Peter Boy
Peter Boy
Personal Information
Birthday:
Home:	Bremen, Germany
Fedora-specific Information
FAS-Name:	pboy
Fedora-Mail:	pboy@fedoraproject.org
Miscellaneous Information
private Mail:	pboy AT fedoraproject.org
GPG-Key:	tbd
IRC:	@pboy:fedora.im (Matrix) on Freenode in
	#Fedora-Server #Fedora-Documentation
Badges (51)

Peter Boy

About Me

I’m a social scientist at University of Bremen, specialising in research methodology, statistics, and computational methods & infrastructure.

Aside from my teaching and research work, I managed the IT infrastructure of a network of excellence research institutes and highly funded Collaborative Research Centres. This made me responsible for the equipment and functionality of their basic working environment. Initially, I used IBM AIX machines for server, before deciding to use RHEL, Scientific Linux and Fedora instead.

Following the end of Scientific Linux, I migrated all the servers to Fedora Server Edition. Server Edition proved reliable and effective, as Scientific Linux had been.

As part of my research tasks, I have recently been working on web-based communication in science, public administration, and the health system, and the long-term maintenance of quality through software-supported procedures. I became involved in the development of a Java-base open-source Web content management system (CCM — a former Red Hat product) using Tomcat and jBoss/Wildfly application servers. This system is specifically designed to support the work of public administration, scientific and healthcare institutions, the latter specifically to empower self-supporting groups of patients and relatives in the healthcare sector. I took over project management a few years ago.

Personally, I have been using Fedora since the release of Fedora Core 1. For a long time, I happily used exclusively a Fedora desktop in research and teaching. However, when Gnome 3 was introduced to Fedora, I reluctantly switched to MacOS. Gnome Shell was too cumbersome for my daily work routines. I continued to use Fedora in Gnome classic mode for server administration and Java development activities.

What I'm Currently Working On in Fedora

Fedora Server Edition

In 2019/2020, I joined the newly formed Server Edition Working Group.

Initially, I concentrated on developing Fedora Server-specific documentation. But I soon expanded my activities to include community building and the further development and improvement of the Server Edition. My focus here is on users and usability, stability, reliability, low error rates, efficient administration, and safe data handling. And all this while ensuring the rapid introduction of the latest versions of the application software.

I share the goal and aspiration of the members of the Working Group to maintain Fedora Server as a reliable tool for use in production, despite the high rate of technical innovation and updates.

Fedora Docs

In 2022, I also participated in an initiative to revitalize Fedora Docs. My focus was on systematically and clearly restructuring the documentation (curation), creating easy-to-understand documentation and instructions for authors, and establishing procedures for systematically updating the documentation contents. I ultimately took on one of the three seats on the Docs Team Board with the specific task of content planning (writing) and curation of the documentation (editor).

We were able to achieve a significant improvement in documentation. But ultimately, our resources were too limited to maintain the tasks in the long term.

To prevent a new initiative from suffering from insufficient resources again and to revitalize Fedora Docs in the long term, I have developed a Fedora Docs 2025 Community Initiative together with Petr Bokoč. Such an initiative is based at the Fedora Council and is intended, among other things, to ensure the availability of the necessary resources.

The initiative was approved in November 2025. Since then, I have been one of the co-leads and a member of the Fedora Council for the duration of the initiative.