http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2180673/red-hat-releases-fedora
Karin Bakis Public Relations Corporate Marketing Red Hat, Inc. Email: kbakis@redhat.com Office: 978-392-1096 Mobile: 978-758-3546
On 05/29/2012 03:15 PM, Karin Bakis wrote:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2180673/red-hat-releases-fedora
"Red Hat has released its Fedora 17!"
Is it Red Hat that sends announcements and claims to be releasing Fedora or is the inquirer getting it wrong?
Last time I checked we are a community distribution and thus the community releases Fedora not Red Hat.
Regards JBG
Hi --
In addition to the announcements made by Robyn Bergeron and the Fedora Project, Red Hat distributes a press release announcing new Fedora releases as the Fedora Project is a Red Hat-sponsored community.
The lead sentence in the Red Hat press release makes it clear that it is a Fedora Project announcement:
The Fedora Project, a Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT) sponsored and community-supported open source collaboration, today announced ....
-- Karin
Karin Bakis Public Relations Corporate Marketing Red Hat, Inc. Email: kbakis@redhat.com Office: 978-392-1096 Mobile: 978-758-3546
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com To: marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2012 2:18:21 PM Subject: Re: The Inquirier on F17
On 05/29/2012 03:15 PM, Karin Bakis wrote:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2180673/red-hat-releases-fedora
"Red Hat has released its Fedora 17!"
Is it Red Hat that sends announcements and claims to be releasing Fedora or is the inquirer getting it wrong?
Last time I checked we are a community distribution and thus the community releases Fedora not Red Hat.
Regards JBG
On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 11:18 AM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
On 05/29/2012 03:15 PM, Karin Bakis wrote:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2180673/red-hat-releases-fedora
"Red Hat has released its Fedora 17!"
Is it Red Hat that sends announcements and claims to be releasing Fedora or is the inquirer getting it wrong?
Last time I checked we are a community distribution and thus the community releases Fedora not Red Hat.
Red Hat does a press release on the newswire for each release, in addition to the general release announcement and other activities that we do.
(I see that Karin just responded to this, and said just about what I was goign to say.)
-r
Regards JBG
-- marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
On 05/29/2012 09:31 PM, Robyn Bergeron wrote:
On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 11:18 AM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson"wrote:
On 05/29/2012 03:15 PM, Karin Bakis wrote:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2180673/red-hat-releases-fedora
"Red Hat has released its Fedora 17!"
Is it Red Hat that sends announcements and claims to be releasing Fedora or is the inquirer getting it wrong?
Red Hat does a press release on the newswire for each release, in addition to the general release announcement and other activities that we do.
(I see that Karin just responded to this, and said just about what I was goign to say.)
But I think we all agree the linked article is really bad written and it would he useful to "help" those news sources to improve their reporting.
On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Nicu Buculei nicu_fedora@nicubunu.ro wrote:
But I think we all agree the linked article is really bad written and it would he useful to "help" those news sources to improve their reporting.
In addition, I'd love to hear some sort of official word about the "Fedora project serves as the proving ground for new features that eventually end up in the firm's Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) operating system" part. I mean, is this a concept Red Hat is actively marketing?
If so, as an ambassador I'd love to know it because I am constantly fighting against this "Fedora is a beta (or worse) level package and its users are just Red Hat's guinea pigs" attitude in press, blogs and users of other distros.
If that's not true, it would be really useful to have some words from a @redhat spokesperson to back a different point of view on the Red Hat/Fedora relationship
Cheers
G.
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 08:29:30AM +0200, Gianluca Sforna wrote:
On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Nicu Buculei nicu_fedora@nicubunu.ro wrote:
But I think we all agree the linked article is really bad written and it would he useful to "help" those news sources to improve their reporting.
In addition, I'd love to hear some sort of official word about the "Fedora project serves as the proving ground for new features that eventually end up in the firm's Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) operating system" part. I mean, is this a concept Red Hat is actively marketing?
If so, as an ambassador I'd love to know it because I am constantly fighting against this "Fedora is a beta (or worse) level package and its users are just Red Hat's guinea pigs" attitude in press, blogs and users of other distros.
If that's not true, it would be really useful to have some words from a @redhat spokesperson to back a different point of view on the Red Hat/Fedora relationship
There's a big difference between "Fedora is a beta and users are guinea pigs," and "Fedora is a place where *any contributor* can work on new technical features and put them in front of millions of users as part of a free and open source software development process." Red Hat is only part of our community and we've had plenty of other contributors over the years put new software into the distribution for people to use.
Being the proving ground for new technology that might be in a future RHEL release is only one function of the Fedora Project. Of course that function is quite important to Red Hat, and a reason why Red Hat continues to put substantail resources into Fedora. But it's not the only thing the Fedora Project does, and as you know lots of contributors have their own reasons to participate as well.
Another way to think about it is like this... Any dedicated contributor has the potential to contribute features and technology to integrate into Fedora the distribution, just like Red Hat does. It just so happens that Red Hat dedicates people, time, and money to that creation and integration effort, and as a result each release has lots of innovative new features. As the Fedora community (and indeed the wider FOSS community) essentially "elects" the best stuff over time, Red Hat can use that crowd wisdom to help decide what pieces make the most sense for its enterprise product. Any other contributor can do the same thing, at whatever scale makes sense for them.
On 05/31/2012 05:39 AM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 08:29:30AM +0200, Gianluca Sforna wrote:
On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Nicu Buculeinicu_fedora@nicubunu.ro wrote:
But I think we all agree the linked article is really bad written and it would he useful to "help" those news sources to improve their reporting.
In addition, I'd love to hear some sort of official word about the "Fedora project serves as the proving ground for new features that eventually end up in the firm's Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) operating system" part. I mean, is this a concept Red Hat is actively marketing?
If so, as an ambassador I'd love to know it because I am constantly fighting against this "Fedora is a beta (or worse) level package and its users are just Red Hat's guinea pigs" attitude in press, blogs and users of other distros.
If that's not true, it would be really useful to have some words from a @redhat spokesperson to back a different point of view on the Red Hat/Fedora relationship
There's a big difference between "Fedora is a beta and users are guinea pigs," and "Fedora is a place where *any contributor* can work on new technical features and put them in front of millions of users as part of a free and open source software development process." Red Hat is only part of our community and we've had plenty of other contributors over the years put new software into the distribution for people to use.
Being the proving ground for new technology that might be in a future RHEL release is only one function of the Fedora Project. Of course that function is quite important to Red Hat, and a reason why Red Hat continues to put substantail resources into Fedora. But it's not the only thing the Fedora Project does, and as you know lots of contributors have their own reasons to participate as well.
While there is, of course, a definition of proving ground (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proving_ground ) ... I have always thought of proving grounds as the place where car manufacturers put hundreds of thousands of miles on their new vehicles, really putting them through endurance testing and so forth.
Paul pointed out that there may be some of that going on (not only by Red Hat, but by many people), but I think that the phrase really skips this detail: If you continue to use the metaphor, we're not simply "driving cars" in Fedora. We're inventing them, and designing them, and continually pushing that technology forward -- collaboratively, as a community.
Another way to think about it is like this... Any dedicated contributor has the potential to contribute features and technology to integrate into Fedora the distribution, just like Red Hat does. It just so happens that Red Hat dedicates people, time, and money to that creation and integration effort, and as a result each release has lots of innovative new features. As the Fedora community (and indeed the wider FOSS community) essentially "elects" the best stuff over time, Red Hat can use that crowd wisdom to help decide what pieces make the most sense for its enterprise product. Any other contributor can do the same thing, at whatever scale makes sense for them.
On 05/31/2012 12:39 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 08:29:30AM +0200, Gianluca Sforna wrote:
On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Nicu Buculeinicu_fedora@nicubunu.ro wrote:
But I think we all agree the linked article is really bad written and it would he useful to "help" those news sources to improve their reporting.
