Hi Folks,
(The below is something I wrote back in June, contemplating it. I still
feel this way, but I've not been as active in the project as I was then.)
The Fedora Legacy Project seems to me just barely alive.
Sometimes I think about it and wonder why it seems that way. Is it just
me who feels that way?
Here are some concerns for the continued vitality of the Fedora Legacy
project:
* Participatory structure I: One of the reasons I joined the legacy
project in the first place is because I had the impression back in
fall 2004 that we were a vital community with a number of players
who each took turns doing different roles in the process of doing
the work of Legacy.
The fact of the matter is that for quite awhile, only 3-4 people
seem to have been doing the bulk of the work described on our "par-
ticipate" page, of vulnerability tracker, Vulnerability Analyst and
Patch Creator, Test RPM Packager, QA Tester, Publisher (Release
Manager), and nevermind the other roles listed. On some occasions,
a single person does all the steps (except source QA and binary QA
testing -- *if* binary QA even gets done at all).
<http://fedoralegacy.org/participate/>
Working with others is fun. Knowing that people are around who care and
who will be there to do stuff and consult with is part of the fun of doing
community work. But it is only fun if there is a community to work with.
I know there are folks like you out there that read with interest every
post that is made to the fedora-legacy-list, who are willing to jump in
and answer questions and concerns of others having problems with the
legacy software that we maintain.
But I miss collaboration here, for the most part. I guess what I miss is
the sense of vitality when collaborators are close at hand. Like, when
folks visit on IRC and chit-chat with one another while doing work on
various projects... Very few of us seem to do IRC... Or make known
specific times when we will be available on the #Fedora-Legacy channel
that we operate on irc.freenode.net.
* Participatory Structure II: Guidance, deliverables, goals, and
governance.
Sometimes in participating with Fedora Legacy it feels like Legacy is a
ship without a rudder. We have our goals generically set out on the
websites that we operate, namely
- Main site: <http://fedoralegacy.org/>
- Wiki: <http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legacy>
and we do get stuff done. Not necessarily very fast, but it gets done.
But where is the governance? Where are the week-to-week or month-to-
month goals? Where are the meetings that projects of our scope ought to
be having, at least monthly, to assess how we are doing our job and where
we are going, how we are succeeding and where we need to grow, and to give
people ownership, responsibility, accountability, and expectations as to
what they can do (or are needed to do) to keep our project vital and have
fun while doing it?
Sometimes I feel like I have some ownership in this project -- I am on the
build team after all and have access to our build server and can find new
vulnerabilities, enter new bugzilla reports, propose patches, propose
updated .src.rpm packages, build new binary .rpm packages to be pushed to
updates-testing or updates.
But other times it's like -- okay. I'm lost. Where are we?
A. Do we have all the volunteers we need to take care of all the
various and sundry aspects of running a successful project? Are
all our roles filled and being operated? Do we have leaders in
charge of the various areas to help get new people acclimated to what
these roles do to get fresh blood contributing? Do we have ways to
make it easy for people to get started contributing?
Some roles: (see http://fedoralegacy.org/participate/)
B. Are we keeping up with vulnerabilities? Or are we just taking care
of the "low-hanging-fruit" kind of vulnerabilities that are critical?
C. Now that we have some official Fedora infrastucture (like CVS), do any
of our maintainers know how to work it or what to do with it? (Am
afraid I don't.) Do we need to get people involved with its use?
I like the fun of doing the good work of Fedora Legacy, helping people out
who want to or have to run older Fedora or Red Hat distributions of Linux.
It feels good to get this work done, and know that some folks are getting
some good out of what we do here.
But we need people to play with and help us get work done. It gets a bit
lonely (and overwhelming!) when only 3 to 6 people regularly contribute to
the basic work of maintaining security fixes for our Fedora (and RedHat)
releases.
Anyone wanna come talk on IRC sometime? Have a visit? Help set up
short-term goals, long-term goals for our project? Grab a bug and start
finding patches? (...with many thanks to Michal Jaegermann for sharing
some packages he has made for Seamonkey and Firefox that we need to get up
off our collective duff and use and make official!) Have any ideas to
attract more folks to participate in what we do?
Thanks for your time.
Warm regards,
David Eisenstein
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