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|Mike McGrath (mmcgrath) | |Mike McGrath (mmcgrath) | ||
|I think a better focus and more defined project goal will go a long way | |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. | ||
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Revision as of 17:23, 5 June 2009
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
- If you could single-handedly change one thing about Fedora, what would it be and why?
- Please name three things you plan to work on and realize while being on the Board or FESCo!
- 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?
- 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?
- What is Fedora's place in the larger community with respect to other distributions?
- 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?
- 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?
- What are your unique strengths and what are your weaknesses?
- How will you make the work for in Fedora easier and more fun?
More
- Who is Fedora for?
- Should any steps be taken to make sure releases don't get as much last minute delays as in the past? If yes: which?
- 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?
- 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?
- 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?
- 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?
- Please give three examples of other boards or communities you have participated in and the positive differences you made there.
- Simple question: Among the two, do you prefer Gnome or KDE?
- Do you think a Fedora Foundation is still worth pursuing? Why or Why not?
- 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. |
| Kevin Fenzi (nirik) | |
| 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 Kofler (Kevin_Kofler) | |
| Adam Miller (maxamillion) | |
| x. Lorem ipsum | |
| Bill Nottingham (notting) | |
| Jens Petersen (juhp) | |
| Andreas Thienemann (ixs) | |
| Seth Vidal (skvidal) | |
| Ian Weller (ianweller) | |
| Christoph Wickert (cwickert) | |
| David Woodhouse (dwm) | |
| Return to top | |
| 2. Please name three things you plan to work on and realize while being on the Board or FESCo! | |
| Tom Callaway (spot) | 1. 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. 2. 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. 3. 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:
1) Continuing the Secondary Architecture effort. 2) Continue to try and encourage users to become contributors in a number of ways. 3) 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) | |
| Kevin Fenzi (nirik) | |
| Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore) | Secondary arches more widely accepted and worked on.
EPEL moved to koji/bodhi requirements for new VCS |
| Kevin Kofler (Kevin_Kofler) | |
| Adam Miller (maxamillion) | |
| x. Lorem ipsum | |
| Bill Nottingham (notting) | |
| Jens Petersen (juhp) | |
| Andreas Thienemann (ixs) | |
| Seth Vidal (skvidal) | |
| Ian Weller (ianweller) | |
| Christoph Wickert (cwickert) | |
| David Woodhouse (dwm) | |
| Return to top | |
| 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. |
| Kevin Fenzi (nirik) | |
| 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 Kofler (Kevin_Kofler) | |
| Adam Miller (maxamillion) | |
| x. Lorem ipsum | |
| Bill Nottingham (notting) | |
| Jens Petersen (juhp) | |
| Andreas Thienemann (ixs) | |
| Seth Vidal (skvidal) | |
| Ian Weller (ianweller) | |
| Christoph Wickert (cwickert) | |
| David Woodhouse (dwm) | |
| Return to top | |
| 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 infrastructure.
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.
|
| Kevin Fenzi (nirik) | |
| 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 Kofler (Kevin_Kofler) | |
| Adam Miller (maxamillion) | |
| x. Lorem ipsum | |
| Bill Nottingham (notting) | |
| Jens Petersen (juhp) | |
| Andreas Thienemann (ixs) | |
| Seth Vidal (skvidal) | |
| Ian Weller (ianweller) | |
| Christoph Wickert (cwickert) | |
| David Woodhouse (dwm) | |
| Return to top | |
| 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. |
| Kevin Fenzi (nirik) | |
| 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 Kofler (Kevin_Kofler) | |
| Adam Miller (maxamillion) | |
| x. Lorem ipsum | |
| Bill Nottingham (notting) | |
| Jens Petersen (juhp) | |
| Andreas Thienemann (ixs) | |
| Seth Vidal (skvidal) | |
| Ian Weller (ianweller) | |
| Christoph Wickert (cwickert) | |
| David Woodhouse (dwm) | |
| Return to top | |
| 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. |
| Kevin Fenzi (nirik) | |
| Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore) | Make sure that those smaller groups inside fedora get heard. Provide a strong
voice for secondary arches. |
| Kevin Kofler (Kevin_Kofler) | |
| Adam Miller (maxamillion) | |
| x. Lorem ipsum | |
| Bill Nottingham (notting) | |
| Jens Petersen (juhp) | |
| Andreas Thienemann (ixs) | |
| Seth Vidal (skvidal) | |
| Ian Weller (ianweller) | |
| Christoph Wickert (cwickert) | |
| David Woodhouse (dwm) | |
| Return to top | |
| 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. |
| Kevin Fenzi (nirik) | |
| 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 Kofler (Kevin_Kofler) | |
| Adam Miller (maxamillion) | |
| x. Lorem ipsum | |
| Bill Nottingham (notting) | |
| Jens Petersen (juhp) | |
| Andreas Thienemann (ixs) | |
| Seth Vidal (skvidal) | |
| Ian Weller (ianweller) | |
| Christoph Wickert (cwickert) | |
| David Woodhouse (dwm) | |
| Return to top | |
| 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. |
| Kevin Fenzi (nirik) | |
| 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 Kofler (Kevin_Kofler) | |
| Adam Miller (maxamillion) | |
| x. Lorem ipsum | |
| Bill Nottingham (notting) | |
| Jens Petersen (juhp) | |
| Andreas Thienemann (ixs) | |
| Seth Vidal (skvidal) | |
| Ian Weller (ianweller) | |
| Christoph Wickert (cwickert) | |
| David Woodhouse (dwm) | |
| Return to top | |
| 9. How will you make the work for in Fedora easier and more fun?
Less paperwork, less manual steps, more areas of opportunity. :)
| |
| Tom Callaway (spot) | Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur rutrum ipsum in tellus hendrerit a luctus dui pulvinar. Praesent vitae leo tortor. |
| 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. |
| Kevin Fenzi (nirik) | |
| Dennis Gilmore (dgilmore) | I will try to make it simpler and more consistent. |
| Kevin Kofler (Kevin_Kofler) | |
| Adam Miller (maxamillion) | |
| 9. How will you make the work for in Fedora easier and more fun?
Less paperwork, less manual steps, more areas of opportunity. :) | |
| Bill Nottingham (notting) | |
| Jens Petersen (juhp) | |
| Andreas Thienemann (ixs) | |
| Seth Vidal (skvidal) | |
| Ian Weller (ianweller) | |
| Christoph Wickert (cwickert) | |
| David Woodhouse (dwm) | |
| Return to top | |