This is a report created by CLE Team, which is a team containing community members working in various Fedora groups for example Infrastructure, Release Engineering, Quality etc. This team is also moving forward some initiatives inside Fedora project.

Week: 15 – 19 June 2026 (Flock Week!!)

Fedora Infrastructure

This team is taking care of day to day business regarding Fedora Infrastructure.
It’s responsible for services running in Fedora infrastructure.
Ticket tracker

• Helped getting elnbuildsync moved into stg openshift (ongoing).
• A couple more services had OS upgrades to Fedora 44.
• Some more MirrorManager problems.
• Scrappers found another ostree repo. on kojipkgs, limited dir. indexing to stop the attack and then searched for any other ostree repos. Hopefully the last time it happens.

CentOS Infra including CentOS CI

This team is taking care of day to day business regarding CentOS Infrastructure and CentOS Stream Infrastructure.
It’s responsible for services running in CentOS Infrastructure and CentOS Stream.
CentOS ticket tracker
CentOS Stream ticket tracker

• Finish rebuilding/bumping some pkgs for ppc64le libvirt/qemu-kvm stack on el10 (https://gitlab.com/CentOS/infra/tracker/-/work_items/1928)
• Start to work on debuginfo origin servers refresh with el10 instances (https://gitlab.com/CentOS/infra/tracker/-/work_items/1892)
• More coordination work with Stream team about secureboot issues (https://redhat.atlassian.net/browse/CS-3400)
• Finishing last debuginfo pool members reinstall (https://gitlab.com/CentOS/infra/tracker/-/work_items/1892)
• Decommission old openstack env for stream (https://redhat.atlassian.net/browse/CS-3404)
• Cloud SIG doc url change (migration to gitlab, from pagure) – https://gitlab.com/CentOS/infra/tracker/-/work_items/1934
• internal requests (FRCL and audit compliance)
• Move another SIG doc url (away from pagure.io) – https://gitlab.com/CentOS/infra/tracker/-/work_items/1938
• Modified the aws load-balancer settings for one ocp tenant (https://gitlab.com/CentOS/infra/tracker/-/work_items/1932)
• Migrate haproxy load-balancers to el10 for stream dc-move prep (https://redhat.atlassian.net/browse/CS-3353)

Release Engineering

This team is taking care of day to day business regarding Fedora releases.
It’s responsible for releases, retirement process of packages and package builds.
Ticket tracker

• Migration at 95%, the only thing left to migrate is majorly fedora-scm-requests, bug fixes, and continued releng operations.
• Migration: archive-repo-manager from pagure
• Fix: Missing permissions on releng/fedora-comps
• Bug Fix: Mass tagging script for verification bits
• F45 Change Sets reviews are in check and f45-python side tags are merged.
• Regular releng operations.

QE

This team is taking care of quality of Fedora. Maintaining CI, organizing test days
and keeping an eye on overall quality of Fedora releases.

• We’ve started searching for new owners/maintainers of Packager Dashboard and Oraculum

Forgejo

This team is working on introduction of https://forge.fedoraproject.org to Fedora
and migration of repositories from pagure.io.

• Completed the Flock To Fedora 2026 presentation on Fedora → Forgejo migration efforts #588, packaged and deployed Forgejo 15.0.3 #620.
• successfully ran the PR fix doctor across all migrated repositories #601 to address merge issues with Pagure imports.
• Enhanced runner infrastructure with the addition of a Testing Farm runner option #619 and docker-slim type runner #568, and improved security by deploying oauth-proxy to secure the Forge metrics endpoint #571.

EPEL

This team is working on keeping Epel running and helping package things.

• Updated caddy in rawhide, resolving 14 CVEs
• Ongoing onboarding of Pedro

UX

This team is working on improving User experience. Providing artwork, user experience,
usability, and general design services to the Fedora project

• With Flock this week, got to see how all the final designs turned out it in person!
• Emma delivered her talk on ‘Why You Should Use Open Source Design in Open Source’ at Flock
• Great progress on the F45 wallpaper in the final stretch!

If you have any questions or feedback, please respond to this report or contact us on #admin:fedoraproject.org channel on matrix.

The post Community Update – Week 25, 2026 appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

This is a report created by CLE Team, which is a team containing community members working in various Fedora groups for example Infrastructure, Release Engineering, Quality etc. This team is also moving forward some initiatives inside Fedora project.

Week: 08 – 12 June 2026

Fedora Infrastructure

This team is taking care of day to day business regarding Fedora Infrastructure.
It’s responsible for services running in Fedora infrastructure.
Ticket tracker

• Request for CentOS Alternative Images SIG URL Update
• Wiki upgrade problems/patch with FedoraMessaging when editing a page
• Staging wiki down due to PluggableAuth extension issue
• Move all remaining Fedora 42 instances to 44
• Deploy DRM Panic Frontend
• Switch from session-based OIDC to Authentication Bearer
• Move the Fedora Badges static assets from Pagure to Forgejo
• badges: fix image trigger annote order on deploy metadata
• List authorization in CORS headers for API routes

CentOS Infra including CentOS CI

This team is taking care of day to day business regarding CentOS Infrastructure and CentOS Stream Infrastructure.
It’s responsible for services running in CentOS Infrastructure and CentOS Stream.
CentOS ticket tracker
CentOS Stream ticket tracker

• Fix backup cache DB mismatch on backup machine
• Change isa riscv %dist to .el10rv
• Reinstall failed sponsored server
• rebase needed qemu-kvm/libvirt stack for ppc64le hypervisor role
• Refresh new RHEL releases on deployment server[s]
• Deploy new donated machine (and onboard new sponsor)
• Upgrade various OCP clusters to latest 4.18 minor version
• debug a acme renew issue
• Investigate crashing postgres on cbs-hub
• Degraded RAID array in sponsored machine
• CentOS-Stream-GenericCloud-x86_64-10-latest.x86_64.qcow2.SHA256SUM is a zero byte file
• cbs command aborts on Fedora 44 due to missing CA bundle path
• [reminder] : reach out to new sponsor in South Africa

Release Engineering

This team is taking care of day to day business regarding Fedora releases.
It’s responsible for releases, retirement process of packages and package builds.
Ticket tracker

• Change Set Review for F45
• Script improvement and feature addition (in-progress):
  • fix(orphans): handle alternative providers to eliminate false positives
  • Fixes #9841 – adds a release_type field to .composeinfo so we can tell Beta and Final releases apart.
• Regular Releng Operations
• Fedora 42 EOL Preps

AI

This is the summary of the work done regarding AI in Fedora.

• Testdays (the webapp we use for running…Test Days) has an MCP server now (not sure if it’s deployed in prod yet though) – work by Jaroslav Groma

QE

This team is taking care of quality of Fedora. Maintaining CI, organizing test days
and keeping an eye on overall quality of Fedora releases.

• Executive summary: Python 3.15 and kmscon Changes landing caused some fallout, tool tech debt payoff / enhancement continues, most team members used Day of Learning for AI experimentation
• Two major Changes landed: Python 3.15 and kmscon consoles, various fallout from that:
  • CoreOS and IoT both broken by the kmscon change
  • Got on-the-fly keyboard layout changes added (important for openQA)
  • Kickstart installs broken by Python 3.15 change (sent a fix)
  • Various openQA test updates required for kmscon fixes
• openQA serial bug worked around, new packages now deployed to prod
• Tech debt repayment and new feature work continue on testdays, issuebot and blockerbugs
• Kparal continues to find bugs in Lenovo laptop support
• Work on ELN kernel gating got blocked by an unfortunate pre-existing design problem
• Worked with Cristian Le to get rpmdeplint pipeline updated so fixes from last ~year are in prod, it now runs in ~2 minutes instead of ~20
• Team did some AI agent / skills experimentation during Day of Learning

Forgejo

This team is working on introduction of https://forge.fedoraproject.org to Fedora
and migration of repositories from pagure.io.

• `testing-farm` optimized runner option provided to `ci` and `atomic-desktops` organizations
• Regular runners capacity increased from 1 to 4 concurrent jobs
• Private Issues work is ongoing.

EPEL

This team is working on keeping Epel running and helping package things.

• Executive summary: 
• Completed archiving of EPEL 10.1
• Package maintenance across multiple Fedora and EPEL packages
• Quality work via bug reports and bodhi karma

UX

This team is working on improving User experience. Providing artwork, user experience,
usability, and general design services to the Fedora project

• Final stretch prepping Flock materials – Fedora badge, livestream template, sponsor splash
• Progress being made on the F45 Wallpaper
• Emma gave a talk about the Fedora Design team at the Waterford office’s Fedora 44 Release Party last Wednesday

If you have any questions or feedback, please respond to this report or contact us on #admin:fedoraproject.org channel on matrix.

The post Community Update – Week 24, 2026 appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

Introduction

Hi, I’m Aman, a software developer and open-source enthusiast who enjoys backend development, APIs, and building tools that are useful to others.

I recently started my Outreachy internship with the Fedora community, and this is my first blog as an intern. In this post, I want to share what my first two weeks have been like, what I’ve learned so far, and what I’m looking forward to in the next phase of the internship.

I’m working on the Fedora Release Schedule Planner API, a project focused on improving Fedora’s release planning workflow by moving away from older XML-heavy processes and strengthening the current FastAPI-based API through better tests, authentication, and infrastructure integration.

About the Fedora Community

Fedora is a global open-source community behind Fedora Linux and many related projects. People contribute in many areas, including packaging, infrastructure, design, documentation, testing, and release engineering.

One thing I’ve enjoyed learning about Fedora is its Four Foundations: Freedom, Friends, Features, and First. These values reflect Fedora’s focus on free and open-source software, community, innovation, and adopting new technologies early.

What I like about Fedora is that it is not only about writing code. Communication, documentation, reviews, and helping new contributors are also important parts of the community.

Through this internship, I’m also getting a better understanding of Fedora’s release process and how different contributors work together to improve the tools used by the community.

About My Project

My Outreachy project is Enhancing the Fedora Release Schedule Planner API.

Fedora’s traditional release planning workflow relied heavily on manually edited XML files, which made the process difficult for newcomers, harder to scale, and less connected to modern tooling.

The Fedora Release Schedule Planner API is a modern FastAPI-based project hosted on Codeberg. It has already moved from Flask to a modular FastAPI architecture, uses Pydantic for data validation, provides auto-generated Swagger documentation, and relies on Forgejo Actions for CI/CD testing.

The goal of my internship is to help make this API more production-ready. My work will focus on improving the test suite, strengthening CI reliability, adding secure authentication with OpenID Connect, integrating the API with Fedora infrastructure data, and preparing it for deployment.

Learning More About the Community

I had already started contributing to the Fedora Release Schedule Planner API during the Outreachy contribution period. During that time, I joined the project’s Matrix chat, went through issues and pull requests, and became familiar with the basic project structure.

So, during the first two weeks of the internship, my focus was more on understanding the project in depth. I followed discussions in the Matrix chat, worked through issue and pull request conversations, and learned how mentors and maintainers review changes.

We also have a weekly Google Meet call with the mentors. These calls are helpful for discussing progress, asking questions, and understanding what to focus on next.

Alongside exploring the codebase, I spent time reading Fedora documentation and project-related resources to better understand the release planning workflow.

I also explored the FastAPI codebase, tests, CI setup, and previous pull requests more closely. This helped me understand how tools like Pydantic, Swagger documentation, and Forgejo Actions are being used in the project.

Challenges and Wins

One of my biggest challenges in the first two weeks was understanding the codebase beyond its basic structure. During the contribution period, I had already become familiar with the main parts of the project, but during the internship, I started understanding how different layers work together, including API routes, database models, Pydantic schemas, services, templates, and tests.

