Dear all,
the semiannual exercise is upon us. FESCo candidates must submit an "interview" in which they answer a set of questions (but can also add whatever they want). The question whether we should have a new set of questions needs to be answered.
Currently we have the following:
Mandatory Question #1: Describe some of the important technical issues you foresee affecting the Fedora community. What insight do you bring to these issues?
Mandatory Question #2: What objectives or goals should FESCo focus on to help keep Fedora on the cutting edge of open source development?
Mandatory Question #3: What are the areas of the distribution and our processes that, in your opinion, need improvement the most? Do you have any ideas how FESCo would be able to help in those "trouble spots"?
Please answer with any proposals. If there is sufficient support for change, I'll gather a list and submit this for some kind of poll (details to be figured out...).
Zbyszek
On 04. 11. 19 15:58, Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek wrote:
Dear all,
the semiannual exercise is upon us. FESCo candidates must submit an "interview" in which they answer a set of questions (but can also add whatever they want). The question whether we should have a new set of questions needs to be answered.
Currently we have the following:
Mandatory Question #1: Describe some of the important technical issues you foresee affecting the Fedora community. What insight do you bring to these issues?
Mandatory Question #2: What objectives or goals should FESCo focus on to help keep Fedora on the cutting edge of open source development?
Mandatory Question #3: What are the areas of the distribution and our processes that, in your opinion, need improvement the most? Do you have any ideas how FESCo would be able to help in those "trouble spots"?
Please answer with any proposals. If there is sufficient support for change, I'll gather a list and submit this for some kind of poll (details to be figured out...).
It is this time of year again.
On Sat, Apr 4, 2020 at 3:49 PM Miro Hrončok mhroncok@redhat.com wrote:
On 04. 11. 19 15:58, Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek wrote:
Dear all,
the semiannual exercise is upon us. FESCo candidates must submit an "interview" in which they answer a set of questions (but can also add whatever they want). The question whether we should have a new set of questions needs to be answered.
Currently we have the following:
Mandatory Question #1: Describe some of the important technical issues you foresee affecting the Fedora community. What insight do you bring to these issues?
Mandatory Question #2: What objectives or goals should FESCo focus on to help keep Fedora on the cutting edge of open source development?
Mandatory Question #3: What are the areas of the distribution and our processes that, in your opinion, need improvement the most? Do you have any ideas how FESCo would be able to help in those "trouble spots"?
Please answer with any proposals. If there is sufficient support for change, I'll gather a list and submit this for some kind of poll (details to be figured out...).
It is this time of year again.
From the questions on the wiki, I like those two:
2 . Why do you want to be a member of FESCo? 6 . Currently, how do you contribute to Fedora? How does that contribution benefit the community?
With some encouragement for short answers those might put some personality into the otherwise pretty dry and technical interviews
Fabio
-- Miro Hrončok -- Phone: +420777974800 IRC: mhroncok _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
FESCo agreed[1] today that I am tasked with starting an open discussion on the questions and collecting feedback for them to approve. Please discuss the questions on this thread.
For reference, the questions used in previous election cycles are: * Describe some of the important technical issues you foresee affecting the Fedora community. What insight do you bring to these issues? * What objectives or goals should FESCo focus on to help keep Fedora on the cutting edge of open source development? * What are the areas of the distribution and our processes that, in your opinion, need improvement the most? Do you have any ideas how FESCo would be able to help in those “trouble spots”?
A list of other suggested questions is on the wiki[2].
Additionally, the following questions have been proposed: * What do you feel is Fedora's place in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux development pipeline and how should Fedora address conflicts between RHEL and Fedora requirements?
In order to give FESCo time to approve the proposed questions before the beginning of the interview period[3], I will present the proposed questions to FESCo ticket #2394[4] on Tuesday 12 May 2020. I will post my recommendation to this thread on Monday 11 May 2020.
[1] https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting-1/2020-05-04/fesco.2020-05-... [2] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Elections/Questionnaire#FESCo_.28Engineering.... [3] https://fedorapeople.org/groups/schedule/f-32/f-32-elections-tasks.html [4] https://pagure.io/fesco/issue/2384
On Mon, May 4, 2020 at 1:24 PM Ben Cotton bcotton@redhat.com wrote:
FESCo agreed[1] today that I am tasked with starting an open discussion on the questions and collecting feedback for them to approve.
