do/did.

rjune: By how many of my goals get accomplished, such making Fedora more network aware, and by the reaction of the community to those changes.

rsc: Whether the explained plans and expectations got solved or at least started (depending on the size of the project).

SMParrish: To have a growing and vibrant community, which continues to publish a world class distro. Also continue to provide an environment where each individual can express themselves and contribute in their own way.

susmit:

  • If I am able to solve/provide all the problems/resources that are put forward by the ambassadors, then I shall think I am successful.

tatica: I talk a lot, and have a to-do list with goals, projects and suggestions. I'll keep this online. Also I'll add a chat/comment section/guestbook on my webpage so people can send me new ideas, requests, complaints or anything. I'll leave an open channel and I won't become an unreachable person. Being a member of FAmSCo just helps more, it doesn't mean that I'll become a different person. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Tatica/ToDo I'll let other people measure our success... it's not mine alone, this is about teamwork and I'll keep it just like this.

walters: A difficult question; I guess it would come down to looking at, for the issues raised to the Board, how many did we bring to a successful conclusion, and in how many of those decisions did I play a strong role? Another metric is how far along the above goals I've achieved or pushed forward.

What are your unique strengths and what are your weaknesses?

ajax: I rock at Mario Kart. I have a ring that can open beer bottles. At one point in time I actually understood calculus and thermodynamics. I know how and when to switch between long-term and short-term reasoning. I know how to say "no" to bad ideas. I have a surreal knack for remembering minutiae. I'm forgetful of tasks that aren't written down. I can't bench press very much. I can't keep a straight face when telling a joke. I tend to ramble a bit.

ctyler: I teach students how to use Linux and other open source technology, and to become involved in open source communities. This gives me a repeated opportunity to take new contributors through the steep learning curve of getting started with open source, and to see how this can be streamlined and improved. This focus along with many years experience with a wide range of computer and software technology are my strengths. My weaknesses (of which there are many!) include spreading my time too thin, and being a bit of an introvert in the midst of a community-based undertaking (open source).

cwickert: I'm used to cope with criticism, in fact I need it as a vital feedback. I think this is something that every FESCo member should have, because in the steering committee you are in an exposed position. On the other hand my criticism sometimes is a little harsh. I can be demanding and dogmatic. Other weaknesses include poor English and bad typing skills (still suffering from an accident two years ago).

djf_jeff: I think that my perseverance and happiness are two of the most important part of my personality. A little bit of disorganization and my skills in English is two points that I tried hard to work on.

jforbes: While my focus as a developer has always been a slightly narrow scope, I have had quite a bit of experience across an entire distribution in packaging, release management, and bug fixes. I have the ability to look at the big picture, and sometimes set aside my personal desires when they are not what is best for the distribution at the time. I unfortunately am rather disorganized, and am trying to make improvements in that area to increase my efficiency as a member of the community.

ke4qqq: Strengths - I am passionate about Fedora, and more specifically Fedora's stance on innovation from free software, which makes me committed to furthering Fedora Weaknesses - My life continues to get busier, which means I am not spending as much time as I would prefer contributing to the Fedora Project.

kital: for both - i am passionate

lfoppiano: My strengths are: pragmatic, concreteness, resoluteness, world wide scale thought My weaknesses are: first experience in FAmSCo

mbuf: My greatest strength is that I am very versatile in nature. I travel often, so I don't necessarily have access to Internet connectivity, and it takes time for me to catch up with work when I return to it.

mdomsch: Strength: I've been a member of the Board since April 2006, and a contributor to Linux since 1999, so have a deep historical understanding of the community and how we have become successful. Through my work at Dell, I've been a part of the success of Linux across a wide range of users, and have the opportunity to evangelize Linux strengths to diverse users daily. I'm also good at recognizing where, with a small investment, a large gain can be made. The Fails-To-Build-From-Source FTBFS runs are one such example (idea borrowed from Debian) which have helped ensure that packages continue to build properly from one Fedora release to the next. For a second example, I instituted the role of Mirror Wrangler, and developed the software and processes by which we now distribute Fedora software worldwide, growing from a few dozen loosely managed mirrors to several hundred well-coordinated public mirrors, and even more private mirrors. Weaknesses: I rarely chime in on Fedora mailing list threads, though I do read most of them and follow the Planet regularly. When I feel I have a particular insight not already represented, I will share it, but I actively avoid "me too" comments. This may keep my list posting stats low, but I prefer to view it as keeping the signal-to-noise ratio high. I don't have minions or armies of ninjas.

mjg59: I've worked on pretty much every part of the Linux stack. I understand the kernel and desktop and almost everything inbetween, so I'm in a good position to make reasonable technical judgements on the majority of issues that face FESCO. My primary weakness is probably that I've only been involved with Fedora for a little over 18 months. I'm not as familiar with all of the Fedora infrastructure as I'd like to be, though that's improving quickly.

pjones: Well, I've got very strong technical skills, and I've worked on a large number of varied projects in Fedora and for Red Hat. So I've got a wide perspective which helps me understand different points of view.

red_alert: I can very well coordinate and organize but I might want to do too much by myself instead of delegate important work.

rjune: My greatest strength is that I have none. I have chosen to not specialize in any one thing. I am not the greatest coder around, but I am handy with eight languages. I have been administrator of multiple networks ranging from three to three hundred systems. I provide a patient and thourough support, as anyone whom I have helped in #fedora will attest. My weakness tend towards thins I find generally unimportant. I wore the same pair of pants all weekend because I had nothing important to do. People that do nothing but waste time get ignored because they are irrelevant.

rsc: I'm not sure, but did I not already answer that somehow? I sometimes like to rub salt into wounds by making noise (from time to time a bit lurid, because small and tiny voices are unfortunately to often ignored) and especially if things do not get solved.

