This is a part of the FESCo Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts on Friday, 21 May and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Thursday, 3 June 2021.

Interview with Frank Ch. Eigler

Questions

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

I’d like to lend a hand to this group of great people to keep the linux distro I love good enough for my kids to use long into the future. Keep it relevant, keep it exciting, keep it stable.

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

I develop, and co-maintain several developer-tools oriented packages (systemtap, elfutils, other performance tools). I have decades of time working with other toolchain component communities (gcc, gdb, heck some lkml time too). Have attended and/or given talks at several Fedora conferences over the years. I’ve started to engage with fedora infrastructure teams a bit, initially by operating the new debuginfod service there.

How should we handle cases where Fedora’s and Red Hat Enterprise Linux’s needs conflict in an incompatible way?

Delicately if possible, arguing for as good a balance as is achievable. We understand that RH pays the bills, it does not own the people. Thus, community interests also need a passionate and fair representation. Let’s hope this sort of thing stays very rare, and can be resolved with – at most – a little more spending rather than major community disruption.

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

I enjoy giving dissident points of view as fair a hearing as possible. I also love diving into little technological detours, just the kind of new ideas that come into FESCO. I enjoy working with reps of other distros, and seek solutions that solve common problems. … And try to balance the new-and-shiny with a conservatism to keep working things working. My favorite color is blue, no, yellow.