mini cowboy, CC-BY-SA by rdenubila on Flickr

I’ve been thinking a lot over the past couple of years of the role that critics play in the course of free/open source development.  Obviously one of the advantages that FOSS software has over its proprietary counterparts is that it almost always has a richer feedback mechanism, so that it can incorporate the feedback (and patches!) from a wide variety of interested parties.  (The mantra of “No matter how many smart people you hire, there are always smarter people outside your organization.” rings loudly in my ears!)  This feedback loop is important — perhaps even vital — to long term development.  At the same time, the open nature of FOSS development gives critics a large forum in which to voice their opinions.  How best to be make sure that there’s a fair balance between constructive feedback and criticism?  I was reminded of this balance by a couple of quotes from former US President Theodore Roosevelt.  In 1894, he said:

Criticism is necessary and useful; it is often indispensable; but it can never take the place of action, or be even a poor substitute for it. The function of the mere critic is of very subordinate usefulness. It is the doer of deeds who actually counts in the battle for life, and not the man who looks on and says how the fight ought to be fought, without himself sharing the stress and the danger.

 

On April 23rd 1910, he put it a little more eloquently:

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

 

To each of you who are in the arena — who are daring greatly, who are fighting the good fight, I tip my hat to you.  It’s not always easy work, or sexy work, or work that gets a lot of praise and glory. Thank you for your tireless efforts to make the world a better place one piece, one parameter, one package, or one project at a time.  And to those critics who aren’t in the fight, we still hear you — but at the end of the day, I’m more willing to pay attention to those who are engaged in the battle.

Starting today, I’ll be working for Bluehost — one of the largest web hosting companies in North America.  (Or, more specifically, I’ll be working for Bluehost’s parent company, Endurance International Group.)  My job will be focused on open source outreach and community building, and helping Bluehost build better relationships with open source developers.  I’ll be taking the lessons I’ve learned from the Asterisk community and the Fedora community and applying them to other open source communities.  Don’t worry — I’ll still be actively involved in most of the same open source communities that I’ve been participating in over the past several years, and I’ll be participating in a few new ones as well.  I’ll still be working remotely from Virginia, so that I don’t have to uproot my family and move across the country.

I’ll share more details of my job over the coming weeks and months.  In the meantime, you know where to find me — trying to make the world a better place, one conversation at a time.

In particular, I’d like to take this opportunity to share several things that I’ve been very thankful for during my tenure as the FPL.

First of all, I’m thankful for my friends… not only friends that made me laugh when I was stressed out, or friends that helped get things done, but also for friends that weren’t afraid to tell me when I made a mistake, or needed to view things from a different perspective.  I’m humbled by friends who have inspired me, and taught me, and set a good example for me, and listened to me when I needed to vent.  I’ve made a lot of new friends over the past couple of years, and I value those friendships as the number one thing I’ve taken aware from the experience.  I look forward to continuing to rub shoulders with my FLOSS friends in the future.  Thank you for your kindness and your support.

Next, I’m thankful for the perspective I’ve gained.  It’s so easy to get “tunnel vision” when working on a program or a project.  Many of us enjoy free and open source software because we learn about so many different things and become experts in many different areas.  Unfortunately, this also means we can assume that our world view is the correct world view, or perhaps even the only world view that matters.  If there’s one lesson I’ve learned from being the Fedora Project Leader, it is that there are many different perspectives on each issue, and that most of them have something valuable to add to the equation.  I’m thankful for the new perspectives I have gained, and for the experiences that have helped me to gain a wider view.

I’m also thankful for the many thousands of hours that hard-working Fedora contributors have put forth to make Fedora better.  In looking back over the past three releases (Fedora 14, 15, and 16), we’ve made a lot of forward progress.  That’s not to say that there hasn’t been some controversy along the way.  Looking to the future, I hope that we can continue to chart new territory in Fedora, while not forgetting the lessons of the past.  As one of my favorite songs puts it, “Fly your mind… fly it like a kite.  But keep your feet on the ground.”  I have no doubt that the Fedora community can continue to add new features and still do the necessary communication and integration work to make the disparate pieces come together to make a more unified whole.  Not only have we made the distribution better, but even more importantly we’ve made the community better and stronger.

