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Jan 2007

History / Things that were agreed on


Discusson stage

Topics for the next IRC-Meeting


Below this line:


FESCo is the body that leads Fedora Extras. There are some jobs that FESCo and its members need to do, but having FESCo does not mean that all improvements and decisions for Fedora Extras need to be made by FESCo. The committee rather wants to maintain a flat hierarchy where all medium or bigger decisions are normally developed and acknowledged by the Fedora Extras community. This means that often those who want something to happen are expected to do the legwork to make it happen.


Something as big as Fedora Extras needs some sort of leading body as otherwise sooner or later chaos would arise. FESCo, the Fedora Extras Steering Committee, is this group for Fedora Extras. But that doesn't mean that all decisions, policies, proposals, improvements and everything else needs to come from FESCo and its members. Fedora Extras is rather meant as a community effort and all its contributors should be able to influence how this whole business it run.

Workflow to get something realized or improved

If you think "Extras needs foo" or "Extras should realize Brand-new-Idea" then the way to get it realized in Extras works like this:

  • you poke a bit around on IRC, on fedora-extras-list and/or in a FESCo meeting and discuss your idea roughly to evaluate what other people think about it. If you get the impression that some people back the idea in general then it's probably worth investing more work and proceed with it
  • you work out a detailed proposal that outlines the whole thing; it should contain things like "why Fedora Extras needs this", "How is it getting realized", "Who will be responsible" and stuff like that
  • send the proposal to the list for public discussion;
  • if you want explicit FESCo feedback at this point ask the FESCo chair to bring the topic up in a FESCo meeting to chat a bit about it
  • integrate feedback you receive in that discussion directly in the wiki and/or encourage contributors to directly work on the document in the wiki
  • if there are major disagreements integrate the parts that are controversial into a separate section. Or encourage other people to write a counter proposal that suits their expectations better.
  • FESCo members are strongly encouraged to participate in the public discussion. It is unacceptable for a FESCo members to stay quiet during a public discussion and to step up in a FESCo meeting later "I think it's totally bullshit"
  • in case it is a controversial topic send the re-worked proposal to the list for a second (or third) discussion
  • if you think you got enough feedback send a mail to the FESCo-chair asking to bring it up in the next FESCo meeting
  • FESCo will then look at it in the meeting; in an ideal world it should be just a "The community want this, it does not hurt the project, so it is ACKed". As its often a bit more complicated it might be a good idea to participate in the meeting. Maybe the issue even needs to be brought up in multiple meetings.
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Note above scheme is exactly the scheme that is used by FESCo-members, too, to get something realized. There are no differences in this workflow between FESCo-members and non-FESCo-members.
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Note2: The above scenario is a rough scheme; there are often situations were some things need to be done slightly differently, but it should help everyone to get the rough idea how to realize stuff.

What FESCo is not

FESCo is not a dumping ground for work. Sure, FESCo members have some jobs they need to do (accept sponsors, kmods, static pacakges, ...; guide the project; take care of things that gone wrong and fix them; organize things that need to be done -- mass rebuilds for example). But that often a lot of work already besides simply maintaining their own packages, so there is often not much time left for realizing other, often new things or ideas.

Asking FESCo to realize Brand-New-Big-Idea thus often does not work very well. Sure, you can ask FESCo or one of its members to work out a proposal realize it. But you should not expect FESCo to work on it immediately. There are simply to many request to work on something so FESCo has to set priorities to get the most important things done first. The best way to get something realized is to do it yourself and/or get other (FESCo-) people interested in it so you realize it together. In this scope please remember that nobody in FESCo is getting paid for being in FESCo or improving Extras; all members do the FESCo-work in their spare time (yes, there are some Red Hat employees in FESCo, but none of those are getting paid for their work in FESCo).