In addition, I'd love to hear some sort of official word about the "Fedora project serves as the proving ground for new features that eventually end up in the firm's Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) operating system" part. I mean, is this a concept Red Hat is actively marketing?
If so, as an ambassador I'd love to know it because I am constantly fighting against this "Fedora is a beta (or worse) level package and its users are just Red Hat's guinea pigs" attitude in press, blogs and users of other distros.
If that's not true, it would be really useful to have some words from a @redhat spokesperson to back a different point of view on the Red Hat/Fedora relationship
There's a big difference between "Fedora is a beta and users are guinea pigs," and "Fedora is a place where *any contributor* can work on new technical features and put them in front of millions of users as part of a free and open source software development process." Red Hat is only part of our community and we've had plenty of other contributors over the years put new software into the distribution for people to use.
Being the proving ground for new technology that might be in a future RHEL release is only one function of the Fedora Project. Of course that function is quite important to Red Hat, and a reason why Red Hat continues to put substantail resources into Fedora. But it's not the only thing the Fedora Project does, and as you know lots of contributors have their own reasons to participate as well.
Here we come to one of the core issues of Red Hat vs The Fedora community as in we ( the community ) do not view RHEL release being one function of the Fedora Project.
Red Hat certainly believes it to be one of the function the project however we ( the community ) certainly don't nor should we as an project allow any sponsor Red Hat or otherwise have any influence either directly or indirectly of the project and it's direction.
Another way to think about it is like this... Any dedicated contributor has the potential to contribute features and technology to integrate into Fedora the distribution, just like Red Hat does. It just so happens that Red Hat dedicates people, time, and money to that creation and integration effort, and as a result each release has lots of innovative new features.
So in essence here you say that all innovation that happen in the project is all thanks to Red Hat and the community members time is worthless compared to the time and money Red Hat sponsor the project with.
I would say that the above is a rather interesting response from a former project leader then again if memory serves me correct you actually did call Fedora "Beta" in one of the Red Hat summit during you time as our project leader so I cant say that I'm surprised by this.
As the Fedora community (and indeed the wider FOSS community) essentially "elects" the best stuff over time, Red Hat can use that crowd wisdom to help decide what pieces make the most sense for its enterprise product. Any other contributor can do the same thing, at whatever scale makes sense for them.
True but at the same time no other *sponsor* is allowed to essentially *sponsor* the project as you as the former projects leader are well aware of.
In the end from the communities point of view Red Hat is a sponsor no more no less, we Fedora have our own leadership, our own developer base and own priorities Fedora goes it's own way regardless of Red Hat or RHEL or any other contributor,sponsor or distribution downstream to us thinks.
Red Hat can continue to advertise to it's partners that we are some kind of testing/proving ground for RHEL and directly or indirectly try to influence the direction of the project and we the community will continue to do our best to shake that stamp off the project and stay firm at the steering wheel and try to prevent Red Hat from doing so and we will continue to do so until either one of the two possible outcome on how that will end will come to pass.
JBG
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 02:22:05PM +0000, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
On 05/31/2012 12:39 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 08:29:30AM +0200, Gianluca Sforna wrote:
On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Nicu Buculeinicu_fedora@nicubunu.ro wrote:
But I think we all agree the linked article is really bad written and it would he useful to "help" those news sources to improve their reporting.
In addition, I'd love to hear some sort of official word about the "Fedora project serves as the proving ground for new features that eventually end up in the firm's Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) operating system" part. I mean, is this a concept Red Hat is actively marketing?
If so, as an ambassador I'd love to know it because I am constantly fighting against this "Fedora is a beta (or worse) level package and its users are just Red Hat's guinea pigs" attitude in press, blogs and users of other distros.
If that's not true, it would be really useful to have some words from a @redhat spokesperson to back a different point of view on the Red Hat/Fedora relationship
There's a big difference between "Fedora is a beta and users are guinea pigs," and "Fedora is a place where *any contributor* can work on new technical features and put them in front of millions of users as part of a free and open source software development process." Red Hat is only part of our community and we've had plenty of other contributors over the years put new software into the distribution for people to use.
Being the proving ground for new technology that might be in a future RHEL release is only one function of the Fedora Project. Of course that function is quite important to Red Hat, and a reason why Red Hat continues to put substantail resources into Fedora. But it's not the only thing the Fedora Project does, and as you know lots of contributors have their own reasons to participate as well.
Here we come to one of the core issues of Red Hat vs The Fedora community as in we ( the community ) do not view RHEL release being one function of the Fedora Project.
Red Hat people who contribute to Fedora are community too. There's not a dividing line with the community on one side, and Red Hat on the other. We have some community members who are volunteers, some who work for Red Hat, some who do paid work for other companies, etc.
Red Hat certainly believes it to be one of the function the project however we ( the community ) certainly don't nor should we as an project allow any sponsor Red Hat or otherwise have any influence either directly or indirectly of the project and it's direction.
Community members all have influence over the project, and that doesn't exclude members who work for Red Hat.
Another way to think about it is like this... Any dedicated contributor has the potential to contribute features and technology to integrate into Fedora the distribution, just like Red Hat does. It just so happens that Red Hat dedicates people, time, and money to that creation and integration effort, and as a result each release has lots of innovative new features.
So in essence here you say that all innovation that happen in the project is all thanks to Red Hat and the community members time is worthless compared to the time and money Red Hat sponsor the project with.
No, this is not what I said. I said "Any dedicated contributor" can do this. Any many do. I mentioned features that Red Hat creates specifically, but I did not exclude those created by people not at Red Hat. Please don't twist my words.
I would say that the above is a rather interesting response from a former project leader then again if memory serves me correct you actually did call Fedora "Beta" in one of the Red Hat summit during you time as our project leader so I cant say that I'm surprised by this.
[...snip...]
I don't remember saying any such thing, so apparently our memories differ. If someone can show me where I did, I'll gladly own up to it as a mistake, though, because that's not what I believe.
On 05/31/2012 03:27 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
Red Hat people who contribute to Fedora are community too. There's not a dividing line with the community on one side, and Red Hat on the other.
I beg the differ for one example from within our community why does Red Hat feel the need to appoint four members on the board if all members of the community are considered equal Red Hat or otherwise?
Just a food for your thought
I see a line and I wished it did not exist because I know that a lot of Red Hat employees are contributing good honest work and a lot of it on their own free time and not strictly because it's part of their "dayjob" and they are doing a heck of a good job.
There is just to much evidence within our community ( confrontations, decision making etc ) that says otherwise so in the end I guess we agree on disagreeing...
JBG
On Fri, Jun 01, 2012 at 02:03:19AM +0000, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
On 05/31/2012 03:27 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
Red Hat people who contribute to Fedora are community too. There's not a dividing line with the community on one side, and Red Hat on the other.
I beg the differ for one example from within our community why does Red Hat feel the need to appoint four members on the board if all members of the community are considered equal Red Hat or otherwise?
Since the FPL has appointed three of those seats to volunteers and only one to someone who's a Red Hat employee, I'm not sure how this is relevant. Looking at the Board history for those seats[1] one can see half the appointments since mid-2008 have been volunteers. Also of note is the fact that half the people elected by the community since that time have also been volunteers. So the appointments don't look slanted toward Red Hat employees AFAICT, which is just as intended.
We can agree to disagree on your overall point, that's fine. I just wanted to point out the facts don't support an effort to stack the Board with Red Hat people.
* * * [1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board/History
On 06/01/2012 03:02 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
We can agree to disagree on your overall point, that's fine. I just wanted to point out the facts don't support an effort to stack the Board with Red Hat people.
I never said that Red Hat stack the board with Red Hat people the question was which you btw have still not answered is why does Red Hat feel the need to appoint four members on the board.
Let me try to rephrase this so you better understand what I'm getting at...