SMParrish: My strength is being able to listen to multiple points of view on an issue and to assist the parties in coming to a consensus and resolve their differences. My stubbornness could be seen as a weakness, when presented with a problem that I can't solve I pour myself into it, sometimes to the exclusion of other things. I see situations like this as a learning experience. I admit I don't know everything, and I would rather learn through attempt and failure than just asking for the solution.

susmit: I shall rather not answer this.

tatica: Weakness: Weaknesses:

  • I talk too much... is that bad? maybe, maybe not.
  • I don't have the internet at night (at weekends I have it; this situation will hopefully only be for a couple of months) but that doesn't mean I won't keep working at nights. I'm writing this whilst I'm offline :) So it's time that I can use to write, draw or do anything without distractions... not a weakness either.
  • I have a daily work routine. So maybe sometimes I won't be available because I'm solving some work issues. (but I think we all do, right?)

Strengths:

  • I talk too much.... people will always know what I'm I doing, and I'll always ask what everyone thinks I'm missing, doing well and doing badly... I hope to receive feedback _almost_ 24/7 (but a lot of people know this since I hang out a lot in IRC, Mailing lists and everywhere I can)
  • I'm perseverant... I don't care what has to be done to achieve our goals; I'll do it.
  • I know how to call out to people, it's a fact that when you're so enthusiastic, people feel that and want to join you, and I love being like that.
  • I want to work, and that's why I'm here.
  • Being a woman also helps me a lot. A great amount of my collegues come to me to ask for advice and sometimes they want me to be their speaker. I don't believe in gender distinctions but I know that I can send a message that will be heard because girls sometimes have more tact doing this kind of thing!

walters: Of my strengths: I have a fairly broad knowledge of technology, both how the core Fedora OS is made as well as the wider landscape; from how competitors like Windows and Ubuntu work at both a technology and organizational level, as well as other developments in the operating space such as cloud computing. On the other end, I have picked up some design understanding from my time on the Red Hat desktop team, and this plus general experience have given me the ability to step back from the details and look at a broader picture. Another strength, complementing the breadth of knowledge, is that I have strong communication skills. However, one of my weaknesses though is definitely that I sometimes get sucked into the same details for too long, and sometimes have let the quality of my communications go too low ("flaming"). That's something I've been making a concerted effort to fix.

Committee specific questions: Board

Suppose a user/contributor brings up an issue that bothers an important fraction of Fedora community and he proposes a change in the default behavior of Fedora; but either you don't have personal interest in that area, or (as a user) the issue doesn't bother you. How would you approach the problem?

ajax: <-- no answer -->

ctyler: Fedora is the community as much as it is the technology. Any issue that is significant to an "important fraction" of our community is of necessity significant to the board, and must be taken seriously. The board needs to act in the best interests of the entire project, and where possible, should make decisions that accommodate all of the significant needs within the community, but it must not shy away from making hard decisions which, if not made, will harm our community.

cwickert: <-- no answer -->

djf_jeff: <-- no answer -->

jforbes: <-- no answer -->

ke4qqq: <-- no answer -->

kital: <-- no answer -->

lfoppiano: <-- no answer -->

mbuf: <-- no answer -->

mdomsch: Conversations about changing the default behavior of Fedora software rarely make it to the Board level. These are handled by FESCo, and only in extreme circumstances would the Board be asked to review a FESCo decision. However, issues that bother an important fraction of the community have happened on several occasions during my tenure on the Board. One specific example was the Trademark License Agreement text for the use of the Fedora trademark in domain names. In these instances, I have spoken with the contributor one-on-one on IRC to more fully understand their point of view, so that when the issue does surface for the Board to make a decision, I can participate in those discussions and help build a consensus decision. I find email quite often does not lend itself to such conversations as well as other more immediate forms of communication.

mjg59: <-- no answer -->

pjones: <-- no answer -->

red_alert: <-- no answer -->

rjune: <-- no answer -->

rsc: I am not running for the Board...