Based on the feedback in this thread and the discussion in FESCo #2394[2], I will submit the following questions to FESCo for approval as the official FESCo candidate questionnaire for the Fedora 32 election cycle:
1. Why do you want to be a member of FESCo? 2. How do you currently contribute to Fedora? How does that contribution benefit the community? 3. How should we handle cases where Fedora's and Red Hat Enterprise Linux's needs are at odds?
For reference, the questions used in previous election cycles are:
- Describe some of the important technical issues you foresee
affecting the Fedora community. What insight do you bring to these issues?
- What objectives or goals should FESCo focus on to help keep Fedora
on the cutting edge of open source development?
- What are the areas of the distribution and our processes that, in
your opinion, need improvement the most? Do you have any ideas how FESCo would be able to help in those “trouble spots”?
[1] https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting-1/2020-05-04/fesco.2020-05-... [2] https://pagure.io/fesco/issue/2384
On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 02:27:06PM -0400, Ben Cotton wrote:
On Mon, May 4, 2020 at 1:24 PM Ben Cotton bcotton@redhat.com wrote:
FESCo agreed[1] today that I am tasked with starting an open discussion on the questions and collecting feedback for them to approve.
Based on the feedback in this thread and the discussion in FESCo #2394[2], I will submit the following questions to FESCo for approval as the official FESCo candidate questionnaire for the Fedora 32 election cycle:
- Why do you want to be a member of FESCo?
- How do you currently contribute to Fedora? How does that
contribution benefit the community? 3. How should we handle cases where Fedora's and Red Hat Enterprise Linux's needs are at odds?
Hmm, that swings the pendulum very far in the other direction. The first two questions are about the candidate, and the last is about a very specific facet of community collaboration. There is no general question about current challenged or Fedora direction. Can we please include something like that too?
Zbyszek
On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 3:13 PM Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek < zbyszek@in.waw.pl> wrote:
- Why do you want to be a member of FESCo?
- How do you currently contribute to Fedora? How does that
contribution benefit the community? 3. How should we handle cases where Fedora's and Red Hat Enterprise Linux's needs are at odds?
Hmm, that swings the pendulum very far in the other direction. The first two questions are about the candidate, and the last is about a very specific facet of community collaboration. There is no general question about current challenged or Fedora direction. Can we please include something like that too?
Do you suggest dropping #1 or 2, or adding a fourth question?
Speaking for myself as an individual, I'm not convinced the current challenges-type questions are entirely useful. In my experience, they mostly serve as a way for candidates to express frustration but don't result in proactive changes. I see the first question implicitly including that question, so what if we made it more explicit:
1. Why do you want to be a member of FESCo? How do you expect to help steer the direction of Fedora?
(I don't love the wording, so I'll keep giving it some thought, but that's the general idea)
On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 04:26:36PM -0400, Ben Cotton wrote:
On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 3:13 PM Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek < zbyszek@in.waw.pl> wrote:
- Why do you want to be a member of FESCo?
- How do you currently contribute to Fedora? How does that
contribution benefit the community? 3. How should we handle cases where Fedora's and Red Hat Enterprise Linux's needs are at odds?
Hmm, that swings the pendulum very far in the other direction. The first two questions are about the candidate, and the last is about a very specific facet of community collaboration. There is no general question about current challenged or Fedora direction. Can we please include something like that too?
Do you suggest dropping #1 or 2, or adding a fourth question?
Speaking for myself as an individual, I'm not convinced the current challenges-type questions are entirely useful. In my experience, they mostly serve as a way for candidates to express frustration but don't result in proactive changes. I see the first question implicitly including that question, so what if we made it more explicit:
- Why do you want to be a member of FESCo? How do you expect to help steer
the direction of Fedora?
(I don't love the wording, so I'll keep giving it some thought, but that's the general idea)
Suggestion: Drop the set of questions entirely, replace with:
Please write a short essay here describing your background, your past contributions to the Fedora Project, what you hope to accomplish, why community members should vote for you and any additional infromation you feel would be helpfull to community memebers.
The questions came out of the 'questionare' that was questions gathered from the community. Then it became "lets just use the same questions since we don't have many new ones". At this point I'd prefer just a short essay from candidates with information i could use to select who to vote for.
If we just make it an essay with suggestions of what to include, I think it might be more engaging than just a sentence or two on specific questions.
