[Ambassadors] Meeting Minute: FAmSCo Town Hall 2010-02-08

[Christoph Wickert]

Am Dienstag, den 09.02.2010, 09:08 +0530 schrieb susmit shannigrahi: 
> I am taking this two items lest Kital be overworked. :)
> 
> -  * kital create a ticket to discuss fallback policy in case there be dispute
>  among mentor and mentee..

Susmit, thanks for helping, but I'm not sure if this works out if you
take this over.

Before we create a general policy we need to investigate the incident
that led me to this question.  This incident happened in EMEA, not in
APAC.  Kital knows both the mentor and the mentee personally, even from
real life.  He already has some IRC logs, so he knows the story.

I welcome everybody who is trying do support kital because currently he
already works way too much for Fedora.  But I'm just not sure if it
works out in this case.

> - * kital put a ticket for discussion - how can famsco support the spin
>  community

I think I need to clarify something here: It is not (only) about the
spin community!

First on the spins media: The decision to produce labeled media of the
LXDE and Xfce spins was made by *all* EMEA ambassadors at the beginning
of last november because at events we usually present not only GNOME and
KDE but also LXDE and Xfce.  The fact that I'm involved in both of these
desktops doesn't mean that these live media are my private hobby.  The
media are not produced to make me happy but because they requested by
visitors at events.  When Max offered me to make a small batch to have
them in time for FOSDEM, I said that I don't want a "limited edition"
for myself.  To me it's important for me that we have a batch for all
events in EMEA during the F12 cycle.

Second: This spins are just one example of a project that gets very
little support. 
      * The spins get little support by rel-eng: I had to withdraw the
        LXDE spin due to a critical error one day after it was released.
        I fixed the problem within 2 days, nevertheless it took 4 weeks
        until the new images were created.  rel-eng also denied to test
        the spins (although this workflow is written down in the wiki),
        but never asked the spins SIG to test them ether. 
      * Little support by FeSCo: One of the reasons why the LXDE spin
        was delayed for so long was that FeSCo had to decide on hiw to
        proceed.  This took two weeks. 
      * Little support by the design team: The ticket I filed for the
        media sleeves was never processed.  Tatica was the only one to
        help me (thanks Tatica!) but in the end, I hat to do the artwork
        myself. 
      * Little support by infrastructure: We still have no direct
        downloads of the spins, only torrents.  The leader of Fedora
        infrastructure even claimed that the "spins are a detriment to
        Fedora". 
      * Little support by marketing: Was there ever done any marketing
        for the spins?

So when it comes to the question: "What can FAmSCo do to support the
spins community?" I have to say: Not much, because the problems exist
throughout nearly all groups in Fedora.  The only thing that FAmSCo can
do is take care of the spins media, but this is not supporting the spins
community but their very own ambassadors.

Third: My question was not, what we or FAmSCo can do to support the
spins but if the FAmSCo members think there is enough commitment from
Red Hat.  Let me give you a few examples: 
      * OpenSUSE had nice 24" touch screen computers at FOSDEM while
        Fedora usually has the laptops of the ambassadors or laptops
        that were sponsored by Dell for one particular event only. 
      * Every OpenSUSE ambassador gets an ambassadors starter kit with a
        bag, a jacket, a shirt, a printed handbook, media and some more
        goodies.  Fedora ambassadors on the other hand have to pay for
        their polos them selves (at least in EMEA). 
      * Commitment is not only about money.  There are people and teams
        inside of Red Hat that seem to care very little about working
        with the community and being open and transparent.  I recall a
        situation where a group not even cared about what the FPL said.
        If they are not listening to the FPL, who else is to tell them
        something?  Their manager?

Please don't get me wrong: I don't want to pick on individuals.
Especially not on Max, the absolutely best community architecture lead I
can imagine.  I don't want to pick on the assignee of the artwork ticket
ether, because I know that she has a lot of work.  Currently Red Hat
seems to try to cut costs at the expense of their employees and the
Fedora community.  This will not work out, it's cutting off their nose
to spite their face!

Regards,
Christoph