Election Questionnaire
Please place questions you would like to see candidates for the various offices answer. If your question is specific to one office (such as the Board or FESCo), please indicate that.
Questions
These question have been sent to the candidates:
Main
- If you could single-handedly change one thing about Fedora, what would it be and why?
- Please name three things you plan to work on and realize while being on the Board or FESCo!
- If elected, how will Fedora as a project be better as a result of your leadership? Or IOW: What strengths will you bring to the Fedora board/FESCo that are currently missing?
- What do you see as Fedora's greatest strength and weakness, and what will you do to improve upon that? Or IOW: Which processes have worked best in Fedora, and which processes need to be improved?
- What is Fedora's place in the larger community with respect to other distributions?
- What are you going to be doing in the Fedora Board that you cannot do outside of it or how would being in board/FESCo help in what you want to accomplish?
- What do you consider to be Fedora's raison d'etre? In the past the focus of Fedora has shifted from release to release. Do you see a long-term goal or a "target audience" Fedora should strive for? How do you define your role in helping the project reaching that goal?
- What are your unique strengths and what are your weaknesses?
- How will you make the work for in Fedora easier and more fun?
More
- Who is Fedora for?
- Should any steps be taken to make sure releases don't get as much last minute delays as in the past? If yes: which?
- How or to what extent would you say are Fedora's governance bodies responsible for protecting volunteers and volunteer based efforts against interference from within Red Hat by either person or policy?
- The Fedora Project suffers from a lack of communication. In 2009 for 8 out of 21 FESCo meetings no meeting minutes were sent to the lists. What would you do to improve communication between the different groups in Fedora and especially between FESCo, Board and the community?
- What would you do to cleanup and organize the Fedora project packaging guidelines, rules and other wiki pages to make it more consistent and easier for new contributors?
- There is a proposal out there to moderate fedora-devel. What should be disallowed? Racist or sexist speech? Profanity? At what point does a complaint against a small project become a personal attack? ie "Your idea is utterly stupid." Should we disallow trolls or posts likely to start flamewars? Who will decide the difference between intelligent debate and flaming?
- Please give three examples of other boards or communities you have participated in and the positive differences you made there.
- Simple question: Among the two, do you prefer Gnome or KDE?
- Do you think a Fedora Foundation is still worth pursuing? Why or Why not?
- Should kernel module packages be allowed in Fedora?
Answers
For easier reviewing we provide two version of the answers:
* text based (copy'n'pasted from the emails with the answers) * in a openoffice table
Answers Wiki Table
| 1. If you could single-handedly change one thing about Fedora, what would it be and why? | |
| Tom Callaway (spot) | If I could snap my fingers and have the world redraw itself around me, I would lift all the legal barriers preventing patent and DMCA encumbered FOSS code from being included in Fedora. RPMFusion does a very good job of keeping these packages maintained, but it would be much nicer to have these things properly integrated into Fedora. Of course, I realize this isn't likely to actually happen anytime soon. :) |
| Josh Boyer ( jwb ) | This is an odd question to me, given that if I could single-handedly do it myself, then I'd just DO IT. Most of the issues we face take collaboration and in that spirit I'll answer with:
The way we do communications at times. We have a myriad of lists of varying topics, the wiki, IRC, etc. And yet we still seem to have trouble getting the proper information to the people interested in it. I have no great solution for this, but it is the one thing I would like to see improve. |
| Mike McGrath (mmcgrath) | Better market recognition of what fedora is and who should use it. |
| David Nalley (ke4qqq) | I'd introduce time-shifting to allow us to accomplish everything without slips and yet for all appearance look like we hit schedule with no struggle. I'd also use this to schedule vacations for those contributors who constantly seem busy and overworked. Seriously though, I see continued growing pains in different areas of Fedora - I wish I had a way to single-handedly mitigate some of those growing pains. |
| Kevin Fenzi (nirik) | I would change the perception that Fedora is just a testbed for RHEL
and not a very nice distribution in it's own right. I think we would gain more contributors if this was more widely known. |
| Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore) | Enable people to find a place that they fit in fedora, more easily, sometimes it seems to be hard to find out how to scratch your itch. |
| Kevin Kofler (Kevin_Kofler) | I'd rename the "Desktop Live" spin to "GNOME Live". I think we really ought to
call a spade a spade and not falsely imply there's only one desktop. |
| Adam Miller (maxamillion) | Marketing/Ambassador focus - Fedora already leads the GNU/Linux
world (and in my opinion the entire Open Source world) in innovation and upstream contributions. The Fedora 11 feature list is second to none but where I feel sometimes we fall behind is the efforts put forth to get Fedora "out there" and I don't want anyone to think that I am saying our Ambassadors or Marketing Teams are not doing a great job, because I think both are doing a bang up job but I feel that other GNU/Linux projects that are ranking as "more popular" on user polls on sites like linuxmagazine.com due to their hightened marketing focus from their respective project. |
| 1. If you could single-handedly change one thing about Fedora, what would it be and why? | |
| Bill Nottingham (notting) | The culture of the development list (and by extension, possibly the
development community itself) needs to change. Every week there's a new hot issue (or three) that has raised the ire of someone and leads to a long and protracted discussion that rarely has any benefits.In a couple of weeks, it ends up being forgotten as the next big issue pops up. It gets to the point that when I see any reasonably high number of unread messages, my initial thought isn't "ooh, let's see what interesting work is being done"; it's "oh no, what's the problem *now*?". I've even received e-mail and messages from others who find it so bad that they don't even want to post development discussion there, as they feel it will just get drowned in more pointlessness and flaming. If the attitude on the mailing list is that bad that we're actually driving contributors away, I think it goes to the top of the list as a place we need to change and a problem we need to solve. |
| Jens Petersen (juhp) | |
| Andreas Thienemann (ixs) | |
| Seth Vidal (skvidal) | |
| Ian Weller (ianweller) | |
| Christoph Wickert (cwickert) | |
| David Woodhouse (dwm) | |
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| 2. Please name three things you plan to work on and realize while being on the Board or FESCo! | |
| Tom Callaway (spot) | 1. Simplifying the Fedora CLA: The existing CLA is a mess, and it is a bit too broad for the needs of Fedora. I plan to work with Red Hat Legal and the Fedora Board to reword the CLA so that it is a minimal, easy to understand document with a smaller audience. Ambassadors and people who want to make wiki changes should not need to sign the CLA, for example.
2. Defining the primary Fedora target: This is a tough one, because I do believe that it is a good thing that Fedora has a broad community of users and developers, but it is also important for the Board to define who the _primary_ target of Fedora is, so that we can make smart design and development decisions. 3. Working on making it easier for people to participate in Fedora. I want to eliminate red tape and bureaucracy wherever possible and ensure that people are able to be involved and happy in the Fedora community. |
| Josh Boyer ( jwb ) | These are in no specific order:
1) Continuing the Secondary Architecture effort. 2) Continue to try and encourage users to become contributors in a number of ways. 3) Aid in defining "what is fedora". That seems like an entirely challenging topic to tackle, and I like a challenge. |
| Mike McGrath (mmcgrath) | Stronger focus for the project. More freedoms for contributors. Growth of Fedora the project beyond Fedora the OS. |
| David Nalley (ke4qqq) | |
| Kevin Fenzi (nirik) | 1. I would like to try and work on the backlog of merge reviews. I
think if we can get that monkey off our back we could open up a lot of great possibilities, like re-reviews of existing packages, less frustration for contributors and increase quality. 2. I would like to try and see about increasing communication between the various Fedora support channels: IRC, forums and mailing lists. 3. I would like to try and increase communication also between FESCo and the community. |
| Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore) | Secondary arches more widely accepted and worked on. EPEL moved to koji/bodhi requirements for new VCS |
| Kevin Kofler (Kevin_Kofler) | 1. Fight for KDE as a first-class citizen (on the same level as GNOME): KDE should get equal space on the download page, on the installer DVD and in naming of spins, changes in shared desktop technologies such as PolicyKit need to keep KDE in mind, menu entries need to mention the actual name of the application because there is generally more than one for each task etc.
