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Revision as of 23:13, 3 June 2008 by Pfrields (talk | contribs) (Fix anchoring)

FPL Goals

The goals for the Fedora Project Leader are varied and often overlap with the work of other Fedora functionaries such as the Fedora Engineering Manager, the Fedora Program Manager, and Community Architecture. As the face or voice of Fedora, the FPL is accountable for everything that happens in Fedora, but the FPL must have some measurable individual achievements besides simply participating in discussions or rubber-stamping ideas.

FY09/Q1 (and first 90 days)

Link here

Foster a broader audience for Fedora. This is not just boosting the number of users, since Fedora is about enabling contributors. It might mean creating new partnerships between Fedora and corporate entities that enhance our ability to drive the adoption of FOSS in places other than the user dekstop. Help Community Architecture build the Marketing plan for F9 to create a better organized message around Fedora, such as "The Future, First," showing off best-of-breed features, etc. Does it exist? Yes. Not only have we made significant progress , but I worked personally on developing the talking points that I then used throughout F9 pre-brief and release interviews in Q1.
Work with those responsible for Red Hat Summit planning on the first instance of FUDCon at the Summit. What did I do? In Q1, I've worked successfully on setting up space, arranging for refreshments, power and A/V support, signs, and some of the logistics for Summit interaction.
Build Fedora brand recognition and ascendancy in the open source community by making public appearances, giving interviews, and performing other key communication duties. What did I do? I've given a large number of interviews in the press, appeared at the FOSE trade show (with many more planned for Q2), and to community groups such as FredLUG and UMLUG.
Lower contributor barriers. It is too hard for collateral contributors to join Fedora, but the nature of the process requires some interaction with complex applications. Automating these processes makes Fedora more attractive for a larger number of contributors. Sell the idea of a JoinKit to the Desktop team. Encourage them to contribute resources to ease the join process for collateral contributors (non-developers) Has the project started? Not yet. However, the programmatic APIs developed by Fedora Infrastructure do make this more achievable, along with the FAS2 and the outlook for SSO.
Work with Red Hat Legal to establish guidelines for implementing the lowest possible CLA barriers. Do they exist? In progress. Working with Legal on how to improve this process and make sure the community is clear on why we have one, what the terms mean, etc.
Clarify roles where needed to improve direction and performance of Fedora. It is not always clear where issues need to be decided in Fedora. The will of the community needs to be maintained, while minimizing the chances for initiatives to stall while waiting for an owner. Drive adoption of a FESCo charter to clarify relative roles of the Fedora Project Board and FESCo in Feora's technical direction. Does it exist? In progress.
Improve Board transparency and effectiveness by holding monthly public meetings via an appropriate channel. Do they exist? Yes.
Develop key technical and management abilities. The FPL needs to maintain a level of skill and knowledge of Engineering department processes, platform capabilities, and leadership. Make significant progress on RH Engineer Accreditation, including at least 2 courses from that curriculum. Did I do it? I took one course thus far, hoping to fit in another by the end of the quarter.
Complete at least 1 leadership course from Red Hat University, possibly web-based if relocation has not occurred by 45 days into the quarter or 75 days into the new hire period. Did I do it? No.
Continue personal contribution to Fedora. The FPL maintains a better community standing by participating in one or more parts of the Project as an equal contributor. Although this work should be secondary to achieving the broader project goals, it's important for the FPL to have context for decision-making and to understand contributor barriers. Continue to participate in ongoing Documentation Project work. What did I do? Worked on Release Notes and Installation Guide, including documenting process for later contributors to follow. This process documentation still needs to be integrated into our formal publications.
Continue to maintain assigned Fedora packages in cooperation with other community developers. What did I do? Maintained nautilus-open-terminal and my other packages. Also participated in getting out new opal, ekiga, and fedora-release-notes packages for F-9, and helping with istanbul.

