= 1 =
"intro"

It's great to be here at CommunityOne.  Thanks for inviting Fedora and giving me an opportunity to talk about this exciting project.

Karsten Wade, I wrangle developer communities for Red Hat -- Fedora, JBoss.org, under Dev Fu.  In Fedora -- Docs, Infra, L10n, Websites; SIGs such as EPEL.  Past year on Project Board, appointed by Red Hat.  Live down in Santa Cruz.

I joke about 'Community Mangler'; what I really do best is un-mangle community issues and get things done.  That is Fedora, getting things done.  People ... creating, packaging, and distributing the best free and open source software.  The operating system is only the tip of the iceberg.

= 2 =
"this talk is about"

What is Fedora.  Who is Fedora.  Why does Fedora matter.

My task is to take a step away from a standard Fedora talk and share with you why Fedora matters to an audience of developers, whose goals may be different from those of a classic Linux enthusiast.

Why does Fedora matter to you? It is a great platform for developing. OpenJDK works great under Linux because of the work of Fedora engineers.  Eclipse works under Linux because of the work of Fedora engineers.  For projects from GNU Classpath to gcj, you find Fedora developers at the center of the decision making and activities.  All of that work finds its way in to Fedora.

Fedora is also about making an impact, and of all these questions, this is really the most important one.  You may have answered that question for yourself already, and I'd like to add to that, too.

For the slideware part of this talk, I'll try to be as brief as possible because I'd rather you, the audience, participate with your questions.  The issues that are important to you are going to guide you within the open source movement, and so they are important to me. Please ask questions.

= 3 =
"what is fedora?"

This is an audience that has heard of Fedora and may have used it or one of it's stable forks, such as RHEL and CentOS.  But if your focus is more on your languages and projects, an OS is just another kind of bicycle.  It has two wheels, gears, and it can get you from here to there at varying speeds.

To make sure this talk is relevant for you, I'm going to take a few minutes covering what Fedora is, from the perspective of Fedora.  It is more than just a logo in front of Yet Another Linux Distro.  The logo is a symbol of a community of people united to advance the ideas and ideals of free and open source software.

Fedora has many different meanings, depending on its context.  But the underlying theme is always clear:  Free and legal for everyone, now and always, for you and for anyone to whom you give Fedora.

We will never violate this tenet.

We do not pass on legal encumberances to our users or any of our community.  You can give a complete copy of Fedora to anyone, at any time, no matter where in the world you live.

= 4 = 
"... a powerful operating system ..."

One way to describe Fedora is as an operating system.

It's a general-purpose computing platform, built on the Linux kernel, with an enormous selection of free and open source application software suitable for use by everyone from children to old, grizzled sysadmins.

It's stable enough to use every day.  Millions of people do. (LATER: TALK ABOUT HOW WE KNOW.)

Fedora pioneered the best in open-source security, SELinux.  Other distributions, some of them after trying alternatives, are coming around and realizing this.  SELinux is one of those implementation details that makes for a very secure server that, as a developer, you can mostly forget about.  The SELinux team is highly responsive to making policy updates.

We host and seed some of the newest projects that offer end-user convenience, features, and whiz-bang.  Experience has borne out that we typically make really good architecture decisions (SELinux, compiz, PolicyKit...) and provide underlying capabilities that are important to a wide range of audiences (developers, SIGs, sysadmins, end-users...)

= 5 =
"... a set of projects ..."

One way to move a massive organism around is to divide it into a thousand parts that self-organize and move toward a common goal.

For Fedora, that common goal is the advancement of free and open source software.  The method of having many projects self-govern, building strong community, and strong interactive bonds amongst other special interests ... this is the open source methodology.

Within those projects we don't just talk about what we love in Fedora, we talk about what we HATE.  And how to fix it.  If you've ever read fedora-devel-list, or many of the other lists, you get a direct view of opinions meeting head-on.  Experience shows us, this is a great way to get some good ideas and move ahead with them.  Is that always going to bring the best idea?  No, but it will often enough, and the rest is good enough to call gold.

= 6 =
"software packages"

This is truly the core and the biggest part of Fedora.  This is where our mantra is clear:  upstream.

Now, why is it significant that, for example, Fedora community members that include Red Hat engineers are the #1 biggest contributor of code to the Linux kernel?

This is because of the upstream mantra.  Imagine a real stream.

You do not just draw water from that stream forever, taking resources as if it is going to flow and flow.

Instead we travel upstream and help implement good irrigation policies.  Good water management.