2. Fight against policies such as restrictions on country flags which are both at odds with my idea of freedom and sending us on a collision course withupstream projects including, but not limited to, KDE). 3. Act as a liaison between FESCo and the KDE SIG. |
| Adam Miller (maxamillion) | 1) The main thing I want to bring to the group is a non-biased approach to forward innovation, the Steering Committee is only there to guide the project along, not control. I would most like to cater to the needs of the developers who are coming to the Committee with the ground breaking features and ideas of tomorrow.
2) I would like to address issues such as KDE and Xfce's status. I agree with the fact that we need a "default" such that there is a "Fedora look" that is uniform for users but I also think that some of the communities of none Gnome groups would like to see some more effort to equate the playing field, which somewhat goes along with my non biased sentiment of keeping things equal. 3) Passion - sound corny? Sorry, but its true. I live for this stuff, I am an Ambassador and I look forward to every chance I get to talk to someone about Fedora and to promote the wonder that is our distribution, our project and our community. |
| 2. Please name three things you plan to work on and realize while being on the Board or FESCo! | |
| Bill Nottingham (notting) | 1. Changing the development culture to be more productive, if at all possible
2. Try to work towards consistent guidelines across packages where possible, instead of 'every developer has their own guidelines' 3. Continue to drive the feature process to highlight the great work being done in Fedora, and to hopefully catch more things before they become issues that delay the release |
| Jens Petersen (juhp) | |
| Andreas Thienemann (ixs) | |
| Seth Vidal (skvidal) | |
| Ian Weller (ianweller) | |
| Christoph Wickert (cwickert) | |
| David Woodhouse (dwm) | |
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| 3. If elected, how will Fedora as a project be better as a result of your leadership? Or IOW: What strengths will you bring to the Fedora board/FESCo that are currently missing? | |
| Tom Callaway (spot) | Keeping in mind that I am running for re-election to the Fedora Board, I think that I bring a significant amount of experience with Fedora to the Board, having been involved with the project since the Red Hat Linux days. I also feel that as an active packager, I have a high level of appreciation for the pain that Fedora packagers feel, and I am a good representative of that aspect of the community. |
| Josh Boyer ( jwb ) | I think the Board is fairly well balanced today. We have a diverse set of
members from a variety of backgrounds. So I don't think there is anything major that is currently missing. What I will try and contribute is a view on overall release quality and package robustness, as well as representing the community as best I can. |
| Mike McGrath (mmcgrath) | I think a better focus and more defined project goal will go a long way for Fedora. We really aren't SuSE, Debian or Ubuntu and shouldn't get compared to them. |
| David Nalley (ke4qqq) | Compared to most of my running mates I am a n00b, having only joined
the Fedora Project in early 2006. I hope to bring some of that vantage point to the Fedora Board. |
| Kevin Fenzi (nirik) | This seems like more a question for someone not already in fesco, but I
think I have a good deal of understanding of how things work in fedora and work in many different parts of it. I think this perspective is very usefull. |
| Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore) | since i'm on FESCOo i don't offer anything new there. For the board I offer
someone to represent the the smaller portions of the fedora community. |
| Kevin Kofler (Kevin_Kofler) | Fedora will benefit from a KDE point of view, and more generally an alternative
point of view, being represented in FESCo. I believe we need to get more diverse points of view into FESCo to avoid the current paradox where several discussions found a large consensus for one opinion on the mailing list, but FESCo subsequently voted the exact opposite. Statistically speaking, a less biased sample is the best way to reduce that effect. |
| Adam Miller (maxamillion) | I don't necessarily think the the Board or FESCo is currently lacking so much as I think it might be a time for some new minds to be brought into the equation so that new ideas can be seen within FESCo. I think I would be able to bring a new outlook to FESCo because I would be a new and ambissious thought process added to the discussions. |
| 3. If elected, how will Fedora as a project be better as a result of your leadership? Or IOW: What strengths will you bring to the Fedora board/FESCo that are currently missing? | |
| Bill Nottingham (notting) | My biggest strength is that I bring a broad variety of experience working
on Linux, on Linux distributions, and in Fedora. I've been doing this for long enough that I feel I've developed a pretty good eye for the right way and the wrong way to do things and implement things. I'm running for re-election, so it would be disingenous for me to claim that that's currently missing, of course. |
| Jens Petersen (juhp) | |
| Andreas Thienemann (ixs) | |
| Seth Vidal (skvidal) | |
| Ian Weller (ianweller) | |
| Christoph Wickert (cwickert) | |
| David Woodhouse (dwm) | |
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| 4. What do you see as Fedora's greatest strength and weakness, and what will you do to improve upon that? Or IOW: Which processes have worked best in Fedora, and which processes need to be improved? | |
| Tom Callaway (spot) | I think our greatest strength is our community as a whole, we are
passionate and hard-working. There are a few key weaknesses that we still need to improve upon:
QA infrastructure.
