Flock with the Fedora Community | RHEL Presents Ep. 62

For this episode I’m joined by my regular cohost Brian Smith and a very special guest, Fedora Project Leader Matthew Miller. We dig into what Fedora actually is as an entity, how it flows downstream through CentOS Stream into Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and the community’s open change process, including the telemetry proposal that had everyone talking. Then we look ahead to Flock, Fedora’s first in-person contributor event in four years, this time in Cork, Ireland.

A few things worth carrying away from the conversation:

• Fedora isn’t legally owned by Red Hat, even though Red Hat pays a lot of us to work on it. Matthew described Fedora as an unincorporated association of individuals, a real community that’s much bigger than any one company, and one you have to earn your way into.
• Doing everything in the open changes how people read the process. The telemetry proposal got heated, but Matthew reminded us that a proposal is a starting point for discussion, not a decision already made, and that Fedora will never track people or monetize user data.
• The best way to join Fedora is to show up and hang out first. Rather than hunting for a code problem to solve, introduce yourself in the discussion forum or on chat, follow the friends-first foundation, and let where you fit reveal itself.

If you’re curious how RHEL gets its start upstream, this one is a great place to begin.