18:04:52 <jsmith> #startmeeting Fedora Board Meeting (Open office hours / general Q&A) 18:04:53 <zodbot> Meeting started Fri Oct 29 18:04:52 2010 UTC. The chair is jsmith. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot. 18:04:53 <zodbot> Useful Commands: #action #agreed #halp #info #idea #link #topic. 18:05:03 <jsmith> #meetingname Fedora Board 18:05:03 <zodbot> The meeting name has been set to 'fedora_board' 18:05:20 <jsmith> #topic Open Q&A 18:05:56 <jsmith> Several Board members are busy/out of commission today, so it's going to be a fairly informal meeting 18:06:20 <smooge> here 18:06:26 <smooge> what can I do for you ? 18:07:17 * walters present 18:07:18 <caillon> should we do a roll call perhaps then? 18:07:21 * caillon 18:07:23 <jsmith> Sure... 18:07:25 * jsmith is here 18:07:54 <rdieter> hola 18:07:57 <smooge> here 18:08:05 <smooge> I have a ? to start things off 18:08:23 <smooge> so question time... we are going through a "generational shift" with some old people burnt out and just pissed off. 18:08:56 <smooge> actually that should have been s/we are/are we/ 18:09:21 <rdieter> I'm not sure we could characterize all the unhappy folks as old. 18:09:41 <jsmith> Yes, we have some turn-over in the project. 18:10:17 <jsmith> At some level, churn is undesirable. At another level, it's a healthy part of any open source community. 18:10:46 <rdieter> though, a common thread is push-back about not 'getting stuff done' without hassle anymore 18:10:52 <walters> smooge: well, clearly people have always been joining and leaving; you're asking whether it's at a problematic level? 18:11:55 <walters> my response though actually regardless of the answer to that is simply that it's important to remain positive, basically. And don't let any loud disruptive minority stop one from doing good work. 18:12:05 * nirik thinks it might be good to approach such people (probibly in private) and ask their concerns and what could be done to help them contribute and have a more positive experence. Of course that doesn't mean it can be done, but listening is good and potentially we could change things to help out. 18:12:30 <smooge> yes is it problematic where people who have large number of packages are just either giving up silently or publically 18:12:35 <rdieter> I agree about a subjective trend, it seems more folks are frustrated (and potentially leaving), though maybe it's just they're being more vocal about it of late 18:12:59 <caillon> i wonder if it would be useful to survey people with FAS accounts that have been inactive for X period of time 18:13:27 <caillon> of course then we'd have to figure out what to ask them, etc :-) 18:13:40 <walters> do we have any metrics on account activity? 18:14:17 * caillon not sure about that 18:14:19 <smooge> I only have an anecdotal memory about account activity 18:14:22 <rdieter> nirik's idea is good, I think. it's an easy first baby-step, esp contacting high-profile (now former) contributors (as smooge suggests, those maintaining many pkgs). 18:15:01 <jsmith> nirik: I agree, and I've tried to reach out to many people (both in public and private) and ask those sorts of questions 18:15:10 <rdieter> smooge: do you have particular examples offhand? I'd be happy to reach out to them. 18:15:21 <rdieter> hee 18:15:50 <caillon> jsmith, has it been useful? ie, do they respond with constructive criticism? 18:15:56 <jsmith> caillon: Absolutely. 18:16:02 <rdieter> jsmith: so what's been your assesment of that contact so far, cliffs notes version? 18:16:18 <caillon> yeah, that was my next question 18:16:23 <jsmith> I'm gonna make some broad generalizations, but here goes: 18:16:51 <smooge> karanip's emails are the latest. I know that as much as say ralf gets under peoples shirts, he is also frustrated just by lack of charter, lack of people of saying what is really going on etc 18:17:01 <jsmith> 1) People are generally unhappy with the tone of communications channels (mailing lists, etc.) 18:17:57 <smooge> as in we should have said "We are delaying on saying no to the multi-spin because there was private interest in helping releng get the spin out. However that person was unable to make the meeting and we would like to get a definate answer from them" 18:18:11 <jsmith> 2) Much unhappiness seems to me to be caused by assumptions that don't play out. (For some reason, people in open source communities tend to always assume the worst, even when there's evidence to the contrary.) 18:19:02 <jsmith> In many cases, simply having a one-on-one (preferably in person) conversation helps to solve those sorts of problems. 18:19:15 <jsmith> (It doesn't scale, but it's something that often works) 18:19:17 <smooge> I have yet to figure out if we are optimistic pessimists or pessimistic optimists at heart 18:19:37 <rdieter> smooge: ha, good one. tough call there. 18:19:46 <jsmith> smooge: Pessimists in public, optimists in person. 18:19:59 <smooge> I know that we are more sarcastic cynics than cynical sarcasts 18:20:23 <rbergeron> lol 18:20:33 <rdieter> smooge is on a roll 18:20:52 <smooge> 2 hours of sleep and large doses of ibuprofen 18:21:10 <jsmith> In general, I think there's too much "I don't like this, so Fedora shouldn't do it" rather than "I don't like this, but I'm willing to work with Fedora to find consensus and work toward a solution." 18:21:48 <jsmith> For better or worse, individuals in open source communities tend to be pretty demanding, and pretty opinionated as well. 18:21:57 <smooge> yep. 18:22:23 * nirik nods. You can find ways to put a positive spin on most anything if you try, but many people don't 18:22:26 <smooge> we are very "judge others strongly, judge self lightly" 18:22:44 <jsmith> Right... 18:23:09 <rdieter> smooge: should be the other way around 18:23:29 <rdieter> and happy la-la fairy land anyway 18:23:32 <rdieter> in happy... 