These policies are across many thousands of packages, and produce growth throughout the open source ecosphere amongst thousands of vibrant software projects.  This goodness benefits us all, coming back around to Fedora magnified.

= 7 =
"translation"

L10n is an important part of a global Fedora community.  We are fortunate to have a strong set of locale teams, some active since the pre-Fedora days.  The L10n project has grown to be another significant contributor to the Fedora experience.

Last summer mentored Dimitris Glezos GSoC project, translate.fedoraproject.org.  

DamnedLies and Transifex, which is a web-based tool for submitting translations.

Tx sits in front of multiple upstream VCSes, translators commit their translations through one interface.  Upstream projects can approve the single committer from the Tx project, giving just the permissions needed for translation.  This project has captured the attention of other major open source projects.  It does more than just solve Fedora's problems with l10n, it presents a better solution for other open source communities.

= 8 =
"artwork"

community-led
free software tools
open process

it is -- icons, backgrounds, themes

Changed for each release.

Being a digital artist is not a requirement, but such folks are
encouraged to come, too. :)

= 9 =
"documentation"

I've been docs lead for several years, near and dear to me.  We produce the best release notes of any Linux distribution, distilled from dozens of contributors on the wiki into SRPM.  Installation, Software Management.  Updates coming to User and Administrator guides.  Main goal from here is going to be documenting for other Fedora contributors, everything from getting involved to packaging to developing through Fedora.

Encourage new contributors, Docs is a gateway project for folks.  We are happy to train up people for contributing in other parts of Fedora.

Wiki for community documentation, with conversion to DocBook XML for longer term maintenance, translation, ease of output, etc.  OpenJDK in Fedora has given us FOP, which means we can finally dump the passivetex method for making PDFs.  That non-free JRE has been a PITA for a long time.

Lots of new goodness coming here, we're looking to begin using and contributing to an upstream project.

= 10 =
"ambassadors"

Our ambassador community has tripled to over 300 persons in multiple countries around the world.  These are the folks in the Fedora shirts at conferences, tradeshows, and scrappy anti-conventions.  Former FPL Max Spevack is moving to Europe to support the very successful EMEA Ambassadors, with one coming soon for APAC.

= 11 =
"infrastructure"

Great sysadmin team, nearly entirely volunteers with their leader hired by Red Hat from doing the job as a volunteer to leading the project full time.

Using only free and open source software, this global team provides a quality of service you usually only find in mature, paid organizations.  This is all done while knowing they need to be both stable over the long term and provide up-to-date development resources.  This is done with a blend of Enterprise Linux and virtualization, so they can run the latest Fedora for new projects.

= 12 =
"websites"
The Fedora Websites team designs and implements a full set of interfaces for all of the Web applications used by Fedora contributors on a daily basis.

That includes:
* our main site
* our wiki
* our package building and testing interfaces
* our Web translation system
* the administration and account system

They just finished a redesign of our Account System to make joining Fedora as easy as typing your name and email and clicking a button.

Fedora Websites contributors are also working on an exciting move to a new wiki system this summer, and a project interface called MyFedora that will make it easy for any member to find all their Fedora resources in one place.

= 13 =
"bug triage"


A Fedora volunteer, Jon Stanley, has reinvigorated our triage program and is actively recruiting for helpers. This work does NOT require experience in open source software development knowledge. This work can be done effectively by just about anyone and makes it easier for experienced developers to spend their time fixing important software bugs.

The new Bug Zappers program shows what one or two dedicated volunteers can do when they are empowered by open source and barriers are removed from their way.

= 14 =
"marketing"

Fedora Marketing produces messages and stories that communicate what Fedora is all about.

We have a great volunteer by the name of Jonathan Roberts who started an interview program to let Fedora developers talk about the exciting changes they are working on, in advance of our release.  By the time the release is ready, the open source community is primed and excited to receive it!

Another contributor, Rahul Sundaram, who works in Red Hat's Pune office, keeps an eye on much of the press and weblogs that happen around the internet, sending thanks, corrections, and inquiries to allow us to communicate effectively about Fedora.

= 15 =
"who does all this?"
 I meet many people who are under the mistaken impression that the Fedora Project Leader directs all these efforts.  On the contrary, a big part of my job is simply knowing about them and talking about them to other people including the press and audiences like this one.

This presentation hasn't even covered the many thousands of developers of open source technology whose work goes into the Fedora distribution.  Fedora, the Linux platform, is aimed at empowering those developers, and the enthusiasts who support them.

