1. Cultivating Contribution Tom “spot” Callaway Fedora Engineering Manager – Red Hat, Inc. This presentation is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (BY-SA) 3.0 license, with the exception of the Fedora and Red Hat logos & trademarks, used with permission.

2. Attributions ● Original Presentation by Paul Frields, CC-BY-SA Slide 6 – from Flickr: user “qf8,” CC-BY-SA Slide 7 – from Flickr: user: “SteelCityHobbies”, CC-BY Slide 9-10 – inspired by drawings done by Karsten Wade, CC-BY-SA Slide 11 – from Flickr, user “World Resources Institute Staff”, CC-BY Slide 13 – from Flickr: user “suneko”, CC-BY Slide 14 – from Flickr: user “thomasclaveirole”, CC-BY-SA Slide 16 – from Flickr: user “Allie_Caulfield”, CC-BY Slide 17 – from Flickr: user “acbo”, CC-BY Slide 18 – from Flickr: user “LollyKnit”, CC-BY Slide 20 – from Flickr: user “ogimogi,” CC-BY Slide 21 – from Flickr: user “416style,” CC-BY Slide 22 – from Flickr: user: “viZZZual.com”, CC-BY Slide 24 – from Flickr: user: “moonlightbulb”, CC-BY Slide 27 – from Flickr: user: “ksr8s”, CC-BY-SA Slide 28 – from Flickr: user: “alex_ford”, CC-BY Slide 29 – from Flickr: user: “simon_music”, CC-BY-SA Slide 30 – from Flickr: user: “bredgur”, CC-BY-SA Slide 31 – from Flickr: user: “kudumomo”, CC-BY Slide 32 – from Flickr: user: “AMagill”, CC-BY Slide 38 – from Flickr: user: “the Mad LOLScientist”, CC-BY Slide 40 – from Flickr: user: “Whatsername?”, CC-BY-SA “Four Foundations” graphics by Mairin Duffy, CC-BY-SA, available on Fedora Wiki

3. Thank You ● Organizers, Speakers, Listeners, Sharers, Helpers, Reviewers, Vendors, Makers, Breakers, Artists, Writers, Hackers, Dreamers ● CONTRIBUTORS, each in your own way

4. Fedora In a Nutshell ● The Fedora Project is Community run and sponsored by Red Hat ● We are a contributor-centric community ● What happens in Fedora today influences millions of Linux users – “Downstreams”: Derivative distributions (RHEL, CentOS), tens of millions of Linux users – “Upstreams”: GNOME, KDE, Linux Kernel...

5. Fedora is Contributor-Centric ● Why do we concentrate on contributors? ● How do we do it? ● How does it influence the Fedora Project?

6. A Crash Course in Oceanography ● From above, it is just a lot of water ● The deeper you dive, the more exotic things get ● Enormous amounts of life, even at the deepest levels, a lot of which no one fully understands yet ● A lot of what happens at the bottom is important to the surface, much more than most people think ● Occasionally, people pee in the ocean. It's okay. You can still swim in it.

7. SCUBA, anyone? ● The Free & Open Source Community is just like an ocean ● Surface: – Users/Consumers float here ● Shallow Water: – File a bug ● This is the most difficult boundary to cross (now, you're swimming) ● Deep Water: – Join a mailing list, edit a wiki, contribute ideas and time ● Deepest Water: – Write a patch, do design work, be a sysadmin, maintain a package, understand/represent the Project

8. Red Hat Secret World Domination Plans RHEL 6: Community Edition OctoChicken Breeding Program Red Hat Weather Control Satellite Network JBoss Suitcase Nukes Real-Time Killer Bee Swarms Mind Control v2.0 ● Now with less aneurysms Subliminal Advertising on Food Network TOP SECRET: DO NOT SHOW OUTSIDE OF RED HAT RHEL 6: Community Edition OctoChicken Breeding Program Red Hat Weather Control Satellite Network

9. Communities of participation Consumers (80%) Participants (15%) Contributors (5%) SEEK SHARE PARTICIPAT E

10. Communities of participation influence User Pool Future User Pool

11. Upstream communities and “ecologically sound” practices ● Upstream is made up of the thousands of projects that Fedora relies on for a complete platform ● Keeping patches or tweaks is not healthy – You end up anchored by them ● Innovation spurs innovation much faster when it is shared – Our features and fixes, when accepted into the upstream sources, help them grow and flourish. ● Builds a working relationship – Minimizes forks

12. “There are two kinds of statistics: the kind you look up and the kind you make up.” -- Rex Stout Producing measurable results

13. Use Statistics ● How many users does Fedora have? – How many fish are in the sea? ● Some distributions make up numbers. Fedora counts unique IPs that reach our update servers. – Much more accurate than counting media distributed, or images download. ● As of 2009-09-07, 1,295,683 unique Fedora 11 systems checked in – Users with aggressively dynamic IPs will get counted multiple times, which inflates the number somewhat, but users behind NAT or corporate proxies get counted as 1 (or not at all). ● More than 17,000,000 unique Fedora users tracked since Fedora 7. – Weekly statistics for every release, along with the methodology we use to generate them are on our website.

14. Smolt ● Gathering hardware information from our users – Anonymous, opt-in only ● Helps us answer the question of who is using our software with what hardware ● Unlike previous efforts, designed to be completely distribution independent and open source – One location to answer the epic question: Will Linux work with my hardware? ● Used by Fedora, OpenSUSE, Mandriva, Gentoo

15. Community-run Infrastructure

16. Fedora Infrastructure ● Fedora's Community designs, builds, and runs all of its Infrastructure – Mix of unpaid volunteers and Red Hat employees ● 100% Free and Open Source – Leverage best available code, improve to meet our needs, send the changes back. ● When we build our own solutions, they're open source from Day 0. – We also design everything to be a good solution for others, as opposed to a niche specific hack. ● We've documented how we built our infrastructure, and how each component fits together – Designed to be reproducible by anyone, anywhere.

