Lessons Learned

[Max Spevack]

On Thu, 22 Mar 2007, Rahul Sundaram wrote:

>> No need for lengthy discussions in general.  Just an advance warning 
>> with a short deadline please.
>
> I dont have a problem with that. What I find poor practice is going 
> through a committee /<insert your governing body> before doing routine 
> things.

This thread is going in circles.

I'm going to speak about the general case here, not this specific wiki 
page topic.

Like it or not, everyone, these are the facts of the game:

(1) Red Hat employees are also members of the Fedora community.

(2) With the Core/Extras merge, we are taking a big step (at least in the 
source code area) in making sure that everyone, regardless of where they 
work, is held to the same level of expectation in terms of how they get 
access.  Most Red Hat engineers are fine with this.  Some are complaining 
and don't think they should have to get Fedora accounts, etc.  I have no 
sympathy for that second group.  Getting a Fedora account should be a 
requirement of every new engineering hire.  Every new hire period, 
actually, but I'll start with eng.

(3) Separate from (2) -- an action, seemingly innocuous, can be 
interpreted differently if it is taken by a Red Hat employee versus a 
community member.  I have no comment on whether or not this is "fair" -- 
it's the reality.  Red Hat employees need to force themselves to go the 
extra step in communication back outside of the Red Hat walls and to the 
Fedora community, even if they think no one is reading it, and even if it 
seems like "too much" or more than would be required if the same action 
was being taken by a non-RH person.  It builds trust and confidence.  And 
anyone who works for Red Hat on Fedora needs to understand that every day, 
their actions need to continue to build trust with the rest of the 
community.  The larger the action, the more this is necessary.

So yes, there is a higher standard.  And by being @redhat.com and working 
on Fedora, you agree to be held to it.  I'm not saying I'm perfect about 
it -- I'm not.  But that doesn't stop me from standing up on my soap box a 
bit.

;-)

-- 
Max Spevack
+ http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MaxSpevack
+ gpg key -- http://spevack.org/max.asc
+ fingerprint -- CD52 5E72 369B B00D 9E9A 773E 2FDB CB46 5A17 CF21