Board nominations

The nomination period is CLOSED
The nomination period ended at 23:59:59 UTC on November 13, 2012.

The following elections will take place in November/December 2012:

• Fedora Project Board (two seats)
• FESCo (Engineering) (four seats)
• FAmSCo (Ambassadors) (three seats)
• Fedora 19 Name (separate schedule from the committee elections)

All dates and times noted are UTC time.

Fedora Board Elections November/December 2012

For the last election, please look at NominationsMayJune2012

There are two seats up for elections this year:

• E1: currently held by Christoph Wickert
• E2: currently held Jaroslav Reznik

More information on board seats history is available here

Eligible Voters
Voting eligibility is determined by a community member's Fedora Account System (FAS) memberships.

To vote for the Fedora Project Board you must have cla_done in FAS.

Candidate Template

Introduction

• Goal statement:
• Past work summary:
• Future plans:
• Anything else you want to add:

Questionnaire

CLOSED
The answering period is now closed (after November 18 2359 UTC). Received responses are below:

• What is the most important part of being on the Fedora Board?
• Do you see any needed change(s) for the Fedora Board?
• If elected then what will be your priorities?
• Why did you choose to be apart of the Fedora Project?
• What will you be able to accomplish if elected, that you couldn't as an unelected contributor?

Candidates

John Dulaney (j_dulaney)

Introduction

• Mission statement: To promote Fedora in my role as an ambassador; to continue to develop test criteria for new features coming into Fedora and evolve the QA process as needed to fit with the evolution of Fedora. I will also strive to make sure that Fedora remains at the forefront of technology and to be the best Free distribution of Linux.
• Past work summary I am a member of the Fedora Quality Assurance team. I help write test cases for new features, I am a proven tester (testing critical path software updates), I test new releases starting prior to branching, and I help establish release criteria. I am also a Fedora Ambassador, especially within the Fayetteville region. I spread knowledge of Linux in general and Fedora in particular and inform people that they do have a choice for Freedom.
• Future plans: Strive to improve the testing of Fedora; both personally and collectively throughout the QA team, to continue to educate people on the advantages of Linux and Free Software, and to continue to test Fedora.

Questionnaire

• What is the most important part of being on the Fedora Board?

• Do you see any needed change(s) for the Fedora Board?

• If elected then what will be your priorities?

• Why did you choose to be apart of the Fedora Project?

• What will you be able to accomplish if elected, that you couldn't as an unelected contributor?

Dan Mashal (dan408)

Introduction

• Mission statement: To make Fedora better in any way I possibly can for users, sysadmins, and developers.

• Past work summary:

Package maintainer:
-BitchX and ScrollZ IRC clients
-MATE Desktop (official feature of Fedora 18) MATE Desktop
My packages

QA team/Triager/Bugzapper/Proventester:
Fedora 17 (Beefy Miracle)
Fedora 18 (Spherical Cow)

Ambassador:
-Held Fedora 17 release party in Walnut Creek, CA.
-Spoke at Silicon Valley Linux Users Group - Aug 1, 2012
-Hosted puppetconf 2012 Fedora booth
-Hosted OLPC Summit 2012 Fedora booth.
-Spoke at Silicon Valley Linux Users Group - Nov 1, 2012

• Future plans:

1) Improve communication between groups within Fedora.
2) To make Fedora the "cool" distro to use again.
3) To make Fedora easier to use for everyone.
4) To make it more accessible for the every day person.
5) To make Fedora the #1 free operating system on the planet.

Whether or not this can be accomplished as a board member, I'll do my best to try to get these things accomplished.

• Anything else you want to add: The first time I installed Linux it was Slackware in 1996. Since then I had my first encounter with Red Hat Linux was version 5. I have run Fedora on production servers. Fedora is like my 2nd job and my passion and I want to see it be the best distribution it possibly can be.

People I'd like to thank along the way whether I am elected or not: adamw, rdieter, MarkDude, leigh123linux, spot, nirik, inode0, rbergeron, jreznik, mrunge, bochecha, limb, elad661, quaid, lh, randomuser, dcr226, fenrus02, stefano-k, nmarques, perberos, panasnyc, caf, flashback, Amanas, dramsey, FranciscoD, randomuser, dcr226, NiveusLuna, masta, jds2001, dgilmore, nb, cwickert.

By no means is that a list of "you people should vote for me", just a thank you for helping me even get here. Thanks.

Questionnaire

• What is the most important part of being on the Fedora Board?

The most important part of being on the Fedora Board, to me at least, is the ability to have a say in the core strategic philosophy of Fedora.

• Do you see any needed change(s) for the Fedora Board?

Yes. I believe That the board should be more involved decisions on core changes that affect the end user.