much of it as we can. |
| Josh Boyer ( jwb ) | Fedora's greatest strength is it's contributor base. We have a great set of
contributors that continute to drive Fedora forward. I think one of our weaknesses (and we do have more than one), is that we as a community can get too hung up on tiny details and can easily lose some of the 'bigger picture'. For example, creating policies and processes for everything under the sun. It is my belief that a process should be a benefit and _help_ to the overall project, not a hurdle. So trying to processize every possible issue that comes up just adds more hoops to jump through and generally increases the amount of effort needed to participate. |
| Mike McGrath (mmcgrath) | Fedora's greatest strength is it's large contributor base, it's weakness is
letting that contributor base flounder a bit. |
| David Nalley (ke4qqq) | One of the strengths Fedora possesses is the relationship with Red
Hat. There is made available to the project, because of this relationship, incredible resources in people, time, money, and equipment that would likely not be available otherwise. This relationship has also been a hindrance at times, though largely it's gotten far better than most would have hoped.
|
| Kevin Fenzi (nirik) | I think our contributors are our greatest asset. We need more of them
to share their passion for Fedora. Our weakness is growing that pool of contributors. I would love to see us engage our end user community and show them how great and fun it is to become an active contributor. |
| Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore) | Fedoras greatest strength and weakness is the rapid pace of development.
constantly pushing the boundaries and being first in market in many cases. |
| Kevin Kofler (Kevin_Kofler) | 1.Fedora's greatest strength is its "always up to date" character. In fact, it works so well there isn't much to improve, though some packages could benefit from more aggressive version upgrades during stable releases. (The kernel and KDE are good examples to follow, those packages not even getting fully-compatible bugfix point releases in some Fedora releases are examples where improvement is possible.) Another huge strength of Fedora is its strict commitment to Free Software.
2. Fedora's greatest weakness (leaving aside things which cannot be fixed such as software patent issues) is the subtle GNOME bias which keeps haunting us from time to time(despite all the improvements having happened over time and the work done by the KDE SIG) and decredibilizing us in KDE circles. In particular, feature pages advertising GNOME-only features need to say so more clearly, the download page needs to present KDE right next to GNOME rather than hiding it behind an extra link and using "Desktop" as a synonym for GNOME needs to stop. Justifying restrictive policies such as a ban on flags by saying "it's the GNOME project's policy" as at least one FESCo member did also makes no sense whatsoever. |
| Adam Miller (maxamillion) | Greatest strengths in my opinion are the leadership in Open Source, upstream contributions, development of bleeding edge technologies, and an incredible community at large. The question on Fedora's weakness was already posed so I won't reiterrate but there is another concern I have which is the inability to find information due to unmaintained wiki pages which is something I would really like to see get fixed, while this isn't specifically a FESCo issue I do feel that FESCo can make a push for features owners and SIGs to keep their pages up to date.