18:23:46 <smooge> well if you ask me, I am always doing it the other way round.. never the other. but people say otherwise :) 18:24:11 <jsmith> I wish we'd all take a healthy dose of Postel's law... "be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others" 18:24:26 <rdieter> amen to that 18:25:26 <smooge> Yeah... actually I think many of our most strongly opinionated people in Fedora would argue against that with all the reasons why doing that has made everything hard in computers. 18:26:22 <smooge> sadly people are not computers and we can't just define humans as simplistic spherical chickens when dealing with them 18:28:28 <nirik> Q: what does the board think about using openhatch or some site we host ourselves as a job board for jobs/roles in fedora? 18:28:57 <smooge> I think it would be a good idea. 18:29:23 <smooge> I would even be happy if we didn't host it ourselves. 18:29:40 <caillon> i'm not entirely opposed to it, but a lot of roles sort of get defined by someone doing work and setting their own roles 18:29:52 <nirik> true. 18:30:55 <caillon> so not really sure what we'd post up there. maybe we should work on the /Join wiki area first? 18:30:59 <mizmo> somethig like openhatch wouldn't block that though it'd supplement it 18:31:22 <mizmo> caillon, generic high-level descriptions really limit how readily people sign up 18:31:32 <jsmith> My concern isn't in letting people know where to help -- it's with the job we do of mentoring people once they step up to the plate 18:31:39 <mizmo> specifically scoped-out tasks energize people who then move on to be more self-directed 18:32:00 <mizmo> right now we dont have any central place to post out those scoped out tasks 18:32:06 <jsmith> Besides FES, right? 18:32:19 <jsmith> Infrastructure has done an awesome job in that regard. 18:32:23 <mizmo> what is FES 18:32:27 <inode0> and mizmo's blog :) 18:32:29 <jsmith> Fedora Engineering Services 18:32:33 <nirik> FES stuff is for small descrete jobs... not roles. 18:32:36 <mizmo> yeh but that's not centralized 18:32:47 <mizmo> we probably all have tasks listed out across various trac instances 18:32:50 <nirik> ie, 'please fix package X to do Y' not 'maintain package X'. ;) 18:32:52 <jsmith> Essentially, a list of small, discrete jobs that Infrastructure would like done, that someone can work on and do on their own 18:33:08 <mizmo> usually they're not explained in terms of someone who isn't already involved in fedora and knows the acronyms, etc. 18:33:09 * inode0 thinks it would be nice for things that can be packaged in more concrete ways 18:33:19 <mizmo> (in general, not FES specifically since i haven't read thru those) 18:33:37 * jsmith will be right back 18:33:44 <nirik> https://fedorahosted.org/fedora-engineering-services/report/6 if folks want to look. 18:35:41 <inode0> FES always seemed to be differently oriented 18:35:53 <inode0> getting a task assigned to you by someone else 18:36:08 <mizmo> some of these tasks dont seem infra related at all which is a little confusing 18:36:15 <mizmo> like holding gaming sessions? 18:36:34 <mdomsch> FES isn't only for infrastructure tasks 18:36:56 <mdomsch> I filed a FES request to have someone rewrite a perl helper in syslinux into C, so we could drop the perl dep from syslinux 18:37:01 <nirik> right, it's fesco driven... 18:37:24 <nirik> so it could be packaging, rel-enging, whatever. 18:37:53 <mdomsch> that task came out of a Spins SIG request to not have to include perl in their package set 18:38:51 <mdomsch> I can see the value in both long-term role lists (job board), and short term task lists (FES) 18:40:21 <inode0> there are two sorts of people looking for ways to contribute 18:40:35 <inode0> those who say I have these skills, what can you give me to do? 18:40:51 <inode0> and those who just want to browse and find tasks that appeal to them 18:41:27 <inode0> the latter group I think is well-suited to a job board sort of idea 18:44:12 <smooge> actually I would say that FAMSCO has done the best job mentoring. I have been trying to ride their coattails with what mentoring I have done 18:46:14 <smooge> inode0, I would say there is a middle ground for that. I see a lot of people come onto infrastructure who say " I have these skills, what can I do?" and we have a list of problems and then we never hear from them again. I need a better way of getting them involved. 18:47:21 <mizmo> the best way is to talk to them one-on-one 18:47:42 <mizmo> nobody (well most people don't) wants to pick through an unfamiliar ticket queue 18:47:44 <inode0> right, and design bounties have clearly demonstrated that with a good layout of a task in a place it is seen people show up 18:48:06 <mizmo> well it's not just the layout, it's saying, this task is for you, and only you, we're depending on you i think 18:48:20 <mizmo> if you point people at a huge less it's a lot more impersonal 18:48:24 <mizmo> s/less/list 18:48:54 <smooge> ah ok. 18:49:08 <smooge> by the way, I thought "saying, this task is for you, and only you," was layout 18:49:34 <inode0> so maybe caillon's thought would make some sense - if we could filter to job listings relevant to interests via the wiki somehow 18:49:46 <mizmo> oh wrt layout i was thinking the funky ninja gfx and branding 18:49:52 <smooge> oh ok 18:50:01 <smooge> i was thinking words 18:50:08 <walters> pictures > words 18:50:12 <mizmo> a long time ago we designed a match making ui for mentorship 18:50:15 <smooge> i forget there are pictures there too :) 18:50:15 <mizmo> for fedora community 18:50:17 <mizmo> didt get implemented tho 18:50:21 * inode0 mean layout to just mean a well-defined task 18:50:41 <inode0> laying out the problem space clearly 18:53:29 <jsmith> Ok... we're almost at the top of the hour 18:53:34 <jsmith> #topic Any other business? 18:54:22 <smooge> not me 18:59:47 <jsmith> #endmeeting