Last but not least, I’m also thankful for Red Hat, and their continued support on behalf of Fedora, and for the great trust they place in the Fedora community.  I could go on and on about the relationship between Red Hat and Fedora, but let me just say that I’m thankful for Red Hat’s continued efforts to do the right thing and to practice what it preaches about open source communities.  During my tenure at FPL, I never once felt pressured by Red Hat to do anything that wasn’t in the community’s best interest, and I think that says volumes about a corporate sponsor.

Rather that give a day-by-day account of my own FUDCon activities, I want to just highlight some of the the things that resonated with me at FUDCon.

First, I was impressed with the Virginia Tech campus.  It was a beautiful location for the event, and the amount of space we had was absolutely fantastic.  Thanks again to Ben Williams and the Math Department at VT for their awesome support.

Second, I was impressed with the number of people who had planned ahead for the conference, and came prepared to both learn and share.  I didn’t see too many people this year just hanging out in the hallway checking email, so that’s probably a very good sign.

I was happy to see how many of the various Fedora groups really had their act together for FUDCon.  Just to highlight a few that caught my eye: The Docs team had several introductory sessions and a hackfest, which helped get some new people up to speed in the docs tooling.  The Cloud SIG had a wide variety of talks on different aspects of cloud computing.  I didn’t get to participate with much of the Infrastructure team’s sessions, but they all seemed interesting and were usually completely full. The ARM SIG also had a huge presence at the conference — with a marathon run of non-stop ARM work happening throughout the conference, and some nice give-aways to help entice more people to join the SIG and contribute.

As a Fedora Board, we met a couple of different times (once on Friday and once on Sunday) to discuss Board goals and work on other Board business.  The board decided that in order to lead by example we would each choose a project to champion over the next year, and that we would make regular reports on how those projects are going.  I’ve asked each of the Board members to pick their project over the next week or two, and be prepared to present it at our Board meeting on February 1st.  If you have ideas or causes that you would like the Board to take up, please don’t hesitate to let the Board know, either personally or via the advisory-board list.  I know a couple of the Board members already have their projects picked out, but I’m sure other members would love feedback and ideas.  I really enjoyed the opportunity of meeting with the Board in a more personal setting, and having the chance for higher-bandwidth communications, and I hope that we can make that happen more often in the future.

Besides all of the technical discussion that happened at FUDCon, I was happy to participate in a number of different talks aimed at making the human side of Fedora more enjoyable.  Whether it was talk about how to better attract new participants or improving exiting processes for Ambassadors,  really enjoyed the ideas and brainstorming that came out of those discussions.  I’m looking forward to seeing how we can improve things in this regard over the coming year.  I also enjoyed the chance to interact with many of the community members in some light-hearted activities as well, including getting bowling tips from Russell Harrison, getting lots of photography tips (and good stories) from Eric Christensen, having a good snowball fight with Jeroen van Meeuwen, and having a good impromptu swordfight with Mark Terranova.  All of these things helped keep me from going too crazy with all the logistics around FUDCon.

So to everyone who participated or supported those who did, let me say thank you.  Now let’s get back to work and finish up all those things we talked about doing, and keep making forward progress…

Amit learning at FUDCon Pune

Prepare to Learn

One of the things I most enjoy about the Fedora Users and Developers Conference is the chance to learn in a fast-paced environment from people who do amazing things every day.  That learning doesn’t come by accident, however.  I learned at my first FUDCon that you really need to prepare ahead of time to be able to take advantage of all there is to learn at FUDCon.  So, write down a short list of topics you’d like to learn about. Write down a list of questions you’d like to ask your fellow Fedora contributors.  Look at the list of workshops, and start planning which ones you would like to attend.  And when we organize the barcamp portion of the conference on Saturday morning, pay attention to the sessions that are pitched and be prepared to vote for the sessions you are most likely to attend.

I’ve seen from sad experience that if you don’t plan ahead for learning, you’ll end up spending too much time checking your email or chatting with your friend in the hallway (more on the hallway track below!), and miss out on a great opportunity to learn and grow.

