This is a part of the Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts on Friday, 3 June and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Thursday, 16 June.

Interview with Major Hayden

  • Fedora Account: mhayden
  • IRC:  mhayden (found in #fedora-cloud, #fedora-devel, #fedora-security, #fedora-sway)
  • 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?

Fedora remains a core part of my Linux deployments on desktops, servers, and cloud
instances since I first discovered it back in the Fedora Core 2 days. It strikes a
balance between fast updates, simple management, and mature development processes.

My service on the Fedora Board from 2012 to 2014 gave me valuable insight into how
Fedora works at a community level and the best ways to make changes. Changes affect
everyone differently, and thoughtful consideration and communication around those
changes makes all the difference.

As a member of FESCo, I would build on the strong legacy of Fedora’s community and
technical capabilities to forge a path into the future. Everyone’s use of technology
evolves at such a rapid pace and I want Fedora to shine as a great foundation for a
casual Linux user and a large corporation. This may require more focus in new areas and
less focus in some others. We get there through building consensus, encouraging new
ideas, and making well-informed decisions on the future. I want to be a part of that!

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

I maintain just under 200 packages in Fedora, including cloud tools such as azure-cli
and Google Cloud’s python SDKs. These packages remain critical to my daily home and work
use of Fedora. New time-saving packaging strategies, such as python’s
pyproject-rpm-macros and rpmautospec, are core to my workflow and I frequently make
pull requests to other maintainers’ repositories to save them time.

As a member of the Cloud SIG, I bring my experience as a cloud consumer and a cloud
builder (OpenStack and Rackspace public cloud) to improve the cloud user experience.
This stands out as one of the best areas for Fedora to gain traction as more workloads
move to cloud deployments. We do plenty of hard work as a team, especially around
testing in various clouds around release time.

Writing about Fedora gives me an opportunity to showcase triumphs and challenges with
everyday Linux use. I love teaching others how to solve problems and take advantage of
new capabilities. As an example, I wrote a post on Fedora Magazine about using
systemd-networkd for a network firewall when systemd-networkd was not receiving
enough attention for its unique capabilities.

With the advent of CentOS Stream, where do you think Fedora stands now and what should be the plans for the future?

Fedora brings something unique to the world because it delivers new features to users as
quickly as possible without sacrificing stability and ease of use. It offers plenty of
tools for iteration on new technology without disrupting a stable release.

Fedora’s future depends on new capabilities on new platforms. Containers, cloud
deployments, and IoT/Edge devices present new opportunities and challenges. Fedora’s
strong legacy on servers and workstations serves as a foundation for this new work. Many
advances and innovations coming from these new platforms could greatly benefit server
and workstation users.

The community sits at the core of everything. Our community must excel as a welcoming
place where ideas are heard, understood, and thoughtfully challenged. Decisions and
debates must include the “why” so that everyone can understand a different point of
view.

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

On the nerdier side, I’m an amateur radio operator in the USA and I love using
emojis. 💕 I use Fedora for much of my ham radio work, including wsjtx for digital
communications around the world. I work at Red Hat with a focus on the Red Hat
Enterprise Linux user experience on public clouds. This gives me a great opportunity to
improve Fedora on clouds through the Cloud SIG.

I avoid taking a position on something until I learn more about it. Everyone has a
different experience as a user and until you understand that experience, it’s difficult
to make a decision. We must continue our drive forward with our core values in mind:
freedom, friends, features, and first.