Just a thought.
kevin
On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 4:39 PM Kevin Fenzi kevin@scrye.com wrote:
If we just make it an essay with suggestions of what to include, I think it might be more engaging than just a sentence or two on specific questions.
Thinking about it from an editorial perspective, the questionnaire format
results in what will likely be more readable posts than a longer essay. The current format does sometimes result in a sentence or two, but a lot of the answers are a paragraph or two. So I'm not sure the end result would be a much different amount of content; some people are going to give shorter replies no matter the form. The other good thing about the current format is that it makes the answers more directly comparable.
That said, I do like the idea of a more free-form response as a way to see how candidates think. I suppose I can toss both at FESCo and let them make the choice. :-)
On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 10:56 PM Ben Cotton bcotton@redhat.com wrote:
On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 4:39 PM Kevin Fenzi kevin@scrye.com wrote:
If we just make it an essay with suggestions of what to include, I think it might be more engaging than just a sentence or two on specific questions.
Thinking about it from an editorial perspective, the questionnaire format results in what will likely be more readable posts than a longer essay. The current format does sometimes result in a sentence or two, but a lot of the answers are a paragraph or two. So I'm not sure the end result would be a much different amount of content; some people are going to give shorter replies no matter the form. The other good thing about the current format is that it makes the answers more directly comparable.
That said, I do like the idea of a more free-form response as a way to see how candidates think. I suppose I can toss both at FESCo and let them make the choice. :-)
Why not do both? Keep the questions to give candidates the opportunity to develop their thoughts along specific lines and leave them the option to add whatever they feel is worth discussing at the end of the questionnaire.
On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 04:55:03PM -0400, Ben Cotton wrote:
On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 4:39 PM Kevin Fenzi kevin@scrye.com wrote:
If we just make it an essay with suggestions of what to include, I think it might be more engaging than just a sentence or two on specific questions.
Thinking about it from an editorial perspective, the questionnaire format
results in what will likely be more readable posts than a longer essay. The current format does sometimes result in a sentence or two, but a lot of the answers are a paragraph or two. So I'm not sure the end result would be a much different amount of content; some people are going to give shorter replies no matter the form. The other good thing about the current format is that it makes the answers more directly comparable.
That said, I do like the idea of a more free-form response as a way to see how candidates think. I suppose I can toss both at FESCo and let them make the choice. :-)
I'd vote for Nirik's proposal over a fixed set of questions...
Zbyszek
Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek zbyszek@in.waw.pl writes:
On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 04:55:03PM -0400, Ben Cotton wrote:
On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 4:39 PM Kevin Fenzi kevin@scrye.com wrote:
If we just make it an essay with suggestions of what to include, I think it might be more engaging than just a sentence or two on specific questions.
Thinking about it from an editorial perspective, the questionnaire format
results in what will likely be more readable posts than a longer essay. The current format does sometimes result in a sentence or two, but a lot of the answers are a paragraph or two. So I'm not sure the end result would be a much different amount of content; some people are going to give shorter replies no matter the form. The other good thing about the current format is that it makes the answers more directly comparable.
That said, I do like the idea of a more free-form response as a way to see how candidates think. I suppose I can toss both at FESCo and let them make the choice. :-)
I'd vote for Nirik's proposal over a fixed set of questions...
I actually like that idea as well, as every candidate can highlight their own focus better that way.
Cheers,
Dan
On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 01:37:08PM -0700, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 04:26:36PM -0400, Ben Cotton wrote:
On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 3:13 PM Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek < zbyszek@in.waw.pl> wrote:
- Why do you want to be a member of FESCo?
- How do you currently contribute to Fedora? How does that
contribution benefit the community? 3. How should we handle cases where Fedora's and Red Hat Enterprise Linux's needs are at odds?
Hmm, that swings the pendulum very far in the other direction. The first two questions are about the candidate, and the last is about a very specific facet of community collaboration. There is no general question about current challenged or Fedora direction. Can we please include something like that too?
Do you suggest dropping #1 or 2, or adding a fourth question?
Speaking for myself as an individual, I'm not convinced the current challenges-type questions are entirely useful. In my experience, they mostly serve as a way for candidates to express frustration but don't result in proactive changes. I see the first question implicitly including that question, so what if we made it more explicit:
- Why do you want to be a member of FESCo? How do you expect to help steer
the direction of Fedora?
