Why Fedora? The Fedora Message Warren Togami Fedora Founder Associate Software Engineer Red Hat, Inc.

Please set Cell Phones to Silent

Agenda ● What is the Fedora Project? ● How does Red Hat benefit from Fedora? ● Past Mistakes ● Community Building Strategies ● Future Direction

Warren's Past Life 2000 Linux Advocate and Hawaii LUG K12LTSP for schools $3,000 for 30 seat school lab. Easy sell? Limited success: Two elementary schools

Warren's Past Life Linux Advocate and Hawaii LUG K12LTSP for schools $3,000 for 30 seat school lab. Easy sell? Limited success: Two elementary schools Software was not good enough... Took too much effort and time Mission: Must make FOSS better

History 2002 school project at University of Hawaii Proposal to Community: Collaborative development of a centralized repository “Extras” add-on software for Red Hat Linux proposal to merge, create bigger project

History 2003 proposal to merge, create bigger project January 2004 hired as Intern Red Hat's Need ● Differentiate community project from ● Enterprise product

Fedora Today Rapidly growing community of volunteers Various sub-projects “Open Development Lab” Fedora Core ● Operating System that was Red Hat Linux ● Only indirect contributions from community ● Bug reports and patches Documentation Project

Fedora Today Volunteer Sysadmins Fedora Ambassadors ● ~100 marketing volunteers globally ● Fedora presence at events worldwide Fedora Legacy ● Red Hat engineering must focus on the Future ● Community security maintenance of older Fedora releases ● Community Project, Community chance to decide fate

Fedora Development Cycle

Fedora Today Fedora Extras ● Fedora grew from the model of Extras ● Collaborative, Central Development ● Package Guidelines, Processes, Policies ● Thorsten Leemhuis, tech journalist Leader ● Over 100 contributors, 90% community ● Almost 2000 source RPM packages

Fedora Today Translators ● accounts!

Fedora: Open Development Lab Research & Development

Fedora: Open Development Lab

Fedora Leading the Way Progress in FOSS Ecosystem

What Fedora has Become 2003 Proposal: Collaborative development of a centralized repository Nothing New... Obvious question... Why didn't Warren work on Debian?

Primary Goal of Fedora Rapid Progress of Free and Open Source Software

Fedora = Progress

How We Achieve Rapid Progress Understand Key Difference ● Community motivation ● Commercial motivation

How We Achieve Rapid Progress Community Motivation ● “fun” short-term benefit ● Attention to detail, Real World ● Volunteers not accountable to Progress or Schedules ● Decisions by Consensus, Tough Decisions are not made ● Too Much Effort

How We Achieve Rapid Progress Commercial Motivation “boring” Long-Term Strategic Benefit i.e. GCC, NPTL, O(1) kernel scheduler, exec-shield, FORTIFY_SOURCE, SELinux, Xen, OSS Java, Directory Server Very Expensive if Done Alone Community and Commercial are better at different aspects of Development

How We Achieve Rapid Progress

Community works on short-term issues Company works on long-term issues Community Motivation: Debian Commercial Motivation: Sun We Do Better because We Have Both Mutual Benefit - Complement Strength and Weaknesses of each other Rapid Progress, cost effective

Fedora is Critical to Red Hat Perception: Fedora will be abandoned Red Hat interested in only Enterprise Corporate Suicide Critical to Red Hat's Business Red Hat invests millions Good for community? Achieve Progress Together

Fedora is Critical to Red Hat Community is Force Multiplier

Past Mistakes

The Dark Age 2003 RHLP and Fedora Launch PAIN, Frustration, Anger, Confusion “Join us to build a community project!” No Leadership No Infrastructure No Tools We expected the community to do it.

Satire: The Dark Age 2003 RHLP and Fedora Launch PAIN, Frustration, Anger, Confusion “Join us to build a community project!” No Leadership No Infrastructure No Tools We expected the community to do it. Google for “EAT YOUR BRANE”

Communities do not “Happen” Opening software alone will not create a community Fedora is not a “magic bullet” to solve problems (Neither was Foundation) Do not expect communities to happen Communities must be Built But how?

Community Building Strategies

Community Building Clear Leadership ● Lead by Example ● Release Early, Release Often ● Show Constant Forward Progress ● Momentum is Key Organization (website, policies, processes) Communication (lists, forums, IRC etc.) Infrastructure (servers, networks, people)

Community Building Learn from RHLP/Fedora Launch Mistakes Fedora Directory Server Launch Careful planning Delayed for weeks and months Prepared website and infrastructure People responsible for communication Anticipate questions, already in FAQ

Attitudes about Fedora “Perpetual Beta of RHEL” Negative Message Better ways of saying it ● Benefit of Being True Scope of Fedora much larger today ● Community wants to do more ● Let them do it (Extras, Games etc.) We cannot productize all this

Micro-Communities For any problem there are usually volunteers interested and willing to work on it Only Need Organization Connect Problems to People interested

(Recap) Community Building Clear Leadership ● Lead by Example ● Release Early, Release Often ● Show Constant Forward Progress ● Momentum is Key Organization (website, policies, processes) Communication (lists, forums, IRC etc.) Infrastructure (servers, networks, people)

Micro-Communities For any problem there are usually volunteers interested and willing to work on it Only Need Organization Connect Problems to People interested Micro-Community Community formed to solve a particular problem e.g. Extras, Perl Team, Ambassadors Fedora Games Fedora Art?

Fedora Summary Points Primary Goal: Rapid Progress of Open Source Software Open Development Lab where R&D happens Community is a Force Multiplier

Future Direction of Fedora Open Core to direct contributions from the Community Safeguards protect integrity Reward for proven contributors Get upstream developers involved Decision of RH package maintainers

Questions and Answers