SMParrish: I would ask the person to explain in detail the what and why of their proposal. Then I would get the most vocal opposers and have them detail their objections. Once we have all this we have a foundation we can build on to find some common ground. In situations like this you can never please everyone and to attempt to do so will lead to failure. Instead you have to encourage compromise and do what is best for the community as a whole. And even if I have no personal interest in the topic as a board member I have to have an interest and help to resolve the issue in a respectful and open-minded manner.

susmit: <-- no answer -->

tatica: I'll ask everything that I can to find out what he/she is talking about, then I'll find people who'll be affected by these changes and make a meeting/poll/mail-thread to evaluate options. At this point I will only be a witness of what they are doing. If these changes help a substantial majority, I proceed to evaluate how these changes can be applied with minimal impact on those parts who doesn't want this change. When a user want to change something that affects our people... it shouldn't matter if is interesting or not. We are here to make users and developers feel confortable, and is our task to care about people who make fedora possible.

walters: I think the general principle here is "rough consensus and working code". Now, in this case we presumably have working code (or at least working enough to prompt debate), so the question becomes - who are the owners and stakeholders that need to come to a rough consensus? The term "Fedora" is used here in a concrete way, but that's the project, not a consumable thing. Further presuming that we're discussing a high-impact issue on a high-profile consumable (for example, the default IM client in the Fedora desktop), then in that case I think that, as the Fedora desktop has owners, they get to decide. I certainly don't think there's any voting involved, for example. If we can't agree on who the owners of the problem space are, then that's a meta-issue for the Board to resolve first, before resolving the issue. Now since this issue was raised to the Board, there was some disagreement about that. But regardless of whether or not I have a personal interest in the issue at stake, I think the path to resolving an issue is the same, as above.

Committee specific questions: FAmSCo

What would you be doing to ensure that as a body FAmSCo is communicating more with its constituents ?

ajax: <-- no answer -->

ctyler: <-- no answer -->

cwickert: <-- no answer -->

djf_jeff: I am not completely familiar with the relations FAmSCo must maintain with others. I will learn more of this process when I jump in if I am elected. But communication is one thing that I always enforce and it's something really important for me, so I will continue to do it in FAmSCo.

jforbes: <-- no answer -->

ke4qqq: I'd like for FAmSCo to consider opening it's mailing list for public view. As time goes on, we discuss far less that requires privacy.

kital: establish famsco reports by a famsco member in the regional ambassador meetings reconsider to open up the famsco list for readable access

lfoppiano: My idea is to have some regular "reports" about the famsco activities and decisions, something really light, like a summary we can use to make ambassador more involved in what FAmSCo is doing.

mbuf: Have regular IRC meetings that are comfortable for people in their timezones, to get continuous feedback.

mdomsch: <-- no answer -->

mjg59: <-- no answer -->

pjones: <-- no answer -->

red_alert: Keep open for any sort of requests and give my best to work as transparent as possible by using the wiki, the mailing list and the planet.

rjune: <-- no answer -->

rsc: Do we have somewhere trouble with the communication or is this just a pro-forma question? Well, FAmSCo has very interesting but also very boring jobs to do (at least I am assuming that). And I am pretty sure, everbody interested in something, picks up, what he/she is interested in. And in case FAmSCo is lacking something, it should get pointed out. If FAmSCo is not aware, what they are doing wrong or what they are lacking, they cannot change and fix it.

SMParrish: <-- no answer -->

susmit:

  • I shall work on bringing out a magazine where (ideally) everyone will write about there works using region/country specific beats.
  • Using conference room more: http://talk.fedoraproject.org/conference
  • And working with ambassadors to identify and eradicte the reasons for lack of communication.

tatica:

  • Suggestions box
  • Twitter or any additional way to get advice, complaints, feedback in real time
  • have monthly meetings or threads, to discuss new issues
  • I'll maintain my to-do and goals wiki page, so people can see everyday what I'm working on, where I need help and what I have done since.

walters: <-- no answer -->

What things should be done to promote Fedora in countries where there is little or no Fedora presence, and how you see FAmSCo can support those initiatives?

ajax: <-- no answer -->

ctyler: <-- no answer -->

cwickert: <-- no answer -->

djf_jeff: That's one of the main thing I want to do if I'm elected. Right now, it may seems to be Canada centric, but I think that all the work we will doc creating and documenting this process will be useful for other regions. The current layout for Ambassadors is a great model, it's decentralized and it work well. But the resources must reach everyone to help them in their quest of promoting Fedora, more if the region is not well aware of Fedora in the first place. I think that laying down this process will help a lot.

jforbes: <-- no answer -->

ke4qqq: We can fund Ambassador's in nearby countries to make concerted efforts to jumpstart communities. We can also help other f/loss projects that are present and active in those countries to succeed, and show the Fedora project as a 'good neighbor'. The bottom line is that FAmSCo can do little more than provide resources and encouragement to someone who is passionate about getting contributors from a given region and let them work on spreading their enthusiasm to others.

kital: Planting Fedora in those countries is effective through the educational institutions and/or in partnership with regional exhibitions or industrie partners. It is just natural that in this countries we need to invest more time in communication with potential supporters. In the past often with a good mentoring and a good start it is only one person which is needed to get the ball rolling - good examples Mirlan and Zoltan - famsco has supported and will further support this in the role as a (communicative) mentor and as the body with direct access to budget and with liasons to the other fedora groups to ship the right swag and the right person for the job if help is needed - examples hungary, kyrgysztan, romania

lfoppiano: Having enough budget we should try to consider the idea of support foreigner Ambassador who join some event in that region in order to meet people and try to find if anyone is interested to join Fedora. Joining the ambassadors will be the second step for who is really interested to participate.

mbuf: Initiate workshops, identify local user groups, and interested members who can become Fedora Ambassadors, and provide them technical support.