(I don't love the wording, so I'll keep giving it some thought, but that's the general idea)
Suggestion: Drop the set of questions entirely, replace with:
Please write a short essay here describing your background, your past contributions to the Fedora Project, what you hope to accomplish, why community members should vote for you and any additional infromation you feel would be helpfull to community memebers.
Writing it as questions helps to write this because it will also make shorter sentences. Basically you are telling people to answer questions like the following, if I understand correctly:
What are your contributions to the Fedora Project? What do you hope to accomplish? Why should community members vote for you? What else is helpful for community members to know about you?
Thanks Till
On Thu, May 14, 2020 at 06:21:43PM +0200, Till Maas wrote:
On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 01:37:08PM -0700, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 04:26:36PM -0400, Ben Cotton wrote:
On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 3:13 PM Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek < zbyszek@in.waw.pl> wrote:
- Why do you want to be a member of FESCo?
- How do you currently contribute to Fedora? How does that
contribution benefit the community? 3. How should we handle cases where Fedora's and Red Hat Enterprise Linux's needs are at odds?
Hmm, that swings the pendulum very far in the other direction. The first two questions are about the candidate, and the last is about a very specific facet of community collaboration. There is no general question about current challenged or Fedora direction. Can we please include something like that too?
Do you suggest dropping #1 or 2, or adding a fourth question?
Speaking for myself as an individual, I'm not convinced the current challenges-type questions are entirely useful. In my experience, they mostly serve as a way for candidates to express frustration but don't result in proactive changes. I see the first question implicitly including that question, so what if we made it more explicit:
- Why do you want to be a member of FESCo? How do you expect to help steer
the direction of Fedora?
(I don't love the wording, so I'll keep giving it some thought, but that's the general idea)
Suggestion: Drop the set of questions entirely, replace with:
Please write a short essay here describing your background, your past contributions to the Fedora Project, what you hope to accomplish, why community members should vote for you and any additional infromation you feel would be helpfull to community memebers.
Writing it as questions helps to write this because it will also make shorter sentences. Basically you are telling people to answer questions like the following, if I understand correctly:
What are your contributions to the Fedora Project? What do you hope to accomplish? Why should community members vote for you? What else is helpful for community members to know about you?
Well, I personally wanted a more free form essay style thing, touching on all those points. If you just ask those questions you are possibly going to get short answers that just answer those and don't expand any.
whats your favorite beverage?
coffee.
vs.
Write a short essay about your favoriate beverage:
I know coffe is an aquired taste, but I've aquired it. I don't really remember being that fond of it in school, but sometime around my first real job post college I got the taste for it. There were tons of little coffee shops around where I worked and I got to sample many varieties. <snip more lines>
And perhaps it doesn't really provide more information, but it could.
But I suppose without enough data people might not vote for people with too short / curt answers. Oh well, if people feel the explicit questions are better I won't stand in the way. :)
kevin
On Thu, May 14, 2020 at 10:50:59AM -0700, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
And perhaps it doesn't really provide more information, but it could.
But I suppose without enough data people might not vote for people with too short / curt answers. Oh well, if people feel the explicit questions are better I won't stand in the way. :)
I prefer the concise answer and having to read to much for too many candidates would annoy me. So our preferences seem to be different, here. There was one election where several candidates wrote very much... So maybe add another questions like
Where can people find out more about you?
Then candidates can mention their blog, social media, ... to provide more background information for the interested reader.
Thanks Till
On Thu, May 14, 2020 at 08:27:12PM +0200, Till Maas wrote:
On Thu, May 14, 2020 at 10:50:59AM -0700, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
And perhaps it doesn't really provide more information, but it could.
But I suppose without enough data people might not vote for people with too short / curt answers. Oh well, if people feel the explicit questions are better I won't stand in the way. :)
I prefer the concise answer and having to read to much for too many candidates would annoy me. So our preferences seem to be different, here. There was one election where several candidates wrote very much... So maybe add another questions like
Where can people find out more about you?
Then candidates can mention their blog, social media, ... to provide more background information for the interested reader.
I think thats a good idea. +1
kevin
On Monday, May 11, 2020 11:27:06 AM MST Ben Cotton wrote:
- How should we handle cases where Fedora's and Red Hat Enterprise
Linux's needs are at odds?
