This is a part of the Fedora Council Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts today, Tuesday 20th May and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Monday, 2 June 2025.

Interview with Shaun McCance

  • FAS ID: shaunm
  • Matrix Rooms: I’m in a lot of channels. Here are a few you can find me in –
    • Fedora: commops, marketing
    • CentOS: centos-promo, centos-docs, centos, ask-the-centos-board
    • Gnome: gnome:gnome.org

Questions

Why are you running for Fedora Council?

I’ve been around Fedora since the beginning. I love Fedora, and I want to see it continue to grow and thrive. I have a fair amount of experience serving on and with governing bodies. This is one of the areas where I can most effectively contribute to projects now.

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 try to help the project delivering on that goal?

There are many ways to increase contributions. I’d like to focus on two that both involve expanding our contributor pool beyond the people making Fedora Linux.

First, there is a lot of room for alternative distributions and package sets. We see this already in editions and spins. By identifying target audiences, we can encourage more contributions in new areas.

Second, there are a number of systems derived from Fedora, such as CentOS, various CentOS derivatives, Amazon Linux, and the distros from Universal Blue. For various reasons, these projects are not part of Fedora. Nonetheless, there is a lot of room for contributors to those projects to also be Fedora contributors in a mutually beneficial way. We see this already, and I’d work to strengthen those relationships.

How can we best measure Fedora’s success?

The Council created Strategy 2028 to double the number of active contributors. This is a measurable outcome, and we should continue to monitor it and work towards it. Aside from the Fedora strategy, I often look at how often Fedora and family are referenced online. When I search for how to do something on Linux, I want the search results to be full of answers for Fedora and related distros.

What do you see as Fedora’s place in the universe?

Fedora should be the default choice for Linux. It is user-friendly and innovative, and it helps drive many of the technologies that shape the Linux landscape. Our engineering is excellent, but we can do more to prmote Fedora as the leading distribution it is.

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

I’m fortunate to have a job that will support me doing Council work during work time. That said, I’ll be honest that I’m stretched thing and my existing obligations aren’t going away. Fedora Council and other high-level strategic work is important to me, and I’ll continue to work to get more community engagement on other work to free me up for this.