Fedora BoF report from Summit 2018

Last week I attended the Red Hat Summit 2018. There I interacted with customers, partners, community leaders, and some friends from around Red Hat. I enjoy going every year and look forward to it, despite the exhaustion factor. This year included a fun event for Fedora — a birds of a feather (or BoF) session. Read on for my report.

FPL Matthew Miller arranged the BoF, and several people assisted there, including Brian Exelbierd and me. Several core contributors attended as well. But out of the 30-35 people who attended, the vast majority were not community members, but rather people interested in or using Fedora.

We split into groups and ran each in a Lean Coffee style. My group included about 12 or so people. I don’t recall every topic in our prioritized cards, but notable ones included:

• Use of legally encumbered codecs
• NVidia drivers
• How to get started contributing
• Whence the minimal install

Our group members voted up the codecs + NVidia topics by a factor of more than 2 over the next highest rated topic! That’s why it made me very happy to report to them that Fedora 28 includes the GNOME Software function that lets users decide whether to enable selected repositories outside Fedora.

I know a few people grumble about this function. I used to rail about the topic myself. As I’ve grown older and met more people in different walks of life, I’ve realized I no longer want to interfere with their agency to make their own choices. The BoF attendees responded well to this new feature and were overjoyed to hear about the way this is now available. I’m pretty sure we made a few instant Fedora converts on the spot.

I enjoyed the BoF overall, but this particular topic resonated with me strongly. I know how hard several of the Workstation working group members worked to make this new feature a reality in Fedora 28. This experience showed me it has an impact on people’s interest in using Fedora. If it also makes them more interested in contributing, that’s great for Fedora in the long run.

Also, I realize I haven’t written on this blog in a very long time. I’ll try not to take so long next time, but no promises. Life is very busy!