 This is the Fedora project leaders of legend and lore panel, and it is amazing. I had this idea, we're just talking at the Fedora social hour, we had this idea off the cuff and thought, wow, since we're doing a virtual event, like, this is the time, we can get everybody together, let's do it. So, for those of you who don't know, we have all of the previous FBLs who are with us. Unfortunately, Christian Gaffden passed away a couple of years ago, but the rest of us are all gathered together here, and it's awesome. So, we don't have anything really organized, I'm just going to ask people to go around and talk, and then we'll talk maybe a little bit about Christian, who I never met personally, and I'm really sad that I didn't have that opportunity, but those of you who have, we can talk about his legacy in the project a little bit, and then we'll take questions from the audience. Use the QA tab over in the chat and start filling things in, and I'm sure there'll be plenty of stories in Chit Chat and everything to go. So, I guess I'll start. I am Matthew Miller, I am the current Fedora project leader, and I've been doing this for a little while. And Robin, tell us about yourself. When were you the FPL, and what are you up to these days? Hi, I'm Robin Brugeron. I was the FPL before Matt, which, unlike everybody else that will be talking after me, was not two or fewer years. That was six years ago? Seven? I mean, it's fuzzy, but yeah, it's been a while, and since then I've worked a little bit on a thing called elastic search for like a hot sulking, and I went over to this place called Ansible, which meant I got to go back to Red Hat, and also I got to work with Greg, who was FPL before me, many people before me and was my manager, so basically he's been my guinea pig for every job I've taken recently, and when he says it's okay, then I decide that I'll take that job. Yes, I understand it. As soon as you went to work for Ansible, the things started working for Red Hat to buy the company. They were like, oh, yeah, we'll go with that. Absolutely, that's exactly how it went down entirely. So I guess go backwards down the list, Jared. Oh, you're muted. Let's try that again. Hey, everybody. Jared Smith, I was the Fedor project leader before Robin. That's been what, eight years ago, nine years ago? I don't know, it's been a long time now. Had a lot of fun jobs since then, doing lots of open source work and community engagement on a number of different companies. I will pass it off to Paul. So Paul Frieds, I was the Fedor project leader from, I guess about 11 years ago to about 13 and a half years ago or so. I came before Jared, and now I'm the director of emerging operating systems, still at Red Hat, and yeah, really enjoying it. Interestingly enough, my manager is another great Max Spivak recruit, Mike McGrath, and I think he's in the audience. So, and he'll probably talk smack about me and that's fine. It happens all the time I'm used to it now. Well, yeah, hi, everyone. I'm Max, for those of you who don't know me. We got old. How did we get so old when I think how long ago we used to do all of this? It is almost, I was a Fedor project leader for a while. I don't know, five, six, seven, eight, something in there. I don't quite remember. And, and it's been almost a decade, almost exactly a decade since I left Red Hat. And I have spent those 10 years either either running Amazon's Linux organization. And, and as many people know, a lot of what Amazon does is is an erstwhile cousin in the extended Red Hat family, or doing kind of Linux and compute virtualization for Google. So here in Seattle, wonder, and it's wonderful, wonderful, wonderful to see everybody. It's wonderful to see you Max because nobody forgets to do it all the open services. I'm Greg I was FPO briefly 1000 years ago. Yeah, and then I left to do some other stuff and then I ended up running community at Ansible. And then Ansible got bought. So I ended up at Red Hat for a while and then I left to work for Max at Amazon for a little bit because that was fun and I was getting a little bored. And then I decided that I'm really not suited for working anymore. So I stopped with you in my bathroom and But you were once that's what you're saying, right? No, no, maybe I don't know. I just really, really embraced the not fitness for work. Finally, I don't, I don't know how long that was the truth, but it is definitely my truth now. Yeah, he retired for a month that went towards Max. And then said retiring again. I love you Max but this is still work so Greg remember what you told me you said Max the biggest mistake you made was you let me take a month off before I started. That's right. Wow, this is what retirement is like. I'm going to work again. Am I stupid. Michael, you're you're left. Yeah, reverse order. Michael Johnson MKJ. I really got the door project started worked out within red hat what it would mean to build a community distribution. And I left after her Fedora core one went off to do a startup with Eric Trump that one didn't go so well. I went all the way from startup into the very entrenched enterprise and spent some years at SAAS that was interesting helped bring some open source experience and ideas there. And then about just about five years ago I went to work at Pendo and I've been having a lot of fun there too. It's, it's always. I will say it's always a interesting ride working with Eric John. My third time doing that now it's absolutely great. Eric is someone you might recognize from the very beginning of a lot of very old spec files in Fedora Linux. If you look look back at those things you'll see his name. Yep, still it. Well and we've got we've got smooth here on the side as the official Fedora red hat historians so he can fill in all the gaps yeah. Yeah, so we are missing someone. Max, I think you had something. Yeah, I can say a word or two we all as we were all getting excited and thinking about having this panel and sort of a very unique opportunity for a very fun and hopefully vaguely amusing reunion. Christian Gaffin was on the mind of a lot of us a number of us work, work closely with him at different times some folks, some folks maybe never met him. I know folks in the audience also spent. Some people had more more or less interaction with him over the years but Christian was Christian was a second Fedora project leader back in 2004 and 2005 and as Matt mentioned he sadly passed away about two and a half years ago. When I, when I first got to red hat in in 2004 Christian was already already a legend. He'd been the kind of lead engineer for red hat Linux for a number of years and from there he had gone to be. I'll keep me honest here but like founder or kind of original leader of the red hat network organization and and and RHN satellite and and ended up by by coincidence right Christian was the first then of three consecutive fpls Christian to Greg to myself who all came out of the the red hat organization you wouldn't think that that was the arm system for fpls but it but it it ended up it ended up being that way and and you know I didn't really I didn't really