Another challenge was making sure my changes did not affect existing behavior. I had to run tests, check formatting, and verify things locally before updating a pull request.

My biggest win was becoming more confident with the project workflow. I was able to work on issues, raise pull requests, respond to review feedback, and understand the expectations around code quality and maintainability.

I also became more comfortable with the tools used in the project, including FastAPI, SQLAlchemy, Pydantic, Jinja2, HTMX, tests, and CI checks.

A small win for me was getting some of my pull requests merged. For example, PR #425 and PR #427 helped me understand the review process better and gave me more confidence while working on the project.

Plans for the Next Month

In the next month, I want to continue building on the work from the first few weeks. Currently, we are focusing on fixing UI-related issues, improving the code structure, and aligning the codebase with the project’s expected structure.

Along with that, I want to keep improving the test suite and make sure the API works correctly with the current FastAPI and Pydantic structure.

I also want to start preparing for the authentication part of the project. Since OpenID Connect is an important goal of this internship, I plan to spend time understanding how Fedora authentication works and how it can fit into the Release Schedule Planner API.

After that, I want to gradually learn more about how this API can connect with Fedora infrastructure data. This is important because the long-term goal of the project is to move away from the older XML-based workflow and make the release planning process more modern and maintainable.

Conclusion

These first two weeks have helped me understand the project better. I now have a clearer understanding of the Fedora community, the Release Schedule Planner API, and how people collaborate in open source.

I still have many things to learn, but I feel more comfortable with the project now than I did at the beginning of the internship.

I am thankful to Outreachy, Fedora, and my mentors for this opportunity, and I am looking forward to continuing the work in the coming weeks.

PS: Cover image generated with the help of an AI tool.

The post From Contributor to Outreachy Intern: My Fedora Journey Begins appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

The F44 election cycle has concluded. Below are the results. We are posting the results early this year as we are currently on the eve of Flock to Fedora 2026 and the results were ready. Thank you to all candidates and voters, and congratulations to the newly elected members!

Results

Council

Two Council seats were open this election. A total of 204 voters participated in this election.

FESCo

Five FESCo seats were open this election. A total of 199 voters participated in this election

Mindshare

Four Mindshare seats were open this election. A total of 154 voters participated in this election.

EPEL Steering Committee

Four EPEL Steering Committee seats were open this election. As the amount of interviews submitted equaled the number of open seats, candidates who interviewed were automatically elected.

The post F44 Election Results appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

We, the Forge team, recently onboarded a Codeberg-hosted repo to the new Fedora Konflux instance.
This is a guide based on the onboarding experience, the steps and UI are similar in Fedora’s Forge.

Useful links

• Konflux UI: https://konflux-ci.fedoraproject.org
• Documentation: https://konflux-ci.dev/docs/
• Cluster Console: https://console-openshift-console.apps.kflux-fedora-01.84db.p1.openshiftapps.com
• Cluster API (for oc login): https://api.kflux-fedora-01.84db.p1.openshiftapps.com:6443

Step 1: Get access to the tenants-config GitLab repo

Konflux configuration is managed through GitOps in the
tenants-config
repo on GitLab. The UI is intended to be read-only — you should do everything through merge requests.

• Sign in via SAML SSO at https://gitlab.com/groups/fedora/-/saml/sso to get
  group membership.
• Make sure you have at least a Guest role. Guest lets you approve MRs
  but not merge them. Ask a maintainer to bump your role if needed.
• Get yourself added to CODEOWNERS for your tenant’s directory
  Example MR.

Step 2: Create your tenant namespace

Follow the instructions in the
tenants-config repo:

• Run the create-tenant-resources playbook. It generates the namespace, RBAC
  and quota resources.

You end up with three files:

• ns.yaml — the namespace with a konflux-ci.dev/type: tenant label
• rbac.yaml — a RoleBinding granting konflux-admin-user-actions to your FAS
  user
• kustomization.yaml — ties together the quota, RBAC, namespace and your
  applications directory. Quota can be increased later.

Then run the update-tenant-apps playbook to generate an ArgoCD application
manifest per tenant directory and update the ArgoCD kustomization.

Example MR.

Step 3: Define your Applications and Components

This is where you tell Konflux what to build. We went with a Kustomize
Configuration-as-Code setup with three layers:

• A shared base — a generic Component template with the git URL, provider
  annotations (git-provider: forgejo, git-provider-url: https://codeberg.org),
  pipeline config and the build.appstudio.openshift.io/request: configure-pac
  annotation.
• Per-application bases — an Application CR plus per-variant overrides (e.g.
  rawhide vs. stable).
• Per-environment overlays (staging/production) — patches for application names,
  component names, context paths and Dockerfile paths.

Open a merge request with everything
Example MR.

Step 4: Add ImageRepository resources

Each Component needs a matching ImageRepository CR. If you don’t have one, the image controller
never provisions a Quay repo, spec.containerImage stays empty on the
Component, and the build service just sits there waiting. No webhook, no PaC PR,
nothing happens.

Example ImageRepository:

apiVersion: appstudio.redhat.com/v1alpha1
kind: ImageRepository
metadata:
  name: forge-rawhide-production
  namespace: fedora-infra-tenant
  annotations:
    image-controller.appstudio.redhat.com/update-component-image: "true"
  labels:
    appstudio.redhat.com/application: forge-production
    appstudio.redhat.com/component: forge-rawhide-production
spec:
  image:
    name: fedora-infra-tenant/forge-rawhide-production
    visibility: public

The update-component-image: "true" annotation is what tells the image
controller to write the Quay URL back to spec.containerImage on the Component.

Example MR. Do not merge yet.

Step 5: Create the SCM secret

Konflux needs a secret to authenticate with your Forgejo/Codeberg instance:

oc create secret generic pipelines-as-code-codeberg 
  -n {namespace} 
  --type=kubernetes.io/basic-auth 
  --from-literal=password={FORGEJO_TOKEN}

oc label secret pipelines-as-code-codeberg -n {namespace} 
  appstudio.redhat.com/credentials=scm 
  appstudio.redhat.com/scm.host=codeberg.org

The Konflux docs
say you need these token scopes:

• issue: Read and Write
• organization: Read
• repository: Read and Write
• user: Read

Don’t restrict the token to a specific repo — scopes like write:user aren’t
available with repo-scoped tokens on Forgejo. If you set the right scopes and
it still complains about insufficient permissions, try a token with everything
enabled.

Step 6: Merge and verify

With the secret in place, merge your MR. ArgoCD picks it up and syncs the
resources. Wait a few minutes, then check:

# Did containerImage get set?
oc get components -n {namespace} 
  -o custom-columns='NAME:.metadata.name,IMAGE:.spec.containerImage'

# Are the ImageRepositories ready?
oc get imagerepositories -n {namespace} 
  -o custom-columns='NAME:.metadata.name,STATE:.status.state'

# What does the PaC status say?
oc get components -n {namespace} 
  -o custom-columns='NAME:.metadata.name,STATUS:.metadata.annotations.build.appstudio.openshift.io/status'

If spec.containerImage is filled in and the status shows "state":"enabled",
you’re good.

Step 7: Handle the PaC pull requests

At this point Konflux opens PRs on your source repo with auto-generated Tekton
pipeline files in .tekton/. Two ways to go:

• Merge them as-is if you’re happy with Konflux’s defaults.
• Close them and use your own pipelines. If you already have .tekton/ files,
  update them with:
• application/component labels matching your Konflux component names
• output-image pointing to quay.io/redhat-user-workloads/{namespace}/{component}
• latest task bundle versions (grab the @sha256:... refs from the
  Konflux-generated files)
• serviceAccountName: build-pipeline-{component}

We went with the second option. We already had pipelines with custom version
tagging that we wanted to keep, so we pulled in the new task bundles and labels
from the generated files and left the rest alone.

Step 8: Re-triggering when things go wrong

The configure-pac annotation gets consumed on the first attempt. If it fails
(token issue, rate limit, whatever), you need to re-add it:

# One component
oc annotate component {component} -n {namespace} 
  build.appstudio.openshift.io/request=configure-pac --overwrite

# All of them
for comp in $(oc get components -n {namespace} -o name); do
  oc annotate $comp -n {namespace} 
    build.appstudio.openshift.io/request=configure-pac --overwrite
done

To sum it up, we created a tenant on Konflux-ci cluster, created applications and components and set a place where the images would be hosted. At the event of push to the codeberg repo main branch – the repo where we store the Forge Containerfiles, the pipeline gets triggered (scoped by the on-cel-expression to only those contexts where the change happened) and a fresh and tagged image appears on quay, ready for further testing and deployment.

Thanks to the Konflux Team for the Forgejo support!

The post Onboarding a Forgejo-hosted project to Fedora Konflux appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

This is a report created by CLE Team, which is a team containing community members working in various Fedora groups for example Infrastructure, Release Engineering, Quality etc. This team is also moving forward some initiatives inside Fedora project.

Week: 01 – 05 June 2026

Fedora Infrastructure

This team is taking care of day to day business regarding Fedora Infrastructure.
It’s responsible for services running in Fedora infrastructure.
Ticket tracker

• Devise the flagging of inactive badges as a boolean column [Triaged]
• feat: add legacy boolean column to badges [Approved]
• Add unit tests for _serve_frontend path traversal safety [Suggested]
• Add (or modify) methods to filter/modify the legacy status [Triaged] [Followup]
• Moved fedora-badges to badges-assets [Repository] [Followup]
• Mark the Pagure’s Fedora Badges repository as OBSOLETE [Commit] [Followup]
• Revamp Fedora Badges Project (into develop) [Merged]
• Port the project management aspect from Poetry to UV [Triaged A] [Triaged B]
• Refreshed the Fedora Badges staging deployment [Resource]
• Update badge rarity calculation [Reviewed] [Followup]
• Modularize the dbapi module while retaining the references [Followup]
• feat: normalize tags into separate tables [Review A] [Review B]
• Readme.md file update [Closed] [Followup]
• Update badge rarity calculation [Review A] [Review B]
• rhel10 migration: tang servers
• rhel10 migration: memcached instances
• nftables cleanup, and table rename
• discover why proxy11 struggles with restarting apache

CentOS Infra including CentOS CI

This team is taking care of day to day business regarding CentOS Infrastructure and CentOS Stream Infrastructure.
It’s responsible for services running in CentOS Infrastructure and CentOS Stream.
CentOS ticket tracker
CentOS Stream ticket tracker

• Sho-Me Power: CentOS Stream Mirror request
• Multiple rsync upstreams are serving stale content

RISC-V

This is the summary of the work done regarding the RISC-V architecture in Fedora.

• F44: core rebuild is completed. Image generation and repo-creation needs some work. ‘omni’ kernels are being built and  ‘kiwi descriptions’ (required for image generation) needs some RISC-V specific patching.  We’re short on resources , so this delay is expected.
• Conferences preparation:
  • Prep for RISC-V Summit, meetings with hardware vendors, upstream meetings, and RISE 
  • Prepare updated material for Flock RISC-V update
• [Hardware] We have one of the newest RVA23 boards (SpacemiT K3) in Fedora RISC-V Koji.
  • Thanks to Jason Montleon.  It’s his personal hardware.   A CLE-sponsored Fedora K3 builder is on its way to him too, it’ll be wired into RISC-V Koji
• [Hardware] Discussed with Jefro about potentially working with Scaleway to get some cloud builders via the RISE initiative.  To be discussed at the RISC EU Summit.

AI

This is the summary of the work done regarding AI in Fedora.