Why does Red Hat reserve four seats on the board for itself to appoint to whomever it chooses?
What gives Red Hat the right to do so against the community?
JBG
On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 11:11 AM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
Let me try to rephrase this so you better understand what I'm getting at...
Why does Red Hat reserve four seats on the board for itself to appoint to whomever it chooses?
Red Hat used to reserve five and released one to the elected pool when Paul was the FPL iirc.
I have in the fairly recent past asked for consideration of shifting two additional appointed seats to the elected pool and/or considering the appointment process to either be done by the Board or a combination of the Board and the FPL. Generally the appointment process has been done with the involvement of the Board anyway as I understand it. I don't think very much would change either way in the end. Very often two of the appointments have been candidates who missed being elected by one spot.
But regardless of who makes the final appointment decision people will like it when they like it and disapprove when they don't. Making either of the changes above might move the blame assigned to the community though which would be a benefit to Red Hat.
What gives Red Hat the right to do so against the community?
I don't think it is "against the community." There are arguably good reasons for appointed seats, one example being to keep some balance in the Board's experience and skills that could be lacking if all seats were elected. For those who agree a partially elected and partially appointed Board is a good thing then it is just a question of how best to arrange the details. I imagine in the beginning it was easiest to get started by giving the appointments to the FPL and it has worked well enough that only a minor change was made a few years ago.
John
----- Original Message -----
On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 11:11 AM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
Let me try to rephrase this so you better understand what I'm getting at...
Why does Red Hat reserve four seats on the board for itself to appoint to whomever it chooses?
Red Hat used to reserve five and released one to the elected pool when Paul was the FPL iirc.
I have in the fairly recent past asked for consideration of shifting two additional appointed seats to the elected pool
It was a topic during "Governance" discussion at FUDCon Tempe and we still have not moved forward from that time. People played with number of appointed seats but before we know how should our governance model looks like (or even how it looks like now) it's not a primary goal.
Currently it works that FPL appoints one seat before elections and one after elections - for me it makes sense to balance Board - to avoid a specific group overtaken the Board (and it's not about RH vs community).
But I'm not against only one appointed seats for each term. But as I already said - it's just math, the most important question is where should Board stand == power given to elected/appointed members...
and/or considering the appointment process to either be done by the Board or a combination of the Board and the FPL. Generally the appointment process has been done with the involvement of the Board anyway as I understand it.
Yep, FPL announces who will be appointed and asks Board and I really trust our FPLs they would not push anyone against the will of the Board.
Jaroslav
John
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On Fri, Jun 01, 2012 at 01:06:28PM -0500, inode0 wrote:
On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 11:11 AM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
Let me try to rephrase this so you better understand what I'm getting at...
Why does Red Hat reserve four seats on the board for itself to appoint to whomever it chooses?
Red Hat used to reserve five and released one to the elected pool when Paul was the FPL iirc.
Right, that was something I changed during my FPL time.
I have in the fairly recent past asked for consideration of shifting two additional appointed seats to the elected pool and/or considering the appointment process to either be done by the Board or a combination of the Board and the FPL. Generally the appointment process has been done with the involvement of the Board anyway as I understand it. I don't think very much would change either way in the end. Very often two of the appointments have been candidates who missed being elected by one spot.
But regardless of who makes the final appointment decision people will like it when they like it and disapprove when they don't. Making either of the changes above might move the blame assigned to the community though which would be a benefit to Red Hat.
The FPL individually is accountable for making appointments. One of the reasons we have appointments, in my opinion, is to make sure the FPL has the authority and opportunity to reach outside a "usual suspects" group to identify and include leaders that might not otherwise be elected. I feel the FPL should use appointments to bring different perspectives to the Board, and/or include people with useful experience that helps the Fedora Project reach specific goals over the coming year.
I can't speak for Robyn, obviously, but I see Garrett Holmstrom as a possible recent example. His experience in the cloud area will undoubtedly help inform larger project work that keeps Fedora relevant in a cloud-centric environment. Since I can speak for myself, I would use Dimitris Glezos (of Indifex) as an example, bringing an international perspective, as well as I18n/L10n experience, to a Board that I felt was very North American-centric.
What gives Red Hat the right to do so against the community?
I don't think it is "against the community." There are arguably good reasons for appointed seats, one example being to keep some balance in the Board's experience and skills that could be lacking if all seats were elected. For those who agree a partially elected and partially appointed Board is a good thing then it is just a question of how best to arrange the details. I imagine in the beginning it was easiest to get started by giving the appointments to the FPL and it has worked well enough that only a minor change was made a few years ago.
This is a good explanation. I'd also reiterate that "against the community" is not supported by the fact that (1) the Fedora community has chosen to elect quite a few Red Hat employees, and (2) the FPL continues to appoint quite a few non-Red Hat employees, over the Board's history.
When I was the FPL, having appointments afforded me flexibility in finding people I thought lent the Board extra credibility and insight -- but I always took care that these appointed people supported the Project's mission and values, thus making them with the community, not against it. I think other FPLs have all done the same and I've never had a quibble with an appointment.
I try to remember meritocracy and democracy are not identical. Like many people who've been in a leadership position in a meritocratic community (as Fedora strives to be), I struggle with the idea that elections run the risk of becoming popularity contests. This doesn't mean appointments should be used to install unpopular people; rather, they support meritocracy by expanding the experience and capability of the Board in line with the project's mission and values.
On 06/04/2012 08:21 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
When I was the FPL, having appointments afforded me flexibility in finding people I thought lent the Board extra credibility and insight -- but I always took care that these appointed people supported the Project's mission and values, thus making them with the community, not against it. I think other FPLs have all done the same and I've never had a quibble with an appointment.
I think, to formalize how it works in practice, you can change the policy from "Red Hat appointed seats" to "Fedora Board appointed seats" and that would be a improvement IMO. Also I would request Robyn to push for reducing the number of appointed seats if that makes sense.
Rahul
On 06/04/2012 02:56 PM, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
When I was the FPL, having appointments afforded me flexibility in finding people I thought lent the Board extra credibility and insight -- but I always took care that these appointed people supported the Project's mission and values, thus making them with the community, not against it. I think other FPLs have all done the same and I've never had a quibble with an appointment.
I think, to formalize how it works in practice, you can change the policy from "Red Hat appointed seats" to "Fedora Board appointed seats" and that would be a improvement IMO. Also I would request Robyn to push for reducing the number of appointed seats if that makes sense.
That indeed would go a long way.
JBG
On 06/04/2012 02:51 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
This is a good explanation. I'd also reiterate that "against the community" is not supported by the fact that (1), and (2) the FPL continues to appoint quite a few non-Red Hat employees, over the Board's history.
Well the FPL is not elected by the community but is hired by Red Hat through some internal process they have that we ( the community ) know nothing about and Red Hat has a track record of inventing position within the community then more often then not hire people outside the community to fill those positions. ( Even thou the company has been getting better at rephrasing these job positions and choosing people within the community rather than outside in more recent times).
Arguably an better approach to choose an FPL is for the community to nominate individuals which then would be subjected to whatever process Red Hat uses internally to filter out and eventually get on it's payroll.
At least to me that's the only compromising solution that I can see working between both parties involved without one ruling over the other.
With regards to "the Fedora community has chosen to elect quite a few Red Hat employees" which I can certainly agree to since I my self have voted Red Hat employees over community candidates since I base my voting more on the individual work and technical knowledge rather than on some popularity contest.
But I still think that this is one thing that is wrong with our election process as in I feel that corporate entity's or individual from there in may not be allowed to hold majority of seats neither on the board nor in any of the committees within the community to prevent that corporates interest influence either directly or indirectly the projects direction and resources and that view of mine is not limited to Red Hat but to all sponsor, sponsoring the project ( if and then when Red Hat *decides* some other corporate can sponsor the project).