|
| 4. What do you see as Fedora's greatest strength and weakness, and what will you do to improve upon that? Or IOW: Which processes have worked best in Fedora, and which processes need to be improved? | |
| Bill Nottingham (notting) | I don't think those two are actually the same question, as the
strengths and weaknesses aren't necessarily processes. (In fact, if the strength of Fedora is only in our processes, we're in trouble.) Our biggest strength is our vibrant community; we've attracted a large variety of contributors working in lots of areas, whether they be art, development, or our fine infrastructure team. We've successfully produced not only a world-class Linux distribution, but also a hosting environment for fostering open-software development, a reference case for quick global infrastrucutre deployment, and a translation infrastructure that's now being adopted by other projects. Furthermore, for most usage cases out there, we've got packagers in Fedora working to bring software for that case to the users; we do a good job of satisfying the long tail. Our biggest weakness is that we have this great diversity of people, but we don't particularly focus them. So, we end up with large groups of people each saying that their own usage case or methodology is the most important, and can't possibly be made worse at the expense of some other contributor, or even the good of the project overall, even if the harm is completely imaginary. So we end up in endless arguments (most of them silly), and miss the opportunity to make the overall project and release better. |
| Jens Petersen (juhp) | |
| Andreas Thienemann (ixs) | |
| Seth Vidal (skvidal) | |
| Ian Weller (ianweller) | |
| Christoph Wickert (cwickert) | |
| David Woodhouse (dwm) | |
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| 5. What is Fedora's place in the larger community with respect to other distributions?
| |
| Tom Callaway (spot) | Fedora is a leader. We are pushing the boundaries of Free Software every
day, and we have a commitment to working with upstream to make significant improvements. We are also working with other distributions to collaborate on complicated efforts or to standardize our processes. For example, I'm meeting with members of the OpenSUSE community at LinuxTag to see where we can have a common set of packaging guidelines. |
| Josh Boyer ( jwb ) | I view Fedora as the leading (sometimes bleeding) edge distribution overall.
It is often the first to ship the latest versions of packages, and it strives to do so in a quality manner. More importantly, it is often the first to ship the combination of the latest packages, which helps shake out bugs in the package interactions and has a trickle down effect for other distros. |
| Mike McGrath (mmcgrath) | Fedora works with upstream and gets new technologies first. |
| David Nalley (ke4qqq) | Fedora is the place of innovation. This means that many people come
here to deploy new technology and features first, and come with the idea that this is the proving ground, that deploying within Fedora will gain them a huge userbase and perfect their product. We've are also rapidly becoming the standard bearer for freedom and openness. |
| Kevin Fenzi (nirik) | Well, Fedora is not an enterprise distro with support channels and
such, but otherwise I think it fits a large number of use cases. I think it's ideal for todays desktop/laptop use. I think it's great for development servers for exploring new tech. |
| Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore) | Fedora is a leader and prover of new technologies. it is a place where
everyone can scratch there personal itch and come together to make a great product for everyone to use. |
| Kevin Kofler (Kevin_Kofler) | Fedora is the distribution doing most of the innovation. All distributions
benefit from us pioneering new technologies. |
| Adam Miller (maxamillion) | I think we are the bar in which other distributions are measured
against. Though I might be biased in that thought. I think Fedora leads in every adpect that a free and open source project should with loyalties to the ideals that entails. |
| 5. What is Fedora's place in the larger community with respect to other distributions? | |
| Bill Nottingham (notting) | Fedora is committed to making a distribution that anyone can use, modify,
and redistribute freely for any purpose (commerical or otherwise). We don't include poison-pill software that only has guarantees if received from Fedora; we don't include binary-only software that the user can't modify, etc. We're committed to solving problems the right way whenever possible, even if it's more work, not papering over them with hacks. |
| Jens Petersen (juhp) | |
| Andreas Thienemann (ixs) | |
| Seth Vidal (skvidal) | |
| Ian Weller (ianweller) | |
| Christoph Wickert (cwickert) | |
| David Woodhouse (dwm) | |
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| 6. What are you going to be doing in the Fedora Board that you cannot do outside of it or how would being in board/FESCo help in what you want to accomplish? | |
| Tom Callaway (spot) | I think that participating in the Fedora Board helps me ensure that
Fedora makes intelligent and strategic long term decisions, and that the best interests of the Fedora community are well represented. |
| Josh Boyer ( jwb ) | To be honest, not much. One of the things I like the most about Fedora is that