Eugene teaching at FUDCon Pune

Prepare to Share

I’ve talked briefly about learning at FUDCon, but that must mean there’s another side to the coin: If there are people to learn, then there must be people willing to teach as well.  This is one reason why the barcamp session at FUDCon is truly amazing, because anybody can stand up and propose a session.  It always helps if you have something prepared to share, or know the material well enough that you can do a presentation without any formal preparation, but that’s not an absolute requirement.  I do encourage you, however, to spend some time thinking about the things you have that you could teach to other participants, and then come prepared to share your knowledge with others.

I’d also like you to think about ways you can share the FUDCon experience with those who aren’t able to make it to the conference.  All the usual suspects (blog posts, microblogging such as identi.ca or Twitter, social networking, IRC channels) are there and available to help us share with those who are participating vicariously.

Socializing at FUDCon Tempe

Prepare to Socialize

Another important aspect of FUDCon is the chance to get to know your fellow Fedorans better.  So even though I told you earlier to plan ahead so that you don’t get stuck in the “hallway track” at FUDCon, I must confess that the hallway track is an important part of the conference.  Perhaps as important as the technical bits.  Getting to know your fellow contributors helps build trust in our community, and helps to smooth over the rough patches that we encounter from time to time.  Sometimes being able to put a face and a name with an IRC handle makes all the difference.  There are a number of activities on the schedule specifically designed to help you get to know your (virtual) neighbors a bit better, and I’m sure some people will come up with unscheduled activities as well.

So bring your HAM radio, or your DSLR, or your latest robotics kit, or your hot dog costume.  Bring your favorite keyboard or input device… and then don’t be afraid to say hello to those around you.  And if you see me, say hi!  (I’ll be the guy playing amateur photographer and generally trying to make sure things go smoothly.)

Work being done during FUDCon Tempe

Prepare to Work

Last but not least, I ask each of you to come to FUDCon prepared to work.  Yes, we have a good time at FUDCon.  Yes, we learn and share and grow.  But at the end of the day, FUDCon is about making forward progress, and moving us one step closer to our goals.  Yes, talk is important, and conversation is crucial.  It’s only if we put those ideas into action that FUDCon is truly successful.  If you’re a part of a steering committee or a special interest group in Fedora, prepare to set a plan for the upcoming year.  If you’re not yet a member of a special interest group, you might want to join one at FUDCon, and take the first step to becoming more involved.

I can’t wait to spend time with many of you at FUDCon this coming weekend, and hope to meet the rest of you someday at a future event.

(Thanks to María “tatica” Leandro and Kushal Das for sharing their FUDCon photos with me.)

When? Where?

FUDCon Blacksburg will take place January 13th through 15th, 2012 in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA — a beautiful community in southwestern Virginia, nestled in the Appalachians and near the Jefferson National Forest.

How much does it cost?

Like all FUDCon events, there is no charge to attend FUDCon Blacksburg.  Simply show up and enjoy the conference!

Where do I pre-register?

Please register online by adding your name to the wiki at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Blacksburg_2012#Pre-registration so that we can plan appropriately for the number of people attending FUDCon.

What about hotel rooms?

We’ve arranged a special rate with the Inn at Virginia Tech. Click this link for reservations or call the Hotel directly at +1-540-231-8000 or toll free at +1-877-200-3360 and ask for the Fedora room block. Our block expires on December 28, 2011, so don’t delay!

I’m flying to FUDCon.  What airport do I fly into?

The closest commercial airport is Roanoke Regional Airport, approximately 40 miles from Blacksburg. A shuttle bus is available Monday through Saturday (but not on Sunday) from http://www.smartwaybus.com/schedule.htm.  Please consult that website for a detailed schedule and map.  There will be a few people with cars to help shuttle people to the airport if you happen to fly out on Sunday.

Where do I find more information?

The main website for FUDCon Blacksburg is at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon:Blacksburg_2012. I hope to see you at the conference.

