This is a part of the FESCo Elections Interviews series. The voting period starts on Thursday, 28 May and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Thursday, 11 June.

Interview with Justin Forbes (jforbes)

  • Fedora account: jforbes
  • IRC nick: jforbes (found in #fedora-kernel #fedora-devel #fedora-workstation #fedora-arm. I am in quite a few actually)
  • Fedora user wiki page

Questions

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

FESCo is a position of service to the community. While I tend to stay heads down in kernel land for day-to-day work, I have been involved in various areas since FC1, and I am a Fedora user for general use. I think it is important that Fedora can continue to meet the needs of the community, even as those needs evolve. Change is not always a bad thing, but it has to be managed in such a way as to not completely disrupt what we have now.

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

Primarily I am the Fedora kernel maintainer, though I poke my head in various places. I have served on FESCo previously, and have been involved in various initiatives in the past just trying to improve Fedora where I can.

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

RHEL and Fedora are very different distributions philosophically, but they share a similar DNA. I don’t honestly believe that there are needs which “conflict in an incompatible way”. Certainly there are some problems to solve around the area of keeping Fedora a valuable investment for Red Hat, without alienating the community that makes Fedora what it really is. But that’s just it, they are problems to be solved, I do believe that such solutions exist. And I think if we find the right solutions, it is not only a benefit to RHEL, but also something that makes Fedora better. When it comes down to it though, Fedora has to do what is right for Fedora.

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

As I mentioned earlier, I view FESCo as a service position. I don’t come to FESCo with any agenda of my own other than to support the community needs and hope to leave Fedora better than I found it.