I'm not sure this one makes any sense to include. The obvious answer is "Fedora takes precedence". This is about Fedora, after all, not RHEL. That might be a good question for Red Hat to think about internally, for the RH employees in FESCo, but that's it.
On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 2:49 PM John M. Harris Jr johnmh@splentity.com wrote:
On Monday, May 11, 2020 11:27:06 AM MST Ben Cotton wrote:
- How should we handle cases where Fedora's and Red Hat Enterprise
Linux's needs are at odds?
I'm not sure this one makes any sense to include. The obvious answer is "Fedora takes precedence". This is about Fedora, after all, not RHEL. That might be a good question for Red Hat to think about internally, for the RH employees in FESCo, but that's it.
If the consensus from the Fedora community is that RHEL should shift development elsewhere, the Fedora Council can always reach out to me and I can start that internal conversation. I do not believe for a second that's actually the consensus though. Fedora and RHEL are symbiotic in so many ways that it is naive to believe Fedora is somehow self-contained and RHEL gets no value from it or has no impact on it.
I find it to be more productive to discuss collaboratively between making Fedora a vibrant community with it's own direction and usecases, and balancing the investment that the primary Fedora project sponsor is making. That's exactly what some of the other conversations around ELN are highlighting and why we have difficult conversations around these proposals. Happily, most of the Fedora community seems to understand this. While the work to have such conversations can be hard, it ultimately helps make things better for both.
josh
On Wednesday, May 13, 2020 12:17:08 PM MST Josh Boyer wrote:
On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 2:49 PM John M. Harris Jr johnmh@splentity.com wrote:
On Monday, May 11, 2020 11:27:06 AM MST Ben Cotton wrote:
- How should we handle cases where Fedora's and Red Hat Enterprise
Linux's needs are at odds?
I'm not sure this one makes any sense to include. The obvious answer is "Fedora takes precedence". This is about Fedora, after all, not RHEL. That might be a good question for Red Hat to think about internally, for the RH employees in FESCo, but that's it.
If the consensus from the Fedora community is that RHEL should shift development elsewhere, the Fedora Council can always reach out to me and I can start that internal conversation. I do not believe for a second that's actually the consensus though. Fedora and RHEL are symbiotic in so many ways that it is naive to believe Fedora is somehow self-contained and RHEL gets no value from it or has no impact on it.
That's not what I'm getting at at all. Please allow me to clarify, that seems to have come off in a different way than I intended. When making decisions for Fedora, whatever is in favor of Fedora should take priority. If something is *also* beneficial to RHEL, that's excellent. But if Fedora would be made worse by a given change, or the lives of Fedora developers made more difficult for benefit only to RHEL, it clearly makes no sense to have that in Fedora. If Fedora is neither positively nor negatively effected, and it can make things easier over in RHEL land, that's also great!
On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 10:11 PM John M. Harris Jr johnmh@splentity.com wrote:
On Wednesday, May 13, 2020 12:17:08 PM MST Josh Boyer wrote:
On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 2:49 PM John M. Harris Jr johnmh@splentity.com wrote:
On Monday, May 11, 2020 11:27:06 AM MST Ben Cotton wrote:
- How should we handle cases where Fedora's and Red Hat Enterprise
Linux's needs are at odds?
I'm not sure this one makes any sense to include. The obvious answer is "Fedora takes precedence". This is about Fedora, after all, not RHEL. That might be a good question for Red Hat to think about internally, for the RH employees in FESCo, but that's it.
If the consensus from the Fedora community is that RHEL should shift development elsewhere, the Fedora Council can always reach out to me and I can start that internal conversation. I do not believe for a second that's actually the consensus though. Fedora and RHEL are symbiotic in so many ways that it is naive to believe Fedora is somehow self-contained and RHEL gets no value from it or has no impact on it.
That's not what I'm getting at at all. Please allow me to clarify, that seems to have come off in a different way than I intended. When making decisions for Fedora, whatever is in favor of Fedora should take priority. If something is *also* beneficial to RHEL, that's excellent. But if Fedora would be made worse by a given change, or the lives of Fedora developers made more difficult for benefit only to RHEL, it clearly makes no sense to have that in Fedora. If Fedora is neither positively nor negatively effected, and it can make things easier over in RHEL land, that's also great!
