This is a part of the FESCo Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts on Monday, 20th May and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Thursday, 30th May 2024.

Interview with Sumantro Mukherjee

  • Fedora Account: sumantrom
  • Matrix Rooms: #fedora,#fedora-kde,#fedora-mindshare,#fedora-social,#fedora-social-hour, #fedora-arm,#fedora-devel,#fedora-qa,#fedora-workstation,#fedora-test-days, #fedora-i3,#fedora-badges,#fedora-docs,#fedora-l18n,#fedora-ambassadors)

Questions

Why are you running for Fedora Council?

I hail from APAC (India) and would like to focus on bringing in more non-US perspectives, which includes bringing in more contributors from diverse backgrounds. Efficient utilization of our brand new design assets which are now in multiple languages (Hindi, for example) to onboard variety of users (general and power-users) to the Fedora community as contributor either to functional sides (QA, packaging..etc) and/or outreach.
In the recent past; the council charter has been expanded to an Executive Sponsor. This role enables people like me to work closely with an upcoming initiative.
In parallel, I am closely working on Blueprints (https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/introducing-fedora-change-proposal-blueprints-in-association-with-fedora-qa/115903)
this is a long term effort and will benefit from my connections with people in Council (ie FESCo rep and FESCo at large)

The Fedora Strategy guiding star is that the project is going to double its contributor base by 2028. As a council member, how would you help the project deliver on that goal?

As a council member, I would work closely with teams which will need more attention building pipelines for onboarding, mentoring and retention of contributors. In Fedora QA, I have worked extensively to handle a high influx of contributors and retain them for at least a Release Cycle or two. I have optimized workflows that have been helping Fedora QA to grow optimally without burning out contributors or team members. I could help solve problems and coordinate closely with CommOps and other teams to build data-driven contributor pipelines to help Fedora Project double its contributors by 2028.

How can we best measure Fedora’s success?

However, there is no specific way to measure, BUT.. here’s something I think can define Fedora’s success the best
Fedora Linux’s success is measured by the people who use Fedora.
Fedora Project stands as the reference for the people who want to build an upstream community diverse and strong.
Fedora Project at its core is composed of people who take pride in packaging, testing, designing, translating, blogging, evangelizing and collaborating across the globe.
Fedora project takes pride in being a trendsetter for bringing technologies which impact a large downstream ecosystem and embolden their trust in our four foundations.

What is your opinion on Fedora Editions – what purpose do they serve? Are they achieving this purpose? What would you change?

Fedora Editions are Fedora Project’s flagships. They are exclusively tested and tried by Fedora’s in-house QA team to deliver on the expectations of tens of thousands of users. These platforms serve as building blocks for the Fedora Project to share innovation across multiple downstream ecosystems. Fedora Edition has more room to grow in terms of adoption in CI platforms and pre-installs for Hardware Makers. I would love to drive the adoption of Fedora not only at an organizational level ; but also in schools, universities and next-gen digital influencers.

The Fedora Council is intended to be an active working body. How will you make room for Council work?

As a long-term member, the Council is a body which in the coming days will be working across many facades of the Project, taking bold decisions to make our community
more robust, productive and healthy. Being a long-term member, I support the goals and I’ve prepared my upcoming work cycles such that I have room to spend time
at the Council position.
The aforementioned changes in accordance with 2028 strategy impacts my role in Fedora Project at large and I will always want to be a stakeholder. This will help drive decisions which help the Quality teams day to day operations.