On Mon, 2007-03-19 at 13:31 -0500, Mike McGrath wrote: > What can we learn from this so we don't repeat it? > > http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/07/03/19/1522208.shtml > I was only half kidding with this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/christopherblizzard/376866932/ It's an important part of our story. I would say that there are few things that we need to keep in mind as a project that will make sure we don't fall down that path: 1. Getting releases out the door and into the hands of people on a short schedule is probably the most important thing. It keeps us out of process hell, keeps us focused on the software and keeps us in a constant feedback loop with our user base. We learn, produce, learn, produce. 2. Avoid the tendency to not trust ourselves. We have to understand that we'll make mistakes. As long as we're willing to face up to those mistakes as adults and learn from them as opposed to putting in process that ever ever prevents us from making mistakes, we'll do OK. People inside of Red Hat are fond of "Fail Often" as a mantra, even though we don't practice it enough ourselves. We should be OK that as a concept. 3. Process and democracy are not a replacement for strong leadership. We encourage leadership inside of our organization from packagers all the way up to the board. Encourage strong leadership instead of moving to a democratic process where power is completely watered down and no one has to take responsibility or is accountable. 4. Embracing and understanding corporate involvement. Red Hat sponsors our work, we should make sure that others are sponsors as well. It's a true sign of health if we can get more than one involved party. We've never figured out what that looks like, but it's something we should do at some point. Just saying "it's fine" is a big step. Counterpoint: people inside of Debian are so afraid of money affecting the process that they aren't willing to put things in place to make themselves successful. It's weird and I don't understand it. (This is my one big take away from Mozilla experiences. Companies can help if you know how to deal with them.) I think Ian's comments seem to agree with this list. My mantra for Fedora is "a better debian than debian" and I think these are some of the key mechanisms we need to keep in mind moving forward. --Chris _______________________________________________ fedora-advisory-board mailing list fedora-advisory-board@xxxxxxxxxx http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-advisory-board