mdomsch: <-- no answer -->

mjg59: <-- no answer -->

pjones: <-- no answer -->

red_alert: Send active experienced ambassadors to events in regions with no/little presence. FAmSCo can support this by providing a budget and their own experience as well as by organizing the presence at a foreign place.

rjune: <-- no answer -->

rsc: Interesting question having some overlap with my nomination statement. The main thing is, that the Fedora Project should show up at events, trade fairs and conferences. If nobody is within a given country, somebody from outside needs try to care about local events there and e.g. point them out to other Fedora Ambassadors. Here FAmSCo could try to promote such events a bit more than in the past (at least one FAmSCo individual I am aware about, has already done a great and amazing job so far), that ambassadors more easily could pick them up. We need to go on and enhance already started things. Another very important point is the financial planning for such countries and events - as of maybe high travelling and duty (for swag) costs, the individual ambassador might be not able to raise the money, even if he/she would like to participate and help. Some of these events might get a desaster because of language barriers, but that is (at least from my point of view) something we've to accept and which should not take as a point to stop anything.

SMParrish: <-- no answer -->

susmit:

  • Getting new ambassadors there and helping them with initial support. There is no other way.

tatica: Fedora should start to teach. People always want to learn. Promoting installfests is only effective in countries where people have a medium/high monetary position. So we are talking more about places where people get a low payment (low salary) or have a poor internet conection. We could try to get sponsorship to get some "small schools" open to everyone and do weekly/monthly videoconferences (or in person if we can) to teach people how to use Fedora. We don't know if in those places there is our next leader or our next awesome idea just waiting to be developed. We could also collect old pc's and use them to setup several "Fedora-Schools"

walters: <-- no answer -->

Do you see any shortcomings in the mentoring overall process? What do you want to change in that process?

ajax: <-- no answer -->

ctyler: <-- no answer -->

cwickert: <-- no answer -->

djf_jeff: Not that I am aware of. Personally, I think this is a great initiative. There is surely some rough edges to polish but I think it work well from what I can tell.

jforbes: <-- no answer -->

ke4qqq: Documentation is one problem. We repeatedly have mentors who have questions about the process or don't understand it. We need to document the process more thoroughly than we have. The mentoring program isn't perfect, in many ways it's highly subjective. However, it's probably the best solution we can come up with given our constraints. While it isn't perfect, it does permit us to

kital: Process itself works great! Some technical improvement could be used to save time - as example automatic fama ticket generation on joining the group

lfoppiano: What I would like to change is to improve the number of mentors for the ambassadors, and define a more clear way how mentors are chosen.

mbuf: Nothing, at the moment.

mdomsch: <-- no answer -->

mjg59: <-- no answer -->

pjones: <-- no answer -->

red_alert: Add real life mentorship whenever possible. The big advantage of the ambassadors project is that we have people spread nearly all over the world and therefore new ambassadors should mostly be able to gain from the experience of ambassadors located nearby.

rjune: <-- no answer -->

rsc: Let me say, that I am a mentor for Fedora Ambassadors in EMEA, so I am hopefully in a good position to tell, that I cannot see any issues until now. It works as expected and contributors show up at me. Introducing this process really helped to ensure, that the Fedora Ambassadors group is not just a Fedora fanclub or the typical entry group for new Fedora contributors at all. Of course I can't speak for all mentors, but if the other mentors have a good schema as well, things will work as planned. Promoting and representing Fedora is not that easy as some people maybe imagine, so some kind of internal quality assurance was and is required - and that is, why we have this mentoring step for about half a year now.

SMParrish: <-- no answer -->

susmit:

  • Right now, I don't find any. It is a bit rigid for new people, but that is fine IMO. If there is something to change, I shall like to see a process to support/mentor the people, if required, even after the mentoring period is over.

tatica: There is something I always say to _my ambassadors_ (and everyone else I talk to)... "Do to Be". If you want to BE an ambassador, you should show me what you DO. Most ambassadors who don't continue with their task, are the ones who join fedora ambassadors after 6 months of being fedora users. It's not a question of time... it's more like, if they are already working, they deserve to be an ambassador and spread what they are doing.. not what they will do, because we don't know if they will. I'd propose to ask for some results of their work before approving them as ambassadors (doesn't matter if this takes 1 day or 1 year). Ambassadors MUST be an example. Already working in: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Tatica/ToDo#Mentores

walters: <-- no answer -->

Committee specific questions: FESCo

Do you feel that a Fedora release should have a more conservative update policy than rawhide, and if so what types of updates do you feel are acceptable to a stable Fedora release?

ajax: What a distressingly ridiculous question. Let's flip that on its head: "Do you feel that a Fedora release should have a more liberal update policy than rawhide?" Of course not. Releases are supposed to be more stable. That's why we do them. What types of updates? Oh, but that's _hard_. How do you teach taste? How do you teach engineering discipline? How do you get it through people's thick skulls that every change has a real cost to everyone who consumes it. Maybe just by saying it a lot.