FUDCon Milan was a successful event.  We started things out with a social event on Friday night at the Yguana Cafe.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t stick around for long as I had to make a run to the airport and help people find their way to the hotel.  On Saturday morning, we all met at venue and kicked off the barcamp session of the conference.  I was pleased to see many people stand up and pitch ideas for presentations — I think we ended up with around 30 different presentations on Saturday.  I took an informal poll during the introductions, and roughly half of the people there had never been to a FUDCon event before.

I gave an informal presentation called “You Could Be The Next Fedora Project Leader”, where I talked about the importance of mentoring new community members and how changes in Fedora leadership are a healthy and vital thing.  I also talked about what I do as the Fedora Project Leader to encourage community building.  I thought my presentation was well received, despite the fact that I somehow tripped the electrical breaker for the projectors as I was starting my talk, and ended up giving most of the presentation without any slides.  (Thank goodness I was prepared!)  Before and after my presentation, I tried to bounce between the other presentations, and actively participated in the “hallway track” of discussions with new friends and old friends alike.  The provided lunch was fantastic, and we even got in a few group photos.

On Saturday evening, we had the traditional FUDPub dinner, which was all-you-can-eat pizza.  I think everyone had a great time at FUDPub, even if some of the pizza was a bit strange.  I wasn’t going to say anything, but the Italian Ambassadors kept joking that the chefs were in the kitchen yelling “We’re running out of food — what can we feed the foreigners?”.  I have to admit — I kind of enjoyed the french fry pizza, even if it wasn’t very traditional.  During the FUDPub dinner, Christoph Wickert slipped away for a few minutes and came back wearing a Beefy Miracle costume — who knew you could find such a thing on eBay.  We all got a kick out of the costume, and had fun taking pictures.  (Francesco Crippa let me borrow his fancy Nikon DSLR, and I went crazy with it — I think I ended up taking a couple of gigabytes worth of pictures. Hopefully he’ll share some of the pictures with us, if he dares wade through all the awful pictures to find a few gems.)  After FUDPub, people went in different directions — some to drink, some to sleep, and some to eat gelato.

Sunday was the hackfest portion of the conference, and again the community came through with a great set of hackfest suggestions.  I think we ended up with twelve or thirteen different hackfest sessions, and everyone I talked to was pleased with the results.

I had a wonderful time interacting with members of our Fedora community, including a lot of people who I got to meet for the first time.  My heartfelt thanks go out to Francesco Crippa and the rest of the FUDCon Milan organizing team — your hard work made for a truly spectacular event.

Last night we hacked on some of the Fedora documentation until around 1:00am. I fixed up some bad formatting in the User Guide so that it would build again, and fixed a few other minor issues.

This morning, I got up early to help some Fedora contributors with their travel arrangements for FUDCon Milan, and ran the FUDCon planning meetings for FUDCon Milan and FUDCon India.  After a quick lunch (thanks to my friends at cloud.com), I headed back upstairs to the docs hackfest room and dove back into fixing up some more docs.  This afternoon, I worked on the Cloud Guide, a bit on the Security Guide, and showed some of the other guys some tricks I use for finding invalid DocBook tagging and fixing it.  I also helped Clint Savage with a couple of minor RPM packaging problems.  Now I’m helping John McDonough proofread a draft version of the Release Notes for Fedora 16.

I’m very much looking forward to the conference tomorrow and the Docs FAD on Sunday.

The result of the Go/No-Go meeting is that the latest Fedora 16 Alpha release candidate was declared “GOLD”. That means we’ll be shipping the Fedora 16 Alpha on Tuesday, August 23rd.

I’m going to take this opportunity to take a short break for a couple of days. I’ll be taking off work tomorrow (Friday) and at least part of the day on Monday to make a long weekend to relax and spend time with some friends. I’ll leave my contact information with the members of the Fedora Board in case something urgent comes up while I’m away.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year since I started as the Fedora Project Leader. There are a number of areas that I’d like to highlight in this retrospective, but the first I’d like to talk about is communications.  Why communications?  I truly believe that we will owe much of our future success and failure (both in the world of FLOSS generally and more specifically within Fedora) to communication.  For something as critical as communication, I think we often do ourselves a disservice in the way that we communicate, and that causes me heartburn.

