Community architects.

Note: Post was delayed to a ridiculous point by house painting, sorry if it’s stale.

Yesterday Max posted some details about how recent Red Hat personnel actions affect Fedora, undeniably for the better.

Because of the amazing work done over the past year by each and every Fedora community contributor, the creation of a Community Architecture team has become a reality. You’ll be hearing a lot more about this team’s progress in the next few weeks.

I’m grateful that, amid all this expert politicking and organizational redesign, Max has been more than generous with his time and advice. He’s sort of like a Fedora ex-President who still takes your phone calls while he’s taking swings out on the links. Except with Max, it’s table tennis. (I have yet to find out what happens when his temper gets the best of him in heated games, like McEnroe.)

This is a very telling part of Max’s email:

There is a lot of overlap in Fedora in terms of roles, responsibilities, etc. We are interested more than anything in simply GETTING STUFF DONE. Within Red Hat, the people who are paid to spend their days on Fedora are all catalysts and community builders. But while Fedora itself has a relatively loose organizational structure, Red Hat is a company, and people all have to be slotted somewhere.

The people who work 100% on Fedora are not the gatekeepers — we don’t want or need to be “authority figures” on the work that people are doing. It is about ACCOUNTABILITY rather than RESPONSIBILITY.

We don’t do everything ourselves, but we are accountable for making sure that certain things get done. The Fedora Way dictates that we do this by being transparent, open, and building communities around different tasks.

Fedora is all about stepping up to the plate, and doing what needs to be done. You will see a lot more of Greg, Jack, and Max’s new team building work over the next several months. I hope people will be interested in joining up with the other Marketing folks, to work on projects like the new Messaging Guide and upcoming FUDCon events.