FWN/Beats/Announcements

Announcements

In this section, we cover announcements from the Fedora Project, including general announcements, development announcements and Events.

Contributing Writer: Rashadul Islam and/or Pascal Calarco

Fedora Announcement News

Fedora 11 End of Life

Paul W. Frields, Fedora Project Leader, announced, "This announcement is a reminder that as of 2010-06-25, Fedora 11 has reached its end of life for updates. As planned, last update pushes to Fedora 11 were made in advance of this date. No further updates, including security updates, will be available for Fedora 11.

Fedora 12 will continue to receive updates until approximately one month after the release of Fedora 14. The maintenance schedule of Fedora releases is documented on the Fedora Project wiki."

Deadline for T-Shirt Registration FUDCon Zurich 2010

Joerg Simon announced:

"Dear Fellows,

If you plan to attend the FUDCon EMEA in Zurich September 17 - 19, 2010 - and want to pick up a pretty FUDCon-Shirt - designed by Maria (tatica) Leandro - do not forget to register it

The Deadline for ordering a FUDCon-Shirt is 2010-June-30 12:00 UTC!!!

After this you can still register yourself for FUDCon but we can not assure you a Shirt matching your Size."

Passing the baton

Paul W. Frields, Fedora Project Leader, announced:

"A leadership change is always momentous, and the Fedora Project is no exception to this rule. I wanted to share some thoughts about being the Fedora Project Leader, tell the community about the person who will be taking over that role soon, and to let you know what to expect over the next few weeks and months.

• * *

I joined the Fedora Project in 2003 so I could give something back to a free software community from whose work I had benefited for a long time. Fedora gave me the chance to bring my skills and experience and use them to help people I'd never get a chance to meet personally. I had no inkling at the time that one day I'd have the opportunity to serve the community beyond helping write some documentation.

When Max Spevack called me in late 2007 to let me know he was considering stepping down, and was interested in having me succeed him as the Fedora Project Leader, I was surprised and humbled. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to both serve the community and to contribute as an employee at Red Hat, where I had already made many friends while working on Fedora -- an opportunity I was happy to take. Over the past two and a half years, through many challenges and changes, not once have I regretted that decision.

• * *

One of the hallmarks of Fedora leadership is that it's open to change. The FPL is not a semi-benevolent dictator for life, but rather a position to which new people can regularly bring their passion for making Fedora better. And so, just as previous FPLs announced their readiness to search for the next leader, I did so a few months ago, in the spirit of openness and transparency that's a hallmark of the Fedora community.

The FPL job is a salaried position at Red Hat, and the Fedora Board members as well as many other stakeholders have been informed and involved with the process of selecting a new FPL. The job posting brought in numerous applicants from throughout the community. Through the hiring process we identified a few best qualified candidates. From them the next FPL was selected, based on the qualifications and experience our entire community expects. At every juncture during that process, the panels were focused on the needs of the Fedora Project, to ensure the next FPL would be a good listener, speaker, and writer; thoughtfully consider solutions to difficult problems; and most importantly, lead effectively.

So it's with great pleasure that I announce Jared Smith will be joining Red Hat in a few weeks as the new Fedora Project Leader.

• * *

Some of our community already knows Jared, but I want to take a moment to tell everyone a little more about his background. He doesn't like to trumpet his own qualifications, but since he happens to be away on personal business this week, I'll just do that for him. :-)

Jared's been a long-time user of both Red Hat and Fedora, and an active participant in the the Fedora community since 2007. He's primarily spent his time working with the infrastructure and documentation teams. He's helped with the development of Fedora Talk, our community VoIP telephony system. Fedora Talk allows various Fedora developers and contributors to communicate verbally for free across the internet.

Jared has also participated in community events such as various FUDCons and Fedora Activity Days. In addition, he has assisted with toolchain development, release materials, and steering duties as a member of the Fedora Docs team.

Jared also brings a wealth of of both technical and community relations expertise from his prior job history. His previous employer is Digium, the commercial sponsor of the open source Asterisk software. While at Digium, Jared worked as Community Relations Manager, as well as an instructor, lecturer, and training department manager.

Before working for Digium, Jared was a Network Operations Manager for the web analytics company Omniture (since acquired by Adobe Systems), where he managed a network of over 6,500 Linux machines. These experiences as a speaker, evangelist, practitioner, and collaborator make Jared exceptionally well suited for the position of FPL.