ctyler: <-- no answer -->

cwickert: I definitely think so. At the time of release Fedora should ship the latest stable versions. Beta versions can also be fine if they are tested and the maintainer is involved in upstream so he can judge the development status. When it comes to updates the most important thing is not break the stable release. Generally speaking we should avoid new major versions during the release cycle. Instead we ship bug fixes and minor versions with enhancements. Major versions are ok if they don't break, fix long standing bugs that are not easy to backport or if they offer a real benefit over the previous versions. When Fedora X+1 is released, Fedora X should get less updates, basically only get bugfixes and security updates. The people who always want the latest and greatest software will upgrade to X+1 anyway and with less work for the old release we can focus on developing X+2 for them.

djf_jeff: <-- no answer -->

jforbes: Certainly, a Fedora release should have a more conservative update policy than rawhide. I believe a release should be stable, yet still feel current. While version bumps are sometimes acceptable in a Fedora release, packagers should take care to ensure that the update has been tested, does not contain any known regressions, and does not break other packages. Changes which break compatibility with existing packages or contain known regressions really do not have a place in a stable release.

ke4qqq: <-- no answer -->

kital: <-- no answer -->

lfoppiano: <-- no answer -->

mbuf: <-- no answer -->

mdomsch: <-- no answer -->

mjg59: As discussed above, yes. But that's somewhat orthogonal to what types of update should be acceptable. A more conservative update policy should be based on ensuring that only well-tested code (by which I mean tested by actual users, not just pushed through updates-testing as quickly as possible) lands in Fedora. There's a more open question as to whether updates should just provide bugfixes or whether we can ship new features. In an ideal world I guess I'd like something like the old Irix model -- separate bugfix and feature streams within our stable release. That's not realistically possible right now, so I think it's fair to add new features to our stable releases, but I think that shouldn't be at the expense of significant changes in the user experience. The Thunderbird UI changes were more invasive than I think should have landed in the distribution, and I think the discussion around that resulted in a good sense of what we feel is acceptable in a stable Fedora release.

pjones: Absolutely. I think that updates should be strictly limited to bug fixes, and I don't think the presence of a bug fix necessarily dictates that an update is necessary. It depends on the package and the bug in question. I think when there's a trade off to be made between fixing old releases and development of new features, development should be preferred, but not to the exclusion of bug fixes which are truly important. Decisions really need to be made on a case-by-case basis, and package maintainers need to be enabled with the information and tools to make those decisions and follow through on them.

red_alert: <-- no answer -->

rjune: As stable implies static, binary compatibility is important to a stable release. Security updates should happen regardless of binary compatibility. Any bugfixes or feature additions that break binary compatibility should be backported or not applied.

rsc: I don't think, a more conservative update policy is really required, but we maybe should enforce the testing repository for one or two weeks before a package can make it into the stable repository. That would avoid the typically broken updates as we had in recent past. Finally, Fedora EPEL seems to be able to manage that schema already, why should it not be good enough for Fedora itself as well?

SMParrish: <-- no answer -->

susmit: <-- no answer -->

tatica: <-- no answer -->

walters: <-- no answer -->

Suppose a user/contributor brings up an issue that bothers an important fraction of Fedora community and he proposes a change in the default behavior of Fedora; but either you don't have personal interest in that area, or (as a user) the issue doesn't bother you. How would you approach the problem?

ajax: Default behaviours have to be evaluated along several axes. Principle of least surprise. It-Just-Works-ness. Muscle memory. Probably a few more I'm forgetting. Anyway, you evaluate it the same way you evaluate anything: name the important axes, compute the length of the vector along each, sum 'em up. "It depends". Not the kind of bombastic demagoguery one might hope for, but then I always did like getting things done more than drama.

ctyler: <-- no answer -->

cwickert: I would listen to both the contributor and the other fraction first in order to get a clear picture of the situation. When I think I have enough information, I'd try to middleman (some say I'm quite good in that) between the conflicting parties and suggest a compromise that is acceptable for everybody. If this is not possible because it's a technical decision that can only be yes or no, a decision needs to be made. I will decide what I think is right, but if there are other people in FESCO who are directly involved in the issue, their vote should have more wight than mine. Generally speaking I think people should only vote in things they really understand. I have seen people in FESCO voting on features although they didn't even bother to read the feature page in the wiki. I don't think this is particularly wise.

djf_jeff: <-- no answer -->

jforbes: The real issue has very little to do with me and whether or not I am bothered. As a member of FESCo I would be serving the needs of the community above and beyond my own little world. The real question is why the default behavior is changing, and when this change is taking place. Such a disruptive change really has no place as an update to a release, but may well have merit in working towards a new release. Particularly if the default behavior change is inline with upstream, and can be justified by the packgers or developers involved. The first step would be to find out why the default behavior has changed, and what are the overall impacts of the change outside of just what the users notice.

ke4qqq: <-- no answer -->

kital: <-- no answer -->

lfoppiano: <-- no answer -->

mbuf: <-- no answer -->

mdomsch: <-- no answer -->

mjg59: FESCO should be making decisions based on an analysis of the technical aspects of the suggestion, not the extent to which individual members are enthusiastic about the change. If I have no background knowledge of the case in question then I'd dedicate some time to reading the rationale for the change and any counterarguments, and also look into why things are the way they currently are. If there's a valid justification for the proposed change and it addresses any technical concerns that would arise as a result, it should be endorsed.

