Fedora Board Questions

As part of the upcoming Board Elections the candidates were asked to complete a number of questions that have been published here. It seems that only two responses were published. I’m not sure why that is but it seems somewhat strange that only two of the seven replied. I also didn’t seem to realise that it wasn’t necessary to answer all questions. Oh well. Here are my answers for those that might be interested that aren’t aware of the wiki page:

What will you be able to accomplish by being elected, that you would not otherwise be able to do as a contributor?

It allows me to contribute back to the project in a more central way than being a contributor and to contribute ideas and direction in a quicker and more direct way.

What will you do to ensure that Fedora remains at the forefront of innovation in the GNU/Linux space?

I believe we need to add more focus on support for mobile devices. With the popularity of small devices such as smart phones, tablets, TV set top boxes and other small, low powered devices I believe we need to better support them, both connecting too them (eg ensuring you can share media from your Fedora laptop with your DLNA connected TV) as well as allowing people to run Fedora on them.

What do you view Fedora’s purpose and place being in the F/LOSS microcosm.

I believe we’re a leader in a lot of areas of innovation. Fedora 15 being the first to ship GNOME 3 and systemd is a perfect and currently relevant example of this. But being in this leading space does scare some users away as they tend to like or require more stable environments that aren’t quite so close to the bleeding edge. Again systemd is an example of this, its the single largest shake up to the unix initialisation system ever.

What are your top three priorities as a board member?

In no particular order:

  • Expansion of support within Fedora to mobile and low power devices such as ARM to ensure Fedora can lead in the ever expanding mobile and low powered device space and allow Fedora to assist others to innovate in this massive arena.
  • Allowing all groups that wish to use Fedora to be able to do so as simply and easily as possible.
  • Ensuring all groups work together nicely and think outside their own box and to impact other groups in a good way rather than a “my way or the highway” attitude.

What do you think about Fedora’s vision and goals?

I think they’re pretty spot on. The four F’s and associated values I think provide a simple vision that is timeless and generally works very well.

Who do you think Fedora is for today? Who should it be for?

I believe Fedora is more for the hobbyist and technology savvy people. I think its very usable for most people but the quick upgrade releases isn’t always what people want. Its much more simple to install than other proprietary OSes, and provides what most consumers want which is generally communications, social networking, photos and music.

If proprietary is black (100% gray) and uncompromising completely free right down to the hardware is white (0% gray), what % of gray are you and why?

I think around 40-50%. I prefer free and open software and hardware. It allows innovative use of various platforms that the manufactures of the HW/SW could never have dreamed of or envisioned. But I’m also a realist, companies need to be able to operate stable, usable systems in order to be able to run their business whether it be technology or more mainline business. I believe in the best tools for the job, and in a lot of cases now days its free and open software that provides this.

Where do you see Fedora in five years? How do you think we’ll get there?

I think Fedora as a distribution will be in a similar location where we are today but running on a completely different class of device. It will still be aimed at server side and derivatives of it will be very mainstream in cloud and associated hosting solutions although its likely you may not even know it. It will be very much more persuasive in the mobile space and I believe that ARM will have been a primary platform for a couple of years. It will still be leading by example.

2 thoughts on “Fedora Board Questions”

  1. I was incredibly disappointed that only two candidates deigned to respond. Hopefully they will turn up for the town hall tomorrow so that we can actually find out what issues they’re standing on.

    I also find it sad that some candidates are asking their supporters to engage explicitly in a tactical voting strategy designed to artificially boost their support. It’s within the rules, but it’s pretty distasteful.

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