Updating the Fedora Project Mission
by Matthew Miller
Background
----------
Way back in 2003, the original Fedora Project mission statement¹ was
straightforward — “to work with the Linux community to build a
complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from open
source software.” This has some virtue: it's clear and concrete, and
it encodes the values of community and open source. But, it's also
rather small; arguably this was _already done_, so, you know, “good
job everyone” — backslapping ensues, nothing more needed, right?
After 6½ years, the Fedora Board (the precursor to our current Fedora
Council) decided it was time for a refresh, and put a lot of work
into coming up with our current mission² (as well as a vision and
objectives). That mission is “to lead the advancement of free and
open source software and content as a collaborative community.”
This has many virtues too — it's ambitious, and again keeps those key
values front and center. But, it's also very broad. If we were to
start a project with a clean slate today to do what the mission says,
I don't think we'd even _think_ of creating a Linux distro. There are
plenty of other activities that could consume an entire large
pro-free-and-open-source project.
When we started Fedora.next, we decided to work underneath the
mission as it stood. This has worked out well enough, but we're
coming up to what feels like the limit. This is clear in the
"Budget.next" process — it's one thing to say that spending is to be
determined in public based on clear objectives and measurable
results, but for it to really work, those objectives need to be
attached to a goal with a more clear scope.
It's now been another 6½ years, and it’s the perfect time to revisit
the mission — to look at who we are, what we do well, what we really
want to do, what we say we do but actually don't, and so on.
Our Thinking
------------
At our in-person activity days at the end of March, the Fedora
Council did just that. We spent some time discussing those questions
and worked on lists of strengths, weaknesses, threats, and
opportunities. We talked about the Fedora Foundations as well, and
agreed that we do want to keep these as statements of our core
values. We wanted something which would answer:
* What do we do?
* How do we do it?
* Who do we do it for?
* and, what unique value do we bring?
After a long and productive working discussion, we decided to break
for dinner, and come back the next morning to actually draft a new
statement to bring to the community for discussion, adjustment, and
approval. Brian scribbled down a quick idea in the evening, and in
the morning we started bright and early at adding to, subtracting
from, rewording, deconstructing, and reconstructing, until we came up
with something that everyone on the Council felt good about.
The New Mission Draft
---------------------
So, here it is:
Fedora creates an innovative platform that lights up hardware,
clouds, and containers for software developers and community
members to build tailored solutions for their users.
Let's Break It Down
-------------------
We decided to not write a new vision statement at this point. The
Four Foundations³ — Freedom, Friends, Features, First — both state
our core values and illustrate our overall goals and objectives.
However, we do want to make sure that some of the various parts of
the mission are explained.
* Creates an innovative platform — at the operating system level,
we don’t just integrate.We do new things. This is what makes
us a platform and not just a distribution. And, “innovative” is
just a buzzword. Current examples include solving the “too fast
/ too slow” problem with Modularity, exploring ostree for
delivery and updates, and the Layered Image Build Service,
where containers become a first-class part of the OS.
- Lights up hardware, clouds, and containers — We want to be
specific about a primary focus as an enablement layer for
environments people want to use.
- For software developers to build tailored solutions for their
users — this includes both upstream software developers and
downstream communities who want to build on what we create.
- For community members to build tailored solutions for their
users — Fedora isn’t just the toolkit. Many of our contributors
are here to collaborate to create solutions for specific user
problems, ranging from Fedora Workstation to Fedora Robotics
Suite. We have lots of ways to do this within the project, from
Editions to Spins and Labs to the upcoming Fedora Playground
concept. The core emphasis, though, is on enabling this
collaboration.
Next Steps
----------
We really hope our proposed mission statement makes sense to all of
you and tries to capture what we want to be for the next three to
five years. We would be very interested in feedback from the
community, not just in how to make the language tighter but, truly,
on the goals of the project and how we can better capture the ethos
of Fedora.
