We may still refine this document, but we expect future changes to be much smaller in scope than previous changes.
This document describes the leadership structure that we have designed to achieve the project objectives, enabling the Fedora Project community to work together to build a robust, leading-edge, rapidly-updated Open Source operating system that we can all share.
The Steering Committee has authority over the content of the web site and the core distribution, and responsibility for considering Red Hat's requirements and the community's needs of the project. The steering committee is also responsible for overall project leadership; in particular, conflict resolution within the project, coordinating with other open source projects, and setting overall goals and guidelines. Though it is responsible for policies, the steering committee is explicitly not responsible for the specific contents of hosted respositories such as Fedora Extras, Fedora Alternatives, or Fedora Legacy; nor is it responsible for any third party packages. The steering committee is not itself responsible for setting legal policies (what content can legally be in the core distribution and on the web site) but will comply with Red Hat's legal policies. It is not responsible for day-to-day operation; it functions more like a board of directors. The steering committee will be involved in technical decisions only when there is also a political issue involved. As a body expressing Red Hat's political requirements, it will consist of Red Hat employees.
The Technical Committee is responsible for making day-to-day technical decisions. This includes what the requirements are for the build system, what standards will be used for packaging and maintenance, and how Fedora Core, Extras, and Alternatives will work together. It is overseen by the Technical Lead, who will always be an employee of Red Hat and will sit on the Steering Committee and act as a liaison between the two. It currently has only Red Hat participants, but external participants will also be added. The Steering Committee and the Technical committee may sometimes meet in congress.
The Technical Committee will charter teams to get things done. Right now, there are two teams, the Release Team and the Merge Team. Team members may be members of the committee but don't need to be.
The members of the Technical Committee are being chosen and the list will be posted shortly.
The Release Team is responsible for making day-to-day technical decisions about Fedora Core releases -- which bugs are marked MUSTFIX and SHOULDFIX, when to slip and when not to slip -- and for making the actual practical implementation of each release happen.
The members of the Release Team are being chosen and the list will be posted shortly.
The Merge Team has the "simple" goal to make the merge between the old Fedora Linux project and the new Fedora Project happen. This includes policy merges and infrastructure management. This team will be reduced and reconstituted as the Infrastructure Team once the merge has been completed. The Merge Team and later the Infrastructure Team will have participants from inside and outside of Red Hat.
The members of the Merge Team are being chosen and the list will be posted shortly.
The Fedora leadership structure is not a voting structure. Our structure follows historical Linux and Red Hat practice; we seek rough consensus and working code, with a benevolent oligarchy (like a benevolent dictatorship, but hierarchical) to resolve disputes and ensure that consistent decisions are made. The leaders who need to achieve consensus will be chosen by merit; functionally, this will be a meritocracy.
The Technical Lead will be the main functional "benevolent dictator" (in the Linux kernel sense), but may be overridden by the Steering Committee, which itself reports to Red Hat's executive management.
Leadership in the Fedora Project will be post-facto recognition of acting leaders, not appointment of people to start acting as leaders after appointment. The leaders that we will recognize will be those who lead by example, whose goals as expressed in their words and actions are aligned with our goals (as stated in the Project Objectives and which we expect to refine over time), and who are willing to be officially recognized as leaders.
Note that this necessarily means that there will be people acting as leaders who are not officially recognized on this web page. This is not meant to denigrate them, or to imply that their opinions are not worthwhile, or to say that their points are not considered. If the only leaders we have are the ones that are officially recognized, then we'll be a dying community.
All recognized leaders are expected to:
Leadership is not a lifetime appointment, and people's available time and personal goals change. Leaving the leadership structure of the Fedora Project is not a bad thing, it is just a change. We want the leadership of the Fedora Project to be vibrant, and that means changing when appropriate.
We will continue to refine this document as we refine the leadership process for Fedora; it is not likely to stay static. Here, we describe the changes we have made, along with the rationale for the changes.