17. Transifex ● Fedora is used all over the world, but most FOSS is only available in English ● Many willing translators in the ocean ● Motivated Fedora community members built Transifex to provide an interface for translators to submit translations, with translator friendly workflows ● Designed to layer on top of multiple development communities, not Fedora specific – Translators can focus on translating, and ignore format or source control variations ● Used by Fedora, Moblin, XFCE, GNOME, OpenInkpot, Banshee, Django, Gimp, LXDE, StatusNet (formerly laconi.ca)

18. MirrorManager ● When Fedora 6 was released, the amount of traffic overwhelmed Red Hat's infrastructure. ● Fedora learned a lot from that release, and restructured much of our infrastructure as a result – Learn from your mistakes, don't be afraid to make them. ● One key component was MirrorManager ● Keeps track of each of the 200+ global mirror servers for Fedora content – Easy interface for new mirrors to be added (public or private) – Mirrors choose what they want to pull from our multiple master rsync servers – Automates much of our “release day” processes

19. Maximum transparency

20. Start with these...

21. ...and build this.

22. ... or this.

23. Communities are teh awsum.

24. Community Motivations ● Contributors have many motivations ● They may want to scratch a particular itch – Fedora Special Interest Groups ● They may enjoy social learning ● They may be building a resume ● An open community will increase the “return on investment” for each contributor ● The reason that the Fedora community exists is to encourage and empower the awesomeness that exists in the world, to bring people together, and to share the awesome results with everyone.

25. Poelstra's Law “It's ok for community members to sometimes be disappointed by an action, but it's not ok for them to be surprised by an action.”

26. Engaging contributors

27. Set Measurable Milestones ● What is one achievable goal that your team could reach to improve in the next few months? ● What is the next action you need to achieve to get there? ● Who is going to do it? – “We are” is often not the right answer. ● GET OUT OF THEIR WAY! ● This may seem like imposed order, which isn't very “open source”... ●... but by doing this, you can look back and show progress, which is a huge motivator.

28. Long Term Strategy ● Have a long term strategy for growth of participation ● Sometimes, you have to ignore the most direct route. – Doing it right is always better than doing it fast ● Building is easier than teaching others how to build – Teaching others to build is exponentially more powerful – Fedora Classroom - Month of weekend learning labs ● “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” – With open source, every taught user becomes a contributor and makes open source better, faster, stronger

29. The Temptation of Band-Aids ● In communities, just as in code and car repair, there is the temptation of Band-Aids ● “It built, ship it!” ● Good enough. No one will notice. – No one will remember why we did that. ● Hacks build up in communities too. – Why not buy a proprietary solution? – Why not just use that proprietary driver? – Why not just let that one guy handle the kernel? ● Being covered in Band-Aids is not awesome

30. Eaten By Raptors ● How would your community hold up if a key person vanished? ● Open communities work around single points of failure. ● Linus is important, but the kernel will keep going if he is eaten by raptors. – We really hope Linus isn't eaten by raptors. ● If your community is open, you will survive – Working in groups ensures shared knowledge – Working transparently ensures that someone can pick up where you left off – Doing it right means that no one has to figure out why you did it weird.

31. Getting Out of the Way ● The role of community leader is different from that of a team leader ● A team leader has a mission to grow his/her team ● A community leader has a mission to empower the community and then to get out of the way – Make sure the runways are clear, there is plenty of jet fuel, but don't try to fly all the planes. ● There is a notable difference between getting out of the way and being disconnected – Being involved is good, taking control is not (unless it is absolutely necessary)

32. Growing Community ~= Compounding Interest ● Takes dedication and willpower ● You must do it with regularity ● It is never too late to start growing community.... ●... but starting early is best.

33. Fedora's Four Foundations

34. Freedom ● 100% legal, redistributable – Allows people to build whatever they want out of it ● Content, websites, artwork, code, everything ● Don't cut corners ● Walking the walk is more important than talking the talk ● “Hybrid” models don't work – “It's good enough for you, but not good enough for us” is a poisonous attitude

35. Friends ● Everyone has something to give ● Art/Design, Translation, Writing/Editing, Explaining ● join.fedoraproject.org ● 15,000+ Fedora Account holders ● Disagreement, then discussion, then consensus

36. Features ● Deliver Technical Excellence ● Upstream Collaboration is key – Our features become part of great Linux distributions everywhere ● Feature process allows contributors to showcase their skills ● Red Hat has hired (and continues to hire) people based on the work done in Fedora

37. First ● Innovation changes the world ● We are eager to do the heavy lifting ● A rapid release cycle helps us maintain a balance – Momentum to bring in the new and shiny – Time for stabilization to shake the bugs out ● Community R&D lab ● Red Hat participates in the community, does not control! – Opportunity to regularly integrate work – See a vision of the future shapes of RHEL – Anyone can realize the same benefits on whatever scale is appropriate for the amount of effort invested

38. The “Fifth F”: FAIL ● Any good project fails sometimes ● Fail Faster! ● Admit your mistakes, learn from them, but don't dwell on them

39. FIN

40. Red Hat Secret World Domination Plans RHEL 6: Community Edition OctoChicken Breeding Program Red Hat Weather Control Satellite Network JBoss Suitcase Nukes Real-Time Killer Bee Swarms Mind Control v2.0 ● Now with less aneurysms Subliminal Advertising on Food Network NO: THIS IS NOT SERIOUS. EXCEPT FOR THE OCTOCHICKEN. RHEL 6: Community Edition OctoChicken Breeding Program Red Hat Weather Control Satellite Network