----
1. http://web.archive.org/web/20031008035915/http://fedora.redhat.com/about/
2. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Overview#Our_Mission
3. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Foundations
--
Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org>
Fedora Project Leader
7 years
[Fedocal] Reminder meeting : Council (Open Floor)
by mattdm＠fedoraproject.org
Dear all,
You are kindly invited to the meeting:
Council (Open Floor) on 2017-04-26 from 09:00:00 to 10:00:00 US/Eastern
At fedora-meeting(a)irc.freenode.net
The meeting will be about:
The Fedora Council will hold our regular Open Floor meeting at 9:00am
US/Eastern in #fedora-meeting on irc.freenode.net. All are welcome!
To convert to your local time, run:
TZ=US/Eastern date -d '9am tomorrow'
Open Floor meetings happen every other week. They do not have a
preset agenda. Instead, we spend the first few minutes of the
meeting deciding what topics will be discussed. If
attendees — Council members and otherwise — have several topics
of general interest, the primary meeting chair (usually the FPL
or FCAIC) will put them in order, and after a certain amount of
time discussing the first, ask if it's time to move on.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Council_Meetings#Open_Floor_Meetings
Source: https://apps.fedoraproject.org/calendar/meeting/5229/
7 years
[Fedocal] Reminder meeting : Council (Subproject Report)
by mattdm＠fedoraproject.org
Dear all,
You are kindly invited to the meeting:
Council (Subproject Report) on 2017-04-19 from 09:00:00 to 10:00:00 US/Eastern
At fedora-meeting(a)irc.freenode.net
The meeting will be about:
The Fedora Council will hold our regular Subproject Report meeting this week
at 9:00am US/Eastern in #fedora-meeting on irc.freenode.net. All are welcome!
To convert to your local time, run:
TZ=US/Eastern date -d '9am tomorrow'
This is not an IRC meeting; it will be conducted via video chat. This week's
primary meeting chair (usually the FPL or FCAIC) will reply to this message
with specific information.
To convert UTC to your local time, take a look at
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/UTCHowto
or run:
date -d 'tomorrow 14:00 UTC'
Source: https://apps.fedoraproject.org/calendar/meeting/5237/
7 years
Re: Updating the Fedora Project Mission
by Neal Gompa
On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 9:55 AM, Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>
> The New Mission Draft
> ---------------------
>
> So, here it is:
>
> Fedora creates an innovative platform that lights up hardware,
> clouds, and containers for software developers and community
> members to build tailored solutions for their users.
>
On one hand, I do like the renewed focus on making Fedora a better
platform for people to build their own great solutions. I hope this
means that there will be increased interest in this field (as opposed
to lackluster interest for the last few years...).
However, I'm extremely concerned that Free and Open Source Software
isn't mentioned at all in the mission draft. One of the key things
that makes Fedora attractive (in my view) is its highly principled
stance on providing the best of Free Software, and while we have been
watering that down in recent years (like making it less awful to use
the proprietary nVidia driver on Fedora), we haven't actually gotten
to the point that we're distributing non-free/proprietary software.
I'd like it to stay that way. I also think that being an operating
system is still a very important aspect of Fedora, and many, many,
many people care about this aspect deeply (myself included).
It's quite troubling that the Council seems to think that it's okay to
let go of these very core aspects of us now. While it might be true
that if Fedora was created in 2017, it might not be a full Linux
distribution, that's certainly not what happened, and our community is
shaped by its experiences. Heck, I've been a contributor to Fedora for
nearly a decade, and I've been a user for longer than that. For me
(and many others like myself), the FOSS principles and the operating
system aspect of the project both matter quite heavily.
It's also worth pointing out that if people are seeing it as
uninteresting and boring, then perhaps we just need a better message
around why it's exciting to help develop a fully featured Free
operating system. The new message may even help in that, but we have
to remember that we haven't actually "won" the war for Free and Open
Source software. There are all-new battles to fight and some of the
same old battles are there too.
Please consider integrating these core aspects into a new mission draft.
--
真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!