• t0xic0d3r helped draft the Fedora AI Developer Desktop Community Objective logic model [Draft]

QE

This team is taking care of quality of Fedora. Maintaining CI, organizing test days
and keeping an eye on overall quality of Fedora releases.

• Reported bugs related to Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen14, a laptop that could be in the next laptop models offering for RHatters. Both the microphone and camera are broken. Notified the CSB team and Mark Pearson from Lenovo.
• We missed an installer crash in F44 KDE and other spins (but not Workstation), documented it and took follow-up steps to prevent it in the future. We have flagged before that having multiple installer UIs and storage paths raises the risk of this kind of situation
• Ongoing tool tech debt and enhancement work: reviving and fixing issuebot, MCP server and devcontainer config for testdays-web, cloud automation now reporting to resultsdb
• cloud automation found systemd bug at AWS
• openQA: deployments upgraded to Fedora 44 and new os-autoinst packages, fedora-media-writer coverage extended, discovered multiple dependency bugs, dracut decryption bug, plymouth keyboard layout bug, KDE config panel layout bug

Forgejo

This team is working on introduction of https://forge.fedoraproject.org to Fedora
and migration of repositories from pagure.io.

• Discussed the coordination process for the private issues
• Enabled the members team to create repositories [Access]

EPEL

This team is working on keeping Epel running and helping package things.

• Prepared EPEL 10.1 for move to archives
• Package maintenance across multiple Fedora and EPEL packages
• Quality work via bug reports and bodhi karma
• Starting to onboard Pedro

UX

This team is working on improving User experience. Providing artwork, user experience,
usability, and general design services to the Fedora project

• Finalizing Flock materials
  • Everything for print sent to organisers
  • Digital assets is now the focus

If you have any questions or feedback, please respond to this report or contact us on #admin:fedoraproject.org channel on matrix.

The post Community Update – Week 23 2026 appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

The F44 elections voting period is now open! The ballot boxes for this cycles elections are open from today, Monday June 1st until Friday, June 12th on the elections app. The ballot boxes will close on June 12th at 23:59:59 UTC.

For links to candidate interviews, please visit this post or the nominations wiki page of each election.

As the number of eligible candidates (4) equaled the number of open seats (4) for the EPEL Steering Committee, no ballot box is available for this election. Instead, these candidates are automatically elected by default.

Good luck to all of our candidates across Fedora Council, FESCo and Mindshare Committee during this election cycle!

The post F44 Elections Vote Now! appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

The F44 election interviews are now live. With seats open across all leadership groups, this is one of our most popular election cycles yet! Use this post to navigate to candidates interview posts easily.

Voting will be open on Monday, June 1st and will close at 23:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th. Best of luck to all our candidates!

Fedora Council – 2 seats open

• Miro Hrončok
• Vít Smolík
• Akashdeep Dhar
• Aleksandra Fedorova
• Tomáš Hrčka
• Fabio Valentini
• Hristo Marinov

Fedora Engineering Steering Committee/FESCo – 5 seats open

• Adam Miller
• Maxwell G
• Neal Gompa
• Fabio Valentini
• Simon de Vlieger
• Michel Lind

Fedora Mindshare Committee – 4 seats open

• Mat Holmes
• Akashdeep Dhar
• Mackenzie Stewart
• Luis Bazan
• Samyak Jain

EPEL Steering Committee – 4 seats

• Diego Herrera
• Carl George
• Troy Dawson
• Jonathan Wright

The post F44 Elections Interviews appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

This is a part of the Fedora Linux 44 EPEL Steering Committee Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts Monday, June 1st and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th 2026.

Interview with Jonathan Wright (jonathanspw)

What is your name and what is your FAS ID?

Jonathan Wright, jonathanspw

What is your background in EPEL? What have you worked on and what are you doing now?

I’ve been a consumer of EPEL for…a long time. 20 years? I’ve been a contributor to EPEL for about the past 5, and on the EPEL steering committee for the past year.

EPEL is very near and dear to my heart and is actually how I got involved with Fedora. I’m on the AlmaLinux team and like everyone else, the first thing I do when installing AlmaLinux (previously CentOS) is dnf install epel-release. I’ve successfully graduated packages from EPEL that ultimately got picked up by RHEL (see Valkey) and work to make EL distros more usable by having an array of package availability that’s not otherwise available without EPEL.

Why are you running for EPEL Steering Committee member?

I have a unique perspective to bring to the table with my history in web hosting and long time usage of RHEL and its clones (CentOS and now AlmaLinux). The past year serving on the EPEL steering committee has been a great honor and I hope to continue in that role for another year.

The post F44 EPEL Elections: Interview with Jonathan Wright (jonathanspw) appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

This is a part of the Fedora Linux 44 EPEL Steering Committee Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts Monday, June 1st and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th 2026.

Interview with Diego Herrera (dherrera)

What is your name and what is your FAS ID?

• Name: Diego Herrera
• FAS ID: dherrera

What is your background in EPEL? What have you worked on and what are you doing now?

My relationship with open source started back in 2006, and I’ve been an
advocate since, both by contributing to various projects and by publishing
my own. My deep dive into EPEL began in 2013 while working in a company doing
R&D work for local industries, where I gained my first practical
experience with RPM packaging. This early work gave me a solid understanding
of what it means to build and manage software within the Enterprise Linux context.

More recently, I joined Red Hat in 2021 to work as part of the
CLE Team, where I deepened my understanding of how to become a proper Fedora packager
and contributor. I have been working together with Carl George, focusing on the
needs of EPEL by participating in steering meetings and doing work
regarding the project’s infrastructure. Through this position, I was able to
participate in activities such as packaging, writing documentation and SOPs,
collaborating on maintenance work required for the infrastructure, and improving
infrastructure automation. Furthermore, during steering meetings, I have been able to
add my viewpoints and insights when they were needed, and I was also able to
take on some of the steering team’s workload,
such as the Forgejo migration.

Why are you running for EPEL Steering Committee member?

Over the last few years, while spending time on the infrastructure side of the project,
I’ve seen first-hand the ups and downs of the project, which has enabled me to
collaborate closely with members of the community.

The EPEL steering committee is already a place where I have been able to
use my experience and knowledge to support and contribute to the project.
However, this time I want a vote on these topics. This will allow me to
collaborate further, helping to turn those discussions into a better
path for the project. I want to continue helping the community so
that the project can continue to grow into a great
platform by ensuring our governance is as solid and reliable as our processes.

For the sake of transparency, even if I wrote the text myself, I also used a local LLM (Gemma4:e4b) to iteratively fix the text’s grammar and flow.

The post F44 EPEL Elections: Interview with Diego Herrera (dherrera) appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

This is a part of the Fedora Linux 44 EPEL Steering Committee Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts Monday, June 1st and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th 2026.

Interview with Carl George (carlwgeorge)

What is your name and what is your FAS ID?

• Carl George
• @carlwgeorge
• Fedora wiki page

What is your background in EPEL? What have you worked on and what are you doing now?

I got my start in Fedora and EPEL in 2014. I was working for Rackspace and joined a team whose primary purpose was to maintain IUS, a third-party package repository for RHEL. Part of my work there involved contributing to and maintaining EPEL packages. I left Rackspace in 2019 to join the CentOS team at Red Hat. In 2021, I started a new team at Red Hat to specifically focus on EPEL activities.

During my time on the EPEL team, I’ve lead the design and implementation of EPEL 9 and EPEL 10. These releases each brought significant improvements to packager workflows and user experience, especially the introduction of minor versions in EPEL 10. We’re currently in the early days of planning EPEL 11, with a focus on continued refinement and quality.

Aside from the hands-on technical work of EPEL release engineering and packaging, I routinely attend conferences to deliver presentations about EPEL and staff Fedora/CentOS booths to engage with the EPEL community. I enjoy mentoring new packagers and helping existing Fedora packagers get started with EPEL.

Why are you running for EPEL Steering Committee member?

I have been on the EPEL Steering Committee since 2020. I have enjoyed my six years serving on the committee, and hope to have the opportunity to continue this important work. I am passionate about EPEL and I am committed to continue finding ways to improve the EPEL experience for both packagers and users.

The post F44 EPEL Elections: Interview with Carl George (carlwgeorge) appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

This is a part of the Fedora Linux 44 EPEL Steering Committee Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts Monday, June 1st and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th 2026.

Interview with Troy Dawson (tdawson)

What is your name and what is your FAS ID?

Troy Dawson (tdawson)

What is your background in EPEL? What have you worked on and what are you doing now?

I started contributing to EPEL 11 years ago with some nodejs packages for OpenShift. I later added rubygems and golang packages as OpenShift changed languages. Later, RHEL 8 did not have KDE, so I added KDE to epel8, and have been maintaining KDE in epel ever since. I have picked up many other packages during the years, but I think my KDE contributions are what I am most known for.

I’ve been the EPEL Steering Committee chair since 2020, taking over from Stephen Smoogen. A lot of changes have happened since then, most of them for the better. I’m not responsible for all the changes, but it’s been wonderful being part of the committee as these changes have come through.

Why are you running for EPEL Steering Committee member?

EPEL has grown to be part of my professional and personal life. I not only want to contribute to it, but help steer it’s growth and progression. I think as a EPEL Steering Committee member, I can help keep EPEL healthy and thriving.

The post F44 EPEL Elections: Interview with Troy Dawson (tdawson) appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

This is a part of the Fedora Linux 44 Mindshare Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts Monday, June 1st and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th 2026.

Interview with Akashdeep Dhar (t0xic0der)

• FAS ID: t0xic0der
• Matrix Rooms: Fedora Council (#council:fedoraproject.org), Fedora Mindshare (#mindshare:fedoraproject.org), Fedora Forgejo (#fedora-forgejo:fedoraproject.org), Fedora Infrastructure (#admin:fedoraproject.org), Fedora Badges (#badges:fedoraproject.org), Fedora Apps (#apps:fedoraproject.org), Fedora Join (#join:fedoraproject.org), Fedora Mentoring (#mentoring:fedoraproject.org)

Questions

What is your background in Fedora? What have you worked on and what are you doing now?

Since the past year, I have been actively contributing to the event planning [1] [2] and proposal curation in the Mindshare committee. Representing our vested interests in the Fedora Council, I have paved the way for improvements in the regional event support (i.e., event owners and regional inventory), digital ambassadorship (i.e., swagpack designs and social media) and recognition service (i.e., Community Metrics and Fedora Badges).

Besides championing our community presence in underrepresented regions (e.g., in DevConf.IN 2026 and FOSSAsia 2026 in APAC), I have continued staying at the forefront of the Fedora Forge community initiative, working as an infrastructure architect for Fedora Infrastructure applications, organizing Fedora Mentor Summit during Flock events and mentoring budding contributors formally/informally in the community.

Please elaborate on the personal “Why” which motivates you to be a candidate for Mindshare

Technology might be why I joined the Fedora Project, but I stayed because of the people who made me feel at home. Progressing in various aspects of our planned functions over the past years has taught me one crucial thing – contributors are actually retained when they feel noticed, supported and trusted with meaningful work. The Mindshare Committee is where that happens, and I want to keep building what we started.

Furthermore, as the committee’s representative to the Fedora Council, I have seen firsthand how decisions at the governance level shape the contributor experience on the grassroots level. The update during the Fedora Council Strategy Summit 2026 gave us an opportunity to serve event organizers, community ambassadors and voluntary contributors better, all while using these outcomes to enhance the community health.

How would you improve Mindshare Committee visibility and awareness in the Fedora community?

Simple. We need to show up where the community is. A community booth in one event, some interactive workshops in another – to begin with in regional event support to ultimately show people that we indeed care. While making sure that our infographic swagpacks are updated on a regular basis in digital ambassadorship, we actually ensure that we are providing people with reasons to come back to us when the time is right.