pjones: Well, obviously it's better if such problems can be resolved without getting to the point that FESCo, as a group, must become directly involved. So obviously that's the place to start. If the point comes when the board really must be involved, then this is basically a public policy question, and needs to be evaluated as such. Which is to say, there are effectively fixed steps here: 1) gather data on what the various parties' concerns are 2) try to understand each point of view 3) solicit solutions, both from the board and others (generally if you get this far, there are plenty of opinions on possible solutions quite readily available, so this is really a sorting exercise ;) 4) analyze benefits and drawbacks of each proposed solution, including less tangible benefits such as the impact on maintainers of packages in terms both of subverting their decisions and in terms of workload generation. 5) hope like hell there's an obviously correct answer. If so, use it. 6) if there's not, try to find ways to move forward in either a) differentiating between the quality of the proposed solutions or b) finding other ways to address the concerns. I realize that this is a completely vague answer, and that's unfortunate, but it's hard to answer a completely vague question any other way.

red_alert: <-- no answer -->

rjune: I would approach it in the same fashion I handle support and consulting work. First I would try to connect him with the appropriate person that has an interest in the area and can address is complaint. Upon connecting him with that person, I would follow the proposal until it's resolution, whether he is happy with that resolution or not. If such a person could not be found, I would help him resolve it myself. If most users would not be bothered by either state, I push to make his proposal the default. If the proposed change was as painful to as many people as what was in place, I explain this to him and help him find a different solution.

rsc: If somehow possible, I would try to understand the issue and try to get it solved. A steering commitee always should care about issues, even if the people on it don't have personal interests in that area. And if exactly that does not happen for some reason, the steering commitee unfortunately failed.

SMParrish: <-- no answer -->

susmit: <-- no answer -->

tatica: <-- no answer -->

walters: <-- no answer -->

Why are you a member of the Fedora project?

ajax: Stockholm Syndrome?

ctyler: "I am Fedora" because Fedora is the most comfortable, transparent, friendly, and technology-savvy open source community that I have encountered.

cwickert: Because it gives me the possibility to change things. If some of the Xfce developers tell me, that we have the best Xfce desktop out there, this is a great acknowledgment and I know I have managed to move something. It's fun to be part of that Fedora movement. There is a growing number of people who in the project who I consider not only colleagues but real friends. I have met many of them in real life and through Fedora I get to know other people, projects and places. I feel very grateful for that.

djf_jeff: Because of all the above answer! ;) No seriously, I am a member of the Fedora project because I think (and I feel) that I can do something and help the project in some areas. I joined because it's a friendly place, full of great people. It's an enjoyable "work place" that encourage the cooperation of all it's members.

jforbes: Fedora has always been a great way to take part in developing a distribution that I am proud to be a part of. I don't think there is any other distribution like it from a community perspective.

ke4qqq: I am a member of the Fedora project because it was a welcoming place to contribute to open source. Ideologically, I find myself more aligned with Fedora's free software policies than with any other distribution or large project. Fedora is also a large enough project for their to continually be a challenge, or something new. I can always expand my horizon.

kital: I work with/on the best OS on a daily basis and my friends are here, so it is natural for me to be a part of the team.

lfoppiano: Because I like the technical status of this distribution, I like the foundations and I would like to contribute to make it better. I also see Fedora as one of the best opportunity we have to improve our person, skills and have comparison all over the world.

mbuf: To help in packaging embedded/VLSI software and tools.

mdomsch: I cut my Linux teeth on Red Hat Linux, and was brought into the Linux community through direct conversations with Red Hat engineers to solve problems. Fedora continues that tradition of open source collaborative development, being first with new features and technologies that are most interesting to me. I do my Linux development work in Fedora, as it provides a stable, cutting-edge development environment, near enough to each of the upstreams that I can do my new work most efficiently (little backporting).

mjg59: It's the most technically vibrant Linux community I've ever interacted with. Unlike most distributions, working on Fedora gives the opportunity to influence of desktop Linux as a whole -- where we lead, others follow.

pjones: Well, I'm a bit of a Free Software guy, and OS software is sortof what I do. And if that describes you, this is really a great project to be working on.

red_alert: Because I want to contribute and do so.

rjune: It's home. I've used Ubuntu, SuSE, Gentoo, FreeBSD, Windows, Yellowdog, and CentOS. I keep coming back to Fedora.

rsc: Why not? Maybe because we have the shiny-est logo? I really like Fedora by its technical base (except for some funky daemons and services like dbus and hal more made for desktop usage than for server usage but due to dependencies unfortunately getting installed on servers as well) and by its people. Surely, I cannot speak for all Fedora contributors, but that ones I know, are nice and helpful and try to make the Fedora world always a bit better.

