Fedora Community Working Group, founding member?

[Max Spevack]

On Mon, 25 Oct 2010, Rex Dieter wrote:

> Does this sound like you or someone you know? Please contact me (or 
> any Board member). We?d like to get the group started soon. Thanks!

I wrote up some thoughts in a blog post 
(http://spevack.livejournal.com/107990.html), but after I posted it, I 
thought it might have been more useful to put the main points in this 
thread.

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(1) Part of the charter/goals states that the CWG "aims to act as a 
central point of contact by being available to communicate needs between 
various groups". How will this be different than the Fedora Logistics 
List? Is it meant to discuss less-technical collaboration needs between 
groups? Make sure that this is clear before you get started.

(2) Will the CWG only be making recommendations, or will it also be 
rallying the troops to implement? There are opportunities here to 
ressurect ideas like the wiki challenge and harness resources like the 
Fedora Engineering Services team, which seems under-utilized and also 
seems like something that could easily be grown, given the number of 
smart engineers in our community who are looking for short-term, high 
impact projects.

(3) Make a concerted effort to bring in some new voices. I think that 
the Fedora Project finds itself in the midst of a generational shift. 
This must be embraced, and not feared. I'd suggest that no more than two 
of the initial five members on the CWG should be folks who have a 
history of serving in high-visibility or leadership roles within Fedora. 
Let's make sure that we're giving newer members of our community 
opportunities to step up into important roles.

(4) Make a bold decision about the question of how Fedora wants to 
handle "poisonous" people, and give it a one-release-cycle trial period. 
Make it clear that Fedora remains a community that is open to many 
voices, and that will always respond most favorably to the people who 
are actually stepping up to contribute any sort of work to the bottom 
line. But also make it clear that there is a right and a wrong way to 
disagree. Just because we're a community of volunteers doesn't mean we 
don't have to treat each other professionally. If people spoke to their 
co-workers the same way they sometimes speak to each other on Fedora 
lists, there would be consequences, and justifiably so. I've always 
thought that Fedora's "code of conduct" could be a simple as "don't be a 
jerk", but I support the mandate of the soon-to-be-formed CWG to decide 
otherwise.