Let's start with the basics, "Who is Paul? Tell us a little about yourself,
where you are from, maybe a few lines to know you better.

I'm from Virginia (USA), where I live with my family.  I currently
work at Red Hat, where I started in 2008 as the Fedora Project Leader.
I recently moved into a new role that involves working with people
inside Red Hat to contribute improvements to our development and
production processes.  It's a new job, so we're still figuring out all
of its aspects, and I will be spending the next few months making sure
that Jared Smith, the new Fedora Project Leader, has a smooth
transition into the position.


How long have you been using linux ... and more specifically fedora?

I've been using Linux since 1997.  I started with Slackware but since
I had never used UNIX or Linux before that, it was pretty difficult.
I also tried Debian, too.  Eventually I found Red Hat Linux 4.1, which
took a lot less expertise to figure out how to install.  Since then
I've increasingly used Linux, and at home we've been Windows-free
since about 2006.

I worked for an office that did analysis of digital media, and Linux
gave us all the tools we needed for free.  Even more importantly, the
code was free/libre (free as in freedom).  Because of that freedom, we
could examine the code that we were using, and give copies to defense
attorneys who needed to reproduce our work and verify our results.
Because Linux supports a strong scientific method and reproducibility,
it was far superior to anything else available.  I ended up building a
big part of my career on developing processes and tools for use by our
staff using Linux and free software.


When did you start using fedora and be part of the community?

I joined the Fedora Project and community in 2003, not long after it
started.  I wanted to give something back to the community that had
given me a big push in my career.  I started in the Fedora
Documentation team, because my technical skills weren't strong enough
to help with any development or packaging at the time.  Since then
I've learned lots of new skills and I've worked with many more teams,
including packaging, marketing, translation, websites, design, and
others.


What do you like the most about the distribution?

That it's easy to use, flexible, and free/libre for everyone.  When
you install Fedora out of the box, it feels like a unified product.
It includes everything you need to communicate with friends, and get
to everything on the Web.  It looks pleasing, and gives you lots of
fun software to try out.

But it's also flexible, because you can use it in lots of different
ways -- not just as a great desktop product but also as a fast,
powerful server.  You can develop software or web sites in a snap
using Fedora, using lots of different platforms and languages.  On one
system, for zero cost, you can develop a Drupal site, design a GUI
tool in C/C++ or Python, put together a spreadsheet, set up an email
or Web server, track a project... there's just no end to what you can
do with Fedora.

Finally, I love that it's free, and that the freedom is something that
we take very seriously.  There are definitely people out there who
think that it's a shame we don't just bundle MP3 or DVD support into
Fedora, but often they don't understand what that would mean in terms
of ethics.  It would be compromising on the right thing to do, and
furthermore in some cases it would mean making our users legally
liable for something without their knowing it.  People who don't care
about freedom are welcome to try other things.  Once people realize
that Fedora cares about maximum freedom for our users, they usually
see why some things need to be separate from Fedora.

We all know that the right thing to do is often a harder thing to do,
so I really appreciate the fact that Fedora goes the extra length to
keep software truly free/libre.  It would be easy to stick our heads
in the sand like an ostrich and pretend these problems don't exist.
That might get us a lot more users, but freedom is really a part of
who we are as a project and I don't see that changing in the
foreseeable future.


What views and experiences do you have about Fedora events that you have
attended?

I love Fedora events like Fedora Users and Developers Conferences
(FUDCons) and Fedora Activity Days (FADs).  They're a great way to put
people together in one room and work very quickly on important tasks.
You can have, for example, a group of Infrastructure team members
working together on developing a new service for Fedora contributors.
Even better, though, is when we can put people together from
*different* teams across Fedora.  That's when collaboration gets even
better.  For instance, it's important for FUDCon events to include
people who are contributing in all sorts of different ways to Fedora,
like putting Ambassadors with Design team members, Websites with
Marketing, Packagers with developers, and so on.

Most importantly, though, these events strengthen the social bonds
between our contributors.  It's often very difficult using electronic
communication like email or IRC to express emotional closeness to
people.  When you argue, people might seem to be more harsh than they
intended.  Disagreements can grow in a way that is much larger than
the small issue that caused them.  Getting people together in person
helps them smooth out those differences, understand each other better,
and leave the event being close friends.  That's my favorite part of
events -- being able to grow friendships with people that I don't get
to see every day in person.


What do you like most fedora community in Latin America and the world?

What I love about the Fedora community is not special to one region, I
find it everywhere -- it's the passion that people have for giving
back to the world, through free software and Fedora.  One of the
reasons I stay involved in Fedora is to help my fellow human beings,
even if I don't ever get to meet them in person.  Free software is a
gift to the entire world that will help people everywhere have tools
and technology that would otherwise be too costly for them.  We can
build up open standards and communications so that any country can
participate in a global information economy.  No other hobby gives you
that kind of impact on the world.  So I love the fact that all over
the world our contributors take this challenge very seriously and put
a lot of energy into Fedora to help other people.


What do you think that where your best choices and actions to impprove how
fedora works in the world as FPL?

