[Ambassadors] Red Hat's investments (was Re: Going passive)

Wed Nov 10 16:40:09 UTC 2010

On Wednesday, November 10, 2010 05:10:36 pm Christoph Wickert wrote:
> Am Dienstag, den 09.11.2010, 23:13 +0100 schrieb Henrik Nordström:
> > And I fail to see how it's really relevant what the balance is.
> 
> My point was: The amount of work from the community is continuously
> rising, the investments by Red Hat - ether by money or manpower - are
> not.

Well,
we should invite you to our Brno office - we're still hiring - even Base OS 
department and guess what? These people work on Fedora! I really like enjoy it! 
Without Red Hat I couldn't spend so much time working here... Yes, we have some 
Red Hat duties - like maintain RHEL packages - but every security fix I prepared 
for RHEL lands RHEL and Fedora in same time!

Also our office try to show Fedora everywhere, we do a lot of marketing stuff here 
in Czech Republic - last time Fedora USB sticks for community members etc. 
There's low budget but we try as much as possible.

Next event is "Red Hat Developers Conference" - it's more Fedora Developers 
Conference as it's open and public event and we talk about our work on Fedora. I 
can invite you, I can probably ask my managers to support a hotel for example 
(as we usually do for some community members - like Kevin for example). It's not 
easy to get budget in Red Hat neither but we try - last year our budget was $0 -
> 0 CZK, we have a deal with local university and still we try - to promote 
Fedora. It's not Red Hat vs Fedora fight, I hope we're members of community. Look 
at KDE SIG - we work together to one common goal - best KDE in both Fedora and 
RHEL. Of course, we had some conflicts - we even had our own FKDESCo ;-) (4:3 for 
community members).

> > If RedHat is using their parental relation to Fedora to enforce certain
> > directions within Fedora against the general will of the community then
> > I would be worried, but I have not seen any significant signs of this.
> 
> You haven't? Ok, let me show you some signs:
> 
>      1. Fedora EMEA e.V. is being closed down.
>      2. Fedora France will likely need to follow.
>      3. Long time contributors like Gerold are stepping down.
>      4. Others are not officially stepping down but simply resigning. I
>         don't want to name any names.
>      5. Several Fedora community websites were close down.
>      6. We hardly have any community members that are willing to run for
>         the board or Fesco.
>      7. We have nobody to coordinate the elections.
>      8. We nearly had no FUDCon in EMEA this year.

I'd like to see one global FUDCon and smaller local events - more FUDCons means 
higher barrier between people.

>      9. Fedora 14 has less features than any other Fedora release.
>     10. We have mailing list moderation, threads are getting closed and
>         users get unsubscribed.

Bad thing.

>     11. We had brilliant community architect in EMEA and his job is
>         vacant for more than a year now. We are told that somebody new
>         is to come (at least for 20hrs/week), but so far, nothing has
>         happened.
>     12. We have groups in Fedora (made of of Red Hat employees) that do
>         not listen to the community and do not even listen to the
>         (former) FPL.

There are Red Hat groups that do not listen to other ones, same in Fedora... 
Again it's not RH vs Fedora fight. And a lot of Red Hatter would die for 
Fedora...

>     13. 2 Red Hat employees who never contributed to Fedora were
>         suddenly given commit access to more than 800 packages without
>         previous notification to the package owners. Thanks God this was
>         revoked.

"the investments by Red Hat - ether by money or manpower"

These two people gives really great value to our community. Yes, they weren't in 
Fedora community before but they are known in Czech community for really great 
ammount of work before they joined Red Hat and Fedora.

>     14. Other package owners got a formal letter from Red Hat that they
>         had to hand some of their packages over to Red Hat employees as
>         they were to become part of RHEL6.

I'd never do this - yes, I asked to co-maintainer rights - it's win for both 
parties.

>     15. The board defined a new target audience without the community.
>         We (e.g. the spins SIG) were given a bunch of questions, we
>         replied to them and asked questions in return. We never heard
>         back from the board until they came up with their new target
>         audience.

I agree. I don't know any fellow Red Hatter who agrees with it.

>     16. We have a board that makes decisions about things they have no
>         idea of and they do not even care to look at it before making a
>         decision.
>     17. We need to have a "Community Working Group" to fill the gap
>         between the board and the community, but the members of the
>         working group are not elected by the community but appointed by
>         the board.

I don't think another group/board is needed here...

>     18. Volunteer contributors have to wait for decisions from bodies
>         like FAMSCo, the board or FESCo.

These bodies should be more flexible and their task should be to resolve conflicts 
between volunteers/groups in Fedora - FESCo for technical ones etc.

>     19. Volunteers are not getting the support they need from the people
>         who are getting paid to work on Fedora.

Personally I try to support them as possible.

>     20. We have more and more red tape that makes live hard for our
>         contributors.

Red tapes are bad...

These are all my personal feelings - nothing official from my Fedora or even Red 
Hat position...

I agree there are some problems but it's all about people, not about color of 
hats. That's why I try to run for board position - if you don't like I'm Red Hat 
emp., don't vote for me but I'm not running there for RH but for me, for my 
conscience.

Jaroslav

> 
> > Sure, occasionally there is some friction, but nothing major from what I
> > can tell, certainly less than whats normal in a parent<->grownup child
> > relation of such closeness as the RedHat<->Fedora relation.
> 
> It is not occasionally but it has become quite frequently.
> 
> > There is some noticeable friction relating to the Fedora trademark which
> > seriously holds back certain aspects of the community, but I doubt the
> > last words have been said on that.
> 
> So, what do you expect here? My experience has thought me that if there
> is a change, it will not be for the better.
> 
> Regards,
> Christoph
> 
> P.S.: I'm not going to name any names or details in public as I don't
> want to play the blame game. I just want to draw a picture of the
> overall situation.
> The only person I am naming at this point is Jared. I really have high
> hopes and full trust in him. I can't wait to meet with him next week and
> I 'm looking forward to a constructive discussion about these issues.
> 
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-- 
Jaroslav Řezník <jreznik at redhat.com>
Software Engineer - Base Operating Systems Brno

Office: +420 532 294 275
Mobile: +420 602 797 774
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