This is a part of FESCo Elections interviews series.

Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The elections started on January 26th and closes promptly at 23:59 UTC on February 3rd.

Please read the responses from candidates and make your choices carefully.

Feel free to ask questions of the candidates here or elsewhere!

Interview with Kevin Fenzi (nirik)

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

I started out in 2005 maintaining the Xfce desktop packages for Fedora Extras, then served on the Fedora Extras Steering Committee, then FESCo after Fedora Core and Extras Merged. I’ve been active in contributing to Fedora Infrastructure for many years, and now am employed by Red Hat to lead Fedora Infrastructure. I also contribute to Release Engineering and maintain a bunch of packages.

Do you think Fedora should be time based or more feature driven distribution? Or compromise?

I am in general in favor of time based with some fudge factor for features. Scheduling a slightly longer cycle when we know there’s big features trying to land shouldn’t be a problem, but if they cause the cycle to be too long, we should really push them to the next release.

What are the most pressing issues facing Fedora today (from engineering POV)? What should we do about them?

I think we need to work on our sponsorship/on-boarding process for new packagers, it’s frustrating for some new contributors. Of course we shouldn’t sacrifice quality, nor do I think we need to.

I think we need a better way to make mass changes accross our collection of packages (ie, for some spec change). This would take people willing to create tools and data.

Care to share a screenshot of your Fedora desktop?

I always find it a bit puzzling why people like screenshots. I use both Gnome and Xfce here (usually alternating at each boot or so), and with both of them my usual setup calls for most everything to be maximized. So, a screen shot would show you… my hexchat window, or my claws-mail window, or my midori window. It’s not really very exciting. 🙂
That said, here’s a shot of my xfce desktop with a terminal:

What are your interests and experience outside of Fedora? What of those things will help you in this role?

I brew beer and mead. That helps you take time and carefully measure and handle ingredients. I think that sort of thing is important in Fedora too. Take your time and do things right.

How can FESCo do a better job communicating with the rest of the Fedora community, or do you feel that FESCo is already doing well here?

One thing that leaps to mind is if we had someone like mizmo to do blog posts for each of our meetings. That would make them more accessible to everyone than a dry irc log.

Also, I think currently we kind of do a poor job of expressing our opinions on the devel list on topics before meetings. I can understand reasons why, (lack of time, someone else already stated the position we agree with so why add a me too, proposal has been mention 100 times and shot down before so why reply now, etc), but it might still be good to try and post more about reasoning to the devel list.

What can you accomplish as part of FESCo that you couldn’t accomplish as a contributor to Fedora without sitting on FESCo?

Guide Fedora to the right decisions based on past history and doing things right.

What degree of leeway do you feel that the Working Groups should have to diverge from one another in establishing their own identity?

I’m happy trusting the working groups to make sensible decisions and have leeway, but it’s really hard to answer this without more concrete information.

For example, I am strongly against creating multiple Fedora distributions, so I would object to working groups doing that.

How would you define the set of criteria for promoting a spin to a product? What about the reverse?

I’m not sure there’s a direct hierarchical relationship between spins and products.

Any new product I would like to see: serves some area no existing product does, has a vibrant upstream and Fedora communities working on it, and is in line with our other values.

With the advent of Fedora Council now, what do you see as the significance of FESCO in Fedora project?

FESCo I see continuing to guide the technical day to day workings of Fedora, the package collection, etc.

I expect the Council to try and work on longer term goals, etc.

How “closely” do you, as a member of FESCO, follow the devel mailing list before voting on FESCO meetings?

As the only real active moderator of the devel list, I read every single post. Of course some posts could come in while I am busy or during the meeting, but I am always caught up the day of the meetings.

In other words, apart from your own technical qualifications, what is your typical process in arriving at decisions?

I think my approach is likely very similar to any other logical person: I try and gather as much information as I can from stakeholders, I look at the code or other technical data and come to a conclusion based on all that. I’ve surely been wrong in the past, and I am sure I will be again, but we are each only human and do the best we can. 🙂

Anything else voters should know?

Make sure you vote! Even if you don’t wish to vote for me, or even if you want to vote against me, make your voice heard. 🙂