This is a part of the Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts on Friday, 8 December and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Thursday, 21 December.

Interview with Josh Stone

  • Fedora Account: Josh Stone
  • IRC/Nick: jistone
  • Matrix Channels typically found in: #rust:fedoraproject.org
  • Fedora User Wiki Page

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

I’m proud of Fedora, both as a user and contributor, and joining FESCo would be a new way for me to contribute to its success. I don’t have a list of things that I would change in Fedora, but even steering along the current course requires time and attention, and there will always be new changes on the horizon. I think that I have relevant experience to help with both as a new member of FESCo.

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

I maintain the Rust toolchain in Fedora, keeping up with its releases every 6 weeks for all Fedora branches, and sometimes point release in-between. We decided long ago that rolling rebases made the most sense for Fedora, since Rust developers are often eager to use new features. This keeps Fedora relevant for Rust developers, and helps Rust SIG packagers to not worry about the toolchain version when updating crates. I also work closely with the LLVM maintainers, both for coordinating Rust needs and in more general issues.

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

Disagreements are natural, and the goal should be to reach consensus, which may require difficult conversations about pros and cons and compromise positions. But even then, it’s not always possible to reach agreement, and hopefully in that case there is a governance structure to fall back on — whether that’s a decision maker in a team lead or manager, or a democratic process like voting in FESCo decisions. Ultimately, it’s important to operate in good faith and assume the same in others, and agree to commit and move on when a decision has been made.

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

I’m a member of Red Hat’s Platform Tools team, where I also maintain the Rust toolchain for RHEL. In a previous role, I worked on SystemTap for Fedora and RHEL, giving me broad experience across the entire system. In the upstream Rust community, I’m a member of the library, release, and security-response teams, and I just recently finished my term as a Project Director on the board of the Rust Foundation. So while my current contributions to Fedora are narrowly focused, I think I have a lot to offer in the larger view as a FESCo member.