7 years
[Fedocal] Reminder meeting : Council (Open Floor)
by mattdm＠fedoraproject.org
Dear all,
You are kindly invited to the meeting:
Council (Open Floor) on 2017-04-12 from 09:00:00 to 10:00:00 US/Eastern
At fedora-meeting(a)irc.freenode.net
The meeting will be about:
The Fedora Council will hold our regular Open Floor meeting at 9:00am
US/Eastern in #fedora-meeting on irc.freenode.net. All are welcome!
To convert to your local time, run:
TZ=US/Eastern date -d '9am tomorrow'
Open Floor meetings happen every other week. They do not have a
preset agenda. Instead, we spend the first few minutes of the
meeting deciding what topics will be discussed. If
attendees — Council members and otherwise — have several topics
of general interest, the primary meeting chair (usually the FPL
or FCAIC) will put them in order, and after a certain amount of
time discussing the first, ask if it's time to move on.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Council_Meetings#Open_Floor_Meetings
Source: https://apps.fedoraproject.org/calendar/meeting/5229/
7 years
Sub-project report request: May 24, Marketing
by Justin W. Flory
Hello all,
I wanted to reach out and formally request the May 24 sub-project report
slot for Fedora Marketing. We're currently working on building what we
want to share with the Council and believe we will be ready in time to
present in May.
Brian Proffitt and Eduard Lucena will be delivering the presentation on
behalf of Marketing. Please let us know if this will be possible and if
there's anything else we need to do to put this in the calendar. :)
Thanks all!
--
Cheers,
Justin W. Flory
jflory7(a)gmail.com
7 years
Fedora Council FAD Report - 2017/2018 Initial Steps
by Brian Exelbierd
The Fedora Council met for an in-person FAD for three days from 26-28
March in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA. Almost the entire Council was able
to attend. Josh Boyer, Brian Exelbierd, Robert Mayr, Matthew Miller, and
Langdon White, were present, and unfortunately, Jan Kuřik and María
Leandro could not make it. We chose Grand Rapids to accommodate one of
the two members with travel challenges and to reduce overall travel
costs for the rest of us.
We set a full agenda^0 and managed to discuss the topics over the three
full days.
We spent the majority of the first and second days considering the
current state of the project. We focused on "What we actually do; What
we do *well*; What we say we do but don't; and What we aspire to."
Using a variety of tools including SWOT analysis (that's
Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threads) and Kellogg Logic Models^1,
we carefully considered how the Fedora Project fits into the competitive
landscape and how we can move forward achieving success while living our
values^2. We considered scope, as well: what we should address directly
and what we should enable by empowering others.
A key result of this is a proposed new mission statement for the Fedora
Project, which will be shared, along with some detail on the thought
behind it, in a follow-on post. These thoughts include alignment of our
objectives and our budget to achieve this mission. This should also
bring some clarity to our overall target audience.
The third day was focused on core decisions and processes for our
community:
* We extended our focus on diversity and inclusion in order to increase
our ability to attract a variety of thoughts to power our project. To
that end we are going to empower the Diversity Advisor with some direct
budget allocation to achieve this vision. In Fiscal Year 2017 we
allocated $6,500 for Diversity and Inclusion, however 100% of that money
was really to support an Outreachy^3 intern. While this is a noble cause
which the Council fully supports, we want to allow the Diversity and
Inclusion group to use the budget to further their objective directly.
Therefore, in Fiscal Year 2018 we are allocating $9,000 for Diversity
and Inclusion. The Diversity Working Group^4 under the guidance of the
Diversity Advisor will need to decide how to best use these resources
and whether we should continue to support Outreachy. Additional funds
may be allocated as there is a need and good ideas.
* We gave some initial thoughts to the Code of Conduct^5. The Diversity
Working Group has done a great job surfacing some needs related to this
area and we are thankful for the work they have done. We have realized
that after the Community Working Group shut down a few issues and
challenges had gone unanswered. We, as the Council, will be taking this
issue forward with an emphasis on an open and transparent process
related to the Code of Conduct. We have some paths forward to explore
and look forward to having an open conversation with the community .
