The Fedora Project is led by contributors from across the community. Different functional areas of Fedora at times evolve, build, or dismantle their own formal leadership over time. Because Fedora is an open source project, it encourages new contributors to identify problems, find solutions, and collaborate with other members to achieve results. This process results in community members recognizing able leaders from among their peers.
The Fedora Project aims to have a thin layer of governance that enables decision making without excessive drag. The individual accountable to Red Hat and the community for the Project overall is the Fedora Project Leader (or "FPL"). The following are current examples of leadership groups in Fedora.
Fedora Council
The Fedora Council is the topmost governance and leadership body in Fedora, and is made up of appointed and elected members from across the Fedora community. Details about the Council such as size, constitution, and succession planning are detailed in the Fedora Council Charter.
Fedora Engineering Steering Committee
The Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo) is a community-elected body empowered by the Council to manage the technical features of the Fedora distribution and specific implementations of policy in the Fedora Project. Details about FESCo such as size, constitution, and succession planning are detailed on this wiki page.
Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee
Please see https://docs.fedoraproject.org/fedora-project/subprojects/mindshare.html instead.
The Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee (FAmSCo) is a community-elected body that supports and enables the work of Fedora's Ambassadors worldwide. Details about FAmSCo such as size, constitution, and succession planning are detailed on this wiki page.
Other groups
The list above is not a complete list of every group of empowered community members. Other groups steer specific parts of Fedora as well, empowered and supported by the relevant teams. The list above shows the three leadership groups that most often work on issues of policy or practice affecting large portions of the Fedora Project.
Community members are always encouraged to get involved in leading Fedora in ways that are important to them, while minimizing overhead and governance project-wide.
Working Groups
Fedora Editions — currently, Atomic, Server, and Workstation — and sometimes Fedora Project Objectives (like Modularity) are lead by Working Groups. These groups are either independent subcommittees of FESCo or the Council. They have formal membership and decision-making processes, but generally the membership is intended to include active contributors and the decision-making power reflects that. A seat on the Working Group itself is not at all required to participate meaningfully in the work on Editions or Objectives.
Subprojects
Subprojects are long-standing major areas of effort under the overall Fedora umbrella. Each subproject has its own governance.
Special Interest Groups
Special Interest Groups, or SIGs, are much less formal. The process for creating a SIG has no red tape. Different SIGs have different structures; some use formalized voting and others don't. Some SIGs may eventually become subprojects; for others, the lightweight framework is perfect.