With the upcoming collectible rarity feature in Fedora Badges and tangible contributor recognition awards (both as a part of Fedora Mentor Summit event and separately), we nudge people to more opportune contribution avenues while avoiding burnouts in longtime contributors. This could further be extended to our Fedora Linux Release Parties too, as ultimately, most of our community members started off as its users.

What part of Fedora do you think needs the most attention from the Mindshare Committee during your term?

Contributor Recognition. With over half a decade of experience in this space, the “What now?” problem (after the first contribution) has only become worse with the advent of AI Assisted Contribution Activities. Newcomers struggle to realize the value proposition of the community connection that Fedora Project could provide, and hence, it has become the need of the hour to incentivize contributions using rewarding activities.

But apart from that, we also need to do better at further improving our local presence in underrepresented regions. In this past term, my pilot experiment on APAC events worked wonders, and it showed us all the community power we can tap into by just being there. With reusable swagpacks, localized printing, active conversations and documented accounts, this limited experiment can scale well across various parts of the globe.

The post F44 Mindshare Elections: Interview with Akashdeep Dhar (t0xic0der) appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

This is a part of the Fedora Linux 44 Mindshare Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts Monday, June 1st and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th 2026.

Interview with Mackenzie Stewart (monkeybean12)

• FAS ID: monkeybean12
• Matrix Rooms: I tend to use these Matrix channels, Fedora, Fedora EPEL Matrix, Announcements, Introductions.

Questions

What is your background in Fedora? What have you worked on and what are you doing now?

My background in Fedora is using the Java programming language from Oracle and I have worked on games and graphics with Java language. I am currently writing computer programs for other computer languages which are Python, JavaScript in nodeJS and Building/Maintaining WordPress websites using PHP, HTML5 and CSS3.

Please elaborate on the personal “Why” which motivates you to be a candidate for Mindshare

I want to help bring people together and support the culture around Fedora, not just the technical work. Fedora is more than just an operating system to me — it’s a community. I want everyone who contributes, whether they code, design, or help run events, to feel valued and know their work matters.

How would you improve Mindshare Committee visibility and awareness in the Fedora community?

I would propose a recurring, informal ” Monthly Community News” session—open to all—where Mindshare members discuss why certain decisions were made, rather than just reporting the results. Also to be a place for any updates or events to be introduced or announced so that it may generate more interest to all.

What part of Fedora do you think needs the most attention from the Mindshare Committee during your term?

Mindshare should act as the “connective tissue.” I want to focus on creating a standardized, project-wide mentorship framework that assists sub-projects in bringing in new contributors.

The post F44 Mindshare Elections: Interview with Mackenzie Stewart (monkeybean12) appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

This is a part of the Fedora Linux 44 Mindshare Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts Monday, June 1st and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th 2026.

Interview with Mat Holmes (theprogram)

• FAS ID: theprogram
• Matrix Rooms: Join, Fedora, Fedora Social, DEI, Mindshare, Design, Council, CommOps, Server, Docs. I also monitor technical channels, but try not to distract people there too much.

Questions

What is your background in Fedora? What have you worked on and what are you doing now?

I started with Fedora through Discussion, our Fedora Help Desk. This helped me both learn and teach about Fedora.
Once I found Matrix, I quickly got involved as a member and sponsor with Join, where I to this day very much enjoy meeting and welcoming many new people.
As I continued over the past couple of years, I have progressed to many people facing roles such as helping with DEI and CommOps. I also stick my beak into Mindshare and Council topics while trying to not step on peoples toes.
These days I have started writing Docs such as the Beginners Guide to Fedora and I am now helping with Server where we are developing new Beginners Guides to Server and the upcoming Home Lab.

Please elaborate on the personal “Why” which motivates you to be a candidate for Mindshare

Mindshare suites me very well as I have extensive experience organising events and doing outreach for professional organisations such as Amnesty International Australia and a political party (which I won’t name as politics is too divisive – but feel free to ask me about it).

My personal motivation is that I enjoy working with people in the Fedora community.

How would you improve Mindshare Committee visibility and awareness in the Fedora community?

The role of Mindshare has changed over the last couple of cycles to be more focussed on events. I would promote people to talk early and often to us, so we can put more smaller events on the table.

What part of Fedora do you think needs the most attention from the Mindshare Committee during your term?

I think Mindshare needs a clearer idea of what budget we have to work with, and we need faster responses to ticketed issues.
We also need to improve the accessible roads to ambassadorship, both in person and digital. Taking my skills from Join, I would extend this to being available to help plan broader small group involvement with communities all over the globe.

The post F44 Mindshare Elections: Interview with Mat Holmes (theprogram) appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

This is a part of the Fedora Linux 44 Mindshare Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts Monday, June 1st and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th 2026.

Interview with Samyak Jain (jnsamyak)

• FAS ID: My FAS username is jnsamyak, and most people in the community know me by jnsamyak as well
• Matrix Rooms: #releng:fedoraproject.org #admin:fedoraproject.org #release-day:fedora.im #devel:fedoraproject.org #mindshare:fedoraproject.org #social:fedoraproject.org #design:fedoraproject.org
  Along with many contributor onboarding, event coordination, and Fedora community discussions across Matrix.

Since this is mindshare, Samyak wanted to do something innovative and creative for keeping mindshare spirit alive.

Questions

What is your background in Fedora? What have you worked on and what are you doing now?

I currently work as a Fedora Release Engineer and have helped lead multiple Fedora Linux releases, including Fedora Linux 42, Fedora Linux 43, and most recently Fedora Linux 44. My work primarily involves release coordination, compose workflows, branching, signing operations, automation improvements, and ensuring smooth release execution across Fedora infrastructure.

Over time, I’ve also contributed toward improving release documentation, mentoring contributors, coordinating release-day activities, and helping newer contributors understand Fedora Release Engineering workflows.

Before Fedora, I contributed to Debian, primarily around Kotlin and Ruby packaging. When I joined Fedora, one of the first things that stood out to me was how welcoming and community-driven Fedora felt. Fedora India meetings became my first real social entry point into the Fedora ecosystem, and from there, I gradually became more involved in both technical and community activities.

Beyond Release Engineering, my Fedora journey has always been deeply community-focused. Some of the initiatives and events I’ve been involved in include:

• Co-organizing Fedora Hatch Pune 2022
• Leading Fedora’s involvement and organization efforts for GNOME Asia 2024 in Bangalore
• Representing Fedora at Flock 2025
• Representing Fedora at FOSSASIA 2026 to strengthen Fedora’s APAC visibility and outreach
• Speaking at conferences like DevConf.cz, DebConf, GNOME Asia, and Fedora events
• Supporting contributor onboarding and mentorship across APAC communities

One experience that particularly shaped my perspective was attending FOSSASIA 2026 as part of Fedora’s APAC outreach efforts. It gave me a much broader understanding of how rapidly open source communities are growing in Asia and how different communities actively engage contributors in the region.

That experience reinforced something important for me: Fedora already has incredible technical foundations and strong community values — but we can do much more in terms of visibility, onboarding, storytelling, and contributor engagement across APAC.

I also currently serve as an Outreachy mentor for the Fedora Release Planner Scheduler project, helping contributors navigate Fedora workflows, collaboration practices, and open source contribution processes.

For me, Fedora has never been only about releases or infrastructure. It has always been about building a welcoming and empowering community around open source.

Please elaborate on the personal “Why” which motivates you to be a candidate for Mindshare

My motivation comes from the grassroots experiences I’ve had throughout my Fedora journey. I’ve experienced Fedora from multiple perspectives:

• As a newcomer entering the community
• As a packager and contributor
• As a Release Engineer
• As an event organizer
• As a mentor helping newer contributors

And one thing became very clear to me: communities do not grow only through technology — they grow through people feeling connected, supported, recognized, and welcomed.

Mindshare sits at the center of that experience.

A major part of this motivation comes from my experiences in APAC communities. I’ve met incredibly talented contributors who often remain unseen simply because they lack visibility, opportunities, guidance, or regional representation. I want to help change that.

Mentoring contributors through Outreachy and interacting with contributors during conferences like FOSSASIA and Flock made me realize how important human connection is in open source communities. Many contributors do not stay because of technology alone — they stay because:

• Someone guided them
• Someone encouraged them
• Someone followed up with them
• Someone made them feel like they belonged

That is one of the biggest reasons why I want to contribute more actively through Mindshare. My goal is not just to organize events or discussions, but to help create:

• Better contributor journeys
• Stronger regional connections
• More approachable onboarding
• More visible contributor recognition
• More interactive and welcoming community spaces

Fedora’s vision talks about creating a world where everyone benefits from free and open source software built by inclusive and welcoming communities. That vision strongly resonates with me, and I want to actively help bring that vision closer to reality.

How would you improve Mindshare Committee visibility and awareness in the Fedora community?

I believe Mindshare visibility improves when contributors can clearly see its impact in their day-to-day Fedora experience. Right now, many contributors still don’t fully know what Mindshare does, how it supports contributors, how regional communities can engage with it, or how contributors can benefit from its initiatives.

I’d like to focus on making Mindshare feel more visible, approachable, interactive, and community-connected across three areas:

Regional Community Spotlights

Introduce lightweight contributor and regional showcases highlighting APAC contributors, Fedora event organizers, mentors and advocates, community success stories, and new contributors making an impact. Sometimes even a simple spotlight can motivate someone to contribute more.

Better Contributor Onboarding and Retention

Help encourage contributor roadmaps by interest area, beginner-friendly onboarding guides, mentorship checkpoints, lightweight follow-up systems, and easier discovery of Fedora teams and opportunities. The contributor journey should feel exciting — not confusing.

Stronger APAC Engagement

Encourage more regional collaboration, Fedora representation at local FOSS events, community-driven mini events and workshops, localized outreach content, timezone-friendly engagement opportunities, and better contributor recognition from APAC communities. There are many hidden Fedora heroes across APAC, and I want to help amplify their stories.

More Interactive DEI Engagement

Explore more interactive approaches such as regional contributor stories, Fedora social storytelling campaigns, contributor experience videos, cultural exchange sessions, community-led DEI discussions, and language-inclusive engagement initiatives. Sometimes even a small welcoming effort can have a lifelong impact on someone entering open source for the first time.

What part of Fedora do you think needs the most attention from the Mindshare Committee during your term?

The biggest area that needs attention is contributor growth and retention — especially across underrepresented regions like APAC. I would specifically focus on three major areas:

1. APAC Visibility and Contributor Recognition

There is immense untapped contributor potential in APAC. I want to help improve regional visibility, encourage local leadership, increase contributor recognition, strengthen cross-community collaboration, and build a stronger regional Fedora identity. Even small recognition efforts can significantly motivate contributors and make them feel valued.

2. Contributor Retention and Mentorship

We need smoother and more approachable contributor journeys. I’d love to help encourage structured onboarding pathways, defined contributor milestones, team-specific starter guides, mentorship and feedback loops, easier first-contribution experiences, and better newcomer follow-up systems. The goal is simple: make contributors feel supported from their very first interaction with Fedora.

3. Human-Centered Community Building and DEI

Fedora is one of the most technically strong communities in open source, but what truly makes it special is its people. I want to help strengthen community interaction, social engagement, inclusive participation, DEI-focused storytelling, contributor appreciation, and community belonging.

Ultimately, I want Fedora to continue being a place where contributors from every background feel welcomed, valued, heard, and inspired to stay.

While contributors may forget specific technical tasks over time, they always remember how a community made them feel.

