Fedora Community Architect (FCA)

The FCA’s core responsibilities provide a framework for day-to-day decisions. However, situations will arise where these responsibilities conflict, or where the best path forward is unclear. In these moments, the FCA must navigate the complexity by relying on a deeper set of principles.

This is a role of significant influence and trust within the community. That influence should be used intentionally and with care. The FCA has a fundamental responsibility to the community of contributors and the long-term health of the Fedora Project. When faced with a difficult choice, the FCA should use Fedora’s Four Foundations (Freedom, Friends, Features, and First) as the primary framework for their reasoning. These are the core values of the project and should consistently inform the FCA’s judgment.

The title of this role evolved and changed over the years since its inception in February 2015. The creation of the role was largely envisioned and advocated for by Robyn Bergeron, then the Fedora Project Leader. When the role was first created, the role title was Fedora Community Outreach and Impact Lead, which was often shortened to Fedora Community Lead (FCL). At the time, the FCL role provided needed separation of responsibilities with the Fedora Project Leader, including the role of organizing the annual Fedora contributor conference, Flock. However, the FCL title did not feel totally right either. Anyone can be a leader in the Fedora community, whether they are employed by Red Hat or not! We did not want to imply otherwise.

Later, in October 2016, the role title was changed to Fedora Community Action & Impact Coordinator (FCAIC). This title was lengthier but better captured what community engagement means in a large, globally-distributed community like Fedora. Over time, more projects, organizations, and companies working on Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) introduced new roles in community management and leadership. However, community work does not have an industry-accepted job ladder, as is more common with software engineering. Red Hat eventually settled on the title of community architect for a career path in community management in its pioneering Open Source communities.

The title was changed in January 2023 to Fedora Community Architect (FCA) to reflect the changing landscape. Ultimately, the goal of changing the name then was to better describe the role and what the FCA did in Fedora. The lengthy "FCAIC" title often came with an explanation to others unfamiliar with Fedora and our unique community culture. FCA was also a handy shortening of the longer FCAIC acronym too!

In 2026, this charter was substantially rewritten to describe the FCA’s actual scope of work, rather than the broader "community manager" framing it had carried since the role’s earliest days. Roles and Responsibilities was reorganized around four concrete areas — Council governance, budget and fiduciary stewardship, the Flock conference, and CentOS ecosystem — with CentOS added as a newly explicit responsibility, reflecting the deepening relationship between Fedora and its sibling project. The Community Initiative Support and Collaboration with Community Ops sections were removed — the former because the Fedora Council paused the Community Initiatives program, and the latter because supporting Community Ops was never a distinct, formal responsibility of the role. Decision-Making was expanded to state plainly that the FCA, while a Red Hat employee, is a fiduciary for the Fedora Project: the community budget belongs to Red Hat, but its stewardship serves Fedora. The FCA’s ongoing working relationship with the Fedora Project Leader and Fedora Operations Architect was documented for the first time, and the stakeholder list in Communication was tightened to reflect only the relationships tied to a formal responsibility.