Meeting started at 2026-05-20 14:01:35 UTC

The Meeting name is 'Fedora Council Meeting'

!hi

mhroncok: Miro Hrončok (churchyard) - he / him / his or they / them / theirs

!hi

!hi

bookwar: Aleksandra Fedorova (bookwar) - she / her / hers

Aoife Moloney: Aoife Moloney (amoloney)

!hi

Hi mhroncok ¬

Peter Boy (ServerWG, Docs): Peter Boy (pboy)

!hi

Justin Wheeler: Justin Wheeler (jflory7) - he / him / his

Morning, afternoon, evening folks 👋

!hi

!hi

Fabio Valentini (⛱️ ➡️ ❓): Fabio Valentini (decathorpe) - he / him / his

Akashdeep Dhar / আকাশদীপ ধর: Akashdeep Dhar (t0xic0der) - he / him / his

It is… nice to not be the one kicking this off, for a change 😅

Missed you Aoife Moloney! And not just for chairing meetings! 😄

The Meeting Name is now council

!hi

Jona Azizaj (she/her): Jona Azizaj (jonatoni) - she / her / hers

Hooray, Aoife is back!!

Howdy folks! 👋

I'm imagining some tropical island, on a beach, with Matrix open on a laptop 🤣

days off until TBD :)

!hi

Beach adventure into unknown?

nimbinatus: Laura Santamaria (nimbinatus) - she / her / hers

ha, I wish. too many meetings for venturing into the unknown

8-9 people here already - Quite the attendance today 🎉

A good quorum, indeed

Aoife brought the fun 😄

Hahaha I doubt that :D

Giving one more minute, then adding the boiler plate agenda stuff

Shush - that was a complement - Just take it lol

Housekeeping

Discuss adopting Fedora Innovation Lifecycle as Council Policy - #564

Update on the status of a public ticket with a summary of the provenpackager revocation discussion - #563

Discuss the status of Fedora Moderation Guidelines - #392

Open Floor

Update on the status of a public ticket with a summary of the provenpackager revocation discussion - #563

Discuss adopting Fedora Innovation Lifecycle as Council Policy - #564

Discuss the status of Fedora Moderation Guidelines - #392

Open Floor

Housekeeping

thats annoying

For the record: I'm here as temporary FESCo / engineering representative to fill in for David - and will likely be gone after the elections when we will elect a new non-temporary Council representative :)

Oh, right!

Thanks for being here, Fabio, and for filling in on short notice.

Welcome Fabio Valentini (⛱️ ➡️ ❓) ¬

!hi

ok quickly - sorry for throwing a 'spanner in the works' by insisting we move the conversation to the ticket. That was annoying, but imo, necessary

I suppose so. We could have taken that learning from the next decision onwards too, but oh well, we adapted quickly to the ticket feedback so I would say no major harm done.

from a quick check of the ticket, Im not seeing anything indicating we should not use the following *types' of questions:

I'm reading through the ticket comments

It was useful to drive conversation in the ticket 👍🏻

A non-technical-specific question about what the candidate would see as strategically important/beneficial for Fedoras future and allow them the opportunity to answer without asking a leading question.

A question around how would a candidate help drive community initiatives/policies, etc.

An 'experience' question, eg what is their experience in Fedora and/or other open source projects, do they have any experience in leadership/governance groups, etc.

I am inclined to agree with [@bookwar:fedora.im](https://matrix.to/#/@bookwar:fedora.im) a bit, on questions that are more revealing

For the record - comments on the ticket convinced me that we don't want a "choose your own three questions" approach and that we want to pick 3 questions in advance same for all, so we don't need to argue about that.

Yes, it seems unanimous for three questions for all, and all questions the same

Im -1 to leading questions.

Leading how?

Also, the Google Doc is now obsolete - If you want to convey your feedback, do it either here in this meeting or under the ticket as comments - Please do not use the Google Doc anymore.

gives the impression there is a wrong or right answer

Sure, that makes sense

Like asking about a certain topic? Like AI and Flatpak stuff? Yep, lets not do those.

I have to apologize; been busy with conference work and haven't had a moment to read the questions. I need a minute to catch up

I liked this question: "What experiences of governence or related fields in community based projects do you have?"

I feel like need a lot of info, and only three questions means that we should not have overlaps

I also think we need to ask something that is not all roses and butterflies. Like, what do you think is the biggest problem facing the Fedora Project in 2026?

I really want to know what a candidate thinks is not working, and potentially how they could be an influence for good on that issue

if we are asking about "what is your experience", we should not ask about "how you contribute"

+1

Are we sure it does not inadvertently raise the barrier of entry to allow only those who have at least one experience in such a field? What if someone is new and wants the Fedora Council to be their first experience?

