This is a part of the FESCo Elections Interviews series. Voting is open to all Fedora contributors. The voting period starts on Monday, 20th May and closes promptly at 23:59:59 UTC on Thursday, 30th May 2024.

Interview with Fabio Valentini

  • FAS ID: decathorpe
  • Matrix Rooms: Fedora Devel, Fedora Rust, Fedora Multimedia SIG, Fedora Libreoffice SIG, Fedora Python, Fedora Pantheon

Questions

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

I have been around in the Fedora community for many years now. With the many areas that I have contributed to, I think I can bring an important perspective to FESCo. I am excited by the recent success of Fedora Linux in general, and I want to make sure that this success is sustainable.

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

I am the most active package maintainer in Fedora, primarily because I’m the main point of contact for most Rust packages (and the Rust packaging toolchain). This includes a lot of package updates, triaging build failures and broken dependencies, and removing outdated / obsolete components from Fedora. I also regularly work with upstream projects to help port to new versions of their dependencies, and report and / or fix issues on some of the CPU architectures that are supported by Fedora. I am currently also working on bringing back packages for the Pantheon desktop, hoping that it will be possible to provide a spin based on Pantheon in the future. I also develop and maintain the service that provides the data source for the “broken dependencies” (FTI / FTBFS) information on the Packager Dashboard. And every Fedora release cycle, I triage, report, and attempt to fix upgrade path issues.

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

Many disagreements I’ve handled were only concerned with details, while the goals of everyone involved were still aligned. So I try to find common ground and / or explore alternative or creative solutions that can work for everyone involved.

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

No pineapple, and definitely not on Pizza.