The post F44 Mindshare Elections: Interview with Samyak Jain (jnsamyak) appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

This is a part of the Fedora Linux 44 Mindshare Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts Monday, June 1st and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th 2026.

Interview with Luis Bazan (lbazan)

• FAS ID: lbazan
• Matrix Rooms: All channels! A lot.

Questions

What is your background in Fedora? What have you worked on and what are you doing now?

My experience with Fedora has involved working and collaborating with the community at both national and international levels, encouraging people of all ages to use and contribute to Fedora. I have worked closely with several countries to help support their growth, maintain community engagement, and motivate contributors to continue participating in the Fedora Project.

Please elaborate on the personal “Why” which motivates you to be a candidate for Mindshare

My main motivation, and what has always kept me connected to the Fedora community, is contribution, networking, and the friendships I have built within it. Beyond that, I truly value being able to continue motivating more people to stay involved in the project.

In my opinion, this is one of the most challenging parts of being a contributor: helping more users and engineers become interested in contributing and encouraging them to continue participating in some way within the Fedora Project.

How would you improve Mindshare Committee visibility and awareness in the Fedora community?

To improve the visibility and awareness of the committee, we should continue working on the plans that are already in progress, because these are not tasks that can be completed in a single day. These initiatives require time to mature in order to improve processes that benefit contributors and the community. The goal is not to make processes more complex, but to improve them so they remain effective and practical for collaborators. This takes time, in addition to the many other responsibilities we manage on a daily basis.

What part of Fedora do you think needs the most attention from the Mindshare Committee during your term?

I believe that the area requiring the most attention is related to events and budgeting. We have had tickets and requests that did not move forward because either the requirements process was not fully understood or the process itself was not completed properly. We should be more open and supportive in this area, especially regarding swag and other resources for smaller events organized in different countries around the world.

The post F44 Mindshare Elections: Interview with Luis Bazan (lbazan) appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

This is a part of the Fedora Linux 44 Council Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts Monday, June 1st and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th 2026.

Interview with Miro Hrončok (churchyard)

• FAS ID: churchyard (you may also find me as mhroncok)
• Matrix Rooms: python:fedoraproject.org, devel:fedoraproject.org, council:fedoraproject.org, and many more

Questions

What kind of experience do you have which might be relevant to the role? E.g Governance, leadership, etc.

I’ve been an active Fedora contributor for over 12 years, co‑maintaining the Python and 3D‑printing stacks and sponsoring new packagers.
I served on FESCo for 5 years and I’ve been on the Council for 1 year. Technically I am on the Fedora Packaging Committee as well, but I am not very active there nowadays.

Through those roles I’ve gained understanding of how Fedora is built and governed. I wish to keep that experience in the Fedora Council and ensure that the people who do the day‑to‑day work of creating Fedora Linux have a strong, informed voice at the table.

I spent my first year on the Council mostly orienting myself and I am not very satisfied with my accomplishments (or lack thereof).
I was contemplating whether to not run again or to try harder. As you are reading this interview, it means I decided for the latter

What do you see as potential opportunities and risks for the Fedora Project?

My overall feeling after spending a year in this role is that there is this abyss between the Council and all the folks doing all things Fedora, like packaging. On one hand, we speak about initiatives, visions, and goals. On the other hand, there is Fedora Linux and people who make it. And I don’t feel like one hand knows what the other hand is doing. This has been frustrating to me and I decided to try to bridge that gap. I don’t have a ready-made solution for this yet, but it’s something that I strongly believe needs to be addressed and reflected in what Council is doing, approving, proposing.

Related to this, I feel that there is a more general risk of fragmentation of the community. For example, we seem to have moved some communication to discussion.fedoraproject.org while we kept others on the mailing lists. This move was a great opportunity to get more people involved in project discussions. At the same time, we risk losing the existing contributors. In the end, it seems we have two almost distinct groups of people who don’t talk to each other much.

No matter how many new contributors we get, we should not lose the existing ones, who are driving the project.

What brought you to the Fedora Project?

It was actually 3D printing.
Back in the day, we had a lab at the university with 1 (one) Prusa Mendel in it and I wanted to package some 3D printing apps like Skeinforge, Slic3r or Printrun for Fedora. I attended an RPM packaging workshop in the Brno Red Hat office and started packaging.
Not long after that I became a Fedora Ambassador, bringing the 3D printer to the Fedora booth at conferences.

The post F44 Council Elections: Interview with Miro Hrončok (churchyard) appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

This is a part of the Fedora Linux 44 Council Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts Monday, June 1st and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th 2026.

Interview with Tomáš Hrčka (humaton, jednorozec)

• FAS ID: humaton, jednorozec
• Matrix Rooms: fedora-forgejo:fedoraproject.org, releng:fedoraproject.org, admin:fedoraproject.org, release-schedule-planner:fedora.im, forgejo-chat:matrix.org

Questions

What kind of experience do you have which might be relevant to the role? E.g Governance, leadership, etc.

In previous years, I was a member of FESCo, where I gained exposure to the governance of the technical side of the Fedora Project.

In my professional life, I currently serve in a leadership role as Product Owner of the Community Linux Engineering team at Red Hat. Our team is responsible for a wide range of areas across the Fedora Project, including Quality Engineering, EPEL, Design, Infrastructure, and Release Engineering.

This gives me a unique perspective that combines community experience, technical understanding, and insight into how Fedora is supported inside Red Hat.

What do you see as potential opportunities and risks for the Fedora Project?

Opportunities

Immutable Desktop
Fedora is well positioned for the shift toward immutable and image-based operating systems. Projects like Fedora Silverblue and Kinoite already provide atomic updates and rollback capabilities while maintaining a strong developer experience.

Cloud-Native and Edge Computing
With Fedora CoreOS and Fedora IoT, Fedora already has strong foundations for container-focused and edge deployments. As these technologies continue to grow, Fedora can remain one of the leading platforms for modern infrastructure.

The Open AI Workstation
Developers increasingly want reliable environments for running local AI workloads and experimenting with open models. Fedora has an opportunity to become the preferred Linux workstation for this use case through strong hardware enablement, modern tooling, and fast adoption of new technologies.

Early Technology Adoption
Fedora has built a reputation for bringing important new technologies to Linux users early, whether that was systemd, Wayland, PipeWire, or Btrfs. That culture of innovation continues to attract developers and contributors who want to help shape the future of Linux.

Risks

Balancing Community and Corporate Influence
Fedora benefits enormously from Red Hat sponsorship, engineering support, and infrastructure. At the same time, maintaining community trust and independence remains critically important. Long-term success depends on keeping a healthy balance between corporate priorities and the Fedora community ethos.

Project Fragmentation
Fedora continues to grow across Spins, Labs, Editions, Atomic variants, and now containers. Growth is healthy, but it also increases the complexity of maintaining consistent quality, direction, and contributor focus across the project.

User Experience vs. FOSS Purity
Fedora’s commitment to free and open-source software is one of its greatest strengths. However, hardware enablement and multimedia support can still be frustrating for many users. Fedora should continue improving the onboarding experience without compromising its principles.

Competition
The Linux ecosystem is moving quickly. Arch Linux attracts many advanced users, Ubuntu remains dominant in commercial environments, and NixOS is gaining momentum among developers interested in reproducible systems and declarative infrastructure. Fedora needs to continue innovating while preserving the strengths that make the project unique.

What brought you to the Fedora Project?

As a user, I was basically forced by my older brother to use Fedora Core 1-3 on our shared family computer.

After a few years of distro hopping, I eventually returned to Fedora because it consistently provided modern software without requiring the amount of maintenance that distributions like Arch Linux demanded at the time.

After years of using Fedora, I wanted to give something back to the community. I started contributing through packaging and co-maintaining several Node.js and Ruby packages.

Later, I had the opportunity to join the Fedora Project professionally as part of the Release Engineering team. Over time, I transitioned into my current role as Product Owner for the team supporting Fedora inside Red Hat.

Today, I have visibility into how work is prioritized across the teams that provide Fedora infrastructure and services, support release engineering and quality processes, and contribute to areas like EPEL, Docs, and Design.

This brings me to the current Council elections. I believe Fedora is at an important crossroads. The project continues to grow, but at the same time, the distribution and contributor experience are becoming increasingly fragmented across Spins, Labs, Atomic variants, containers, and specialized deliverables.

I believe Fedora’s biggest challenge over the next few years will not be innovation. Fedora has always been good at innovation. The real challenge will be maintaining a clear identity, a healthy contributor community, and a coherent user experience while continuing to grow.

The post F44 Council Elections: Interview with Tomáš Hrčka (humaton, jednorozec) appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

This is a part of the Fedora Linux 44 Council Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts Monday, June 1st and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th 2026.

Interview with Fabio Valentini (decathorpe)

• FAS ID: decathorpe
• Matrix Rooms: Too many to list them all: #devel, #rust, #epel, #multimedia, #pride, #python, #quality, #security, … (on the fedoraproject.org homeserver)

Questions

What kind of experience do you have which might be relevant to the role? E.g Governance, leadership, etc.

I have served as a member of FESCo for six terms since I joined the project, and have also been a member of the Packaging Committee for over eight years now. In these roles (among others) I have gathered experience in a variety of both technical and non-technical areas including problem resolution, technical discussions, project management, technical writing / documentation, organizing meetings, etc.

What do you see as potential opportunities and risks for the Fedora Project?

I think it will be increasingly important to keep the balance between what makes Fedora successful and things that end up being costly distractions – to continue integrating new technologies into a modern, but stable distribution, while avoiding adoption of dead-end or unsustainable technologies from the current hype cycle.

What brought you to the Fedora Project?

Fedora is where my distro-hopping days unexpectedly ended a little over a decade ago. It has felt like home since.

The post F44 Council Elections: Interview with Fabio Valentini (decathorpe) appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

This is a part of the Fedora Linux 44 Council Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts Monday, June 1st and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th 2026.

Interview with Aleksandra Fedorova (bookwar)

• FAS ID: bookwar
• Matrix Rooms: Usually #council, #fedora-ci, #mine-with-fedora

Questions

What kind of experience do you have which might be relevant to the role? E.g Governance, leadership, etc.

For some time I was an admin of the Russian Fedora Remix services – maintained the site and the wiki. I also participated in moderation of some of our IRC, Jabber channels and forums, which gave me quite a lot of experience in dealing with the folks which are not necessarily IT experts and professionals.

I am also a proud survivor of the GNOME 3 and systemd debates there

Professionally I have worked as a support engineer, build/devops/CI engineer, team lead and product owner, which gives me a range of experience covering quite a lot of “non-coding but still engineering” topics. And I generally believe that there is a lot more in engineering than just writing code.

I also have been on the Fedora Council for some time now. I can not say I really know how to do this council thing correctly, but I am doing my best.

What do you see as potential opportunities and risks for the Fedora Project?

I believe that the general interest in Linux and Fedora in particular is on the rise, and we as a distribution currently are well placed to provide a lot of things people are looking for – stable base, variety of options, fast moving layers on top of integrated foundation and so on. It comes with the risk though as we just might spread too thin trying to cover all possible use cases, all the emerging technologies and all kinds of sometimes contradicting goals.

Our current project model, while open and community-driven, is still rather centralized.

As a big fan of the idea of federation, I believe that going forward we need to learn how to work with the wider ecosystem without necessarily pulling every connected piece into the same project hierarchy.

As a former Fedora Remix user myself, I see remixing(*) as one of the core ideas, which can help us turn a single distribution into a some sort of constellation of distributions. And while each remix may be managed by different groups and different rules, they still need to have a good collaborative relationship, a way to discuss and communicate changes, or to coordinate shared efforts. Of course they also need a way to communicate and share the load and costs.

