This is a part of the Fedora Linux 43 FESCo Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts today, Wednesday 17th December and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Wednesday, 7th January 2026.

Interview with Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek

  • FAS ID: zbyszek
  • Matrix Rooms: #devel:fedoraproject.org, #reproducible-builds:fedora.im, #jenkins-coreos:fedoraproject.org, #coreos:fedoraproject.org, #quality:fedoraproject.org

Questions

Why do you want to be a member of FESCo and how do you expect to help steer the direction of Fedora?

I think Fedora as a project is in a good place. Our core responsibility is to put out a new release every six months, and we are doing that on schedule and with high quality. But there are always new challenges and issues that need to be solved. As a member of FESCo, I take the Change process seriously, trying to work with submitters to improve their proposals before they are approved, and keeping track of what remains to be done. I do my best to move the things I’m personally working on in the right direction, and I try to help others move the things they are working on.

Most of the proposals that FESCo gets to vote on are obvious. But every once in a while there are proposals which are a mistake. The tough part of the job is to distinguish between something that is risky but will be good for the project if done correctly, and ideas that are a mistake and should be rejected. FESCo is in the position to push back, and needs to do that with enough strength and visiblity to be effective.

The part of being in FESCo that I (and everybody else) likes the least is the slow-as-molasses tickets that get stuck on infrastructure changes or other external constraints. FESCo should do a better job of regularly returning to those, pushing for updates, and figuring out how to finally solve the problem. I like the idea of introducing the limits on consecutive terms of FESCo members
to bring in new people and hopefully use this energy to tackle some long-standing issues.

How do you currently contribute to Fedora? How does that contribution benefit the community?

I maintain systemd and a bunch of other packages in the python scientific stack,
a bunch of tools related to installing Linux (mkosi, pacman, archlinux-keyring), and
tooling for reproducibile builds (add-determinism).

I’m active in FESCo and I contribute to the Packaging Guidelines and in various other places that need help. Over the last year I worked on build reproducibility (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Package_builds_are_expected_to_be_reproducible), bin-sbin unification (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Unify_bin_and_sbin), and helped with introduction of nix (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Nix_package_tool).

How do you handle disagreements when working as part of a team?

Discuss. Evaluate. Discuss again. Reach a compromise.

Rarely there is an issue where compromise is not possible. If the issue is worth fighting for, agree to disagree, try to convince everyone else.

What else should community members know about you or your positions?

n/a