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FESCo is the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee. It is a fully community elected body and represents the technical leadership in Fedora.

Overall Mission

FESCo handles the process of accepting new features, the acceptance of new packaging sponsors, Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and SIG Oversight, the packaging process, handling and enforcement of maintainer issues and other technical matters related to the distribution and its construction.

Common tasks and responsibilities

FESCo is responsible for technical issues and coordination of technical resources for the project.

Issues FESCo handles include:

  • Approval and coordination of Changes for Fedora releases.
  • Package maintainer disputes
  • Larger changes to the Fedora Package collection
  • Guidance and technical direction for other parts of the project
  • Setting the schedule for Fedora development cycles.
  • Reviewing and approving technical content from Fedora Working groups (Product Requirement Docs, deliverables, processes).
  • Responsible for what software is offered to end users under what conditions.
  • Oversight and approval of new spins and other media that doesn't fit under a working group.

FESCo has empowered the FPC (Fedora Packaging Comittee) to handle management of packaging guidelines, so those items are usually deferred to them with occasional FESCo oversight.

Candidates for FESCo should be people who have a wide breadth of knowledge about the Fedora Project as a whole and who understand how the many different pieces fit together. Ideal candidates should also have a history of fostering inter-team coordination.

FESCo has a designate for each Working Group that coordinates with that Group and communicates back to FESCo any issues or concerns. Currently there are: Workstation, Server and Atomic Working groups.

Members

Chair is rotating.

Their interviews for previous elections are published in the Community Blog.

The Previous Fedora Engineering Steering Committee Members wiki page contains a list of previous members. The Updating Fedora Engineering Steering Committee Members wiki page outlines the necessary steps to update FESCo members after an election.

Ticket Policy

FESCo tracks all ongoing decisions using the FESCo Ticketing System. Generally, tickets are of two types: tickets asking for FESCo's advice or tickets asking for a specific policy or technical change to occur. When FESCo's opinion is sought, a ticket is opened and then FESCo will reply to that ticket with either a proposal or by adding it to the next weekly meeting agenda for discussion.

Once a ticket has a formal proposal offered, FESCo members have one week to either vote for or against it or else propose the ticket for the next weekly meeting agenda. At the end of that one week, if the proposal has gained at least three "for" votes and no "against" votes, it is approved and the "pending announcement" tag is added to the ticket. Any "against" votes mean that it goes onto the next meeting agenda. If the week passes and the required number of votes have not been met, the proposal is extended by one further week and the minimum requirement becomes a single positive "for" vote. This is intended to ensure that proposals do not languish.

There is also a shortcut procedure for cases that require urgency. Seven "for" votes will immediately approve a proposal, without waiting for the week to be up.

Meetings

FESCo meets usually on a weekly basis, check the FESCo meeting process. You should verify the meeting date and time from the devel mail "Plan for tomorrow's FESCo meeting" being sent in advance. This email will also include an announcement of any decisions that were made through the FESCo ticket system.

All requests for consideration by the steering committee (including group sponsorship requests and maintainer-ship issues) should be submitted as a ticket:

Generally, issues are voted on in FESCo. A majority of the committee (that is, five out of nine) is required to pass a proposal in a meeting. Disputed proposals (those with both "for" and "against" votes) will only be resolved during meetings.

Meetings require a majority of FESCo to be present; if fewer than five of the nine members are able to attend a meeting, the meeting is cancelled.

Agenda

You can find FESCO's weekly agenda in the FESCo Ticketing System with this report.


Meeting Minutes

You can find FESCO's meeting minutes at the fedora meetbot site as well as posted to the devel@lists.fedoraproject.org list after each meeting. Note that meetings prior to the 2010-10-20 meeting were on Tuesdays.

Mailing List

FESCo has a private mailing list for sensitive matters. This list will have as subscribers only the current FESCo members and the Fedora Project Leader. This list should only be used in very rare situations with private information. The FESCo chair will make sure any discussion on this list that doesn't need to be private will be resent to a public forum (FESCo issue tracker, devel list, etc).

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