SMParrish: I have been a user of Linux for many years. Started off with a copy of Red Hat that I bought at a local big box store. After getting my feet wet I moved to Gentoo to learn the ins and outs of building and maintaining a system. While it was a great learning experience you do eventually get tired of compiling and reconfiguring your system, so I looked for a new distro and community to join. Looking around the Linux landscape had changed since my 1st Red Hat install. I looked at Fedora and saw something I liked, it was the community I knew it was something I wanted to be a part of.

susmit: Refer to question 1.

tatica: Because I found what I most like. Organization and people who want to do. I used a lot of distributions and joined lots of communities. Fedora people isn't just a group of users who spread fedora. It's a group of professionals who want to spread what they use and develop, and I think I'm one of those.

walters: <-- no answer -->

Please mention if you are running for re-election or not. Further: If you are running for re-election, what are the things that you promised but could not do? Why so? What are you planning to prevent a recurrence? If you are running for the first time, in your opinion, what are the things that the previous committee could do but couldn't/didn't?

ajax: I am not running for reëlection. I think the current committee is curiously focused on the Feature list, which is a bit strange since Features seem to be mostly used as a way of generating documentation. I'd like to see more of a focus on process improvements.

ctyler: I have previously served on the Fedora board (F10-F11) but was appointed, not elected. I did not have very specific goals at the time that I joined the board -- but I do have some specific ones now! (See above for details).

cwickert: I'm not running for re-election.

djf_jeff: No, it's my first time ;)

jforbes: This is a first run for me. I believe that the previour committee has done a fine job, though I would like to see more emphasis on QA, and perhaps a bit more transparency to the community.

ke4qqq: I am running for re-election. The thing I planned to work last year that I didn't accomplish to my satisfaction is ensuring that FAmSCo was continued to be seen as relevant (or banished) While I think that those who have served on FAmSCo understand it's relevance (and the places it has lost relevance) I don't think that is seen or communicated outside, and needs to be done.

kital: I run for a re-election after my first period as famsco member. I could not do: - the process to find new ways to encourage people for contributions needs improvement - i was not sustainable enough to enforce that the Ambassador Group has liasons to the other important Groups in the Fedora Project Not reached those goals because i focused more on: - put events in Kyrgyzstan, Romania, Hungary on the road to support underrepresented regions in the former eastern bloc - developed and improved membership process and regional mentoring - worked on measurability and transparency for membership I always put to much on my plate - because i have a lot of ideas - i think it could happen that i do not eat up this time as well ;) What is not so bad as long as i get something done for Fedora

lfoppiano: I'm running for the first time. What I think was missing from the previous committee was that some people don't know what is FAmSCo and what is doing.

mbuf: First time!

mdomsch: I am running for re-election. I made no specific promises in the past, though I did list for Future plans (same as above): Encourage more ways for our millions of users to become active contributors and evangelists. Aside from my MirrorManager work, I had an early impact on what we now call Spins and Remixes, and the process of developing such. I was an early adopter of the tools used to generate Spins, and in doing so ran into several challenges, legal and technical, which I helped bring to light and address. This cleared the way for the new and creative ways to use Fedora.

mjg59: This is the first time I've stood for a Fedora election. I think the main thing the existing committe should have done is make it clearer that, while it's FESCO's job to approve new features, the assumption should be very much that such features will be approved unless there are clear technical issues with the proposed feature. It should never be FESCO's job to prevent someone doing work unless by doing so they'd create direct harm to the distribution. I think that, historically, FESCO has done a poor job of emphasising that point.

pjones: I'm not running for re-election. As a normal developer, I try not to dwell on decisions of the board on a day-to-day basis. That being said, I'm not very happy with the Feature process - it mostly seems to serve as an undue burden on people actually developing features.

red_alert: I'm not running for re-election. I think they could have done better to help to recruit ambassadors/contributors in regions with no presence so far and communicate more transparently. They should have made more contact with the base.

rjune: I am recently returning to the Fedora community after having used Ubuntu for eighteen months, I do not have a useful opinion on this.

rsc: I am not running for re-election, that is my first election. There is not everywhere a classical fail, but we are also lacking some things. I would like to avoid to repeat myself as I've explained that already in my nomination statements.

SMParrish: Not running for re-election

susmit: Yes. What:I promised to work for the whole APAC that I could not do. (But there are things that I didn't promise but could do.) Why: I focused much on India alone. What: I am planning to work more on APAC this time.

tatica: They are doing their work, but I have good ideas to improve it. I don't have any complaints but I do have new tools. I don't know if these ideas are going to work, but I need to try at least :)

walters: <-- no answer -->

What is the most important part of the Fedora the distribution? (IE, Desktop, FEL, AOS)

ajax: Firefox.

ctyler: The most important part is that Fedora can be all of these things. Thinking in terms of server OR desktop, kde OR gnome, live OR installation media is very limiting. Having a wide range of spin targets challenges us to think outside the box, to look at new ways of doing things, and it keeps us on our toes. The dialogues and the jostling are all beneficial, when they're done in a cooperative way within a healthy community.

cwickert: Although for me things like Xfce and LXDE are very important, I don't think one can name certain parts. Is my leg more important than my arm or are my eyes more important than my ears? I don't think this question can be answered strictly because all the parts make up the distribution.

djf_jeff: Hard to say, it all depends on why you use Fedora for. I think the most important part of Fedora is that it encourage the creation of many sub-projects around Fedora to serve everyone needs.

jforbes: QA and testing. Fedora is more than the sum of its parts. I believe that each part of the distribution has purpose to someone, or it shouldn't be included. Our goal as a community is to make the parts a coherent distribution. Given the amount of new features and development we see in each release, QA and testing is what will makes sure the parts are well integrated and ready for a release worthy of the Fedora name.