And here are few I think is wrong with election process and is needed to ensure fairness through out the community
1. The same election process should be used through out the whole project so famsco/fesco should follow the same process as do everyone else.
2. Individual may not serve on more then one committee at a time.
3. There needs to be a limit on how many release cycles or "terms" individuals may serve on the board/committees to ensure rotation and enough "fresh" ideas/approaches to any given task at hand.
4. Nominees cant change their "Introduction" once the nomination period has ended.
5. Nominees that seek re-elections should clearly state what work they did when serving their last election period.
JBG
On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 12:53 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
On 06/04/2012 02:51 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
This is a good explanation. I'd also reiterate that "against the community" is not supported by the fact that (1), and (2) the FPL
continues to appoint quite a few non-Red Hat employees, over the Board's history.
Well the FPL is not elected by the community but is hired by Red Hat through some internal process they have that we ( the community ) know nothing about and Red Hat has a track record of inventing position within the community then more often then not hire people outside the community to fill those positions. ( Even thou the company has been getting better at rephrasing these job positions and choosing people within the community rather than outside in more recent times).
Arguably an better approach to choose an FPL is for the community to nominate individuals which then would be subjected to whatever process Red Hat uses internally to filter out and eventually get on it's payroll.
Arguably that is a worse approach too.
At least to me that's the only compromising solution that I can see working between both parties involved without one ruling over the other.
I think you give the FPL more power than the position really has now. While the position has great responsibilities both to the Fedora community and to Red Hat, aside from the unused veto power over Board decisions the FPL's "power" comes from doing good work and persuading others by argument and more often by example that something is valuable. Without community buy-in I don't see much power there.
With regards to "the Fedora community has chosen to elect quite a few Red Hat employees" which I can certainly agree to since I my self have voted Red Hat employees over community candidates since I base my voting more on the individual work and technical knowledge rather than on some popularity contest.
But I still think that this is one thing that is wrong with our election process as in I feel that corporate entity's or individual from there in may not be allowed to hold majority of seats neither on the board nor in any of the committees within the community to prevent that corporates interest influence either directly or indirectly the projects direction and resources and that view of mine is not limited to Red Hat but to all sponsor, sponsoring the project ( if and then when Red Hat *decides* some other corporate can sponsor the project).
Don't you think the power to influence the project's direction is coming from the work being done more than from participation on a governance body?
And here are few I think is wrong with election process and is needed to ensure fairness through out the community
The same election process should be used through out the whole project so famsco/fesco should follow the same process as do everyone else.
I'm not sure what you mean here. The process is almost identical for FAmSCo and FESCo with minor details that differ like FAmSCo does not require members to be in the packager group. :)
I am interested in understanding what you mean though as I am also very interested in an election process that the community believes in. So please tell us in more detail where you think the problem lies now in this case.
Individual may not serve on more then one committee at a time.
This one I have pretty strong sympathy for since in general I think participating in multiple governance bodies tends to have more negative consequences than positive. But there are always exceptions and off the top of my head today the only person falling into this category now is a volunteer community member elected to two of them. And as far as I can tell he is doing a fine job on both.
There needs to be a limit on how many release cycles or "terms" individuals may serve on the board/committees to ensure rotation and enough "fresh" ideas/approaches to any given task at hand.
I have some sympathy for this too. Getting new ideas into the governance/steering discussion is a positive thing from my perspective. Each governance body can choose now to create such limits, has discussed them in the past, and seems to have always rejected them. I think the usual arguments against imposing limits are (1) voters can enforce any limits they choose by their actions voting and (2) there have been periods where even getting enough people to run to hold an election has been challenging without telling others they can't run.
I'll point out that this is one place where the history of the FPL might help inform the governance bodies of the value of new ideas and fresh enthusiasm.
Nominees cant change their "Introduction" once the nomination period has ended.
This is something we could just do. I'm not sure I see very much value in doing it though.
Nominees that seek re-elections should clearly state what work they did when serving their last election period.
Did you ask them to do that on the questionnaire or at a townhall? We can ask the candidates whatever we want to ask them, someone just has to take a few minutes and ask the question.
John
First thing I'd like to say - I'm pretty sure this is not a right mailing list to discuss governance issues - there's Board Advisory one. Sparsely used by community :(
----- Original Message -----
On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 12:53 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson"
And here are few I think is wrong with election process and is needed to ensure fairness through out the community
The same election process should be used through out the whole project so famsco/fesco should follow the same process as do everyone else.
I'm not sure what you mean here. The process is almost identical for FAmSCo and FESCo with minor details that differ like FAmSCo does not require members to be in the packager group. :)
I don't understand it neither :)
I am interested in understanding what you mean though as I am also very interested in an election process that the community believes in. So please tell us in more detail where you think the problem lies now in this case.
Individual may not serve on more then one committee at a time.
This one I have pretty strong sympathy for since in general I think participating in multiple governance bodies tends to have more negative consequences than positive. But there are always exceptions and off the top of my head today the only person falling into this category now is a volunteer community member elected to two of them. And as far as I can tell he is doing a fine job on both.
People having such important seat should be fully dedicated to this position. And for me it's not a problem to be involved in engineering and for example ambassadors work, just you have to be sure to make it. (and not only make it but do it).
There needs to be a limit on how many release cycles or "terms" individuals may serve on the board/committees to ensure rotation and enough "fresh" ideas/approaches to any given task at hand.
I have some sympathy for this too. Getting new ideas into the governance/steering discussion is a positive thing from my perspective. Each governance body can choose now to create such limits, has discussed them in the past, and seems to have always rejected them. I think the usual arguments against imposing limits are (1) voters can enforce any limits they choose by their actions voting and (2) there have been periods where even getting enough people to run to hold an election has been challenging without telling others they can't run.
The new blood is always welcomed and I'm trying to attract more people for every elections! So again - strong limits are not something I'd like to see and it does not mean, we will get a new interested contributors. This is more task for our marketing us to sell people why they should participate (one of my goals, I should implement it on global level ;-).
I'll point out that this is one place where the history of the FPL might help inform the governance bodies of the value of new ideas and fresh enthusiasm.
Nominees cant change their "Introduction" once the nomination period has ended.
This is something we could just do. I'm not sure I see very much value in doing it though.
Nominees that seek re-elections should clearly state what work they did when serving their last election period.
Did you ask them to do that on the questionnaire or at a townhall? We can ask the candidates whatever we want to ask them, someone just has to take a few minutes and ask the question.
Board members now have goals, again, we have to attract community to be more involved and interested in Board member goal's achievements. For now, we left scheduled reports and let Board member to show the important milestones of the goals when they are ready. Any idea?
But -> Advisory Board ;-)
R.
John
marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
On 06/04/2012 07:03 PM, inode0 wrote:
On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 12:53 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
On 06/04/2012 02:51 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
This is a good explanation. I'd also reiterate that "against the community" is not supported by the fact that (1), and (2) the FPL
continues to appoint quite a few non-Red Hat employees, over the Board's history.
Well the FPL is not elected by the community but is hired by Red Hat through some internal process they have that we ( the community ) know nothing about and Red Hat has a track record of inventing position within the community then more often then not hire people outside the community to fill those positions. ( Even thou the company has been getting better at rephrasing these job positions and choosing people within the community rather than outside in more recent times).
Arguably an better approach to choose an FPL is for the community to nominate individuals which then would be subjected to whatever process Red Hat uses internally to filter out and eventually get on it's payroll.
Arguably that is a worse approach too.
What are the downside you see to this approach?
At least to me that's the only compromising solution that I can see working between both parties involved without one ruling over the other.
I think you give the FPL more power than the position really has now. While the position has great responsibilities both to the Fedora community and to Red Hat, aside from the unused veto power over Board decisions the FPL's "power" comes from doing good work and persuading others by argument and more often by example that something is valuable. Without community buy-in I don't see much power there.