(*) Here I use a word “remix” in the widest possible sense as in anything which uses Fedora content as a base, no matter what kind of content is added on top and what format of the deliverable is built from it.

What brought you to the Fedora Project?

Even though currently I work as a software engineer, I started to use Fedora not as a coder but as a user. I needed LaTeX to write my Master’s and PhD thesis, and at that time the support for LaTeX(with Cyrillics) was really only working on Linux. Big thanks to Tom (spot) Callaway who still packages texlive for Fedora.

So essentially I chose Linux (and Fedora) because it was the easiest thing for me to use.

Of course the name also did play a role. The more common Linux distribution choices in my community at the time were Gentoo or Slackware. People were talking how “Linux is about choice” and that sort of thing. But once I learned a bit more about the ideas behind different Linux distributions, I really got hooked on the concept of an integration, rather than customization.

The Upstream First principle in particular was rather eye-opening for me. The idea that you should not just build a system for your own needs – that is what the local folks were doing – but that you need to share and contribute those changes back, or at least to discuss them with the original developers to understand their thought process and the choices they made.

I always looked at my Fedora system not as a thing to tweak for my personal needs, but as a path to become a part of a larger community.

The post F44 Council Elections: Interview with Aleksandra Fedorova (bookwar) appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

This is a part of the Fedora Linux 44 Council Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts Monday, June 1st and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th 2026.

Interview with Hristo Mainov (hricky)

• FAS ID: hricky
• Matrix Rooms: #bootc:fedoraproject.org, #coreos:fedoraproject.org, #atomic-desktops:fedoraproject.org, #silverblue:fedoraproject.org, #kinoite:fedoraproject.org, #fedora-forgejo:fedoraproject.org, #docs:fedoraproject.org

Questions

What kind of experience do you have which might be relevant to the role? E.g Governance, leadership, etc.

While I don’t have formal governance experience, I’m an active contributor to several teams and organizations focused on image-based systems. This is the very area where Fedora is leading innovation. This gives me both technical depth in Fedora’s modern directions and practical insight into how image-based approaches are being adopted across the ecosystem. Additionally, as an independent contributor, I bring a perspective focused on the broader community’s needs.

What do you see as potential opportunities and risks for the Fedora Project?

Fedora’s leadership in image-based systems is a significant opportunity. The Atomic Initiative is advancing this space meaningfully. However, when such initiatives conclude, we must ensure contributors remain engaged and their work integrates into sustainable community practices.

More broadly, as AI becomes increasingly present in development workflows, we need thoughtful governance around how Fedora engages with it. This is about authorship, accountability, and the moral questions around code provenance and community contribution. Fedora’s values should guide how we engage with these technologies responsibly.

What brought you to the Fedora Project?

I initially needed an OS for on-premise servers, which led me to CentOS. The transition forced a reassessment, and during that process, I discovered Fedora’s emerging work on image-based systems. That discovery led me to get involved in related teams, which deepened my commitment to this community. Now, as an active contributor in that space, what keeps me here is the community itself. I’m inspired by it, and that’s what drives my continued involvement.

The post F44 Council Elections: Interview with Hristo Mainov (hricky) appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

This is a part of the Fedora Linux 44 Council Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts Monday, June 1st and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th 2026.

Interview with Akashdeep Dhar (t0xic0der)

• FAS ID: t0xic0der
• Matrix Rooms: Fedora Council (#council:fedoraproject.org), Fedora Mindshare (#mindshare:fedoraproject.org), Fedora Forgejo (#fedora-forgejo:fedoraproject.org), Fedora Infrastructure (#admin:fedoraproject.org), Fedora Badges (#badges:fedoraproject.org), Fedora Apps (#apps:fedoraproject.org), Fedora Join (#join:fedoraproject.org), Fedora Mentoring (#mentoring:fedoraproject.org)

Questions

What kind of experience do you have which might be relevant to the role? E.g Governance, leadership, etc.

While I could not make it to the Fedora Council through elections in the previous term, I was chosen as a Mindshare Representative from the second half of the term. Besides bringing the interests of the Mindshare Committee to the Fedora Council Strategy Summit 2025, I also worked on further progressing the Fedora Forge Community Initiative with my work on the private issues and Pagure Migrator. Staying true to my volunteer first community agenda, I also worked on the documentation for the Fedora Project Contribution Model to encourage empathetic interactions and managing expectations in our mostly volunteer driven community.

Following the elector concerns from the previous term, I explicitly reinforced just how important it was for us to leverage objective community health metrics over arbitrary conditions that I voiced during the foundational drafting of the Fedora Verified proposal. With my inclination towards process sustainability, I have often voted for deferring decisions until we have accounted for most (if not all) feedback. I have had a hands-on approach towards major proposals like Fedora Forge, Image Mode, FedoraCVE trademark and Fedora Verified, by spending roughly around ten hours per week simply reading through the Fedora Discussion threads.

Besides my direct involvement in the Fedora Council, I am also working as an infrastructure architect, working on various projects in the Fedora Infrastructure and leading the Fedora Badges Revamp Project while mentoring an Outreachy intern. Being elected into the Mindshare Committee has also allowed for me to lead the logistics of various Fedora Project in-person representations at APAC events like DevConf.IN 2026 and FOSSAsia 2026, all while curating and guiding Fedora Project community events across the world. In my past life (or roughly five years back in human years), I also led the Fedora Websites and Apps community initiative.

What do you see as potential opportunities and risks for the Fedora Project?

One of the first things that comes to my mind about risks for our community is decision transparency. The discussions [1] [2] around the AI Developer Desktop Proposal were a valuable learning experience as they showed how much community members care about understanding why we vote the way we do, not just what we voted for. I see an opportunity here for elected members to share their reasoning with their votes on a given proposal, so others can follow the thought process. After all, I would want to vote for someone who engages with what the community has to say and is willing to show their work, even through various disagreements.

To dive even deeper, we also risk alienating the community members by deciding on a certain proposal before it is theoretically ready to be discussed. While a stopgap opportunity here might be ratifying a proposal readiness guidelines document that the members could refer to, in my honest opinion, being active around the Fedora Project community platforms just ends up helping a lot more. If this requires us to spend more hours around the desk, have more frequently organized synchronous meetings, include more electable Fedora Council seats or set regular Fedora Council social hours – then it is something that we need to account for.

Beyond transparency, I also want to champion process sustainability in our established processes. The end of an elected member’s term should not mean that their ongoing work disappears – it should be (or made) possible for incoming candidates or continuing members to carry forward and iterate upon that work. Similarly, we can reduce the risk of potential burnouts among elected members by effectively delegating to the enthusiastic contributors that our community is never short of. Good governance should outlast any single term, and I want to actively work towards building that continuity through documenting better handoff practices.

What brought you to the Fedora Project?

Video games. Back in early 2020 when we were isolated at our homes due to COVID-19 pandemic, all I had was a weak laptop and a Fedora Workstation setup to keep me from boredom. One of my first contributions had been to the Quick Docs. When I thought I was done with my contributing activities, friends like Ankur Sinha, Alberto Sanchez, Justin Wheeler, Marie Nordin, Nasir Hussain, Vipul Siddharth etc. just made me keep coming back for more. Then getting inspired from all the amazing stuff they got up to back in the day made me want to see if I could be of some help – and a huge reason why I am keeping myself busy even today is just that.

The post F44 Council Elections: Interview with Akashdeep Dhar (t0xic0der) appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

This is a part of the Fedora Linux 44 Council Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts Monday, June 1st and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th 2026.

Interview with Vít Smolík (smoliicek)

• FAS ID: smoliicek
• Matrix Rooms: admin:fedoraproject.org, noc:fedoraproject.org, join:fedoraproject.org, data:fedoraproject.org, commops:fedoraproject.org, docs:fedoraproject.org, fedora:fedoraproject.org

Questions

What kind of experience do you have which might be relevant to the role? E.g Governance, leadership, etc.

To strengthen my governance knowledge, I recently completed two courses on governance fundamentals. (Governance Training, and Tools for Project Planning)

I am also familiar with meeting procedures, including how meetings are structured, planned, run and how decisions are recorded. I participate in regular productive meetings with Fedora Infrastructure.

I’ve always been an active person, through cycling and competitive dancing, and even as a student, I’m always thinking about how I can make things better for others. Thus, my current governance experience comes from outside of the open-source world, however, it translates well to the Fedora Project.

I’m an elected member of my school’s board and a member of the school’s parliament. I’m familiar with what it means to represent a diverse community, balance viewpoints, and make consensus-driven decisions. In this role, I dealt with issues such as financial disbursement and conflicting student choice.

As an independent contributor, my focus is entirely on serving our community and listening to the communities voice. While I respect the fantastic work of those who came before me, I will bring independent perspective to the Council, guided by my ethical commitment to fully open-source software.

To me, software freedom is a digital right.

What do you see as potential opportunities and risks for the Fedora Project?

When looking at the landscape now, the single biggest risk facing Fedora right now is the rush to implement AI everywhere. This threatens not only a drop in quality of our codebases but also creates massive legal grey areas. The community is rightfully pushing back against this. Fedora must refuse to let this hype dictate our governance.

The opportunity for Fedora is to set the global standard for what a measured, ethical, and secure approach to AI tooling looks like. Instead of rushing to adopt external, proprietary black boxes, Fedora should take its time to define how open-source principles apply, prioritizing local execution, strict licensing compliance, and open-weight models. Fedora can champion true open-source principles in a changing landscape, proving that innovation does not require the sacrifice of security or ethics.

Our priority must always be human craftsmanship and infrastructure integrity; any tool we introduce must serve our contributors, not replace them.

What brought you to the Fedora Project?

My first introduction to Fedora happened on July 20, 2025, when I sent an introduction to the infrastructure mailing list. On May 21, 2026, I was sponsored to my first sysadmin group. That is what Fedora has done for me and what I can do for Fedora.

Before joining the project, I was a sysadmin working completely alone. Fedora gave me the space to learn how to function in a bigger team, how to navigate complex infrastructure, and how to collaborate effectively.

My trajectory shows I’m capable of learning, adapting, and integrating into complex systems at an exceptional pace. I’ve gone from a newcomer to an active contributor, not only in the infrastructure team but also in Fedora Data Working Group, where I’m helping Hatlas come to life, and in the Join team, where I help new contributors find their footing.

Fedora has helped me scale up my skills rapidly, and I am running for council to ensure Fedora remains just as dynamic, rock-solid, and welcoming for everybody else.

The post F44 Council Elections: Interview with Vít Smolík (smoliicek) appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

This is a part of the Fedora Linux 44 FESCo Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts Monday, June 1st and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th 2026.

Interview with Fabio Valentini (decathorpe)

• FAS ID: decathorpe
• Matrix Rooms: Too many to list them all: #devel, #rust, #epel, #multimedia, #pride, #python, #quality, #security, … (on the fedoraproject.org homeserver)

Questions

Why do you want to be a member of FESCo and how do you expect to help steer the direction of Fedora?

I have contributed to many areas of the project since I joined it over a decade ago, so I think I can bring a broad perspective to FESCo. I want to help insure the project’s continued success happens in a sustainable way.

How do you currently contribute to Fedora? How does that contribution benefit the community?

I am the most active package maintainer in Fedora (by count of updates / builds), primarily because I am the main point of contact for most Rust packages. My work includes package updates, package review, triaging build failures and broken dependencies, and pruning packages for obsolete, outdated, or unused Rust crates from Fedora. I regularly contribute to upstream projects through bug reports and pull requests to fix issues that are discovered downstream in Fedora. Additionally, I triage, report, and attempt to fix upgrade path issues caused by missing package updates every release cycle.