ke4qqq: I think this is best answered by the individual. I think the most important part of Fedora is the community that builds it. That community from time to time shifts its focus from one are to another. If I had to single out a single thing from an individuals perspective, I'd say it's choice.

kital: Fedora Security Spin ;)

lfoppiano: Everything is important. I don't see differences between components of the distribution.

mbuf: I like Fedora packaging.

mdomsch: I don't like this question, as it presupposes one piece or activity is "the most important", and excludes others. The most important thing about Fedora is its people, working together towards common goals, and encouraging slight variations (e.g. Spins and Remixes) to meet individual goals. For me, the ability to remix Fedora to best fit those needs is the most important technical part.

mjg59: The most important part of Fedora for any given user is the part that that user cares about. Saying that there's a single most important part of Fedora implies that there's a given class of user who's more important than any of the others. I don't think that's the case.

pjones: The source code.

red_alert: That it's open source and free to everyone. Desktop vs FEL vs AOS: Desktop (where I'd count in FEL, though).

rjune: I think the Desktop is currently what is the most important component of Fedora. In the future, I think how well it integrates with users' networks and what services it handles will become more important.

rsc: Currently, Fedora is focussed to desktop users, spins and live media, but less to server usage/friendlyness and similar.

SMParrish: We are a desktop distro so that should be our focus, but not any one particular desktop environment. That is one area where Fedora shines, we offer many desktop environments and the maintainers work hard to make sure we always offer the latest and greatest.

susmit: Diversity of packages available.

tatica: Everything is a complement. Everything is important. If we don't give enough relevance to each part we aren't doing our work. I consider that this is like a house, if you don't have a kitchen, or you don't have bedrooms... even if you don't have a bathroom, it's not a house. Same thing with Fedora. I will change this question to: What are the parts where you have been helping? or maybe, What are the parts of Fedora that you will help more?

walters: <-- no answer -->

From your perspective what is it that Fedora brings to linux distros that is unique and original? What sets Fedora apart?

ajax: I'm tempted to say the "freedom" thing, but that's not really it. It's the freedom thing combined with the talent and history of _fixing_ the gaps in what free software offers. There's a driver but it doesn't work very well and it's not upstream? Okay, someone will own that, fix it, and get it integrated upstream. Some distros package; Fedora changes what distros package.

ctyler: Each of the four foundations (Friends, Freedom, Features, First) brings strength to the Fedora, but I think that Fedora's drive to rapidly advance the state of open source ("First") is unique -- I know of no other large Linux distribution with that stated goal. Our desire to be First drives and defines our project.

cwickert: Our rapid innovations. I don't think that any other distribution can compete with us in this field. Our upstream policy is also an important point to mention: Changes go upstream and come downstream, there is no room for isolated applications. Last but not least this is only possible because of our great community. It may not be really large compared to other distros like Ubuntu, but we have a large number of people, who are not only users but also contributing to Fedora or upstream in numerous ways. I think the percentage of developers, contributors, ambassadors etc. is the highest of all Linux distributions.

djf_jeff: The real commitment to free softwares and to the transparency of the development and decisions process.

jforbes: I believe that the Fedora community is what sets it apart. Fedora has a lot of heritage, very skilled developers, and a broad community interested in the success of every single release.

ke4qqq: A strong free software stance, which is unparalleled by other large distributions. Fedora also has a very low barrier to participation, and an emphasis on community.

kital: We are the leaders in Open Source - we are Contributor centered - and we are nice to each other!

lfoppiano: Most of the software contained in Fedora will be available only with about six month delay to other distributions. This is really unique: Fedora is the first.

mbuf: Fedora Electronic Lab.

mdomsch: Rapid evolution, while managing to keep active releases stable. I'm actually shocked there isn't _more_ breakage due to updates made to the already-released versions. There are opportunities to improve of course (no one likes breakage), but overall we do a fine job of balancing getting new features into the hands of our userbase, without inducing widespread failure. I know of no other distribution with a userbase the size of Fedora that even attempts to keep the updates flowing to the extent we do for already-released versions.

mjg59: The extent to which we're willing to push the Linux experience forward. No other distribution has contributed so much to the end-user experience.

pjones: We've managed to build a vigorously free distribution of high quality without most of the politics of debian. I think that's a good thing ;)

red_alert: It always leads and never follows, it's always the latest and greatest, it's a great friendly community and there's lots of freedom. Not to forget the remaining foundation: it's lots of great features and there's more with every release.

rjune: Fedora keeps current without breaking everything, and while the repositories are not loaded with 50,000 packages. One can be reasonably sure that any package in the repository will work, though it may have bugs.

rsc: I would reply here with the same as at the first question. Everything, especially our four foundation principles, that make us unique and original at one side, cause trouble and issues at the other side.

SMParrish: Our sense of adventure. We are never afraid to try something new and innovative. Sometimes it may come back to bite us in the butt, however more often that not we end up blazing the trail and watch as the other distros play catch up.

susmit: Cutting edge packages and software.

tatica:

  • It Works.
  • Easy to use.
  • Professional tools.
  • It's the perfect enviroment for a new user to be able to learn... but also the advanced environment an IT professional can handle.
  • Is the best of both sides together.

walters: <-- no answer -->

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