There is a lot in Fedora that's great, and that I'm proud of.  There
are a few of those things that I was involved in and that I'm
particularly proud of:

* Encouraging more teams to be led by people who are not Red Hat
 employees and not paid to work on Fedora.  For instance, our
 Marketing, Docs, and Websites teams are led by non-Red Hat employees
 (Robyn Bergeron, Eric Christensen, and Sijis Aviles in those
 examples).  But yet those teams still have participants from
 everywhere in our community.  Red Hat is not separate from the
 Fedora community, Red Hat is *part of* the community.  So it's
 wonderful to see that just because Red Hat is involved in a team,
 does not mean a Red Hat employee needs to run that team for it to
 succeed.

* I'm proud of the increased importance we've put on schedules and
 release criteria.  Our project schedule has come a very long way
 since it started several years ago.  Now, we have detailed task
 schedules for every team for each release.  People on Fedora teams
 get regular reminders of what's coming up so they can do better
 planning and better work.  On top of that, we've spent a lot of time
 in the QA and release engineering teams making exact criteria for
 release.  When we can make clear decisions about how ready we are
 for a release, we can be more confident that the release is higher
 quality.

 These improvements have helped Fedora 12 and Fedora 13 especially be
 much higher quality than previous releases.  Both the schedule and
 the release criteria have also made it easier to be predictable in
 our releases.  Even though we haven't quite hit on schedule yet, we
 are trying very hard to do this for Fedora 14!  We'll continue to
 push for better and better predictability.  Hitting a release on
 schedule helps all teams feel like they've achieved a great goal.

* Promoting the idea of "sustainability" in Fedora and free software.
 It's wonderful when team members in Fedora create a new service, or
 package new software, or make a new piece of art.  But what's even
 more important is for all of us to make it possible for *everyone*
 to do these things.  We always need to be working toward a future
 where anyone around us can participate in what we're doing.

 We often call this solving the "eaten by raptors" problem -- if you
 got eaten by a raptor tomorrow, how would your team get along
 without you?  If the answer is that it would be very difficult for
 them, then you need to solve the "eaten by raptors" problem!  Just
 as it is easy for anyone to come into the Fedora Project and help,
 we need to also make it easy for people to leave without any pain.
 If there is only one person doing a specific job in Fedora, that's a
 problem -- we need to scale that work to many people so that work
 becomes sustainable in the long term.


Which ideas do you have for the Project? (the ones you did and you didn't)

I would like to see Fedora become the best way to experience the new
GNOME platform when it is issued (around Fedora 15).  Because we don't
fork or patch a lot of software in the operating system, and instead
we work upstream, we have a fantastic opportunity to present GNOME 3
in the best possible way.  The new GNOME will show a new free desktop
that is different than anything else -- different from Windows,
different from MacOS, and with our own special personality for Linux!
I think it would be great if Fedora was the best place for people to
experience GNOME in that way.  I also would like to see our teams
working with the upstream GNOME to help push the platform even
further.  That collaboration can achieve more than any platform where
people are forking the code, patching it badly, or doing their own
closed designs instead of working with the community.

I also would like to see our communities in different countries
communicating more with the rest of the Fedora Project, and not just
with the people in their country.  When we work together and talk to
each other openly we can achieve far more than when we don't.  I know
a lot of people want to build community Fedora sites, and it's a very
good thing to have a local "gateway" site in the native language.
That site gets them in touch with Fedora community members who can
speak to them easily and give them assistance quickly.  But it's
important that once people get that help, we need to integrate them
into the whole Fedora Project -- and not build many separate projects.
Again, the sustainable approach is for us to all work with each other!
The more we do that, the more we'll succeed.

I know that Jared Smith, the new Fedora Project Leader, will have his
own ideas for what Fedora will do.  I have not forced my ideas on him,
because it's important that each FPL bring his own vision and style to
the job.  But I know that collaboration and a strong sense of
"togetherness" in the Fedora Project is important to him.  I look
forward to working with him to achieve great things in the future!


Will you remain working on the Fedora Project? what would you like to do now
that the preasure is less?

I'll still be working on the Fedora Project, although a lot less after
Jared has taken the reins for Fedora.  The project I care most about
is getting a content management system (CMS) set up for Fedora, and
helping to maintain it, and train others on how to use and maintain it
too (sustainability!).  We will probably be using Drupal, and I am
working on a project plan to keep everyone together on the project and
help us achieve our goals.  I think there are many cool things we can
do with a free and open platform like Drupal that is fully GPL -- and
their community also works a lot like the Fedora community so I hope
to get involved there and bring people into Fedora too.


Do you have any final words to LATAM people?

The Latin American region is full of people who are passionately
interested in free/libre and open source software.  What we want to do
now is to grow a larger leadership in the LATAM area, working together
to assemble the community around the Fedora ideas of openness,
transparency, and friendship.  Any community, wherever it is in the
world, needs a set of leaders who all work together, collaboratively,
to grow contributions.  The most successful Fedora teams and
communities are the ones where people share responsibility, power, and
knowledge about what they're doing.  The more collaborative people
are, the more transparently people plan and work, the more likely that
community can succeed.

I'm very excited that our FPL got to visit the LATAM community and
talk to people in person about these ideas.  I look forward to seeing
the LATAM community get even stronger, and meet the challenges of
leadership and collaboration.  Fedora is all about the future, and
that is where I hope people will continue to set their sights!