I think the voting body should know this. It's not a disqualification

1 question to ground truth qualifications/experience 1 question that speaks to what they want to achieve in the role 1 question that humanizes them

this is a leadership position so I would argue the barrier should be somewhat high

That is why the question should be somewhat open ended, but still cover this important ground.

Make the question more open "what kind of experience you have which might be relevant for the role (for ex. governance,..)?

Being neutral in the question's phrasing allows the nominees to decide whichever side they want to talk about or prioritise. Like they can talk about the more pressing issues or they can play nice/safe - and the voting shall decide.

Im + to the experience question and then not asking about contribution to avoid overlap

This makes more sense. Doesn't really make it professional sounding (like a job board stuff)

Now that I've had time to catch up a bit; I agree that everyone should get the same questions. I do think that there needs to be something about the future and innovation in Fedora. I also think they need to demonstrate how they will be able to lead, however they define that request.

I'm avoidant on people asking nice and safe questions, because then people review more on reputation and name recognition versus what people will do in the role. It is very frustrating to me when someone runs for an election who is visible, gets elected, and then never shows up to a single meeting

Works for me

+1

+1

they can do that even if they make claims in the interview about whatever

As mentioned above, let's stick to neutral questions and let people decide how they want to approach it.

Chances are that both, the pressing issues folks and the nice sounding folks, may give up on attending meetings regardless

True, but someone with passion and big ideas is more likely to be engaged than someone who just answers vaguely or about how Fedora is important for open source, etc. Etc

about that... ive been fumbling towards having a project leadership pledge that I and other leadership can affirm to...

!proposal: Council agree to set three questions - 1. Something about their views on the future of Fedora. 2. What kind of experience do you have that may be relevant for the role in Fedora Council. 3. ???

I do not think that the interview answers have a quantifiable bearing on what they would end up doing potentially in the future.

Like it explains their current stand, the experiences that have gotten so far but the actions in the future can change in any direction. 🤷

I liked Jef's scoping for Q3, something that humanizes them, but not sure what the Q should be

I know theres not a proposal command, Im using it as a statement we can discuss and agree to before formalising

The issue is that the any guardrails you build to catch those catch the people with impostor syndrome much more effectively.

Yep, we do that a lot 😄

I am not keen on a question about "future of Fedora". What if I want to focus on the presence?

Hmm, fair.

I saw Jef Spaleta mentioning something about humanizing them - I like that - Helps connect with them candidates and stuff

Q3 - what brought you do Fedora?

Justin Wheeler: beat me to it lol

question 3 should be broad enough so that I could concievably answer it with an curling analogy to open source

2. How do you see Fedora growing in the future? What are the opportunities and what are the risks?

1. What is the purpose of Council, in your opinion, and how should such a governing body lead?

So what about some questions like these:

3. ...

I dont like that idea.

Heh, yeah, something like "why are you here?"

maybe thats Q3? something about current stuff and something about future

It's simple but straightforward

What drives you?

I like these for the first two

that's fine.... we'll talk about it more if my thoughts get to the point of having a draft

I like Q2 here

Yeah, focusing questions too much on the future might be a "leading question"

Lets avoid those too. Let us let people decide if they wanna focus on the future or the present.

(my 2¢: this is an awful lot of discussion and uncertainty for something that needs to be agreed on basically ASAP)

"How do you see Fedora growing in the future?" is a leading question. It leads to a conclusion that all candidates consider growth an important metric. Perhaps it is sustainability rather than growth that they care about?

ok so I will be pushing us for a resolution by halfpast the hour please. We dont need to do too much bikeshedding

Everyone has their own Fedora story.

This - Makes people "feel" accessible.

welcome to a Council meeting :D

Eep, lol

I have to respectfully disagree. The future is really important for the project, I think, and it also is what many people in voting situations are curious about

1) What do you bring to the table as a Council member?

If is just "What are the opportunities and what are the risks?" - would it work?

Dude's learning quite fast for his first Council meeting, I'd say...

You're not wrong, and lately I'm feeling like every Council meeting should be a video call, but I digress 😛

This is excellent

Let's use Laura's first two questions

I like that. 'What do you see as potential opportunities and risks for the Fedora Project in its future'?

+1

I dont like Q1 from Laura - sorry :/ but I wont block if majority do!

In general, for questions, I'd like us to think from the voter's perspective as much as possible. What do they want to know? What helps make a decision?