On a more personal note, I've come to know Jared well over the past several years. He cares deeply about community and family, not the least part of which is the Fedora community and family. His honesty, integrity, good humor, patience, intelligence, and good old-fashioned common sense will serve him and our growing community well, as we try to take Fedora to the next level.

• * *

Although Jared is away on personal travel right now, Max and I have already started including him in some important conversations, and the community can expect additional exciting news shortly. Over the next few months, part of my changing responsibilities in Red Hat will be to ensure a smooth runway for Jared, as he takes over the duties of the FPL job. Max Spevack will also continue to assist, especially where his role as the manager of Red Hat's Community Architecture team brings strategic benefits to the Fedora Project.

Over time, I expect to spend more time on work that's internal to Red Hat, but I will continue to be involved in Fedora to some extent as an individual contributor. That transition will allow Jared to effectively bring his own vision and energy to Fedora, and I look forward to helping him in whatever ways I can.

I hope the entire community will join me in welcoming Jared to Red Hat as the FPL, and that you'll gift him with the support and friendship I've enjoyed and treasured over the past two and a half years."

FPL travel to LATAM events!

Paul W. Frields, Fedora Project Leader, announced:

"In just a few weeks, the Fedora community in Latin America will hold a major FUDCon event in Santiago, Chile, from July 15-17, 2010. You can find all the details on our wiki

Encouraging the growth of Fedora community around the world is important to our project. That's why the responsibilities of the Fedora Project Leader include lowering barriers and advocating for involvement and participation. One of the ways the FPL does this is by travelling to different community events and talking about the way that Fedora works, and our dedication to sustainable community and free software development.

So I'm very pleased and excited to announce that our new Fedora Project Leader Jared Smith's first appearance at a community event will be at the FUDCon in Santiago, Chile. In addition, just a few days afterward Jared will attend the FISL 11 conference in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Both events represent a unique opportunity for the Fedora Project to support our friends and extend our community in Latin America. As always, the FUDCon event in Santiago is free and open to everyone to register and attend. We look forward to seeing the community at these events!

You can find more information about Jared"

Fedora Development News

Bodhi 0.7.5 release

Luke Macken announced:

"I just pushed a version 0.7.5 of bodhi into production. This release contains the following notable changes:

proventesters & strict critical path update handling

---

For critical path updates to be approved for pushing to the stable repository, they now require a minimum karma of 2, consisting of a +1 from a single proventester, and a +1 from another authenticated user.

You can get a list of critical path updates using the bodhi web interface

You can optionally pass in a specific 'release' or an 'untested' flag, which will return a list of critical path updates that have yet to be approved. I have not added these links to the main interface yet, because at the moment they are fairly expensive calls. This will be addressed in an upcoming release.

The latest command-line client also supports these options as well:

    $ bodhi --critpath --untested --release F13

Auto-obsoletion re-enabled

---

I re-enabled the auto-obsoletion code in bodhi. This means that new updates will automatically obsolete older testing updates containing the same packages. The new update will also inherit all of the old updates bugs and notes. This code had been disabled for a while now, due to some nasty edge cases, but those have since been resolved.

If you experience any problems, please file tickets here"

Fedora 14 Feature Submission Deadline in Two Weeks

John Poelstra reminded the community of the upcoming Fedora 14 feature submission deadline:

"Another friendly and brief reminder that the deadline for new features for Fedora 14 is July 13, 2010.

A list of features accepted so far

Wiki pages explaining the feature process

Please send any other questions about the feature process or this deadline by replying to this message on the list."

Fedora Events

Fedora events are the exclusive and source of marketing, learning and meeting all the fellow community people around you. So, please mark your agenda with the following events to consider attending or volunteering near you!

Upcoming Events (June 2010 - August 2010)

• North America (NA)
• Central & South America (LATAM)
• Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)
• India, Asia, Australia (India/APJ)

Past Events

Archive of Past Fedora Events

Additional information

• Reimbursements -- reimbursement guidelines.
• Budget -- budget for the current quarter (as distributed by FAMSCo).
• Sponsorship -- how decisions are made to subsidize travel by community members.
• Organization -- event organization, budget information, and regional responsibility.
• Event reports -- guidelines and suggestions.
• LinuxEvents -- a collection of calendars of Linux events.