So, you're basically proving my point that this question should be answered by the FESCo candidates...
What you basically state here is that you view the role of FESCo as being required to always represent Fedora's needs in precedence to Red Hat's needs. That is a *valid* position for someone to take. It is, however, not the position that all potential candidates might take. Which is why it is a fascinating and highly-relevant question to ask them.
Le mercredi 13 mai 2020 à 15:17 -0400, Josh Boyer a écrit : Hi,
If the consensus from the Fedora community is that RHEL should shift development elsewhere, the Fedora Council can always reach out to me and I can start that internal conversation. I do not believe for a second that's actually the consensus though. Fedora and RHEL are symbiotic in so many ways that it is naive to believe Fedora is somehow self-contained and RHEL gets no value from it or has no impact on it.
The most downloaded part of Fedora is EPEL, and even Fedora packagers that do not contribute to EPEL will often use it or got involved in the project in the first place because of EL and EPEL. So, no question that EL & server is important for Fedora (people should remember that when they try to conflate Fedora with its desktop edition in Fedora communications).
However, EL as a critical Fedora dimension, is something very different from RHEL the product. Products have short term local deadlines and market positionning tactics that conflict with wider (time or scope) strategies.
Thus, while I personnaly welcome greater EL implication within Fedora, it needs some organisational thought, to be able to handle gracefully objective divergences. Because those divergences *will* eventually happen, and inventing a process at crunch time when things are on fire and everyone is too busy dealing with the fire to listen to others, is no fun.
Regards,
On Thu, May 14, 2020 at 4:54 AM Nicolas Mailhot via devel devel@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
Le mercredi 13 mai 2020 à 15:17 -0400, Josh Boyer a écrit : Hi,
If the consensus from the Fedora community is that RHEL should shift development elsewhere, the Fedora Council can always reach out to me and I can start that internal conversation. I do not believe for a second that's actually the consensus though. Fedora and RHEL are symbiotic in so many ways that it is naive to believe Fedora is somehow self-contained and RHEL gets no value from it or has no impact on it.
The most downloaded part of Fedora is EPEL, and even Fedora packagers that do not contribute to EPEL will often use it or got involved in the project in the first place because of EL and EPEL. So, no question that EL & server is important for Fedora (people should remember that when they try to conflate Fedora with its desktop edition in Fedora communications).
However, EL as a critical Fedora dimension, is something very different from RHEL the product. Products have short term local deadlines and market positionning tactics that conflict with wider (time or scope) strategies.
Thus, while I personnaly welcome greater EL implication within Fedora, it needs some organisational thought, to be able to handle gracefully objective divergences. Because those divergences *will* eventually happen, and inventing a process at crunch time when things are on fire and everyone is too busy dealing with the fire to listen to others, is no fun.
Will? Divergences have happened since the Fedora project was founded. They will continue to happen. Let's review a brief history of some divergences and convergences and their outcomes!
1. Fedora was created after RHEL became the focus instead of RHL. Two distros, a rocky start to building a community, but it was done. Yay!
2. Fedora Extras and Fedora Core were merged. This now complicated the RHEL product development flow, but it was overall beneficial. Yay!
3. Software Collections were created, proposed, and rejected by Fedora. They are alive and well in RHEL and customers that use them see lots of value. Not ideal, but an example of divergence.
4. EPEL. A convergence, wildly useful, very valued by both community, RHEL, and Red Hat customers. Yay!
5. Fedora secondary architectures. A convergence at the start for things like s390x and ppc/ppc64/ppc64le, but then a divergence with things like armv7hl and riscv. Yay! Fedora to more places and for more uses!
6. Introduction of Fedora Editions. This could be viewed as a convergence in a way, since they mirrored the RHEL variants in many ways, but they also spun out KDE, IoT, etc. Yay!
7. Modularity. Introduced in Fedora before RHEL, adopted into RHEL. Having some growing pains, but open collaboration continues. RHEL usage is limited but provides value there. I won't claim yay on the technology, but I'll certainly say Yay! to the community interaction.
8. ELN. A convergence, actively being worked, actively being shaped by the community to address concerns and make it generally useful. Yay x2!
