succession planning

[Max Spevack]

I posted this on my blog (http://spevack.livejournal.com/39464.html), 
but it was recommended to me that I post it to fedora-advisory-board as 
well.

The Fedora Project Leader job has a natural lifecycle to it.

I began my time in this role in February of 2006, about 1 month before 
Fedora Core 5 was released. Now we are about one month after Fedora 8's 
release, and the topic of succession planning is very much on my mind.

After two years and four releases of Fedora, I would like to be able to 
do some other things related to Fedora and/or Red Hat while allowing 
someone else to assume the "Fedora Project Leader" responsibilities.

The holidays will get in the way of this process a little bit, but in 
the coming months, it is our goal to identify who can be my successor as 
the Fedora Project Leader. The Fedora Project Leader is a full-time Red 
Hat position, and so we need to go through a full interview process, 
etc.

None of this is being done ad-hoc or randomly. The Fedora Board is part 
of the process, as is Red Hat's CTO and other managers within the 
engineering organization and human resources.

It is unusual, to say the least, for an announcement like this to even 
be made in public. Due to Fedora's belief in transparency, the other 
members of the Fedora Board and I believe that a statement like this one 
is the right thing to do, and I wanted to make sure that it was in my 
own words.

For the moment, there is not much else to say, because it is going to 
take a while for all of this to be sorted out. There will be a 
transition period built in, and nothing is going to be done without 
plenty of advance notice and without the buy-in of both myself and the 
Fedora Board.

I also want to make it absolutely clear that all of this is completely 
voluntary -- it is my idea, it is initiated by me, and I have brought 
the Fedora Board and other Red Hat VIPs into the discussion because a 
decision like this requires their input.

It has been an honor and a pleasure to serve as the Fedora Project 
Leader. I am not going anywhere for a while, but I wanted to let the 
community know what is going on, and what to expect in the next few 
months.

--Max