you don't have to be in a committee or on the Board to really make an impact on the project. We strive to keep that true and I continue to be impressed at the amount of work that gets done without any sort of Board/FESCo interaction. That being said, I do want to participate in some of the higher level project discussions that the Board tackles. Things like trademark guidelines, 'What is Fedora', etc. |
| Mike McGrath (mmcgrath) | I'm hoping to focus more on visionary goals for Fedora on the board. In my current position I work a great deal on implementation of those goals but not so much in forming them as that's the board's job. |
| David Nalley (ke4qqq) | I personally would love to help drive consideration of a Fedora
foundation-like entity. |
| Kevin Fenzi (nirik) | I'm not sure that it does really. Anyone can contribute and step up
without being in fesco. Being in fesco allows one to help guide things as a whole and help others come up with the best way forward. I look forward to helping others with their ideas in fesco and bringing my ideas and plans there. |
| Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore) | Make sure that those smaller groups inside fedora get heard. Provide a strong
voice for secondary arches. |
| Kevin Kofler (Kevin_Kofler) | As I am someone who wants to bring change into FESCo, getting actually elected
into FESCo (hopefully together with others on a similar mission) is the best way to get there. |
| Adam Miller (maxamillion) | I can't answer this question because I'm not walking into FESCo
with an agenda to push like some politician being shoved in by lobbyists, but instead as someone who is passionate about the success of the project. This question in my opinion is loaded because nobody really knows what they are going to do until a situation occurs and the discussion is had, information and ideas are exchanged and educated decisions are made and this is exactly what I would do my best to accomplish if I were elected. |
| 6. What are you going to be doing in the Fedora Board that you cannot do outside of it or how would being in board/FESCo help in what you want to accomplish? | |
| Bill Nottingham (notting) | I want to ensure that Fedora remains the best, highest quality,
forward-looking Linux distribution out there; one that I find compelling to use and interesting to focus work on. By serving on FESCo, I'm able to try and ensure those goals, in the approving of Features, packaging policies, and other development giudelines. |
| Jens Petersen (juhp) | |
| Andreas Thienemann (ixs) | |
| Seth Vidal (skvidal) | |
| Ian Weller (ianweller) | |
| Christoph Wickert (cwickert) | |
| David Woodhouse (dwm) | |
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| 7. What do you consider to be Fedora's raison d'etre? In the past the focus of Fedora has shifted from release to release. Do you see a long-term goal or a "target audience" Fedora should strive for? How do you define your role in helping the project reaching that goal? | |
| Tom Callaway (spot) | This is a difficult question to answer. I think that the long term goal
of encouraging Free Software is key to Fedora, and I do believe that we should define a primary target for Fedora to ensure that our efforts are not spread too thin or confused. I also don't think that we should take any steps that would limit the effort of motivated community members to shape Fedora for their own needs or wants. To put it bluntly, if our primary target is the Desktop PowerUser, we should still try to make every effort to not make life difficult for a SIG working on making a Fedora Server spin. Its a difficult balance to walk, but I think we have to try. |
| Josh Boyer ( jwb ) | I think this is something we as a community are struggling with right now.
For a long time, just getting a quality release out the door on time was enough to satisfy people. And that may still be valid for many. I know that is usually enough for me, as I tend to enjoy the whole rel-eng aspect of things. However, others are looking for this long-term goal as a way to guide their contributions. The Board has recently started tackling this issue with the 'What is Fedora' discussions, and I do hope to participate in those. |
| Mike McGrath (mmcgrath) | Fedora is the Linux technology leader. I also want to help Fedora become more of a tool for the larger OSS and technology players. When Dell, IBM, or whoever says "I want to put $NEW_PRODUCT together and give it a try." I want Fedora to be the first in that list for deployment and partnership. I'd also like Fedora to be a way for the big players to get in touch with the tons of little players for feedback, testing, input, etc. Fedora is a perfect platform for this. |
| David Nalley (ke4qqq) | I think focus that shifts from release to release is a good thing. One
it's driven by the people doing the work, and as this is a meritocracy, the people doing the work should continue driving the direction of Fedora. I can't help but think that by pigeonholing ourselves as a 'desktop focused' distro or 'server focused' distro that we end up losing valuable contributors, and that it would unnecessarily constrain innovation. I honestly think that the four foundations really encapsulates a lot of Fedora's mission and fear too much being set in stone. I don't envision the Board as being the oracle on high who tells us which direction to go, but rather the guard rail on the edge of the precipice that keeps the project within bounds and out of danger. |
| Kevin Fenzi (nirik) | I think it's impossible to come up with one 'target audience'.