The Rest of FY09

Link here

Foster a broader awareness of and audience for Fedora. This is not just boosting the number of users, since Fedora is about enabling contributors. It means creating new partnerships between Fedora and corporate entities that enhance our ability to drive the adoption of FOSS in places other than the user dekstop. It also means making sure the FOSS world knows about Red Hat's enormous contributions in the FOSS space. Help determine the progress toward a compelling feature set in Fedora. Develop a theme for the upcoming F10 release and preliminary ideas for where to go post-RHEL 6. Rally the internal and external community around them. Do they exist?
Work with Engineering Services personnel (Woods, Poelstra) to unite QA and triage programs and build more community participation by documenting what people can do easily. Q2 - Does comprehensive documentation of QA processes exist where contributors can see and use it?

Q3 - Has the number of core contributors increased substantially?
Work with RHT Marketing to produce PR media about Emerging Technologies products such as ovirt, Thincrust, and the upcoming Fedora community grid -- each at an appropriate time frame in FY09. Emphasize that these are RHT seeded upstreams in which the entire FOSS community can participate. For each quarter, produce one or two of these stories about a different technology that RHT has committed to the FOSS community.
Work with the FEM and RHX to bring at least one ISV into the Fedora Project formally. This means getting their software into Fedora, and having the ISV personnel maintain the software for Fedora and/or EPEL. Because this effort depends on outside participation, it may end up spanning more than one quarter. Q2/Q3 - Did it happen?
Once ensconced in Westford, set up a schedule of producing short videos on new technologies. We don't need a whole crew to do this, just a video camera and a few hours of time. By Q3, produce the first one and have a routine in place for one or two every quarter.
Lower contributor barriers. It is now easier for contributors to get accounts, but the nature of the process requires some interaction with complex applications. Automating or documenting these processes makes Fedora more attractive for a larger number of contributors. Drive the Fedora Infrastructure team to roll out Asterisk solutions for the community to communicate more effectively. Pilot with Board meetings and move on to ad hoc teleconference capability. Q2 - Does it exist and integrate with SSO?

Q3 - Can project contributors schedule ad hoc teleconferences?
Drive production of a capability to do more automated smoke testing of the distribution using existing technologies like libvirt, cobbler, and Dogtail. This really needs to be done in the month or two immediately following release, since it will be needed in the testing phases. Full development probably requires a couple release cycles to complete. Q2 - Has this project started?

Q4 - Can we do automated Anaconda smoke testing of most or all of the test matrix?
Clarify roles where needed to improve direction and performance of Fedora. It is not always clear where issues need to be decided in Fedora. The will of the community needs to be maintained, while minimizing the chances for initiatives to stall while waiting for an owner. Drive Fedora Documentation team to maintain the rest of the project's material, rather than revamping every six months basic user guides already available elsewhere. Trimming and maintaining the wiki will provide the most impact to user and developer support with the lowest drag. Does this team effort exist?
Establish guidelines for operation of the Fedora Board vs. FESCo, to keep technical direction from being mired in managerial issues and vice versa. Do they exist?
Develop key technical and management abilities. The FPL needs to maintain a level of skill and knowledge of Engineering department processes, platform capabilities, and leadership. Renew RHCE by Q3. Did I do it?
Finish Engineering certification curriculum by Q3. Did I do it?
Continue personal contribution to Fedora. The FPL maintains a better community standing by participating in one or more parts of the Project as an equal contributor. Although this work should be secondary to achieving the broader project goals, it's important for the FPL to have context for decision-making and to understand contributor barriers. Turn current auxiliary documentation in Fedora hosted projects, and work on an in-distro tool that is RPM packaged and which provides rel-eng the capabilities needed to bring in proper release docs automatically. Enlist participation and help from the Red Hat Documentation team in Engineering Services to strengthen their community participation. Did I (help) do it?
Continue to maintain assigned Fedora packages in cooperation with other community developers. What did I do?