We are working to create a culture not of consumption, but of contribution.  We love hearing about people using Fedora, but more importantly we want to encourage people to use Fedora to advance FOSS.

= 16 =
"you do"

So the health of free and open source software depends on people like you.

You've come to this speech and you're obviously interested in what Fedora provides.

A free platform for building virtually anything. Research and analysis tools. Web applications. Unencumbered content.

= 17 =
"get an account"

So how do you get involved?

It's very simple.  Get an account.

A single click process.

= 18 =
"what do you like to do?"

Maybe you are a system administrator type who wants to help maintain infrastructure. You can extend your skills on world-class equipment with a world-class team.

Maybe you are a designer who wants to develop collateral for display on the web or in marketing materials for the ambassadors. You can do this with open tools at zero cost in a community of collaboration.

Maybe you just want to fix something in Fedora that has always bothered you. You can talk to the developers in the upstream community and the package maintainers in Fedora, code the solution, and coordinate an effort to push it out to an audience of millions of users. Learn how open source's culture of communication and critique produce the world's best code through teamwork.

= 19 =
"do it in Fedora"

We encourage our members to form Special Interest Groups, or SIGs.

Gather other community members who are interested in the same work, and you now have the power of numbers.

For Fedora 9, our KDE SIG has made Fedora the first leading Linux distribution to provide KDE 4 as a default platform for our KDE installations.

This is just one example of how our community believes in putting work behind the words, to bring truth to our motto of "The Future, First."

= 20 =
"fedora == do it"

What truly distinguishes the Fedora community?

Like other open distributions, we have a primary corporate sponsor – in our case, Red Hat, the world's leading open source solutions company.

But unlike other open distributions, we don't make any distinctions between Red Hat employees and anyone else in the Fedora community.

We all work under the same guidelines. We all share responsibility and the burden of work.

Other distributions and projects reserve “special” parts of the distribution for the corporate members.  Although Red Hat employs key contributors, the company simply pays them to do what they'd be doing anyway. And we have volunteers working on every part of Fedora from
the inside out.

= 21 =
"out of the chaos, innovation"

One of the greatest things I ever heard at our recent FUDCon (spell it out) was a young contributor, an intern at Red Hat, who was advocating revamping our central system initialization system.  His pitch at FUDCon to hold a discussion session went something like this:

“My name is Casey Dahlin, and I want to replace Fedora's init system with something new and improved. If you want to try and stop me, I suggest you attend my talk today on init.”

That's how Fedora works – we challenge assumptions and we are never afraid to try new things.

That's why our work is usually coveted (and absorbed) by other projects – we love emphasizing muscle over marketing,

By the way, we chose an init replacement from another distribution – but we're going to actually USE it.

= 22 =
"innovation never rests"

We release a new distribution every six months.

Taking longer means we lose the ability to start pushing newer features as quickly.

Taking less time means we can't polish them as much.

We seed several long-term distributions, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux.  This is another reason why Fedora is so important – as the upstream for the leading commercial Linux distribution, we are the crossroads of INNOVATION and RELEVANCE. The skills you develop on Fedora are of incredible value in a professional capacity on the RHEL platform.

For people who only want to worry about systems that are free as in free beer, we are also upstream for the CentOS community distribution, which offers only community support but a long lifecycle.

= 23 =
"community power"

You can remix your own distribution with tools found in Fedora. 

Create an open source platform that demonstrates how the new free culture encourages collaboration and reuse to empower everyone from business owners to schoolteachers.

Provide a free software electronics laboratory so students can interactively design and test components and assemblies.

Provide a secure and full-featured Linux system you can carry on a USB pen drive to use on virtually any computer, creating and building persistent data as you go just like a laptop.

By the way – all of these ideas already exist – your imagination is the only limit for the next remix of Fedora.

= 24 =
"the world comes to us"

In the 1980's and early 1990's, open source was a fringe movement.

In the 21st century, it's the defining way to make software. It's a mandatory part of any company's strategic planning, and it's what sets
agile, forward-thinking, cost-conscious, and customer-savvy businesses apart from all the rest.

Young people in school now don't find openness and transparency just an interesting idea – in the Internet age, they are EXPECTATIONS. Openness in standards, information exchange, government, and business relationships. The move to openness and transparency is inevitable.

Fedora is an expression of the power and flexibility of these simple
ideals of openness, transparency, freedom, and community.

= 25 =
"thank you"