Fedora is what we contributors make it. If you want to have a distro that works well on desktops for end users, then work on that. Of course some use cases are out of scope or incompatible. In those cases I think we need to choose where best to spend out resources. We should strive to allow various use cases where there are contributors working on those areas, and if its possible to. |
| Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore) | I think fedora is more of a techie, developer distro. it is a place where you
can prove that your new shiny thing works and is valuable to all. it is useable by everyone but not neccesarily always the best choice. Fedora is not for those wanting long term support, that is where CentOS and RHEL fit in. I personally run servers with fedora on them. |
| Kevin Kofler (Kevin_Kofler) | Fedora's raison d'être is to be 1. 100% Free Software and 2. always current, but
not unstable ("leading, but not bleeding"). We should not compromise on these goals. So our target audience needs to be prepared to get updates, including version upgrades, regularly, and in particular to have sufficient bandwidth to download them (at least as DRPMs). They also need to be prepared to upgrade to a new release at least once a year. And finally, they need to accept that they will not find proprietary or patent-encumbered software within Fedora, but only in third-party repositories. But within those constraints, I don't think we should exclude anyone. However, not excluding anyone also means not designing exclusively for new users (as GNOME is arguably doing), and this one of the reasons why supporting KDE well is important, and this is where the KDE SIG, in which I participate, enters the picture. You can also count on me to stand up for what I see as our raison d'être (i.e. "Free and current") and against any attempts to encroach these principles. |
| Adam Miller (maxamillion) | I don't think we have a "target audience", I think fedora should
be for everyone. That's one of the things I love about Fedora is that in the event a group of Fedora community members want to cater specially to a specific group of users they are free to launch a SIG and/or a Spin in order to accomplish this, which is a wonderful thing because those community members continue to contribute to the project as a whole instead of branching and creating child distributions. I also don't think a long-term goal is very feasible in such an evolving environment where we work with next generation technologies every day, I can't know what's to come and therefore can't make a long-term destination. |
| 7. What do you consider to be Fedora's raison d'etre? In the past the focus of Fedora has shifted from release to release. Do you see a long-term goal or a "target audience" Fedora should strive for? How do you define your role in helping the project reaching that goal? | |
| Bill Nottingham (notting) | Fedora should probably focus more than we do now on a particular audience;
by not targeting any audience (or designing for 'all' audiences, you ensure that you're not optimal for any audience. It's why the Fedora DVD spin is traditionally the weakest offering; it's a jack of all trades and master of none. With a target in mind, you can actually make meaningful decisions about what you're doing. That being said, the target audience is more a board question than a FESCo question; FESCo would just be the implementer. |
| Jens Petersen (juhp) | |
| Andreas Thienemann (ixs) | |
| Seth Vidal (skvidal) | |
| Ian Weller (ianweller) | |
| Christoph Wickert (cwickert) | |
| David Woodhouse (dwm) | |
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| 8. What are your unique strengths and what are your weaknesses? | |
| Tom Callaway (spot) | Strengths:
I haven't come across a piece of code that I couldn't get into an RPM package, and I understand FOSS licensing better than most hackers. Weaknesses: I'm not as good of a software coder as I would like to be. I (occasionally) have great ideas, but lack the skillset to implement them. |
| Josh Boyer ( jwb ) | I have no amazing super-powers. I generally consider myself fairly competent
on the engineering side of things, with a focus more on code than packaging. I also try to be open minded, but I'm not afraid to take a position on something if I feel strongly about it. As for weaknesses, I have those too. I'd like to be more educated in how the non-engineering communities of Fedora function. I can be overly negative at times. I also have a decreasing tolerance for trolls and flame-fest email threads, though I do still try to read them. I dislike kittens and ponies. |
| Mike McGrath (mmcgrath) | I'm a fast learner who knows when it's time to work, and when it's time to have
fun. I'm a results oriented person though the path from point A to point B is also important. I also value simplicity which I see as a strength. My weaknesses include the occasional short temper and horrible spelling.
