Hi Jóhann, I do agree with you that the interaction between Red Hat and Fedora needs to be clearer, and that currently it is a bit vaguely defined and thus it gives ground to conspiracy theories and feelings of disenfranchisement. That said I think you too need to be open to that Red Hat, like yourself and any other participant in the Fedora project does so because there is a sense of self interest. That self interest may wary from enjoyment of community, to skills building, or to Fedora providing a solution to a technical problem you have. Red Hat is not investing heavily in Fedora in terms of infrastructure and development resources just because we as a company needs a place to spend money, if that was the case I am sure you would agree we should instead donate the money to the Red Cross or similar. The reason Red Hat invests in Fedora is because Fedora plays an important part in both product development and in innovating new technologies. So if Fedora ends up not being interesting or useful to you personally anymore I assume you would leave Fedora behind, the same is true for Red Hat. So I think part of the reason we end up having these kinds of argument it is because for a long time maybe both inside and outside Red Hat there has been a pretense that Red Hat as a company has no direct interest in Fedora and that Red Hats resources and contributions to the project is a given, no matter what. Red Hats involvement in Fedora has somehow become the unspoken of elephant in the room. Maybe what we need to do is instead start speaking openly of why Red Hat wants to be involved with Fedora. So you mention that some Red Hat employees have bypassed processes, and I am sure this has happened, but that is a direct consequence of that Fedora not being a 'random' distro for Red Hat, but an integral part of our product development. I mean there is no secret that RHEL is built from Fedora. The tools used to build Fedora overlap and intermingle with the tools used for building RHEL. So I am not saying that makes everything ok, but what I want to say is that we need to accept that these things doesn't happen out of malice, and work together to find solutions for how they can be handled better going forward in a way that is mutually beneficial and acceptable to all. So there are two solutions to the challenge faced with Red Hat and Fedora. The first option is a decision that Red Hat withdraws from Fedora and tries to build replacements for Fedora current role in our product development. Or that the Fedora community and Red Hat agrees that the current involvement from Red Hat is beneficial to Fedora overall, despite that it comes with some strings attached and that the rules of Fedora might at times collide with the practical concerns of Red Hat, who needs to build products for our customers. And I don't think (almost) anyone inside or outside Red Hat wants solution 1. So maybe everyone involved needs to take a deep breath and accept that there is no 'clean' solution here. There is no rule that can be made that somehow resolves all the complexity of Fedora both being a community project and at the same time a core part of the Red Hat product development workflow and overall market strategy. Sometimes this weird duality will create friction, but we need to discuss and talk calmly about these issues and try to find solutions, instead of assuming bad things of each other. And often if a change ends up being good or bad is a lot up to the participants. If you go into something only looking for reasons why it is bad, then there is a good chance you will end up making it bad, at least for yourself. And at the same time if you approach something as an opportunity to do something positive, your chances of doing that is greatly increased. And often the good solutions is about thinking outside the box a bit. And as a sidenote, I think there is a tendency to brand any discussion about Fedora inside Red Hat as some kind of backroom dealings and skulduggery, but I think this is silly and unfair. Red Hat like any other participant sometimes need to figure out what is the Red Hat position on issues and challenges, a position which might not align with every Fedora community member or every individual Red Hat employee, and Red Hat being a company and not an individual can only reach such positions by discussing them internally first. And to me this is actually beneficial to the Fedora community as it can provide the community with a clear sense of what the official company position is on a given subject, as opposed to trying to somehow extract it from the buzz of various individual Red Hat employees stating a mix of company positions and their private opinions. The real challenge here is to avoid the need to build company positions lead into a default of doing discussions internally that can be just as fine be done in the public with full community involvement. This is a challenge that any project with a big corporate sponsor has and I been involved with such challenges many times before in jobs prior to Red Hat. And that is going to be an ongoing challenge for Red Hat and the Fedora community that I am sure we will need to keep working on for as long as Red Hat and the Fedora community exists, as it comes out of the soft challenges like human nature and culture development. Christian On Mon, 2013-10-07 at 10:10 +0000, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote: > On 10/07/2013 08:20 AM, Jaroslav Reznik wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- > >> >On 10/05/2013 07:08 AM, Mathieu Bridon wrote: > >> > > I'd say most of Fedora (and even most of Red Hatters) would quit immediately > > in case the company starts behave like you think it behaves. And I'm saying > > it as a guy who signed mortgage week ago. > > Or people turn a blind eye to the facts on what's actually taking place. > > - It places distrust in the community ( as came completely clear on last > FESCO meeting ) > > - It puts the community to disadvantage compare to it employees which > now as stepped up to the level that community members are subjected to > character and social scrutiny by FESCO ( look at Dan's pp request 3 > meetings ago ) while Red Hat employees entirely bypass that and other ( > privileged ) processes that community members have to go through. > > - It elevates it's own "product(s)" above community's work either under > the so called "defaults" ( or as we are heading now "3 products" ) or > various strategically placed "recommendations" here and there putting > competing community maintained products at disadvantage. > > - It creates ( high ranking ) positions ( suddenly ) in communities, > then recruits individuals outside the community and places them in those > positions and in those communities ( people can just look through the > internet archive's for advertised Fedora positions both for the title > they give these individuals as well as the statement you will be working > as as opposed to working with ). > > etc... > > So as you can see it already is behaving as I think it behaves and quite > frankly this is an disgusting and unjust corporate behavior towards the > community based on mistrust and misuse and sends mixed signals inside > and outside of our community and labels our work as some kind of RH > experiment and test bed. > > All of the issues I have mentioned here before can be dealt with > internally by Red Hat. > > - It has to take a leap of faith and just let go and place trust in the > community since it's highly unlikely that it will venture to far away > from Red Hat interest at least I would be very surprised if it did. > > - If it thinks that our processes are to complex for an new employee to > walk through to gain the necessary access to be able to perform it's > work, it needs to work with us improving those processes and workflows > so that *everybody* Red Hat employees and community members alike will > gain from it as opposed to be bypassing it altogether for it's employee > while the community drowns in bureaucracy. > > - It will need to understand that forcing everything under a single > product ( default ) or three products as well as single audience ( or > three different audience ) hinders growth in sub communities ( due to > them not being equally presented ) as well as fair competition thus > innovation between competing products applications or applications stack > ( be it through better written code/compatibility/features/maintenance > you know those little things that competing products implement or > achieve over each other ) . > > - It needs to understand that there is no need to invent ( high ranking > ) position and try to elevate new employees to those positions within > sub community since it will come naturally on it's own by the share time > that employees has to work and dedicate to the sub community surrounding > the component or group of components. ( An community member only has > around 2 - 4 hours max each day to dedicate to the project unless he's > unemployed or is being paid to work in it ). > > So fourth and so on, > > Red Hat has pretty smart managers and team leaders within their ranks > which I'm pretty sure will straight these issues out and deal with the > community on equal ground and in harmony which benefits us all. > > > JBG -- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