This is about transparency, community's participation and independence in the process in choosing our own leader instead of having it chosen *for* us.
With regards to "the Fedora community has chosen to elect quite a few Red Hat employees" which I can certainly agree to since I my self have voted Red Hat employees over community candidates since I base my voting more on the individual work and technical knowledge rather than on some popularity contest.
But I still think that this is one thing that is wrong with our election process as in I feel that corporate entity's or individual from there in may not be allowed to hold majority of seats neither on the board nor in any of the committees within the community to prevent that corporates interest influence either directly or indirectly the projects direction and resources and that view of mine is not limited to Red Hat but to all sponsor, sponsoring the project ( if and then when Red Hat *decides* some other corporate can sponsor the project).
Don't you think the power to influence the project's direction is coming from the work being done more than from participation on a governance body?
Not with regards to FESCO no I cant say I can.
More often than not decisions that have been made there appear to me being more beneficial to RHEL than it actually does the project even more so do the action of FPC.
And here are few I think is wrong with election process and is needed to ensure fairness through out the community
The same election process should be used through out the whole project so famsco/fesco should follow the same process as do everyone else.
I'm not sure what you mean here. The process is almost identical for FAmSCo and FESCo with minor details that differ like FAmSCo does not require members to be in the packager group. :)
I am interested in understanding what you mean though as I am also very interested in an election process that the community believes in. So please tell us in more detail where you think the problem lies now in this case.
Look at fairly reason events in FamSCO...
Individual may not serve on more then one committee at a time.
This one I have pretty strong sympathy for since in general I think participating in multiple governance bodies tends to have more negative consequences than positive. But there are always exceptions and off the top of my head today the only person falling into this category now is a volunteer community member elected to two of them. And as far as I can tell he is doing a fine job on both.
I'm not that entirely convinced that Christoph being on the both sides of the table in recent FamSCo event was a "positive" thing.
There needs to be a limit on how many release cycles or "terms" individuals may serve on the board/committees to ensure rotation and enough "fresh" ideas/approaches to any given task at hand.
I have some sympathy for this too. Getting new ideas into the governance/steering discussion is a positive thing from my perspective. Each governance body can choose now to create such limits, has discussed them in the past, and seems to have always rejected them. I think the usual arguments against imposing limits are (1) voters can enforce any limits they choose by their actions voting and
Not when there is a whole corporation voting for their *coworkers* in the elections which they either do so because of their own free will or because their manager might have put them up to it.
I know for a fact after being responded by one maintainer in the project who's name I'll leave out for his own sake that he could not update his package until his *manager* gave him permission to do so.
If you need another example which is publicly available in the projects archives is when an Red Hat employee proposed that all conflicts between Red Hat employee and community members would be handled internally with the relevant persons manager.
Fortunately I manage to attend the meeting share my views on that subject and the discrimination that would take place both against the Red Hat employees and the community in whole if that proposal would have been approved.
(2) there have been periods where even getting enough people to run to hold an election has been challenging without telling others they can't run.
There already exist an rule to deal with that should that be the case which just needs to be extended to all governing body's within the project.
I'll point out that this is one place where the history of the FPL might help inform the governance bodies of the value of new ideas and fresh enthusiasm.
Nominees cant change their "Introduction" once the nomination period has ended.
This is something we could just do. I'm not sure I see very much value in doing it though.
This prevents people from altering their introduction, mission statements etc after the nomination period has ended and if people really have not bothered to take the time to properly fill these out before the nomination period has ended they should be disqualified from the election.
Ask you self these do we really want persons in a governing body that cant even do that simple thing?
To me this is pure common sense...
Nominees that seek re-elections should clearly state what work they did when serving their last election period.
Did you ask them to do that on the questionnaire or at a townhall? We can ask the candidates whatever we want to ask them, someone just has to take a few minutes and ask the question.
Townhall meetings are failures from my point of view due to various reasons.
JBG
On 4 June 2012 17:01, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
Not when there is a whole corporation voting for their *coworkers* in the elections which they either do so because of their own free will or because their manager might have put them up to it.
Oh come on. Your accusation is no different from saying everyone from Norway will vote for Norwegians and against Swedish. It is base discrimination and only worthy to be pointed out and reminded it has no place here. You don't trust Red Hat or any corporation, fine. You want to make base accusations about agendas and mystery agents, please take them off the marketing list.
Yes I work for Red Hat. But I will not vote for someone because someone tells me to or because they work for Red Hat.
On 06/04/2012 11:44 PM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
On 4 June 2012 17:01, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson"johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
Not when there is a whole corporation voting for their *coworkers* in the elections which they either do so because of their own free will or because their manager might have put them up to it.
This is a risk that comes with all corporation ( Red Hat including ) in community involvement.
Oh come on. Your accusation is no different from saying everyone from Norway will vote for Norwegians and against Swedish. It is base discrimination and only worthy to be pointed out and reminded it has no place here. You don't trust Red Hat or any corporation, fine. You want to make base accusations about agendas and mystery agents, please take them off the marketing list.
Yes I work for Red Hat. But I will not vote for someone because someone tells me to or because they work for Red Hat.
I never said Red Hat put them up to it but the risk certainly does exist ( as it does with any corporate ).
I know for a fact from one Red Hat maintainer within the project that could not update his package until his manager *granted* him permission to do so thus let me ask you this does the project have any public guarantee from Red Hat that their employees are allowed to make decision which may or may not be in the best interest of the company or it's partners without any ramification from within Red Hat with their participation in the project?
In essence those Red Hat employees that are participating in the project regardless if it's of their own accord or as a part of their job description stand equal to any other community member and are acting of their own free will and their actions are entirely their own?
If so feel free to point me to that statement so I can pass it on to other Red Hat employees to inform them that they don't need permission from their manager to maintain their own package as they see fit within the project...
If that public statement/guarantee actually exist then I shall forever put my "base accusations about agendas and mystery agents" ( as you put it ) to sleep however if it does not exist I suggest you accept the fact that there is indeed distinction between Red Hat and it's employees and the community...
JBG
On 4 June 2012 18:44, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
On 06/04/2012 11:44 PM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
On 4 June 2012 17:01, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson"johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
Not when there is a whole corporation voting for their *coworkers* in the elections which they either do so because of their own free will or because their manager might have put them up to it.
This is a risk that comes with all corporation ( Red Hat including ) in community involvement.
For all the belly aching there is about corporations in Fedora.. can someone please just fork Fedora, create their own utopian non-corporate influenced project and run with it? Mainly because this constant your corporation is killing my community is really really tiresome like a broke record that should have been fixed in Fedora 3 or 6. I am pretty sure that with about 4-16 weeks worth of work 6->8 people could have a build system, bug tracking, mailing lists etc setup and running. ....
I never said Red Hat put them up to it but the risk certainly does exist ( as it does with any corporate ).
I know for a fact from one Red Hat maintainer within the project that could not update his package until his manager *granted* him permission to do so thus let me ask you this does the project have any public guarantee from Red Hat that their employees are allowed to make decision which may or may not be in the best interest of the company or it's partners without any ramification from within Red Hat with their participation in the project?
In essence those Red Hat employees that are participating in the project regardless if it's of their own accord or as a part of their job description stand equal to any other community member and are acting of their own free will and their actions are entirely their own?
If so feel free to point me to that statement so I can pass it on to other Red Hat employees to inform them that they don't need permission from their manager to maintain their own package as they see fit within the project...
If that public statement/guarantee actually exist then I shall forever put my "base accusations about agendas and mystery agents" ( as you put it ) to sleep however if it does not exist I suggest you accept the fact that there is indeed distinction between Red Hat and it's employees and the community...
No there is no such statement and there isn't going to be such a statement anymore than there is going to be a signed statement from non-Red Hat employees they will update packages even if working on it conflicts with other packages or their kids soccer match. There are always going to be outside contingencies and trying to build a promise against them is like holding back the tide.