How do you handle disagreements when working as part of a team?

Many disagreements I’ve handled were only concerned with details, while the goals of everyone involved were still aligned. So I try to find common ground and / or explore alternative or creative solutions that can work for everyone involved.

Where do you think the Fedora Project should position itself concerning the use of ‘AI’ in software development?

I am – in general – wary of becoming dependent on products from companies that are nowhere near profitable and only kept afloat by a combination of inconceivably large amounts of venture capital and “creative” investment arrangements. Additionally, to me these “AI” systems aren’t “just tools” and can’t be treated solely as such, especially due to externalities like unethical data scraping practices, copyright / license laundering, excessive power and water consumption, noise and greenhouse gas pollution, hardware shortages and price increases, etc. I have yet to see a competitive “AI” product that does not have these problems, and I am unsure whether creating one is even possible.

What else should community members know about you or your positions?

No pineapple, and definitely not on Pizza.

The post F44 FESCo Elections: Interview with Fabio Valentini (decathorpe) appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

This is a part of the Fedora Linux 44 FESCo Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts Monday, June 1st and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th 2026.

Interview with Neal Gompa (ngompa)

• FAS ID: ngompa (Conan Kudo is a common nickname for me)
• Matrix Rooms: devel:fedoraproject.org, #asahi:fedoraproject.org, #asahi-devel:fedoraproject.org, #kde:fedoraproject.org, #workstation:fedoraproject.org, #cloud:fedoraproject.org, #kernel:fedoraproject.org #centos-hyperscale:fedoraproject.org, #budgie:fedoraproject.org, #multimedia:fedoraproject.org, #miracle:fedoraproject.org, #cosmic:fedoraproject.org, #centos-kernel:fedora.im, #admin:opensuse.org, #chat:opensuse.org, #bar:opensuse.org, #obs:opensuse.org, #RedHat:matrix.org, #networkmanager:matrix.org, #rpm:matrix.org, #rpm-ecosystem:matrix.org, #yum:matrix.org, #manatools:matrix.org, #lugaru:matrix.org, #buddiesofbudgie-dev:matrix.org, #PackageKit:matrix.org, #mir-server:matrix.org, #mageia-dev:matrix.org, #kiwi:matrix.org (There’s quite a bit more, but I think that sort of covers it. ) (There’s quite a bit more, but I think that sort of covers it. )

Questions

Why do you want to be a member of FESCo and how do you expect to help steer the direction of Fedora?

As a long-time member of the Fedora community as a user and a contributor, I have benefited from the excellent work of many FESCo members before me to ensure Fedora continues to evolve as an amazing platform for innovation. For the past few years, I have had the wonderful privilege of serving as a member of FESCo, and I enjoyed my time serving to steer Fedora into the future, and I wish to continue to contribute my expertise to help analyze and make good decisions on evolving the Fedora platform.

How do you currently contribute to Fedora? How does that contribution benefit the community?

The bulk of my contributions to Fedora lately are on the desktop side of things, though I have gotten back into doing core stack stuff too. Most recently, I’ve worked within the KDE community to help develop Plasma Login Manager and Plasma Setup to further modernize the Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop Edition and enable it to fully participate in the Fedora Ready program. I have also been actively assisting our friends at various PC makers participating in the Fedora Ready program to better support Fedora as an operating system offering for their products. This has directly led to the Fedora community gaining a new Fedora Ready participant with Star Labs, who offers Fedora KDE on their products as an operating system option. There’s always more to come on that front, and I hope Fedora Ready will continue to grow. On the core stack side of things, I’ve recently ported PackageKit’s DNF backend to DNF5, which once again unifies Fedora’s package management stack for the first time in several releases. This unlocks the ability for us to freely leverage DNF5 features that do not have analogues in DNF4.

My hope is that the work I do helps with making the experience using and contributing to Fedora better than it was ever before and that Fedora’s technical leadership in open source draws in more users and contributors.

How do you handle disagreements when working as part of a team?

I attempt to explain my viewpoint and try to build consensus through persuasion and collaboration. If there isn’t a path to consensus as-is, I try to identify the points of disagreement and see if there is a way to compromise to resolve the disagreement. Generally, this ultimately results in a decision that FESCo can act on.

Where do you think the Fedora Project should position itself concerning the use of ‘AI’ in software development?

I am rather conflicted about “AI” technology, especially LLM-based generative AI (GenAI) technology. I worry that it wipes out the implicit fairness that we believe Free Software carries. The nature of this tooling and how people gain access to quality tools creates an unpleasant classist split of haves and have-nots based on affordability. As the costs to access and leverage LLM technology skyrocket, a new underlying elitism will implicitly develop since only gainfully employed affluent developers will have access to the best technology.

It is true that there are open models under OSI licenses that exist (IBM Granite and Google Gemma 4 are examples of these), and I know that it’s possible to create your own models leveraging open source technology. But to date, open models do not yet produce results as good as the frontier proprietary cloud models, and we now operate in a world where proprietary services tightly integrate these things together and make it very hard to ignore the result. Perhaps more focused development on open models leveraging open source technologies will change that, but given how expensive such endeavors are, I am a little skeptical. Or perhaps the lack of willingness by many AI practitioners to pursue that is what makes me skeptical.

Putting that all aside, I am skeptical of AI technology in large part of my experience as an open source software maintainer. The quality of contributions are significantly lower than unassisted ones thus far (here’s a notable example), and while I’m sure it is possible to leverage it effectively in a productive fashion, there is mounting evidence that our ability to learn and maintain cognitive skills are weakened by reliance on AI technology as it exists today. I would prefer to receive poorer contributions from people that were their own as an opportunity to help them grow, because that is the embodiment of human success.

In the end, I do not feel like it is a good idea for Fedora as a project to make AI a critical pillar, but supporting open source, well-integrated tooling for people to experiment with AI/ML in the environment of their choice and knowing the risks they take on in doing so is perfectly fine with me.

What else should community members know about you or your positions?

To me, the most important thing about Fedora is that we’re a community with a bias for innovation. Our community looks to solve problems and make solutions available as FOSS, and this is something that Fedora uniquely does when many others take the easy path to ship old software or nonfree software everywhere. We work with tens of thousands of projects to deliver an amazing platform in an easily accessible and open fashion, built on FOSS infrastructure and tools. This makes Fedora special to me, and we should continue to hold ourselves to that high standard.

I’m also a big believer in community bonds and collaboration, which is why people tend to find me all over the place. I’m involved in Asahi Linux, CentOS, openSUSE, and several other similar projects in leadership roles as well as a contributor in order to demonstrate my commitment to this philosophy.

The post F44 FESCo Elections: Interview with Neal Gompa (ngompa) appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

This is a part of the Fedora Linux 44 FESCo Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts Monday, June 1st and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th 2026.

Interview with Simon de Vlieger (supakeen)

• FAS ID: supakeen
• Matrix Rooms: I am in many rooms but most active in the Release Engineering, ELN, bootc, Atomic Desktops, and my projects Image Builder channel.

Questions

Why do you want to be a member of FESCo and how do you expect to help steer the direction of Fedora?

In the past I’ve interacted with FESCo only through change proposals. Due to the nature of my work on
image-builder I’ve gathered quite a bit of knowledge and ideas (though never enough) about the whole of Fedora and how it is put together. I’d like to take part in the other side of things both to learn
more but also to apply what I have learned.

Personally I’m a big proponent of “building on Fedora”. By that I mean that we could and maybe should
make Fedora as generic as possible in the packaging department with few assumptions about how an eventual system is laid out. This would open the road for more technical variety in the various editions, spins, and
labs. Examples here (non-exhaustive) would be UKIs, systemd-boot, BTRFS boot-to-snapshot, and others.

Separately but interconnected is that I’d love it for Fedora to be the prime place people go to if they want
to build their own flavour of a distribution. Remix culture should be nurtured, documented, and made as easy as possible so that the ideas can be tried and tested outside of Fedora before making their way into Fedora.

How do you handle disagreements when working as part of a team?

Well, I take a super pragmatic approach to disagreements. Sometimes it’s just easier to bow out of a disagreement
than to continue it. Often times one person cares more about a given problem than another person and to me that
means it can be good to give in, expecting the same in return on a later issue that another person might care more
about.

This way fosters pretty strong ownership of problems and an environment where people trust eachother on problems
rather than going at eachother.

Where do you think the Fedora Project should position itself concerning the use of ‘AI’ in software development?

Super hard question. Since this is specifically about AI in software development most of it would probably concern what upstreams do. As long as they keep compatible licenses we won’t have much of a say in this.

As for the more general approach to ‘AI’ in software development I feel like we should promote open implementations as far as that’s possible. The AI/ML SIG has been doing a lot of work with ROCm and other open stacks to be able to run models on Fedora. The future is not servitude to big tech companies but hopefully running our own local models.

There’s probably more that can be done in outreach as ‘AI’ stacks can be notoriously hard to package, our expertise could be shared and it might be useful; but I don’t know if that should/would be a Fedora Project kind of thing.

What else should community members know about you or your positions?

Firstly, I want to disclose that I work at Red Hat as people do hold opinions about that so let’s have that out of the
way.

Other than that I want things to be open with the community deciding our direction. Generally I’m on the ‘conservative’
side as far as there is a conservative side in Fedora. I mean that in the sense that I think our current rules and guidelines concerning contribution and packaging are a decent starting point and we should not change them lightly.

We should also try to use as much as possible that what Fedora already offers. Many recent projects have been causing splits in infrastructure and community spirit. Let’s do less of that.

The post F44 FESCo Elections: Interview with Simon de Vlieger (supakeen) appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

This is a part of the Fedora Linux 44 FESCo Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts Monday, June 1st and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th 2026.

Interview with Michel Lind (salimma)

• FAS ID: salimma
• Matrix Rooms: #Fedora Devel, #Fedora EPEL, #Fedora ELN, #Fedora Golang, #Fedora Python, #Fedora Rust, #Fedora Security Team, #Fedora Social, #CentOS Devel, #CentOS Hyperscale, #CentOS Promo, #CentOS Proposed Updates

Questions

Why do you want to be a member of FESCo and how do you expect to help steer the direction of Fedora?

I have been active in the Fedora community since almost the very beginning (see also the next question), and an elected member of FESCo since the F40 election cycle. Outside of committee work, I am an experienced packager for multiple programming language ecosystems and maintain tooling intended to improve packaging workflows.

The project is facing some interesting decisions at the moment, in terms of what we produce (which packages, in what formats, for which architectures), how we produce them (what build systems, how we do quality assurance, especially in the face of an avalanche of CVEs), and who our contributors, users, and downstreams are. It needs both experienced hands who knows how things are done and why, as well as familiarity with current industry practices.

I believe I bring both of these to the table. At my day job, I focus on upstream distribution work and integrating improvements into our production fleet, which informs the perspective I bring to my FESCo work. If reelected, I hope to continue contributing that perspective – and I hope I have demonstrated my ability to separate what is best for the project from what is best for my employer.

How do you currently contribute to Fedora? How does that contribution benefit the community?

Apart from my FESCo membership, I am an active packager and a member of various packaging SIGs (Rust, Python, Golang). My day job revolves around a large CentOS Stream deployment, so I was a member of the Fedora EPEL Steering Committee, am an active member of the CentOS Hyperscale SIG, and co-founded the Proposed Updates SIG that is forked off to focus on producing timely updates for those who deploy CentOS Stream in production.

I maintain sandogasa, a set of tools and library crates to assist with Fedora and CentOS packaging workflows. They solve some unique needs (e.g. bootstrapping EPEL packages, both those needed at work and also those needed to run Fedora’s mailing list infrastructure), and sometimes provide up to date alternatives to previously-written utilities (e.g. sandogasa-hattrack can surface someone’s Fedora Discussions activity – a platform that was not around when fedora-active-user was written). As these tools mature I hope to see them adopted more as part of project workflows.