* We had some great conversations about the signature events held by the
project. We realized that some of the events haven't necessarily been
accomplishing their goals because they have been overly broad or no
longer aligned with the realities of today. Therefore we are taking the
following actions:
** We want to make sure that Flock is attended by as many
contributors as possible from all around the world. We also
recognize that we have to live within our budget and cannot afford
to fully fund every person who would possibly attend. Therefore we
are initially going to increase the Flock budget from the $75,000 it
had in Fiscal Year 2017 to $85,000 in Fiscal Year 2018. This will
allow for a few more funded attendees from regions that have
traditionally not been well represented. However, we are also going
to work on both the goals of the event and how it is funded overall.
There will be a follow up post and discussion about these changes as
we seek community input. We discussed the possibility of Flock
rotating to APAC and LATAM as well as NA and EMEA, although that may
be realistically limited by travel budget constraints.
** Additionally, we are not going to create a line-item budget for
regional FUDCons. Instead, we are going to allocate budget for great
ideas. We want to make sure the community has the freedom to create
the outreach events we need, not just do the outreach events
dictated by the budget. This doesn’t mean we won’t do regional
events; instead we want to fund regional events that are clearly
going to accomplish great things and be good uses of funds as well.
This may even mean that we continue to support a FUDCon in some
regions, if that turns out to be the great idea. Or, it may be
another idea, like doing smaller but more frequent Fedora Meetups.
* Mindshare is the currency of our project. We aren't in the sales
business; we are in the ideas business. Last year FAmSCo started working
on an outreach committee concept called FOSCo. For various reasons this
didn't happen. We recognize that FOSCo is only one way to achieve the
larger goal of growing our mindshare. This year we have asked Robert
Mayr to focus on this challenge and created the Mindshare
Representative^6 on the Council by changing the title of the seat set
aside for FOSCo. Robert will be leading an open and transparent effort
to help our project align around mindshare goals. To help him succeed we
have allocated a budget of $9,000 so that he can drive forward with
implementation. Additional funds can be allocated as there are needs and
good ideas.
* Ambassadors are a key component of our project and our "feet on the
ground." We realize that the Mindshare position above will involve a
lot of work with the existing Ambassadors group. However, we can't make
our Ambassadors wait for this to be solved. Therefore we allocated a
full Quarter 1 budget for the ambassador regions. We based this
allocation on one-fourth of the total annual spending from last year.
The goal is to allow our Ambassador groups to be funded through the end
of the conversation about our new mission. The new allocations replace
the stop gap budget^7 that was provided earlier. These are hard
allocations that should not be exceeded. The Fiscal Year 2018 Quarter 1
budgets for the regions are: APAC $1,600; LATAM $1,300; EMEA $4,100; NA
$4,250.
These are not budget cuts; they are a way of preserving flexibility. We
want to preserve funding for any changes the ambassadors will want to
make as they align around the new mission. We hope the ambassadors will
give very careful thought before committing to any events after June 1
to ensure they will help us with our mission.
This post is being sent to both the Fedora Community Blog and the
council-discuss mailing list. Please follow up with your comments in the
mailing list thread here, as we don’t want to split the discussion.
0:
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/council-discuss@lists.fedor...
1: https://pagure.io/FedoraLogicModelTemplate
2: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Foundations
3: http://www.outreachy.org/
4: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Diversity
5: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct
6: https://pagure.io/Fedora-Council/tickets/issue/102
7:
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/council-discuss@lists.fedor...
7 years
Diversity Adviser Role
by María Leandro
Hello all.
As some of you know (or not) I'm currently on my last pregnancy month,
which has been a high risk pregnancy that has kept me AFK. The Diversity
Team has grow from a single person role to a group effort that has prove to
be a complete success.
In order to be fair with the team and with myself, for the next months
(probably half a year) my time will be limited with the new family member,
so I hope the council can either find a replacement from the great team we
already have, or consolide the group and not take the role as a single
person one.
Anyway, hope the timing is good, and lets keep making Fedora great!
--
tatica
Maria Gracia Leandro
http://www.tatica.org
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:tatica
LinuxUser= 440285 GPG Public Key: E1CDCC56
7 years