Before I dive too much into communication, let me first get something off my chest.  I’m not the most communicative person in the world.  For those of you who know me personally, that shouldn’t come as a big surprise.  By nature, I’m a fairly quiet person.  Most of the time, I’d much rather be in the trenches solving problems than standing in the spotlight.  The last thing I want anyone to think is that Fedora is somehow being directed by my ego.  That being said, I’ve done a lot of reflecting, and I’ve come to realize that Fedora needs a leader that is more communicative, that spends more time in public helping to market Fedora (for lack of a better term), that spends less time in the trenches.  If I’m going to blog about communication and how we can improve, let me be the first to apologize for being a bit quiet in the past, and let me also be the first to pledge to each of you my renewed determination to open my mouth more and to be better about the ways I communicate.

Now, looking at the Fedora Project has a whole over the past year, I think we’ve done an OK job of communication.  Not a great job, but an OK job.  There are a few particular areas I’d like to highlight — not to come off as sounding preachy, but to point out some things that will make us stronger.  First, the obvious item — flamewars.  We’ve certainly had a number of them over the past year, with some worse than others.  In general, however, I’d say we’re getting better about keeping the overall numbers of flamewars down, at least compared to years past.    I’m still concerned, however, about the levels of sniping and snarky comments that I see within our community, and the lack of civility that is displayed from time to time.

If I may, let me offer a few reminders about communications that I believe will help us to strengthen our communities.  While many of these focus on the mechanics of email, I think they probably apply equally well for IRC and other communication formats.

• Focus on what is right and not who is right.  The greatest asset we have within Fedora is the people who contribute their time and energy and passion to make it better.  If we come to realize that, it only makes logical sense that no matter how much we may disagree with a technical proposal or the actions of another person, let’s stay focused on the technical details and try not to turn the discussion into personal attacks.  In religious circles, there’s a concept of “loving the sinner but hating the sin”.  Even if you’re not a religious person, that concept should hopefully help illustrate the point I’m trying to make.
• Don’t question other people’s motives. This one ties in somewhat with my first point, but I think it deserves to be mentioned as well.  We all contribute to FLOSS for our own particular reasons, and who are we to judge that one reason is better than another? One of the quickest ways to lose someone else’s trust and respect is to question their motives.  Let’s try to judge each contribution solely based on its technical merit.
• Taste your words before they leave your mouth.  When I was in school, I had an English teacher that always told the class to “Taste your words before they leave your mouth.”  For better or worse, many of the people in our community are only known by what they write (and how the write it).  How do your messages reflect upon you, and upon the community in general?  Is your content precise and specific?  Does the formatting of your message reflect common email etiquette?   (I promise I won’t go into a long rant about top posting versus bottom posting, but I will encourage everyone to trim their replies to show which parts of a conversation they’re replying to.)  Does the tone of your email reflect a willingness to work toward a common solution?  Is you message productive, or simply meant to evoke an emotional response?
• Repetition.  Not all repetition is harmful, but if you’ve made the same point repeatedly (either in the same thread, or keep making the same point every time you get the chance), you’re probably not doing yourself any favors.  It’s natural for the human brain to look for patterns, and I think we’ve all probably participated in communities where certain members exhibit a pattern of repetition, to the point where our brain says “Oh, it’s another post on that same point by so-and-so… I’ll tune it out.”  Now, as the FPL, I don’t want to get to where I’m tuning people out, so please use repetition sparingly.  Chances are, we heard you the first time or two.
• Be willing to be part of the solution.  It has been my experience that people are much more likely to get a positive response to communication when they can show that they’re willing to be part of a solution to a perceived problem.  If you’re the one pointing out the problem, show that you’ve done your homework and that you’ve tried to understand the problem to the best of your ability.  Be humble enough to point out the things you don’t understand.  If you’re responding to a problem report, communicate clearly whether you too are willing to be part of the solution.

In addition to suggestions above, I’d also like to point out that we need more than just a lack of bad communication — we need more healthy communication as well.  I’m going to do my part to work on this over the coming year, and I invite you to join me.  If you’re doing something constructive in Fedora or other areas of FLOSS, talk about it!