I have landed multiple change proposals in the past – most notably around Btrfs and systemd-oomd. Most recently, for the F43 cycle Neal Gompa and I worked on Wayland-only GNOME and for F44 cycle, I landed:

• Remove Python Mock Usage with Maxwell G
• Upgrade uutils-coreutils to 0.5 and nushell to 0.109.2+ with Fabio Valentini and Benjamin A. Beasley
• Django 6.x with Carl George

How do you handle disagreements when working as part of a team?

In my experience, disagreements are sometimes inevitable. While it is better to have consensus, sometimes that’s not possible, and it is important to recognize those situations and agree to disagree.

It is sometimes easier to understand each other’s positions in less formal situations – I am reminded of our Friends foundational value here. This is where having personal interactions with other community members really helps – we can disagree without taking things personally, or clear things up in a side channel because sometimes some reasons cannot be divulged in public.

In the end, we are all fallible humans, and we all have our own interests and preferences, both personal and work-driven. Being able to understand those we disagree with both make it easier to keep things civil and to find compromises.

Where do you think the Fedora Project should position itself concerning the use of ‘AI’ in software development?

I have a nuanced take on this, so this will likely rub some people the wrong way. I have strong ethical reservations about using (generative) AI, and legal reservations as well, but IANAL so I will not really cover the legal aspects here; I defer to all the legal counsels who have vetted the project’s AI policy and my employer’s legal counsel who must have OKed our AI usage…

There’s the issue of training data provenance – there’s the issue of regulations not catching up yet to either address copyright infringement issues, nor protecting workers from job displacement, nor regulating energy and water usage. I could go on. If you’re “lucky” enough to work on improving the AI itself, while I can’t speak to how that is done at my day job, suffice to say there are horror stories out there, at that company, affiliated companies, and competitors. There are concerns that inappropriate use of AI leads to cognitive decline.

Using AI in software development is, as a large project shipping mission critical software, sadly seems to be verging on inevitable these days – but I’d rather we use it defensively, like how curl uses AI scanners. Using it to help triage issues, like COPR’s Log Detective, is also promising.

We certainly could use some more resources when it comes to fixing CVEs and when it comes to tooling – there are simply not enough volunteers, sadly. Though – this comes up in Debian’s debate about AI usage too – we should be careful not to close off opportunities for new contributors because it’s easier to fix something with LLM assistance than to onboard someone to do it.

I will own up to writing sandogasa mostly with AI assistance. As part of that, I wrote up my personal LLM policy for those curious. As the org name (slopfest) suggests, my colleague and I who have repos there feel conflicted about the use of LLMs; we try to limit it to this GitHub organization, and to tasks that are repetitive and error-prone anyway. Just as artifacts produced by GNU autotools do not need to be GPL licensed, hopefully you can use these tools free of any LLM taint.

Finally, the elephant in the room – the Fedora AI Developer Desktop Initiative, that intends to make it easier to install hardware drivers and development libraries needed to leverage GPUs, including, controversially, the proprietary NVIDIA stack. NVIDIA is worth over USD 5tn. IBM is valued at just over USD 200bn. I think NVIDIA can hire enough people with packaging experience to solve the problems they themselves cause by not open sourcing key headers people want to compile against – and I know they do employ people who know packaging. I think one role distributions like Fedora can do, and large NVIDIA customers especially among the hyperscalers, is to have a common position to negotiate with NVIDIA. If that happens then we might have enough traction to end up with positive outcomes.

Without pushing back against the tide of AI boosterism, I fear that the reputational damage because this is seen to be a top-down initiative would outweigh any benefit – and I still think this could have been a remix and Council was involved unnecessarily early. We used to be perceived as caring strongly about licensing (it took us a long time to ship a subset of RPM Fusion, and Tom Callaway’s work is immortalized in the name of Fedora’s previous licensing system), and I really prefer that we’re not seen to be AI boosters, because a) it does not seem like the right thing to do IMHO and b) the crowd we will attract, and likewise, the existing contributors and userbase we will alienate.

What else should community members know about you or your positions?

I work for Meta – which runs CentOS Stream on millions of bare metal servers and in containers. I hope I have demonstrated over the past two years in FESCo, and over a longer period in my other Fedora and CentOS engagements, that I try to put the community first and not let my employer’s interest override my responsibility to the community.

I recently relocated to Ireland with my wife and kid – it’s a lovely country, and a fascinating bridge between the US we left and Europe, given the presence of US multinationals here and the history of Irish emigration. We are looking forward to attending more European open source conferences in the future once we are more settled in.

The post F44 FESCo Elections: Interview with Michel Lind (salimma) appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

This is a part of the Fedora Linux 44 FESCo Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts Monday, June 1st and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th 2026.

Interview with Maxwell G (gotmax23)

• FAS ID: gotmax23
• Matrix Rooms: Fedora Devel, Fedora Golang, Fedora Python, and I loiter in a bunch of other places!

Questions

Why do you want to be a member of FESCo and how do you expect to help steer the direction of Fedora?

I care a lot about Fedora, and I hope to bring a fresh voice to FESCo informed by my multiple years of active participation in Fedora development. I want Fedora to continue to excel as a Linux distribution and a FOSS community that is welcoming to new users and contributors and ideas. I value the Fedora Foundations and the long-term contributors that have built a great distribution and improved our upstreams and the FOSS community at large.

Additionally, I am interested in ensuring the day-to-day aspects of Fedora development run smoothly and continuing to improve the packager experience. I am closely watching upcoming changes to dist-git (and potentially bug-tracking) in Fedora. I am excited about these changes — this is a great opportunity to address warts with the existing systems — but it is crucial to ensure that the transition fully addresses the project’s needs.

How do you currently contribute to Fedora? How does that contribution benefit the community?

I am part of the Golang and Python SIGs and the FPC and have worked a lot on Packaging Guidelines improvements and RPM automation (macros, generators, etc.). As a FESCo member, I would continue to guide workflow improvements in Go, Python, Ansible Collections, and beyond. We’ve made good strides, but we still have work to do, especially surrounding multi-build updates, mass rebuilds, security bugs, and license detection.

I run the Orphaned Packages Process and maintain the associated tooling. I am also a packager sponsor and have mentored a couple new Fedora contributors. I will continue keeping the Fedora package collection healthy and helping new people get involved in Fedora development as a member of FESCo.

I maintain the Ansible stack in Fedora which led me to work upstream on the Ansible Community Steering Committee and the release manager team.

How do you handle disagreements when working as part of a team?

One of my favorite parts of FOSS communities like Fedora is getting to work with so many passionate people from all over the world toward a shared goal. I think it’s important to keep this is mind when having disagreements. Disagreements happen, but we can always create room for respectful dialogue and compromise. In the end, we are all on the same team.

Where do you think the Fedora Project should position itself concerning the use of ‘AI’ in software development?

I am an AI skeptic and worry about AI’s impact on society, the environment, and human intellectual creation. But I understand that various industries, including ours, are (attempting to) adopt AI-based tools. Just recently, I reviewed a set of AI-assisted contributions to a Fedora package. I am still trying to balance these conflicting notions. I am willing to support AI experimentation based on free/open technologies in Fedora as long as our project’s principles and policies are followed and the community is on board.

The post F44 FESCo Elections: Interview Maxwell G (gotmax23) appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.

This is a part of the Fedora Linux 44 FESCo Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts Monday, June 1st and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Friday, June 12th 2026.

Interview with Adam Miller (maxamillion)

• FAS ID: maxamillion
• Matrix Rooms: fedora: #fedoraproject.org, #fedora ai:fedoraproject.org (AI/ML SIG), #fedora bootc:fedoraproject.org, #epel:fedoraproject.org, #fedora releng:fedoraproject.org

Questions

Why do you want to be a member of FESCo and how do you expect to help steer the direction of Fedora?

I am a long time Fedora user and contributor, with my first contribution dating back to 2008. Having previously served as a member of FESCo from 2015 to 2018, I understand the gravity and operational realities of this committee. My foundational engineering roots in the project include serving in SysAdmin Main within the Fedora Infrastructure Team and working as a member of the Fedora Release Engineering Team, where I contributed to our core build tooling, container infrastructure, and Project Atomic. Additionally, I spent roughly a decade upstream as a member of the Ansible Core Engineering Team, driving various Fedora focused integration efforts.

In recent years, my engineering focus has centered squarely on the AI infrastructure space. I currently serve as the Technical Advisory Council (TAC) Chair for the Linux Foundation AI & Data, and I am a core maintainer of the OpenShell Agentic Security & Governance project.

What I hope to bring to FESCo this time around is a pragmatic, deeply experienced perspective on how we can responsibly bring AI technologies into both the inner workings of Fedora as a project, and into the deliverable artifacts we release to our users. My goal is to ensure this transition happens safely, securely, and in absolute alignment with the open source way.

How do you currently contribute to Fedora? How does that contribution benefit the community?

I have recently re-engaged my hands on contributions, focusing primarily on AI related projects and working to scale my contribution footprint back to my historic levels. Even with a multi year hiatus, my historical contributions still ranks me in the top 50 of all contributors in the Fedora Badge System. Over my career, I have contributed to more than 200 open source projects, many of which remain packaged and shipped in Fedora today. My current work aims to ensure Fedora stays ahead of the curve as the landscape shifts toward AI native software stacks.

How do you handle disagreements when working as part of a team?

I always aim to find consensus through collaborative discussion, transparency, and healthy, respectful debate. I believe a steering committee’s job is to weigh technical merits and community impact objectively. However, if a consensus cannot be reached and a majority vote is taken, I fully practice the principle of “disagree and commit.” Even if a decision goes against my personal vote, I will actively support and work to successfully execute the majority decision to keep the project moving forward smoothly.

Where do you think the Fedora Project should position itself concerning the use of ‘AI’ in software development?

Fedora needs a pragmatic open source strategy to address AI’s disruptive impact on both the software development ecosystem and open source itself. We must establish clear, principles based guardrails around the ethical use, consumption, and application of AI within our project’s development pipelines, while continuously solidifying Fedora’s core principles of The Four Foundations, in a rapidly changing world. We should position Fedora not as a passive consumer of industry hype, but as the secure, foundational infrastructure that makes open source AI development possible.

When it comes to AI in software development, my position centers on two fronts:

• Infrastructure & Tooling: Fedora must excel at providing the open source building blocks, runtimes, and container environments required to build, test, and serve models locally and securely. We need to ensure our developer tooling adapts to modern workflows while fiercely protecting user privacy and data sovereignty.
• Security, Sandboxing, & Provenance: As AI assisted code generation and autonomous agentic tools inevitably find their way into development pipelines, FESCo must proactively advocate for strict isolation, predictable build environments, and robust supply chain security. We must ensure that automated code contributions or AI developer aids do not introduce unvetted security vulnerabilities, malicious packages, or license compliance risks into the Fedora ecosystem.

What else should community members know about you or your positions?

I have been an open source contributor for more than 25 years. Professionally, I am a Distinguished Engineer at Red Hat. In my open source community efforts, I serve as the TAC Chair of the LF AI & Data and am an active upstream core maintainer of OpenShell. I have previously had the distinct honor of serving the Fedora community on FESCo, and I would be incredibly grateful for the opportunity to bring my combined history in Fedora and my current expertise in AI systems back to the committee to help steer our next chapter.

The post F44 FESCo Elections: Interview with Adam Miller (maxamillion) appeared first on Fedora Community Blog.