An Overview of Contributing to Fedora
Kevin Fenzi
tummy.com, ltd.
Red Hat Linux
Red Hat Linux 1.0 was released on November 3, 1994.
...
Red Hat Linux 9 was released March 31, 2003
Basically no external contributions
Red Hat Contributed Packages
Red Hat "contrib" directory.
fire and forget.
little in the way of updates or security checking.
poor quality.
little or no peer review.
Fedora Core
FC1 was released on November 6, 2003.
FC2 was released on May 18, 2004.
FC3 was released on November 8, 2004.
FC4 was released on June 13, 2005.
FC5 was released on March 20, 2006.
FC6 was released on October 24, 2006.
Fedora Long term support
fedoralegacy.org
3rd party attempt to provide additional support.
Limited community.
Very moving target.
Very hard problem without paid workers.
Fedora add ons
fedora.us
3rd party site with add on packages.
High quality, but limited community.
Infrastructure issues.
Fedora Core + Fedora Extras
Fedora Extras
"official" version of fedora.us.
Started with Fedora Core 3
Good community.
Good infrastructure.
High quality packages with peer review.
Problems with "Core" interface.
True community support outside "Core"
Fedora 7
Fedora ("Merged")
Rush to finish merge for F7.
Difficult task with a bumpy few months.
Lots of changes very fast.
Still growing pains with infrastructure.
Lots more community input.
4945 packages and growing fast.
Philosophy of current day Fedora
Upstream Upstream Upstream
Try and do as much work with upstream projects as possible.
Give patches and changes back to upstream as much as possible.
Try not to carry patches or things that upstream won't take.
Helping upstream helps Fedora (and all other distros too!).
Structure of current day Fedora
Fedora Project Board
9 members: 5 redhat, 4 community
1 redhat appointed chair with veto power.
"high level direction"
Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo)
13 members, all elected.
Technical decisions.
Disclaimer: I am one of those 13.
Many ways to join in and help out
Maintain packages.
New package.
Co-maintain.
Patches.
Many ways to join in and help out
Review packages
New packages.
Merge reviews of old "core" packages.
Many ways to join in and help out
QA/bug fixing.
Help triage bugs.
bugzilla plans.
Automated QA.
Test installs.
Run rawhide and report bugs.
Many ways to join in and help out
Infrastructure
Help with tickets.
Help coding (updates/buildsys/mirrormanager).
Many ways to join in and help out
Docs/Wiki work
Help write docs.
Help clean up the wiki.
Proof/check docs.
Help with FWN (Fedora Weekly News).
Many ways to join in and help out
End user help
IRC channels.
Mailing lists.
Forums.
Many ways to join in and help out
Security team
Help check packages for security issues.
Help audit packages for CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures).
Run checkers over repository.
Many ways to join in and help out
Translations
Translate packages.
Help with translation tools.
Transifex.
Many ways to join in and help out
Art team
Contribute community art.
Help review/critque art.
Make icon themes and wallpapers.
Many ways to join in and help out
Special Interest Groups (SIG's)
games.
EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux).
KDE
perl/python/mono/java groups
The Fedora Community
Barrier to entry could be lower in some cases.
Lots and lots of community now.
Things improving all the time.
Some Upcoming Fedora 8 Features
Bigboard
IcedTea
Generic Logos
Laptop and Bluetooth improvements
NetworkManager
Pulseaudio
Tickless / wakeup fixes
Transifex
XULrunner
Many others