2. How do you see Fedora growing in the future? What are the opportunities and what are the risks?

3. What drives you to participate in Fedora?

1. What is the purpose of Council, in your opinion, and how should such a governing body lead?

We lost the experience question

Please do challenge it! I'm writing off the top of my head right now

I don't like that the questions are so specific. Suppose a candidate wants to say "the Council is not functional, I run to change that by doing this and that" and now we are distracting them with other more specific questions.

I think it was the second half of Q1, but suggest a revision?

Aoife gave us five minutes deadline, I don't want to make her mad :D

A question about the role of council should be in the form of a referendum, not a question for the council itself.

Id swap out the Q1 from Lauras and add in the experience one

Isn't that already fix as part of our governance foundation?

>

What is the purpose of Council, in your opinion, and how should such a governing body lead?

we have an additional open section for them to write an essay?

I mean, we let people answer about the future if they want to, but pushing them to do so, might make it look like that it is in our expectation for them to be able to plan for the Fedora Project's future (or something similar), which I am honestly not a big fan of.

What if someone's around to change the current processes and not focussed on the new technology in the horizon - Do we pick them or do we say that since they did not answer a question of future scope, we probably would not want them around here?

Quick, someone write a new Q1 instead of analyzing why Q1 is not right

OK, we agree that Q1 is not working!

What works, folks.

Lets focus on getting the idea of the question nailed down.

We can play the phrasing game later.

Someone pitch something fast, we have four minutes!

we are infamous for knowing what we don't want, aren't we?

Idea?

The results can then turn up as comments under the ticket

Helps us save some time for other things that we might have on the agenda

I suppose so.

Describe how you have, or intend to, lead in a governing body such as Fedora Council.

How do you see Fedora growing in the future? What are the opportunities and what are the risks?

What drives you to participate in Fedora?

To me, I'd also see fixing a process as the future in this case. But that's me. I'm writing off the top of my head, really.

Question proposal? :D

Describe how you have, or intend to, lead and participate in a governing body such as Fedora Council.

How do you see Fedora growing in the future? What are the opportunities and what are the risks?

What drives you to participate in Fedora?

+1

this is good q1

Something like

2. ???

3. Humanizing candidates etc.

1. About experience

Can we vote on this?

Ive used participate twice, we need to edit one of them out but the idea is the same

We have two minutes!

version 2.10: Q1 - what kind of experience you have which might be relevant for the role (for ex. governance,..), Q2 - What do you see as potential opportunities and risks for the Fedora Project in its future; Q3 - What brought you to Fedora?

Works

!proposal

I am not happy about the "quick, quick, vote on something that was just proposed right now" approach. we seem to do it a lot

2. How do you see Fedora growing in the future? What are the opportunities and what are the risks?

1. Describe how you have, or intend to, lead and participate in a governing body such as Fedora Council.

3. What brought you to Fedora

I like this set

Aoife Moloney: what is the ultimate deadline here?

@bookwar's covers what I think voters want to know

I'm sorry for contributing to that. I guess I'm also feeling mildly frustrated that we are in the eleventh hour to be deciding this, but it also feels bad when we spend a long time on a single topic and the community is waiting for answers on us for other topics too. I won't push on a vote if we really aren't ready, but the deadline for election questions is tomorrow.

Not a fan of it at all but if it rolls the ball ahead, I'm indifferent to that.

Hey - likewise. We had the entire two week time for the Google Doc and it was just you, Aoife Moloney, Jona Azizaj (she/her) looking into it.

this is not a big issue and should not even be taking meeting time imo

theres an interview deadline for 21 may

so we need to have our questions prepared before then for candidates

3: open ended

It covers

1: experience

2: vision

that's why we had a homework to brainstorm this so we don't do it *on the meeting* :/

Sure. Lets go ahead with bookwar's list.

Im happy to go with bookwar 's set too so can this be actioned to be pasted into the ticket and then ack it there please?

+1

I'll be honest that I've been on the road and haven't had time for much for over those entire 2 weeks. I'll sit out now.

Same for me too 😕

I'll back off on this

Going forward we need to be cleaner and clearer what meeting time should be used for, vs ticket-based tasks. This is something Im both guilty of messing up and can see this needs to stop/change

anywhoo, can I do an action please?

Proposal: put the 2.10 version into the ticket, breathe for 2 hours and if no new immediate issues are found - go with it?

I would honestly think thrice before taking up assignments because in this incident alone, something was agreed upon, performed too and moved away from (as if it never even existed in the first place) before we have the urgency based decision thingy here.

(I don't like the "in its future" part of Q2 but I will not block it.)

