Fedora Council Charter

On an ongoing basis, including sessions at Flock and in public online meetings, the Fedora Council will identify two to four key Community Initiatives with a timeframe of approximately eighteen months, and appoint Community Initiative Leads for each goal. Each Community Initiative is represented by one Fedora Council seat. Typically, this seat is filled by the Lead of the Initiative, although it is possible for two people (at most) to share a single Fedora Council seat as Co-Leads. While naturally the people in these roles will focus primarily on their own Initiative, this is a full Fedora Council position and Community Initiative Leads are invited to participate in all Fedora Council activities and decisions.

Community Initiative Leads typically serve on the Fedora Council for the duration of their Initiative. When the Initiative concludes, the Fedora Council term also expires.

Each Community Initiative Lead is paired with an Executive Sponsor, who is another member of the Fedora Council.

Community Initiatives must be documented with measurable goals. The Community Initiative Leads are responsible for coordinating efforts to reach those goals, evaluating and reporting on progress, and working regularly with all relevant groups in Fedora to ensure that progress is made. Executive Sponsors are responsible for making sure the Initiative is on track and for removing blockers.

The Fedora Council also includes five representative seats: an Engineering Representative, a Mindshare Representative, a DEI Advisor, and two Elected Representatives.

The Fedora Council is not driven by meetings or by tickets, but does hold regular public meetings (via a chat system or video call). The Fedora Council discusses current issues, clear through anything outstanding which can be quickly resolved, and to ensure that nothing urgent is left pending. All members are expected to regularly communicate what is going on in their area, through blog posts or other public updates.

The Fedora Council holds a multi-day, face-to-face meeting annually. All members should strive to attend in person (travel funding is available). We also often meet for a day before or after other significant Fedora-related conferences (Flock, DevConf.cz). These meetings are not public, but minutes and summary documents will be provided.

Additionally, the Fedora Project Leader will set aside regular times to meet with the community. Attendance is not mandatory for all Fedora Council members but is encouraged.

The general policy of the Fedora Council is to default to open. Most meetings are held in public channels, and open to all Fedora users and contributors. Discussion is held in a public forum open to all, and formal decisions will be recorded in a public ticket tracking system.

Occasionally, when personal, private, or sensitive issues need to be discussed, a video call might be used. A private mailing list and ticket tracking instance also exist for these situations, but will also only be used when dealing with these uncommon issues.

Serving on the Fedora Council is a significant commitment of time and energy. Workload for the various roles will vary, but each will require a number of hours every week, and in most cases, the more, the better a Fedora Council member is able to do the job fully.

We recognize that most Fedora community members do not have the luxury of working on Fedora full-time or as part of a paid position. The time commitment required for these roles comes simply from what is required to lead a large project like Fedora, and is not intended to be an artificial limit on who can participate. We know that that it can be a pragmatic limit, and for that reason, the Fedora Council is responsible for extra effort to receive, recognize, be responsive to, and meaningfully reward the input of contributors offering their individual time.

To advance free software, we need to provide a sustainable integration of free software without cutting corners. By providing a positive first impression before and during installation and real use, we support Fedora’s reputation as a leading and reliable product that attracts future users and contributors. To provide that integration and experience we must have a clear set of priorities to help all contributors decide how to allocate resources and resolve conflicts. These priorities are not meant to be exclusive, or to keep contributors from working on the parts of Fedora that matter to them.

These priorities will sometimes expose gaps where contributors need additional assistance, and allow them to seek it both within the community and by bringing in additional contributors to help, exclusively on their particular interest area if desired. While narrowing our focus in some areas, though, we must provide opportunities for exploration to all contributors within the framework of our core values and without impeding progress.

The previous previous governance structure (Fedora Board) had five members directly appointed by Red Hat and five elected at large. The current structure is more complicated but has a much greater proportion of members selected by the community by election or merit. In the previous board structure, the Fedora Project Leader had a special veto power; in the current model, all voting members can block on issues, with a valid reason. The FPL does not have a special veto, but does have a limited power to “unstick” things if consensus genuinely cannot be reached and a decision needs to be made.

Former membership on the Fedora Council, along with membership on the previous Fedora Board, is documented on the History of Fedora Council Membership page.