The point here isn't to rest on laurels and say we're done. It's also not to say we're perfect, or frankly even good, at figuring out Enterprise needs vs. non-Enterprise. My point is this: we have done this together since the project was created, Red Hat have always considered the community before proposing anything, and we will continue to do it together as long as Fedora exists. I am old enough now to have been both a non-RHT and RHT Fedora community member and have seen these interactions through both perspectives. There is a MASSIVE amount of internal discussion and mental energy put into where we develop, what benefits all sides can have, and how to start those discussions. Then, after those discussions start, Red Hatters are often the ones arguing and shaping on behalf of Fedora. For anyone to assume there isn't this kind of organizational thought at this point given the project's history is very odd.
People need to realize this will never be easy and stop throwing up the "this is a RHEL thing" wall as soon as something new is proposed. The bias there is both large and unfounded. I didn't see anyone claiming Fedora community members we're being used as unpaid labor when we announced Lenovo was preinstalling Fedora on Thinkpads. It was massively celebrated as a victory, as it should be! Why? Because together the community has created something even more people will benefit from by that vendor's choice. Lenovo is making a smart choice because they see the value in Fedora and open source. That doesn't change the fact that it was still work Fedora did and will continue to do to make that successful in the long run. RHEL is no different.
If I have any good will left in this community, I'd use it to ask that we all stop the "Fedora vs. RHEL" mentality. It's not healthy and it creates unnecessary division. There will be more proposals in the future that aim to address Enterprise needs. Let's just work on them as we would anything else and find compromise to make everyone successful. In my humble opinion, the worst thing that can happen is those proposals stop coming to Fedora and start going elsewhere.
josh
On Thursday, May 14, 2020 5:37:10 AM MST Josh Boyer wrote:
On Thu, May 14, 2020 at 4:54 AM Nicolas Mailhot via devel devel@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
Le mercredi 13 mai 2020 à 15:17 -0400, Josh Boyer a écrit : Hi,
If the consensus from the Fedora community is that RHEL should shift development elsewhere, the Fedora Council can always reach out to me and I can start that internal conversation. I do not believe for a second that's actually the consensus though. Fedora and RHEL are symbiotic in so many ways that it is naive to believe Fedora is somehow self-contained and RHEL gets no value from it or has no impact on it.
The most downloaded part of Fedora is EPEL, and even Fedora packagers that do not contribute to EPEL will often use it or got involved in the project in the first place because of EL and EPEL. So, no question that EL & server is important for Fedora (people should remember that when they try to conflate Fedora with its desktop edition in Fedora communications).
However, EL as a critical Fedora dimension, is something very different from RHEL the product. Products have short term local deadlines and market positionning tactics that conflict with wider (time or scope) strategies.
Thus, while I personnaly welcome greater EL implication within Fedora, it needs some organisational thought, to be able to handle gracefully objective divergences. Because those divergences *will* eventually happen, and inventing a process at crunch time when things are on fire and everyone is too busy dealing with the fire to listen to others, is no fun.
Will? Divergences have happened since the Fedora project was founded. They will continue to happen. Let's review a brief history of some divergences and convergences and their outcomes!
- Fedora was created after RHEL became the focus instead of RHL. Two
distros, a rocky start to building a community, but it was done. Yay!
- Fedora Extras and Fedora Core were merged. This now complicated
the RHEL product development flow, but it was overall beneficial. Yay!
- Software Collections were created, proposed, and rejected by
Fedora. They are alive and well in RHEL and customers that use them see lots of value. Not ideal, but an example of divergence.
- EPEL. A convergence, wildly useful, very valued by both community,
RHEL, and Red Hat customers. Yay!
- Fedora secondary architectures. A convergence at the start for
things like s390x and ppc/ppc64/ppc64le, but then a divergence with things like armv7hl and riscv. Yay! Fedora to more places and for more uses!
- Introduction of Fedora Editions. This could be viewed as a
convergence in a way, since they mirrored the RHEL variants in many ways, but they also spun out KDE, IoT, etc. Yay!
- Modularity. Introduced in Fedora before RHEL, adopted into RHEL.
Having some growing pains, but open collaboration continues. RHEL usage is limited but provides value there. I won't claim yay on the technology, but I'll certainly say Yay! to the community interaction.
- ELN. A convergence, actively being worked, actively being shaped
by the community to address concerns and make it generally useful. Yay x2!