Just putting it out there - Sorry if this suddenly feels like offtopic or unwarranted 🙏

it wont come up again as Elections is something FOA manages, but I wasnt here and folks stepped in to help which I really appreciate

meetings do help to boost the work on a ticket, but yeah, we need to learn how to have "boost" conversations and "final" conversations not at the same time..

I really would like to discuss the idea of more video meetings as Council in the future, but I digress

It honestly feels like most (if not all) work leading to a decision eventually ends up happening in the meeting alone, and not on the ticket. Take, for instance, I am joining right now when its 2006IST at my end but sometimes I wouldn't be able to make it (because DST or whatever else). Having discussions on the ticket too (which are equally honored) just makes it feel like that the opinions are actually being accounted for.

It will not be as open as this.

Let's discuss this more in open floor

I'm super curious where we are with this?

what is the expected discussion wrt https://forge.fedoraproject.org/council/tickets/issues/564 on this meeting?

Lets park the meeting/ticket stuff please for now, we can discuss that under housekeeping which we should reserve 10 - 15 mins for

Please do not take it personally. The "the meeting should have been an email - it was" meme is as old as the e-mail itself :)

we should punt on that ticket

I hope it's not "let's vote" becasue that did not go well last time we did that :D

Is there anything we can discuss here?

No I dont think this is ready for a vote anyway

Yeah hahah

I'm curious what the plan is though, for executing this

the updated draft is in discussion.. I plan to give it two more weeks.. and then I can start formal discussion period on a final draft

Like, is this something trying to get lifted before Flock? Or will it come up at Flock?

This. The urgency driven vote thingy rarely ends up well for us. Sometimes it is indeed important to take it slow and perhaps, also explain just why someone voted in favor or in opposition to some proposal.

it does NOT have to happen before flock.

we can discuss it at flock

Could you drop the !link?

can we move the "formal discussion" part post Flock?

i can do that

yes formal post flock is fine

Folks, let's try and discuss the topic at hand 🙏🏻

(I read your flock message after I posted mine)

My bad, I was in the middle of typing a response before we swiftly moved away from that topic.

There is some Matrix federation lag, a group of messages will appear suddenly for me

(another reason for video meeting heheh)

Is there anything to discuss before Flock? Or will it come up in the strategic sessions panel with Council?

I have been wondering what we are going to say/do in that opening panel at Flock

(I have strong opinions about video meetings, happy to share them after this meeting)

Not sure if we want to have our own agenda or let the audience drive it with Q&A

To be honest I want to open a separate thread on Fedora and Remixes part as a prerequisite to the sandbox discussion. Because that recent conversation got me rather surprised of how Remixes are perceived by some members of the community. When I was thinking about Hummingbird, AI and Sandbox stuff, I felt like it all builds on top of the Remix as a concept and that it is widely acceptable that we want Remixes to be sort of part of the project as we go. It felt like a safe thing to do. And it seems to not be as safe now

So it sounds like we're done with this topic, though? The lifecycle one, I mean,since we're punting to later

I would agree nimbinatus :)

It is an interesting perspective. Not as safe how?

Oh, hmmm

We can punt, if it makes sense. I just hope we have time to discuss this more before we get to a final voting stage

for example, people are asking if it is remix - why we are even talking about in fedora

for example, people are asking if it is remix - why we are even talking about it in fedora

I feel like this is part of the whole "urgent vote, vote now" dynamic, if we don't have time to discuss or flesh out the concept for something so big and so huge

Kevin Fenzi answered this well in the other topic, that Remix folks still participate in the upstream

well within scope for the larger discussion.

For example, compare Asahi Remix with Universal Blue

But then again, I would say that such points of contention would almost always be there and should not hamper progress

Criticism like those that we have gotten in a relatively similar scoped AI developer desktop thingy to begin with...

Where is the place for feedback? Ticket or Fedora Discussion?

I think, we don't need an answer, we need a communcation and discussion about this vision, before we start making decisions

SO that answer doesn't come as surprise to anyone

Jef Spaleta: is there a good place? I think its posted to discourse

I also want to take the last few mins to get a handle on these meetings please. We have a lot of bad process in place

(this is also a confusing dynamic since our Discourse integration never migrated from Pagure to Forgejo – we used to push hard for discussion in Fedora Discussion and votes in tickets, but lately, we are discussing in tickets once again)

Not saying that having it over Forgejo restricts discussions but Discourse is comparitively more visible

I would suggest the latter, if we are interested in funnelling in more feedback from folks, who aren't necessarily from the Fedora Council

in my head, council tickets are for council members to discuss, discourse is for everybody

ok so this gives good lead into housekeeping

oh boy we are all over the place :D

[@jspaleta:fedora.im](https://matrix.to/#/@jspaleta:fedora.im) let us know where you want feedback

Stepping away for a while and coming back really puts things into perspective :D

discourse while we are navigating the open discussion on the draft...