Anyway, this conversation has nothing to do with marketing and is my last on the subject.
On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 6:01 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
On 06/04/2012 07:03 PM, inode0 wrote:
On Mon, Jun 4, 2012 at 12:53 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
On 06/04/2012 02:51 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
This is a good explanation. I'd also reiterate that "against the community" is not supported by the fact that (1), and (2) the FPL
continues to appoint quite a few non-Red Hat employees, over the Board's history.
Well the FPL is not elected by the community but is hired by Red Hat through some internal process they have that we ( the community ) know nothing about and Red Hat has a track record of inventing position within the community then more often then not hire people outside the community to fill those positions. ( Even thou the company has been getting better at rephrasing these job positions and choosing people within the community rather than outside in more recent times).
Arguably an better approach to choose an FPL is for the community to nominate individuals which then would be subjected to whatever process Red Hat uses internally to filter out and eventually get on it's payroll.
Arguably that is a worse approach too.
What are the downside you see to this approach?
Well, any process like this done by Fedora will be done in public. So let's imagine somehow we get 12 potential FPL candidates into our pool of candidates to consider. We cut that down to a reasonable number of 3-4 to pass on to Red Hat for further vetting. We have just said that 8-9 of the candidates weren't good enough in our estimation. What would that be based on? The public nature of this vetting likely would make people shy away from the process, being told you don't cut it is hard enough to deal with privately. Now let's imagine Red Hat is thrilled with one of our candidates and picks that person. Red Hat is put in the position of in public rejecting the other two or three candidates. Do you suppose this would lead to more or less second guessing than we have now when we mostly have no idea who was considered?
So I suspect this might limit the pool of people who are even willing to consider being the FPL, I suspect it would lead to a nightmare in Fedora of trying to decide who and by what method we would vet potential FPLs, and I think Red Hat's final decision would be questioned more when we know who they rejected.
At least to me that's the only compromising solution that I can see working between both parties involved without one ruling over the other.
I think you give the FPL more power than the position really has now. While the position has great responsibilities both to the Fedora community and to Red Hat, aside from the unused veto power over Board decisions the FPL's "power" comes from doing good work and persuading others by argument and more often by example that something is valuable. Without community buy-in I don't see much power there.
This is about transparency, community's participation and independence in the process in choosing our own leader instead of having it chosen *for* us.
I won't argue that point with you. If you want Fedora to select the FPL because you think Fedora should that is fine. I can imagine getting there at some point.
With regards to "the Fedora community has chosen to elect quite a few Red Hat employees" which I can certainly agree to since I my self have voted Red Hat employees over community candidates since I base my voting more on the individual work and technical knowledge rather than on some popularity contest.
But I still think that this is one thing that is wrong with our election process as in I feel that corporate entity's or individual from there in may not be allowed to hold majority of seats neither on the board nor in any of the committees within the community to prevent that corporates interest influence either directly or indirectly the projects direction and resources and that view of mine is not limited to Red Hat but to all sponsor, sponsoring the project ( if and then when Red Hat *decides* some other corporate can sponsor the project).
Don't you think the power to influence the project's direction is coming from the work being done more than from participation on a governance body?
Not with regards to FESCO no I cant say I can.
More often than not decisions that have been made there appear to me being more beneficial to RHEL than it actually does the project even more so do the action of FPC.
Well, I have no objection with things being beneficial to RHEL. I would argue that Fedora providing technology desired by RHEL and other downstream consumers is as important for Fedora as anything else we do that is motivated by a target audience.
And here are few I think is wrong with election process and is needed to ensure fairness through out the community
The same election process should be used through out the whole project so famsco/fesco should follow the same process as do everyone else.
I'm not sure what you mean here. The process is almost identical for FAmSCo and FESCo with minor details that differ like FAmSCo does not require members to be in the packager group. :)
I am interested in understanding what you mean though as I am also very interested in an election process that the community believes in. So please tell us in more detail where you think the problem lies now in this case.
Look at fairly reason events in FamSCO...
I am very familiar with recent events in FAmSCo. They changed their election procedures to be very similar to FESCo's. Now can you tell me what specifically about the FAmSCo election policies you do not approve of?
Individual may not serve on more then one committee at a time.
This one I have pretty strong sympathy for since in general I think participating in multiple governance bodies tends to have more negative consequences than positive. But there are always exceptions and off the top of my head today the only person falling into this category now is a volunteer community member elected to two of them. And as far as I can tell he is doing a fine job on both.
I'm not that entirely convinced that Christoph being on the both sides of the table in recent FamSCo event was a "positive" thing.
Both sides of what table? The Board had nothing to do with the reorganization of FAmSCo as far as I know. Well, aside from ignoring the call to disband FAmSCo. :)
There needs to be a limit on how many release cycles or "terms" individuals may serve on the board/committees to ensure rotation and enough "fresh" ideas/approaches to any given task at hand.
I have some sympathy for this too. Getting new ideas into the governance/steering discussion is a positive thing from my perspective. Each governance body can choose now to create such limits, has discussed them in the past, and seems to have always rejected them. I think the usual arguments against imposing limits are (1) voters can enforce any limits they choose by their actions voting and
Not when there is a whole corporation voting for their *coworkers* in the elections which they either do so because of their own free will or because their manager might have put them up to it.
Please. So few people vote if you could just get 100 people to vote for candidate X that candidate would win. Hardly anyone from Red Hat votes, hardly anyone from the community votes.
I know for a fact after being responded by one maintainer in the project who's name I'll leave out for his own sake that he could not update his package until his *manager* gave him permission to do so.
If you need another example which is publicly available in the projects archives is when an Red Hat employee proposed that all conflicts between Red Hat employee and community members would be handled internally with the relevant persons manager.
Fortunately I manage to attend the meeting share my views on that subject and the discrimination that would take place both against the Red Hat employees and the community in whole if that proposal would have been approved.
(2) there have been periods where even getting enough people to run to hold an election has been challenging without telling others they can't run.
There already exist an rule to deal with that should that be the case which just needs to be extended to all governing body's within the project.
Yes, and in the case of the Board the rule is that the FPL appoints all the seats that the community failed to field candidates for - bet you don't like that rule.
In the other cases the elections are delayed hoping more candidates will show up. Neither of these is a good thing.
I'll point out that this is one place where the history of the FPL might help inform the governance bodies of the value of new ideas and fresh enthusiasm.
Nominees cant change their "Introduction" once the nomination period has ended.
This is something we could just do. I'm not sure I see very much value in doing it though.
This prevents people from altering their introduction, mission statements etc after the nomination period has ended and if people really have not bothered to take the time to properly fill these out before the nomination period has ended they should be disqualified from the election.
Ask you self these do we really want persons in a governing body that cant even do that simple thing?
To me this is pure common sense...
I just don't think this small thing is important. I doubt anyone voting remembers anything from that introduction when they vote. Certainly it isn't nearly as important as their contributions and standing in the community. It isn't as important as their answers to community posed questions. It is about the least important thing they do in the election process. And the rules governing the introductions are set by each governance body. The Board doesn't make anything more than your name mandatory, FAmSCo has rejected nominations for not filling out the information in the past.
As with most election details, I think the governance bodies can set their own rules.
Nominees that seek re-elections should clearly state what work they did when serving their last election period.
Did you ask them to do that on the questionnaire or at a townhall? We can ask the candidates whatever we want to ask them, someone just has to take a few minutes and ask the question.
Townhall meetings are failures from my point of view due to various reasons.
They are failures from my point of view too, at least I see the possibility for them to be far more informative than they are today. But they will always fall short so long as contributors don't come and participate in them.
John
On 06/05/2012 12:04 AM, inode0 wrote:
<snip>...</snip>
Don't you think the power to influence the project's direction is coming from the work being done more than from participation on a governance body?