The point here isn't to rest on laurels and say we're done. It's also not to say we're perfect, or frankly even good, at figuring out Enterprise needs vs. non-Enterprise. My point is this: we have done this together since the project was created, Red Hat have always considered the community before proposing anything, and we will continue to do it together as long as Fedora exists. I am old enough now to have been both a non-RHT and RHT Fedora community member and have seen these interactions through both perspectives. There is a MASSIVE amount of internal discussion and mental energy put into where we develop, what benefits all sides can have, and how to start those discussions. Then, after those discussions start, Red Hatters are often the ones arguing and shaping on behalf of Fedora. For anyone to assume there isn't this kind of organizational thought at this point given the project's history is very odd.
People need to realize this will never be easy and stop throwing up the "this is a RHEL thing" wall as soon as something new is proposed. The bias there is both large and unfounded. I didn't see anyone claiming Fedora community members we're being used as unpaid labor when we announced Lenovo was preinstalling Fedora on Thinkpads. It was massively celebrated as a victory, as it should be! Why? Because together the community has created something even more people will benefit from by that vendor's choice. Lenovo is making a smart choice because they see the value in Fedora and open source. That doesn't change the fact that it was still work Fedora did and will continue to do to make that successful in the long run. RHEL is no different.
If I have any good will left in this community, I'd use it to ask that we all stop the "Fedora vs. RHEL" mentality. It's not healthy and it creates unnecessary division. There will be more proposals in the future that aim to address Enterprise needs. Let's just work on them as we would anything else and find compromise to make everyone successful. In my humble opinion, the worst thing that can happen is those proposals stop coming to Fedora and start going elsewhere.
There are times when these proposals are only useful for RHEL, and not Fedora. For some reason, those scenarios are actually more common than things that are only beneficial to Fedora, and not RHEL, though we have some of those too. These are the situations I'm suggesting we should approach in a different way. For example, Modules have caused nothing but headache for Fedora users and RHEL sysadmins alike. I wish I could say what the impact on packagers has been, but I've not built any packages requiring modules, and I'm not an active packager for Fedora or EPEL at this time. This is a good example, because they're not useful in Fedora. I'd argue they're not useful in RHEL either, SCLs come out ahead, because they can actually be installed in parallel. In Fedora, it makes sense to only have the latest stable, compatible with our libraries, available as a normal package.
Maybe Modularity for Fedora could be handled alongside the standard repos, instead of suddenly switching packages to modules, with an ever growing list of default modules. This way, RHEL devs could have gotten their toy into Fedora, but without disrupting Fedora.
I didn't really mean to make this about Modularity, so to get back on track.. I don't believe anyone in the Fedora community views the Fedora community itself as "unpaid labor". Most of the folks doing stuff that only benefits RHEL are Red Hat employees, and that makes sense. It's not some much of a versus scenario as it is that there are some things that are beneficial to both, and some things that are only beneficial to one side. We can work together for the things that are beneficial, but it makes no sense to damage Fedora for the benefit of RHEL, or the opposite.
At the very least, that's my opinion now. There may still be hope for me yet. ;)
On 14. 05. 20 14:37, Josh Boyer wrote:
- Modularity. Introduced in Fedora before RHEL, adopted into RHEL.
Having some growing pains, but open collaboration continues. RHEL usage is limited but provides value there. I won't claim yay on the technology, but I'll certainly say Yay! to the community interaction.
This was introduced in Fedora, ignored, then done in RHEL, and than partialy integrated into Fedora. Naturally, I won't claim yay on the technology, but certailny I won't yay on the community interaction either.
On Mon, Nov 4, 2019 at 8:59 AM Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek < zbyszek@in.waw.pl> wrote:
Dear all,
the semiannual exercise is upon us. FESCo candidates must submit an "interview" in which they answer a set of questions (but can also add whatever they want). The question whether we should have a new set of questions needs to be answered.
With the recent gitlab discussions pointing out that for newer volunteers that a lot of the infrastructure it very opaque to them, it may be good to not rely on abbreviations (FESCo) until it's defined and perhaps provide a link to their structure and purpose.
Fedora Engineering Steering Committee
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fesco/
Thanks, Richard
devel@lists.stg.fedoraproject.org
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Alexander Ploumistos -
Ben Cotton -
Dan Čermák -
Fabio Valentini -
John M. Harris Jr -
Josh Boyer -
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Miro Hrončok -
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Richard Shaw -
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Till Maas -
Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek