Elections/Questionnaire

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

1. If you could single-handedly change one thing about Fedora, what would it be and why?
2. Please name three things you plan to work on and realize while being on the Board or FESCo!
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?
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?
5. What is Fedora's place in the larger community with respect to other distributions?
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?
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?
8. What are your unique strengths and what are your weaknesses?
9. How will you make the work for in Fedora easier and more fun?

More

1. Who is Fedora for?
2. Should any steps be taken to make sure releases don't get as much last minute delays as in the past? If yes: which?
3. 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?
4. 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?
5. 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?
6. 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?
7. Please give three examples of other boards or communities you have participated in and the positive differences you made there.
8. Simple question: Among the two, do you prefer Gnome or KDE?
9. Do you think a Fedora Foundation is still worth pursuing? Why or Why not?
10. 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.
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 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.
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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)	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. 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. 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: Continuing the Secondary Architecture effort. Continue to try and encourage users to become contributors in a number of ways. 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)
Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore)	Secondary arches more widely accepted and worked on. EPEL moved to koji/bodhi requirements for new VCS
Kevin Fenzi (nirik)	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. I would like to try and see about increasing communication between the various Fedora support channels: IRC, forums and mailing lists. I would like to try and increase communication also between FESCo and the community.
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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.
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 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.
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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: We're making good steps here, but we still need to build automated QA infrastructure. Package Review: We need to streamline this process, and automate as 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.
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 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.
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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.
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 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.
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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.
Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore)	Make sure that those smaller groups inside fedora get heard. Provide a strong voice for secondary arches.
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.
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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.
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 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.
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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.
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 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.
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9. How will you make the work for in Fedora easier and more fun?
Tom Callaway (spot)	Less paperwork, less manual steps, more areas of opportunity. :)
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.
Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore)	I will try to make it simpler and more consistent.
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.
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10. Who is Fedora for?
Tom Callaway (spot)	That's the big question, isn't it! I truly believe that Fedora is flexible, in that you can make it work for your needs, but in the same breath, that there needs to be a well defined primary use target. This may be controversial, but I don't think that primary target is "Aunt Tillie, Desktop User, afraid of the Command Line". I think Fedora is more for a power-user, someone who is comfortable with using a computer, but also wants good tools (GUI and CLI) to help them be productive with their day to day tasks (Email, Web, Games, Development, Communication, Multimedia). I think Fedora is for folks who like to know how things work, even if they will never make a single code change.
Josh Boyer (jwb)	Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses... More seriously, this is a really hard question to answer.
Mike McGrath (mmcgrath)	Fedora should be for enthusiasts, hobbyists and people that are actually doing the work that ultimately becomes a free software product. Every Fedora user could be a contributor.
David Nalley (ke4qqq)	What I think you are really asking is 'What is Fedora's target demographic?' The people that Fedora should be targeting is contributors. This isn't to say the Fedora is a 'developer's distribution' necessarily, nor is it to say the contrary. What it does say is that it takes a ton of work, a huge portion of that volunteer, to make Fedora successful. That means, at least in my mind, we should stop trying to nail down where we are in the sea of free software and let the waves of contributors direct us by their actions. If we seek out and grow Fedora contributors we make Fedora more successful. Dennis Gilmore wrote 'I work really hard on those things I believe in.' in his nomination for the board, and I think that sentiment is true in large part all across Fedora. When people care about something, they work passionately at it. Fedora is for those passionate contributors. We're happy that others, like OLPC, Moblin, RHEL, and the millions of Fedora users across the globe like recognize the excellence that those passionate contributors make, but those are largely serendipitous.
Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore)	everyone
Kevin Fenzi (nirik)	Many folks. Early adopters. Folks who like new tech. Desktop users. Development server users. Many others.
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11. Should any steps be taken to make sure releases don't get as much last minute delays as in the past? If yes: which?
Tom Callaway (spot)	I think that Release Engineering makes every effort to try to minimize last minute delays, but some are simply unavoidable. With the exception of Fedora 10, which was delayed due to the security intrusion during the release cycle, I think we've had a better handle on what needs to be done to minimize "slips" in our release cycle. Improving the QA and bug triage earlier in the release process is key to minimizing last minute delays, and we're making positive progress in those areas.
Josh Boyer (jwb)	Possibly, yes. There is a Fedora Activity Day June 8-10 that will try and address some of this. I am participating in that and look forward to what we can come up with to help here.
Mike McGrath (mmcgrath)	More QA in earlier steps, earlier feature freeze. The former of which requires more people.
David Nalley (ke4qqq)	This is FESCo's domain, and not a Board issue. From a personal perspective, I'd love to see no delays, and I think some of the current discussions on fedora-devel about length of composes, time spent running updates, etc are beginning to show some of the growing pains that we are experiencing as a project. I look forward to seeing some of the novel approaches to dealing with this.
Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore)	As much as we can we should try to always improve how we do releases/ handle blocker bugs. but i fear we will always find last minute blockers.
Kevin Fenzi (nirik)	I'm not sure what could be done, aside from trying to slow fedora down. Delays happen. Perhaps we could place more resources on those areas that have caused delays in the past.
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12. 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?
Tom Callaway (spot)	[Disclaimer: I work for Red Hat, but they do not tell me what to say.] In general, I think that in almost every possible situation, Red Hat is content to let Fedora do whatever it needs to do to be successful. The only places where Red Hat steps in are areas where Fedora's actions would construe a legal, financial or security risk to Red Hat as a company, and these are few and far between. I think that outside of those conditions, the Fedora Board (and FESCo) should feel entirely unencumbered by Red Hat's interference, keeping in mind that Red Hat (and its employees) are major contributors.
Josh Boyer (jwb)	I don't understand this question. It seems to be predicated on the theory that Red Hat has some nefarious notions in store for Fedora, and I simply don't think that is the case. Fedora has existed for a number of years now, and during that time it has continually become more open and less Red Hat governed. I'd be happy to discuss it further if there were more concrete examples or concerns.
Mike McGrath (mmcgrath)	I think it's the FPL's position to fight for Fedora freedom wrt our primary provider. In particular I think our agreement with our contributors should protect each party equally.
David Nalley (ke4qqq)	As I said earlier I see the Board (and FESCo and every other governance body) as a guard rail. Ideally they never get in the way and are largely unnoticed by the vast majority. However, they serve an excellent purpose as a safety measure to keep things from going awry. As I mentioned earlier the bond with Red Hat is great for Fedora and at times bad for Fedora, even if it's only in perception. I see the various governance bodies as there to make it easy to contribute and get things done. To the extent that RH (or even groups within Fedora) makes that difficult, I definitely think that it's within their purview to try and fix the situation. I'll note that previous Boards dropped the onerous CLA process from something that often took weeks to complete to something that is click-through now. Another example is FESCo's relatively recent move to make getting sponsored as a packager easier, by limiting the rights that packagers have and creating a new class called provenpackager.
Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore)	I think we need to ensure that all people are free to do the work that interests them regardless of who there employer is.
Kevin Fenzi (nirik)	I'm not sure I understand the question. What sort of 'interference' ?
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13. 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?
Tom Callaway (spot)	I can't really talk to the FESCo management. I know that documentation is not fun to do, but it seems to me like there is room for improvement in that space. On the Board, we've worked hard to take good meeting notes with gobby, and then publish those notes on a timely basis for the entire community to see. We also have regular public meetings, and I think they have been extremely productive. In my role as Fedora Packaging Committee Chair, I've worked hard to ensure that as new guidelines are added (or old ones amended), an explanatory email is sent out to the development community, so that no one is surprised later on at an unexpected change.
Josh Boyer (jwb)	FYI there is a FESCo ticket opened to fix this very item. As a member of FESCo, I agree we screwed up earlier in the year in regards to meeting minutes and hopefully we'll come up with a good mechanism to get them written and published in a timely manner soon. In terms of the Board communications, I am not entirely sure what, if anything, more could be communicated. The Board discusses confidential material often, and I think John has done a good job with the meeting minutes so far. If I am elected to the Board, I will keep an eye on this issue and make sure that as much information as can be disclosed is.
Mike McGrath (mmcgrath)	I think too many people have their eyes in too many projects. If the FESCo meetings were important to someone, they are free to go to the meetings or log them. Meeting minutes don't force people to pay attention and if a contributor doesn't have time to read the meeting log, it's possible they shouldn't be involved with the FESCo workings anyway. I think more of our contributors should focus on fewer things and focus on the quality of those things, not the number of things they're involved in. Group to group communication can be a problem. There are technical fixes to this but also policy changes. I think there's room for better communication between groups, but I feel more accountability towards the group leaders for communication. Poelstra has done wonders in this respect and the release readiness meetings.
David Nalley (ke4qqq)	Having been responsible for meeting logs I can empathize with those doing the work that it's not easy to get done particularly with everything else going on in a meeting. That said such communication is vital, but for openness and just general communication. I've noticed that other organizations and even one of our SIGs uses a meeting bot, to record and publish meetings. That would help alleviate the situation you refer to specifically, but doesn't deal with all of it. I've noticed that the Board has engaged a non-member to handle publishing minutes from meetings, and that strikes me as a good idea, but perhaps not foolproof. As a contributor, I started in early 2006 and kept up with mailing list traffic and was on IRC for certain meetings. Until 2008 I never realized how much really went on in IRC. In some ways I think that's very efficient, in others I think it's unfortunate as it essentially hides a lot of the inner workings from people. Perhaps logging and posting minutes of key channels is the answer, but that's also a LOT of content, and I think it would largely go unread. At a minimum I think groups should be publishing at least informal agendas for meetings to the mailing list.
Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore)	Look into having a meeting logging irc bot. that will post minutes for us making them consistent between the different groups within fedora.
Kevin Fenzi (nirik)	Sadly, this was a failed attempt at spreading the log taking out. We need to be much more clear who is responsible for the logs and minutes, and I think we should require they be posted the same day as the meeting, if not right after. It's usually much easier to just do them as the meeting happens than try and go back and do them later anyhow. I would be happy to just do them moving foward if that's needed.
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14. 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?
Tom Callaway (spot)	Can I have 6 extra hours each day? :) This is definitely something that could use some work, and I would encourage anyone who has a suggestion for cleanup or reorganization (without making changes to the actual guidelines) of the Packaging Guidelines to talk to me.
Josh Boyer (jwb)	Encourage the people that take interest in that. I'll be honest and say that at a personal level, I can't see me having the time to focus on cleaning it up myself. However I would certainly want to make sure that those willing to do that work aren't hindered in any way.
Mike McGrath (mmcgrath)	I don't think that's the boards job, so running for the board I don't feel that I'd get involved unless there were a major issue, like packages no longer getting accepted into Fedora. As far as new contributors I feel more documentation is required on the part of the major groups. Podcasts, video casts to welcome people are one idea I've been kicking around. In particular Fedora is so large that people get overwhelmed and have no idea what to expect. I'd like to see the groups spend more time on new people expectations.
David Nalley (ke4qqq)	This is a FESCo issue, though watching some of the involvement with FPC and the Docs Project to accomplish the consistency and ease of use has been interesting. Personally I think this is an issue everyone agrees on, and there are already efforts underway (although surely slowed due to the impending release) to get this accomplished and I think it should run its course.
Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore)	Move them out of the wiki into a CMS perhaps, or perhaps look at making them into something that can be printed as a book/pdf.
Kevin Fenzi (nirik)	Part of the problem with a wiki approach is that things get slowly modified over time and overall organization gets lost. I think in order to do better in this area we need to step back and come up with a plan for reorganizing things.
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15. 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?
Tom Callaway (spot)	I think that some people on the Fedora mailing list have gone beyond respectful and reasonable discussion/disagreement in their comments, and unfortunately, were creating a negative environment for people to work in. I proposed that our moderation policies be based around the idea that we should all "be excellent to each other", even when we disagree. I think when people start to make personal attacks against individuals or projects, that goes over the line. You can get the same message across with: "I feel strongly that the idea that you have proposed is not good for Fedora, because foo and bar and baz." as opposed to: "Your idea is F*%$&^% stupid, and only a *&(^%& would think it was good." We'll have to wing it as we go along, but I'm hopeful that this new moderation policy will help people to think twice before they decide to say something that they may later regret.
Josh Boyer (jwb)	There is a balance to be struck. Criticism of the project is often one of the best ways to help us grow, but there are times where it can go too far. And I'm not sure you can really quantify and codify what the boundaries are. Frankly, I think even the specter of moderation is likely to help. It can be surprising how often a gentle reminder to be polite can work. I also think that as a community we should trust our elected leadership to do the right thing. If they aren't, and there are egregious examples of abuse by the leadership, I'm fairly confident that they can't be censored from the internet completely and they'll be pointed out. I am not worried in the slightest about this.
Mike McGrath (mmcgrath)	I'm against censorship in any form. If trolls want to be trolls, people can ban them on their own via mail filters, etc.
David Nalley (ke4qqq)	Wow that's a lot of questions - I'll be honest and say I really dislike the idea of moderation, and do so for several reasons. Censoring some or all 'bad speech' is a zero sum game. And it's always going to infuriate someone. The worst offense that censorship brings is waste. Some of the most talented, hardest working people in Fedora are the same people who are likely to have to moderate, what a waste of precious cycles. At initial blush, I'd almost guess that something akin to greylisting might be employed once a thread reaches some arbitrary number (100 is the number sticking in my head). So essentially once a thread hits that arbitrary number, messages for that thread are rejected for 36-48 hours. This doesn't directly solve the problem of people not 'being excellent to each other' but does make the medicine a bit less painful, and hopefully automated. Every instance of 'bad behavior in recent memory seems to have occurred in massive threads that can't seem to die. Perhaps that's a stupid suggestion, after all it's 1am, and I'm still up working on these questions. Realistically there is no good solution to people behaving badly in a volunteer community, you are essentially left choosing the difference between multiple evils.
Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore)	I think there is no right or wrong answer here. people being rude or argumentitive need to know that its not there right to be that way with others. I think sometimes we need to think if what we are about to send is something that would be considered appropriate if that person was in front of us. a little more thought about our actions is a good thing.
Kevin Fenzi (nirik)	I am thinking we should not do moderation on that level. Instead we should make fedora-devel a better place by becoming more technical and usefull. When someone makes a post thats an attack or other, we should stop responding to them. I think we can lead by example here, as well as stopping feeding the trolls and non productive folks. I note that since this proposal, the list has been a good deal more tame. Is it the threat of moderation? People realizing they were not adding to the discussion? Or just more techincal on-topic posts? I'm not sure, but I think moderating is a pretty slippery slope.
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16. Please give three examples of other boards or communities you have participated in and the positive differences you made there.
Tom Callaway (spot)	I'm currently a seated member of the Fedora Board, and I have previously served on FESCo. In addition, I'm leading the Fedora Legal effort, and helped to build the Licensing guidelines that help ensure that Fedora remains committed to Free Software. I'm also the chair of the Fedora Packaging Committee, and have helped create the Fedora Packaging Guidelines.
Josh Boyer (jwb)	Rel-eng: I have generally tried to help rel-eng overall, focusing lately on updates pushing and powerpc. FESCo: I've been on FESCo for quite some time now, and I can't think of a singular instance of making a huge impact. I'm OK with that, as FESCo is really about the long term impacts. Fedora user: I've been a Fedora user since FC1 and have tested and helped with a number of bugs along the way. And yes, this counts. The Fedora user community is one of the most important communities we have :).
Mike McGrath (mmcgrath)	I've never been involved in another board and my first community experience was with Fedora. I've committed my time to it. I've communicated with many other projects, like SuSE for example and smolt. The key is to find common goals and work towards them. Be polite, empathetic, and understand there are multiple ways to do something. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
David Nalley (ke4qqq)	• NA Ambassadors - Along with Clint Savage, John Rose, Brian Powell and many others helped drive a resurgence in the NA Ambassador Community. We went from leaning (some might say leeching) on Red Hat to produce our swag, send RHT speakers, etc to truly driving the schedule, doubling and in some cases tripling our appearances at LUGs, BarCamps, and conferences, filling speaking slots with community members rather than contributors from RH who are paid to speak. We also greatly improved our swag efficiency and handle making all of it. UCLUG - Steering committee member. Along with others pushed a revitalization that in some cases increased our attendance by an order of a magnitude. Creating content that appealed both to new users and graybeards alike. Pushed multiple community outreach programs. Southeast Linuxfest Foundation - Secretary of the Foundation - organized (well still in the process really) and help build a regional Linux conference in the Southeast that appears will successfully happen on June 13th. Blue Ridge Amateur Radio Society - multiple term vice president - led community outreach with non-technical groups as well as government and other radio groups. Grew organization to the largest of its kind in the state, and putting on the largest amateur radio fest in the state.
Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore)	OLPC, Spacewalk
Kevin Fenzi (nirik)	Well, I am quite active in #fedora trying to help users there. I have also taken to trying to help out people on fedoraforum. I am also active in some of my local LUG groups (nclug.org and lug.boulder.co.us).
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17. Simple question: Among the two, do you prefer Gnome or KDE?
Tom Callaway (spot)	For most things, I prefer GNOME, although, I do keep both installed on my primary workstation.
Josh Boyer (jwb)	I don't prefer either really. I find likes and dislikes with both. This is not a political answer either. On my machines, I typically run the default Gnome install, but use some KDE applications such as k3b and amarok. I find that I reinstall machines (for testing!) too often to really bother changing defaults or being tied to a particular environment.
Mike McGrath (mmcgrath)	KDE.
David Nalley (ke4qqq)	vi - ohhh wait that's the next question. At the moment I am using Gnome, though I have been one of the KDE-faithful for most of my Linux desktop 'career'.
Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore)	KDE
Kevin Fenzi (nirik)	Xfce. ;)
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18. Do you think a Fedora Foundation is still worth pursuing? Why or Why not?
Tom Callaway (spot)	I do not think it is worth pursuing at this time. The problems that originally caused us to stop pursuing that option still exist: For patents, OIN does that job for us, and Red Hat is already a member so Fedora gets those benefits. For legal coverage, Red Hat Legal are experts in the fields that Fedora needs coverage in. A independent foundation makes it far more difficult for us to directly leverage their expertise. For financial reasons, a US non-profit cannot take the majority of their funding from one source, and it is very unlikely that Fedora could be self-sustaining in the near future. Our hosting and bandwidth costs alone are very significant. I also do not feel that Red Hat has interfered with Fedora in any significant way, and that the Fedora Board remains the primary decision maker and governance body for Fedora.
Josh Boyer (jwb)	I have no insight to the original pursuits so I'm not very familiar with the problems that were encountered. It would be a bit silly of me to state an opinion without having some amount of knowledge on the issue.
Mike McGrath (mmcgrath)	I wish we had a Fedora Foundation though the details of that are fuzzy to me. It would be convenient to have a separate legal entity to Red Hat.
David Nalley (ke4qqq)	I do think it is. The real benefit is the efficient handling of money. A number of initiatives within Fedora hinge on our being able to deal with money, and those initiatives (such as the Fedora store) are routinely blocked as legally Fedora is effectively a non-entity, or at best the spawn of Red Hat. I don't think, unless things changed dramatically, that there is a possibility for a US-based non-profit entity, but there are a number of different strategies that might be available. Fedora EMEA e.V. makes tremendous use of it's organization. There are a number of thorny issues, from financial, to trademark, to even the relationship with Red Hat that need to be resolved and researched. That said I think that continued exploration of this matter is important, and could be a boon for Fedora in many ways.
Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore)	I think it would need to be evaluated if we were going to get resources donated on the same level as Red Hat does from other companies. Until we have that level of investment then its extra overhead for little gain
Kevin Fenzi (nirik)	No. I think it would not help any, and might loose us support from our biggest supporter.
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19. Should kernel module packages be allowed in Fedora?
Tom Callaway (spot)	Nope. I think that there are many reasons for this, but the primary one is that it encourages people to not get that code merged into the upstream Linux kernel, where it truly belongs.
Josh Boyer (jwb)	No. The code belongs in the upstream kernel, where it would get into Fedora by default.
Mike McGrath (mmcgrath)	I have no opinion on this except that if the module is good enough for Fedora, it should ultimately be sent upstream.
David Nalley (ke4qqq)	This is a FESCo issue and not a Board issue. I personally wouldn't want to see kernel modules in Fedora's repos.
Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore)	no they should not, we should get them into fedora's kernel package and upstream. If there is little to no chance that a module will be acceptable upstream i dont see why it should be allowed in fedora as an out of kernel rpm module. keeping a module in sync with fedora kernels is alot of work and leads to many broken deps and frustrated users.
Kevin Fenzi (nirik)	No. If they are not good enough for the upstream kernel, why should they be good enough for our users ? I think kmods have their place in rpmfusion and other 3rd party repos, but I hope someday they will all be gone and no longer needed.
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