I meant where on Discourse?

Found it

We have a lovely new board for our tickets. It needs both refinement and triaging. Im saying this as someone who is offering to *do* this work, but I would like council to help me structure how we work

ok, 10 mins is not enough time for this really ;/ but it should be!!

May I make a suggestion on that?

please!! :)

What do you need?

Perhaps having a documented SOP of how the decisions are taken or when a ticket reaches a state when decisions/votes can be passed upon them could be a good starting point?

Chat based meetings usually take longer than video ones. People need to read, need to write, and need to reply, and it's multiplexed. Perhaps we need to consider whether a chat meeting needs to be longer OR shorter and more often OR fewer things. Perhaps we need to do one discussion per meeting, and focus on the decisions in ticket?

Which is easier with a board like this

But one topic per meeting might be helpful if we want to keep it at a reasonable tumeframe

*timeframe

I would agree, and my leaning is towards ... more meetings 👀

We used to do weekly, but stopped. I forget why

but Id like us to have meaningful ones

Weekly makes sense but I really think we need to have at least some regular video meetings for the really difficult stuff, where text meetings fall down

so we have a meeting to refine tickets and triage

It takes longer all while we eventually end up discussing a little lesser as compared to what equal-durationed meeting could eventually end up achieving. I kinda get why Justin Wheeler is suddently pushing for video calls now ;)

and a meeting for discussions

we also don't have a clean raised hand que mechanism

I say this as someone who desperately loves to not have video meetings, but I really think we need to consider this

and ideally no meetings for voteds

I'll be honest that I'd lean to more meaningful but same cadence. So more async discussion and one single "shot" at a larger sync discussion per topic

and ideally no meetings for votes. this should be tickets

Plus having fortnight meetings grinds things down to a halt, and/or people lose context of what had been going on previously or asynchronously somewhere else. Increasing the frequency could also be of help here.

Another reason why I like video meetings, it's easier for the chair to enforce raised hands and keep order

I honestly lean to chat more. It's more accessible tbh

I'm not saying stop chat meetings, I'm saying just not ALL chat meetings

Especially if going to a weekly format

I dont see disorder here in a disruptive sense.

But if I'm the minority here, I'll back off

But overall, chat meetings *will* take longer. They need to be scoped much smaller than a video or in person

however, I want to point out that votes and agreements are not the same

But in raelity, it's often the chair talking all the time with one of the participants.

nimbinatus: currently a meeting works like a trigger to look at the ticket. If not meeting, we need another strong-enough trigger

I just feel like our text meetings are chaos when we have the really big topics

I mean we could the transcribing tech to make the video meetings just as accessible to folks too. Plus we could have them as an addition to the ongoing series of Matrix meeting anyway - It doesn't have to replace it.

I think with discipline, it can be better, but if I'm the only one feeling this, then I'll back off

That is a preperation issue.

Not only, but I digress

I would like us to consider a video meeting for ticket refinement and triage

True. I'm not saying no. But this is something people can keep up with even if you can't actually make the call

Also true. And I'm guilty of this very much

This is our functional problem, at the moment

There is not async work happening between meetings

And then meetings are where we suddenly have the urgent rush to read, review, and decide

I'm not sure how to fix that

I don't think video calls will help us, because big part of we are missing is talking to community, or explaining our thought process to the community, not to each other.

That wont change if you change the format.

I do think that the "making to the call problem" is not exclusive to just video meetings, it happens in the Matrix meetings too like I previously mentioned in my misplaced rant, but I do get where you are coming from.

I'm not sure _we_ are all aligned as Council either at times, and I would like to not get named on LWN or The Register when we have disagreements, which should be more normal anyways

There seem to be (close to) no async discussion amongst the council members about the tickets until there is a meeting and people go read the tickets. That's... bad

There is no such thing as bad publicity.

meeting time over

Heres my suggestion: one video call a month (or two weeks) to discuss tickets. We refine them together - do they have the right information for us to bring to a meeting, where are they on priority, is this a conversation or is it just a voting-ticket? and then reserve these text based meetings for one, max two tickets we need group conversations for

bookwar: and hence, my proposal of having this.

We can use this as a baseline to understand just what input we need from the community to be able to reach a point where we can comfortably vote on something and stick by our decision while we are at it.

i have a thought

Lets move to the council room