For example, the decision about the complete redesign of Anaconda should have been looked at a lot more closely than it was. It has caused Fedora 18 to be delayed over and over again due to the amount of bugs that it has. Anaconda in Fedora 18 is both harder to use and is actually less functional than Anaconda in Fedora 17.

I believe that the board should also be responsible to make sure that communication is improved between all Fedora teams.

For example, the change to systemd/systemd-logind has affected many package maintainers and upstream developers. Something that worked fine before now no longer works and upstream developers and packagers have had to scramble to make their software work with the recent changes in Fedora 18.

• If elected then what will be your priorities?

To ensure that the boards maintains good strategic goals, transparent philosophies, communication between teams, and ensure overall communication to the end user.

• Why did you choose to be apart of the Fedora Project?

Why not? I have been welcomed with open arms. I joined the Fedora project as a member of the QA team. Even after running Fedora and RHEL as a System Administrator contributing to Fedora has taught me so much that I didn't know before and it has translated in to being a better System Administrator. Fedora has introduced me in to a social circle of extremely intelligent people that I would have not known had I not joined.

As a System Administrator I have run Fedora servers and keeping up to date with Fedora is important as well, since almost every company I have worked for runs RHEL or CentOS servers.

• What will you be able to accomplish if elected, that you couldn't as an unelected contributor?

As an unelected contributor I felt that my opinion didn't really matter that much. I feel like being elected to the board that my opinion will have a much greater weight than it previously did as a member of the QA or Ambassador teams.

Michael Scherer (misc)

Introduction

• Mission statement: Make sure the Fedora community grow and run as smoothly as possible, and to make sure thi is a welcoming environment
• Past work summary:
  • coder on Fedora-review and rpmlint project and various others automated QA tools ( mostly for others distributions )
  • frequent presenter and helper for the Paris LUG for various distribution during the monthly LUG meeting, and for the various Fedora party organized since 3/4 years
  • member of the proventester group
  • serial package reviewer ( 60 since april 2012 ), helped on the Openshift Origin feature as tester and reviewer
  • founding member, packager representative, board member and secretary for 1 year of another linux distribution project (Mageia), left in April 2012 for private reasons.
  • packager and community sysadmin for Mandriva/Mageia since 2003, taking care of package like python and puppet, for Fedora since 2010, Linux user since 2002.

• Future plans:

I do not have any future plans to present, because to me, the board is here to serve the project, and in practice hold as much power as people who are wanting to do the job give to him. So anything I could or would do could be done without being on the board and so not related to my candidacy. Therefore, my goal is more to listen, help to solve issues for others, and provides guidance and advice based on my experience of community and free software.

• Anything else you want to add:

While my job is not related to Fedora ( I am just a part time sysadmin ), I must disclose that my employer is currently the main sponsor of Fedora. Also, I must confess that I was convinced to run for this election by a few people who will recognize themselves.

Questionnaire

• What is the most important part of being on the Fedora Board?

I think the most important part is to not be needed by people to do their work, and yet still be here if they need help, ie the delicate balance etween absent and yet present. People work faster and better when there is no roadblock, and while there is a natural tendency for anybody to wait on "higher authority", this is not ideal for the goals of the Fedora project ( most notably "First" ).

• Do you see any needed change(s) for the Fedora Board?

A needed change, no, I think the system work good enough so far to not need any radical changes. But the fact that almost no one wanted to be candidate for this year election until the last moment is rather strange and should IMHO be looked at, even if I have no idea on where to start or even if that's something that requires a change on the Fedora Board. I must confess that as a contributor and user, I have so far seen no issues with the Board.

• If elected then what will be your priorities?

My priority would be to make sure the project can be sustainable and grow ( even if I do not believe in a infinite contributor growth, sooner or later, we will hit a maximum on this part, and what to do at that moment is IMHO a challenge that we may not have anticipated )

• Why did you choose to be apart of the Fedora Project?

Free software work mainly because people participate, and I always tried to give back to the projects I use and to the free software ecosystem in general, as . I currently use Fedora on my desktop for the innovation who allow me to keep my skills up to date, and because the strict checking of licenses who permit me to trust the software I use day to day. So to me, it was normal to contribute back under various forms, from support in LUGs to package reviews and bug reports or QA for Fedora.

• What will you be able to accomplish if elected, that you couldn't as an unelected contributor?

I will be disappointing, but the answer is likely "not much". I do not think the board hold much power to do something except in very specific areas. The board cannot force volunteers to do any work if no one want to do it. So the only work that would be accomplished if I am elected will be done by others who will have more free time to do it if the board and the project is running fine.