Not with regards to FESCO no I cant say I can.
More often than not decisions that have been made there appear to me being more beneficial to RHEL than it actually does the project even more so do the action of FPC.
Well, I have no objection with things being beneficial to RHEL. I would argue that Fedora providing technology desired by RHEL and other downstream consumers is as important for Fedora as anything else we do that is motivated by a target audience.
Here we come to a point of one of what I consider a core issue in the community which is this so called "target audience" and the set of "Default" that goes with it.
From my point of view the board should not decided what is that so called "target audience" or is the so called "Default" we ship but rather we should allow each sub community to define it's own set of target audience ( which afaik they do btw ), we drop the so called default to give all sub communities and various components an equal foot to stand on and equal presentation on our web site etc. and resources within the project ( which currently is not the case ) because the community is filled with components that provide same or similar function.
Arguably having the "Default" has been historically and will continue to be the cause for the most confrontation within the project heck if I put on my QA hat every release cycle we are faced with the question if we should only test Gnome or if we should test Gnome and KDE ( due to historic reasons it has been allowed to tag along ) or should we test Gnome, KDE, XFCE,LXDE which we try to do to the best of our ability since in essence we are an service in the project as is releng and design community's as well but we are kinda being told to only test the so called "Default" which btw no criteria exist for which leads to the fact that none of the other *DE sub community's can strive to become that "Default" to get the same treatment as we are giving the current set of defaults ( see what I'm getting at with this)...
<snip>.. </snip>
I'm not that entirely convinced that Christoph being on the both sides of the table in recent FamSCo event was a "positive" thing. Both sides of what table? The Board had nothing to do with the reorganization of FAmSCo as far as I know. Well, aside from ignoring the call to disband FAmSCo. :)
Serving both sides of the tables is always a bad thing from my pov.
Arguably the process should be this.
You can run for any open position within the project if you aren't already serving one
If you should get elected in more than one you will have to choose which one you will serve and the next runner up will take the seat you give up.
There needs to be a limit on how many release cycles or "terms" individuals may serve on the board/committees to ensure rotation and enough "fresh" ideas/approaches to any given task at hand.
I have some sympathy for this too. Getting new ideas into the governance/steering discussion is a positive thing from my perspective. Each governance body can choose now to create such limits, has discussed them in the past, and seems to have always rejected them. I think the usual arguments against imposing limits are (1) voters can enforce any limits they choose by their actions voting and
Not when there is a whole corporation voting for their *coworkers* in the elections which they either do so because of their own free will or because their manager might have put them up to it.
Please. So few people vote if you could just get 100 people to vote for candidate X that candidate would win. Hardly anyone from Red Hat votes, hardly anyone from the community votes.
At least regardless of what that corporate is it should never be allowed to hold majority of seats in any governing body within the community from my pov ( Unless ofcourse these seats are being filled in by the FPL because of lack of nominees )
<snip>...</snip>
There already exist an rule to deal with that should that be the case which just needs to be extended to all governing body's within the project.
Yes, and in the case of the Board the rule is that the FPL appoints all the seats that the community failed to field candidates for - bet you don't like that rule.
Nope I actually agree with that rule very much and the FPL should appoints whomever it feels like even fill all the seats with Red Hat employees for all I care including people serving other governing positions within the project.
In the other cases the elections are delayed hoping more candidates will show up. Neither of these is a good thing.
It makes no sense delaying it.
I'll point out that this is one place where the history of the FPL might help inform the governance bodies of the value of new ideas and fresh enthusiasm.
Nominees cant change their "Introduction" once the nomination period has ended.
This is something we could just do. I'm not sure I see very much value in doing it though.
This prevents people from altering their introduction, mission statements etc after the nomination period has ended and if people really have not bothered to take the time to properly fill these out before the nomination period has ended they should be disqualified from the election.
Ask you self these do we really want persons in a governing body that cant even do that simple thing?
To me this is pure common sense...
I just don't think this small thing is important. I doubt anyone voting remembers anything from that introduction when they vote.
I personally read the pages always when the nomination period ends and again before I cast my vote.
Certainly it isn't nearly as important as their contributions and standing in the community. It isn't as important as their answers to community posed questions. It is about the least important thing they do in the election process. And the rules governing the introductions are set by each governance body. The Board doesn't make anything more than your name mandatory, FAmSCo has rejected nominations for not filling out the information in the past.
I dont make distinction in those things like you do I take all of these things into account and I consider each of those being of equal value when doing so.
<snip>...</snip>
Townhall meetings are failures from my point of view due to various reasons.
They are failures from my point of view too, at least I see the possibility for them to be far more informative than they are today. But they will always fall short so long as contributors don't come and participate in them.
I personally dont participate in things that I dont see working out.
JBG
On 06/01/2012 05:02 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
On Fri, Jun 01, 2012 at 02:03:19AM +0000, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
On 05/31/2012 03:27 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
Red Hat people who contribute to Fedora are community too. There's not a dividing line with the community on one side, and Red Hat on the other.
This is a very positive viewpoint and I'm glad that it gets expressed here and other places. Still, there are some ways, of course also due to history, in which the Fedora Project and Red Hat are not completely independent.
Red Hat ultimately controls the Fedora trademark and the Fedora domain names, and pays for the Fedora infrastructure. What is shown on Fedora websites, and what is called Fedora, is ultimately under Red Hat control. This leaves Red Hat in an unique 'negotiation position' for influencing the direction of the project that other contributors do not have.
Complete independence would mean that the trademark, domain names, and infrastructure are under the control of a legally and functionally separate entity, which is donation funded. I am not necessarily taking the position that such an arrangement would be beneficial to Fedora, just saying that such a level of independence would be subtly, yet significantly, different from the current situation.
It would take explicit marketing effort from both Red Hat and Fedora Project for 'the public' to see Fedora as larger than Red Hat; to see Red Hat as a community member, a small contributor, working to the larger whole of Fedora. Especially considering that this is, in several important senses, not true.
Let's take a step back. Most of the negative influence of the Red Hat relationship on the Fedora brand is the idea that Fedora is a lower quality product than RHEL, which Fedora is eventually 'distilled to'. That perspective is crucial for Red Hat's business positioning, and is probably true for Red Hat's customers, but it is not true in general.
Fedora and Red Hat serve vastly different purposes, and for many purposes, RHEL is the inferior product. To whom is Fedora the better quality product and do those users read the inquirer?
Hi,
This is just a little thought, wouldn't that sentence/title just The Inquirier's sarcastic (and funny) touch to the published article? which is kind of a regular procedure for them as far as IT news reporting is concerned?
At the end of the day, Fedora is the community-driven disribution strong throughout the years, whereas RHEL is just the commercial product.
-Ilyes On Jun 1, 2012 5:22 PM, "Emanuel Rietveld" codehotter@gmail.com wrote:
On 06/01/2012 05:02 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
On Fri, Jun 01, 2012 at 02:03:19AM +0000, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
On 05/31/2012 03:27 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
Red Hat people who contribute to Fedora are community too. There's not a dividing line with the community on one side, and Red Hat on the other.
This is a very positive viewpoint and I'm glad that it gets expressed here and other places. Still, there are some ways, of course also due to history, in which the Fedora Project and Red Hat are not completely independent.
Red Hat ultimately controls the Fedora trademark and the Fedora domain names, and pays for the Fedora infrastructure. What is shown on Fedora websites, and what is called Fedora, is ultimately under Red Hat control. This leaves Red Hat in an unique 'negotiation position' for influencing the direction of the project that other contributors do not have.
Complete independence would mean that the trademark, domain names, and infrastructure are under the control of a legally and functionally separate entity, which is donation funded. I am not necessarily taking the position that such an arrangement would be beneficial to Fedora, just saying that such a level of independence would be subtly, yet significantly, different from the current situation.
It would take explicit marketing effort from both Red Hat and Fedora Project for 'the public' to see Fedora as larger than Red Hat; to see Red Hat as a community member, a small contributor, working to the larger whole of Fedora. Especially considering that this is, in several important senses, not true.
Let's take a step back. Most of the negative influence of the Red Hat relationship on the Fedora brand is the idea that Fedora is a lower quality product than RHEL, which Fedora is eventually 'distilled to'. That perspective is crucial for Red Hat's business positioning, and is probably true for Red Hat's customers, but it is not true in general.
Fedora and Red Hat serve vastly different purposes, and for many purposes, RHEL is the inferior product. To whom is Fedora the better quality product and do those users read the inquirer? -- marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.**org marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.**org/mailman/listinfo/marketinghttps://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
----- "Paul W. Frields" stickster@gmail.com wrote:
Since the FPL has appointed three of those seats to volunteers and only one to someone who's a Red Hat employee, I'm not sure how this is relevant. Looking at the Board history for those seats[1] one can see half the appointments since mid-2008 have been volunteers. Also of note is the fact that half the people elected by the community since that time have also been volunteers. So the appointments don't look slanted toward Red Hat employees AFAICT, which is just as intended.
We can agree to disagree on your overall point, that's fine. I just wanted to point out the facts don't support an effort to stack the Board with Red Hat people.
How about the bigger question, what percentage of FESCo has been Red Hat employees during any term. After all it is FESCo that really matters what is in Fedora, not the board. I would track this out myself but the use of non@redhat email addresses makes it hard, even asking the candidates in Election town halls you get the run around commonly. "Who I work for doesn't matter." How many times have we heard that?
-- Bob
On 06/01/2012 10:24 PM, Robert 'Bob' Jensen wrote:
How about the bigger question, what percentage of FESCo has been Red Hat employees during any term.
Since FESCo is fully elected, it is entirely up to Fedora contributors to choose whom they elect. If they want to factor in, the organization one works for, that is upto them.
Rahul
----- Original Message -----
----- "Paul W. Frields" stickster@gmail.com wrote:
Since the FPL has appointed three of those seats to volunteers and only one to someone who's a Red Hat employee, I'm not sure how this is relevant. Looking at the Board history for those seats[1] one can see half the appointments since mid-2008 have been volunteers. Also of note is the fact that half the people elected by the community since that time have also been volunteers. So the appointments don't look slanted toward Red Hat employees AFAICT, which is just as intended.
We can agree to disagree on your overall point, that's fine. I just wanted to point out the facts don't support an effort to stack the Board with Red Hat people.
How about the bigger question, what percentage of FESCo has been Red Hat employees during any term.
How many ran for elections and got voted...
After all it is FESCo that really matters what is in Fedora, not the board.
More than to other Fedora bodies as FESCo is engineering committee and Red Hatters in Fedora are mostly engineers. Makes sense :) You see less in Board and even less in FAmSCo...
Jaroslav
I would track this out myself but the use of non@redhat email addresses makes it hard, even asking the candidates in Election town halls you get the run around commonly. "Who I work for doesn't matter." How many times have we heard that?
-- Bob
marketing mailing list marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 9:22 AM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
Here we come to one of the core issues of Red Hat vs The Fedora community as in we ( the community ) do not view RHEL release being one function of the Fedora Project.
The community is large and comes to Fedora for a lot of reasons. Some people in community, I am one of them, did in fact come in no small part because of the downstream consumption of Fedora in RHEL.
Red Hat certainly believes it to be one of the function the project however we ( the community ) certainly don't nor should we as an project allow any sponsor Red Hat or otherwise have any influence either directly or indirectly of the project and it's direction.
I hope most of the community does care about the goals and interests of its users (both end users of the distribution as well as downstream consumers of the distribution). That doesn't mean the community has to do anything to help achieve those goals and interests, but it seems idiotic to ignore them entirely and to not help contributors achieve their goals so long as they are consistent with the project goals.
John
Thanks Paul (and Robyn) for your reply
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 2:39 PM, Paul W. Frields stickster@gmail.com wrote:
There's a big difference between "Fedora is a beta and users are guinea pigs," and "Fedora is a place where *any contributor* can work on new technical features and put them in front of millions of users as part of a free and open source software development process."
Yeah, I'm sorry for pushing the "drama" button on the first characterization but at least I've got a decent answer from 2 different project leaders :)
Being the proving ground for new technology that might be in a future RHEL release is only one function of the Fedora Project. Of course that function is quite important to Red Hat, and a reason why Red Hat continues to put substantail resources into Fedora. But it's not the only thing the Fedora Project does, and as you know lots of contributors have their own reasons to participate as well.
So correct me if I'm getting it wrong: you are saying that Red Hat does in fact invest in Fedora so it can push new technologies early and prove their usefulness and reliability before adding them to RHEL. Robyn's addition makes it even more clear that "proving ground" is not necessarily a bad thing, and everyone is welcome to play with the same rules to make each Fedora release the best.
Of course, while I see the concept pretty easily, I think the problem will not go away soon because the link between Red Hat and Fedora appears to be pretty tight to a casual observer, and "proving ground" can be (and I've seen it was) misrepresented to mean something like "place where you throw things together hoping that they will stick".
We just need to pay attention and be prepared to counter this kind of misinformation
Anyway, thank you again for your insight on the topic.
On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 03:38:47PM +0300, Nicu Buculei wrote:
On 05/29/2012 09:31 PM, Robyn Bergeron wrote:
On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 11:18 AM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson"wrote:
On 05/29/2012 03:15 PM, Karin Bakis wrote:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2180673/red-hat-releases-fedora
"Red Hat has released its Fedora 17!"
Is it Red Hat that sends announcements and claims to be releasing Fedora or is the inquirer getting it wrong?
Red Hat does a press release on the newswire for each release, in addition to the general release announcement and other activities that we do.
(I see that Karin just responded to this, and said just about what I was goign to say.)
But I think we all agree the linked article is really bad written and it would he useful to "help" those news sources to improve their reporting.
Something to keep in mind is that these online publications see a lot more hits when they include "Red Hat" in the title, by virtue of Red Hat's status as a publicly traded company. So they have an incentive to link Red Hat with the Fedora release in some way. Unfortunately, the headlines are often written in a way that misinforms the reader because the community releases the product.
The reason I point this out is not to make excuses for the journalists or publications, but to explain why we continue to see the same thing over several years even after repeated corrections. As always, we can correct gently and in a friendly, cordial manner.
On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 1:18 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
On 05/29/2012 03:15 PM, Karin Bakis wrote:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2180673/red-hat-releases-fedora
"Red Hat has released its Fedora 17!"
Is it Red Hat that sends announcements and claims to be releasing Fedora or is the inquirer getting it wrong?
Last time I checked we are a community distribution and thus the community releases Fedora not Red Hat.
http://www.redhat.com/about/news/press-archive/2012/5/fedora17-provides-pote...
I can't help but read that as a sponsor expressing in public how proud it is of the community it works with. We should be happy by what Red Hat actually had to say about the release and about our community. Red Hat can't prevent the media from misrepresenting things, but I don't see Red Hat misrepresenting anything here.
John
On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 5:36 PM, inode0 inode0@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.redhat.com/about/news/press-archive/2012/5/fedora17-provides-pote...
I can't help but read that as a sponsor expressing in public how proud it is of the community it works with.
Seconded. This is actually a very well written press release; additionally it avoids the "proving ground" trap altogether :)
marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org
-
Emanuel Rietveld -
Gianluca Sforna -
Ilyes Gouta -
inode0 -
Jaroslav Reznik -
Jóhann B. Guðmundsson -
Karin Bakis -
Nicu Buculei -
Paul W. Frields -
Rahul Sundaram -
Robert 'Bob' Jensen -
Robyn Bergeron -
Robyn Bergeron -
Stephen John Smoogen