|
| David Nalley (ke4qqq) | As a relative n00b I think I understand the challenges faced by some
of the more recent contributors, and the people who have yet to begin contributing. At the same time, I don't have the experience leading the Fedora Project that most of the other candidates do. |
| Kevin Fenzi (nirik) | well, I have been involved with fedora for a long time, and know a lot
about how things are put together. I think thats both. New perspectives may come up with a better ideas, but knowing the history and reasons for things is important as well. |
| Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore) | I have a good understanding of how the different parts of fedora work how they
all fit in together from buildsys to releng and everything in between. I may not always know how a regular user may use something. helping my mum use fedora has shown me that. |
| Kevin Kofler (Kevin_Kofler) | 1. Strengths: I have experience with both Free Software development and packaging, I also have a formal university education in Mathematics and Computer Science, I speak 4 languages fluently (English, French, Italian, German), I'm used to IRC meetings from my involvement in KDE SIG. People at my university consider me a brilliant student, in KDE SIG I'm known as a "Qt/KDE ninja" for my successes at fixing critical bugs or tracking down their causes.
2. Weaknesses: I tend to overreact when something angers me (and need to try really hard to stay polite) and can't always avoid to "feed the trolls". |
| Adam Miller (maxamillion) | I would prefer not answer this one. |
| 8. What are your unique strengths and what are your weaknesses? | |
| Bill Nottingham (notting) | My biggest weaknesses are that I'm really bad at delegating, and I
don't find nearly enough time to do actual development and bugfixing work. In combination, that can be a bit of a problem for software maintenance. |
| Jens Petersen (juhp) | |
| Andreas Thienemann (ixs) | |
| Seth Vidal (skvidal) | |
| Ian Weller (ianweller) | |
| Christoph Wickert (cwickert) | |
| David Woodhouse (dwm) | |
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| 9. How will you make the work for in Fedora easier and more fun? Less paperwork, less manual steps, more areas of opportunity. :)
| |
| Tom Callaway (spot) | Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur rutrum ipsum in tellus hendrerit a luctus dui pulvinar. Praesent vitae leo tortor. |
| Josh Boyer ( jwb ) | Fun is a relative term. For example, if you don't find packaging fun to begin
with, I doubt I can do anything to really make it more fun. And 'easier' isn't always a goal either. To be honest, some of the items and issues we face _are_ hard and trying to make them easier usually doesn't get any progress. There are times we need people to simply dig in and work such items, even if they aren't fun or easy. That being said, there are things we can do to make sure we aren't making things harder than they really are. I answered a previous question with the example of too many policies and procedures. Things like that can and should be avoided and should hopefully make Fedora a more enjoyable project to contribute to. |
| Mike McGrath (mmcgrath) | I think Fedora is in an interesting transition period right now in an industry
that's currently in transition. Getting a better focus in place so that all of our thousands of contributors are working towards the same goal will keep expectations in line more. Additionally, in the more practical sense, I'll continue my work in Fedora Infrastructure to keep things fast as well as continue to help make more tools feature rich and useful. |
| David Nalley (ke4qqq) | I would hope that staying out of the way would help work progress in a
fun and easy manner. Perhaps I could tell a few jokes, though my wife claims I have no talent when it comes to humor. |
| Kevin Fenzi (nirik) | I would like to see more engagement and community amoung contributors.
Perhaps some non tech gatherings on irc, or more use of #fedora-social or the like. |
| Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore) | I will try to make it simpler and more consistent. |
| Kevin Kofler (Kevin_Kofler) | By opposing policies which require changing upstream projects' software for no
good reason and thus place a pointless workload on the maintainer(s). Again, the restrictions on flags are a good example of such an annoying and useless policy. I also hope to be part of a more diverse FESCo which will lead to fewer decisions diametrally opposed to the majority's views and thus reduce frustration. |
| Adam Miller (maxamillion) | I don't understand the question. |
| 9. How will you make the work for in Fedora easier and more fun? Less paperwork, less manual steps, more areas of opportunity. :) | |
| Bill Nottingham (notting) | Ice cream and ponies for everyone! |
| Jens Petersen (juhp) | |
| Andreas Thienemann (ixs) | |
| Seth Vidal (skvidal) | |
| Ian Weller (ianweller) | |
| Christoph Wickert (cwickert) | |
| David Woodhouse (dwm) | |
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