FESCo Meeting Summary - 2009-03-06

[Josh Boyer]

On Mon, Mar 09, 2009 at 11:10:52AM +0000, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
>So David has stopped being a Fedora volunteer and decided to become an
>Ubuntu user instead:
>
>http://davidnielsen.wordpress.com/2009/03/07/drawing-my-own-conclusion/

That's a shame indeed.

>I seem to be in a minority, but I think this is a great shame.  We
>should treat volunteers much better.  FESCo shouldn't shoot down
>proposals without telling the owners of those proposals (no matter how
>stupid they think the proposal is, it's courteous to arrange a time
>when that person can be present and state their case).

There are 2 issues I want to highlight here.

1) When a Feature is declined by FESCo, that does not mean that the
   application(s) in question will not be included in the distro.  It
   simply means that it will not be highlighted, or in this case made
   the default.

Perhaps it was a culmination of events that lead David to his decision.
I certainly hope it was not the fact that banshee won't be the default,
because it can most certainly still be in the distro and reproposed for
F12.

2) FESCo actually does try to inform Feature owners about when their
   Feature is going to be discussed.  A weekly agenda is published before
   the meeting, and I believe we either are or are planning to email
   the owners directly.  However, we cannot always wait for the Feature
   owner to be available due to timezones, vacations, etc.  We make a
   best effort and any feedback should be done on the list or on the
   Feature page itself.


>I will just note here that Ubuntu has a code of conduct which is worth
>reading:
>
>http://www.ubuntu.com/community/conduct

Not want to dismiss this out of hand, I went and read it.  I also read
the follow on Leadership code of conduct.  I don't immediately see why
you decided to point this out, as I cannot tell what you think FESCo
has done that would violate anything in there.

I'll also point out that Fedora has existed for a number of years without
a documented code of conduct.  While the document you pointed to is
certainly nice, I don't see the need to write down and require everyone
to sign something that is just plain common sense.

josh