Jaroslav Reznik (jreznik)

Introduction

• Mission statement: To attract new contributors (people/fellow teams/upstreams etc.) to join the Fedora community, in both technical and non-technical areas of Fedora, to act as a mirror what we are now and what we should be.
• Past work summary: Since I have joined Fedora Community I've touched a lot of it's core parts - from developer side as Fedora KDE SIG member, packager, system configuration etc.; community as Ambassador for Czech Republic and EMEA and now management as a guy with a head on release spike and (current) Board member.
• Future plans: Open the Board to the community (as we did with public IRC meetings, public release names review) and as stated in the Mission statement attract new so called "do-ers" as we need "a fresh blood" to continue the work in a different Fedora bodies (FESCo, FAmSCo, Board, CWG etc.).

Questionnaire

• What is the most important part of being on the Fedora Board?

To breath for Fedora? But seriously - the most important part is to be on the Fedora Board and should be for other folks too - as you could see, we usually have a problem with filling all seats with enough candidates (it's great there are three more people running now). Not running for Board just to be there but to know, that everyone can do it and everyone will be considered by contributors to be elected. Do not worry, run for it!

• Do you see any needed change(s) for the Fedora Board?

Board is opening - that's good sign. Two years ago, meetings were private calls only, now we have public IRC meetings combined with private calls. It would be great, to minimize the "private" part more. It does not go well with our foundations (on the other hand, sometimes we have to...).

• If elected then what will be your priorities?

While reading the elections discussions, we (and me as a Board member) failed in communication - when Mizmo was on Board, she established Board blog, I contributed that times too but after the blog was cancelled, we/I did not try to fix it. This would be my top priority - to start the blog again and to assure that all meeting minutes are published. It looks like boring secretary job but it's important one.

• Why did you choose to be apart of the Fedora Project?

I expect it's "a part" not "apart" ;-)

For me, my journey to be a part of Fedora Project started years ago, I was RHL 5.x user, then Fedora Core user but one day I just got crazy from some system configuration tool misbehaving. And I quit Fedora immediately instead of fixing the issue. Now after years, I know, it was mistake and another day, a few years after, I was hired by Red Hat to fix system configuration tools. Paradox of life! If I could time travel, I'd choose to be a part of Fedora from the beginning :)

• What will you be able to accomplish if elected, that you couldn't as an unelected contributor?

I hope there are no differences in the terms of what Board and "unelected" contributors could do within the project - and it's the main strength of our community. Active members doing the work should lead the project, period. And Board is more a partner to these efforts. That's what I'd like to see (and it could be accomplished from Board ;-).

Buddhike Chandradeepa Kurera (bckurera)

Introduction

• Mission statement: Expanding the Fedora Project while Preserving the free culture and the diversity with in Fedora project.
• Past work summary:
  • Member of FAmSCo in F18 Cycle
  • Co-Admin - Fedora Summer Coding Group (Administering GSoC/ GCI 2012)
  • Managing Free Media membership
  • Budget Wrangler for APAC
  • Fedora Ambassador
  • Event Liaison (APAC) - Design Team

• Future plans:
  • I would like to focus the groth of the project since it is required to gain more and new contribution.
  • Support implementing/ maintaining policies which are crucial to preserve the free culture of the project and the diversity with in Fedora project.
  • Actively participate decision making process with in the project and extending relationships with external entities such as local communities and other free software entities.

• Anything else you want to add: I have served 6 months (F18 cycle) in FAmSCo and able to achieve some goals and able to represent Fellow Fedora Ambassadors needs. I ll make sure if I get elected I ll do my best for the Project and fulfill my responsibility.

Questionnaire

• What is the most important part of being on the Fedora Board?

In my view, Fedora board is managing the Fedora project shaping it and leading it. As being part of the board I would be able to actively engage with such. Then the most important thing is it represent the whole project, whole contributors.So it would be a representation through all parts of the project. Which practically make facilitation to the whole project is feasible.

• Do you see any needed change(s) for the Fedora Board?

Not that major changes. But I would like to see more interconnections/good communication flow between Board and the committees(FAmSCo and FESCo) and contributors.

• If elected then what will be your priorities?

The highest priority is to facilitate the project preserving free culture with in the project and it is diversity. Because as I believe those two factors helped Fedora to grow and sustain. Most important that is where our whole creativity was born and which I believe.

• Why did you choose to be apart of the Fedora Project?

The answer is simple, I believe in Free Culture and fedora is believe in Free Culture too.

• What will you be able to accomplish if elected, that you couldn't as an unelected contributor?

I think what mean here is "why this post". The reason is to represent and facilitate the whole community which is not that much possible being a contributor. I represented fellow FAms in F18 FAmSCo and this is the time to represent whole community being a member of the board. I m willing to take this chance and responsibility.