I don't even know what mailing list this belongs on anymore, so I'm leaving it to both. On Wed, 10 Nov 2010, Christoph Wickert wrote: > 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. I'm been contributing to Fedora for almost 5 years now, and in that time I have participated in different roles within Fedora, and made a lot of different decisions. Most of them, if I had to do again, I would, because I think a lot of good things happened for Fedora over that time. But the one thing that I wish I could go back in time and change is the way things have happened in the Europe community over the past few years. Some of the first people who I really got to know personally within Fedora were folks in Europe. The first FOSDEM and LinuxTag that I went to, in 2007, was one of the best times that I had as a Fedora contributor. People became close friends in addition to being co-contributors. I also knew that the community in Europe really wanted more attention, and a greater presence from Red Hat people for whom Fedora and community was part of their job. It wasn't possible to hire a brand new person specifically do that, but when I was no longer the FPL, the opportunity did present itself (and let's be honest, I helped to create that opportunity) for me to have a chance to spend some time in Europe and try to fill that need. If I had to do it all over again, though, I wouldn't have done it. Not because we didn't do some good things, or not because I didn't living in a different place, but because it was always temporary, and there was no way to *guarantee* that things wouldn't take a step backward when that resource (me) had its attention drawn elsewhere. And that's exactly what happened. Add to this the fundamental disagreement betweeen Red Hat's legal folks and the community in Europe regarding what is acceptable for a non-profit entity's status regarding the Fedora trademark, and I don't fault folks in Europe for being angry -- maybe not angry at INDIVIDUAL PEOPLE -- but angry at the entity which is Red Hat. I blame myself. I feel tremendous guilt and sorrow for the current situation in EMEA. Not because of anything that I did, but rather because I was unable to stop this bad result from taking place, because a bad situation has been the result of nothing but good intentions, and because I feel powerless to fix it. I know that there is a FAD EMEA next weekend, and I know that there will be some emotional discussions held at that FAD. I'm not able to attend that FAD -- not because I don't want to, but because I've had some personal travel planned for a few months now that same weekend, and it's impossible to reschedule or change. I've already told Jared that I'll be in my car and driving for large chunks of Friday November 19 and Saturday November 20, especially in the late morning and early afternoon UTC-5, and that if there are any conversations happening at the FAD that I can participate in from my phone and that people would like me to participate in, I'll do it. --Max _______________________________________________ advisory-board mailing list advisory-board@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/advisory-board