ever work that much with Christian directly. We sort of we sort of followed each other around, but but I remember I mentioned the flood Con Raleigh a while back and one of my happiest memories was was at that flood Con Raleigh in 08 or early 09 when a bunch of the old red hat alumni came by I remember Christian pulled, pulled a number of us aside and took us across the street from where we were doing the fun, the flood pub to some other bar and bought us some very expensive whiskey and talked about how he'd been following what had happened with fedora and that he was he was really pleased with what fedora had become and and and I had the great fortune. A few years later to work directly with with Christian for about five years at Amazon, where he was the lead engineer for Amazon Linux and I was I was the the engineering manager for Amazon Linux and one of the best things that ever that ever happened to me was a chance to work that closely with him and and folks will be happy to know that that the legend of Gaffden is alive and well at Amazon as well and people still talk about the arms Gaffden mode settings and and and that and that he and his Linux knowledge and his Linux leadership are quoted chapter in Amazon's Linux engineering meetings to this day. Oh my Christian Christian was from another country how did he learn to speak English. But, but, but anyway, I'm getting a little emotional and I don't want to hijack the session but but he was a wonderful wonderful man and a wonderful engineer and and we just didn't want to do this without acknowledging him and anyone else wants to say something go ahead but I just wanted to say that. Instead of learning English by watching Pulp Fiction over and over whether that is true. I have no way of knowing but that's that's what's claimed and and from his vocabulary one has no reason to doubt that claim. No I remember him saying that he was not. All of the rules enough in school to be allowed to study English in school so he had to pick it up on the side. It was that and documentation for a UCP package. You've got to learn the technology and you're inspired by it that makes sense. I was going to say if like listening to Pulp Fiction a bunch of times didn't do it that certainly would. So we do have some questions here. And the first one is from Robin, which is how could we possibly schedule this session against one that was named beefy miracle we're actually talking about that before you arrive. I don't know how that happened it seems like a horrible tragedy and I'm sorry we'll never let that happen again. Hugs to Mr Gallagher. But a related question here also is what is your favorite fedora codename of all time. Is it beefy miracle for everybody or does someone have a different favorite. Yeah I don't know if that's I don't know if that's even a question. Second favorite could be Zod Zod was pretty good I was going to be my choice. I know there was some wrangling to make Zod be the answer even though it was very hard to get it to come around to that in the actual naming scheme. We got creative didn't we. When there's a well there's a way. And who remembers the intense effort after Zod to name I want to say seven I think Zod was six I didn't do my research but to name seven, nothing so that you claim that nothing can replace Zod. But that failed. Someone asked what are the odds of bringing the code names back the answer is very low because I'll just say legal and we'll leave it at that I can expand some other time. It turns out naming is hard and it turns out, you know, there's a open source project somewhere that's named pretty much every word and non word on the planet at this point and numbers I guess are our fair use. So things that are fun are least likely to be accepted so then you end up with the worst possible names so another favorite was when when Fedora quit using names because it was getting more and more ridiculous and it got rid of having to explain the the naming system so I was a gung ho for just switching to numbers. Call me a heretic. I think I was the last person who actually oversaw names and then I think Matthew you might have been the first person who only had numbers. Yeah, I guess that's true. Yeah, right. I've never had a name. Also, naming your releases after problems is just asking for it. Don't do that. It disappeared, didn't it? The names disappeared after that. Yeah, I guess that's true. Yeah, I guess that's true. Yeah, right. I've never had a name. We didn't need another show. Here's Kat. Hi Zen Bud. Also, naming your releases after problems is just asking for it. The names disappeared after that. So if you could define one moment from your tenure as FPL to defying your time as a leader, what would that moment be for each of you? Oh, that's a deer in the headlights look there, Robin. Sorry, that was too serious all of a sudden. It's not serious. It's just like, ooh. How do you choose? Why do we always have to start with me? What is yours, Matthew? I mean, you're still ongoing. Tell us yours up to this moment. This woman does not count. I know this is a glorious moment for you, but right. Right. Okay, fine. Come back come back to me. Let someone someone's got an answer. Yes. Yeah, so I would say that it was when red hat had bought into the idea of Fedora. And one of the things that helped red hat move in this direction was, you know, separating community from enterprise. What's the value of enterprise value of community. And there had been an idea that 64 bit is enterprise. So we'll just do 32 bit. And Justin Forbes became Fedora 64. And that was, it was a, it brought us a question that red hat wasn't quite prepared for yet. So it was, is this the place where we fold, right? Or is this the place where we lean into what we've done and say the point of this is community, the point of this is to build and make a real community far more than we had ever been able to do with red hat Linux where it was kind of on the side. And I was really pleased to see that the assumption that, well, 64 bit is enterprise when it came from the community that leadership inside red hat was able to say, huh, I guess we were wrong about that and start leaning into it rather than saying, nope, we decided that 64 bit is enterprise and the community doesn't get to play in that playground. So I felt like it was a real defining moment for what was the relationship going to be was red hat going to stand behind this as a true community project, or try to pretend that it was a community project and it came down solidly on top of actually supporting the project as its own real thing and really building a community. So that was that I like it set the set the project on the right road and we're here today talking about it. Okay, I've got mine now. Excellent. All right, so I will say one, well, what was the question my defining moment the thing that change everything I guess it was probably the day when I realized that everybody who had come before me that I talked to about this job who kind of snarkily, chockingly said, you know, smart enough to do the job and take it. And I went to my boss who was the lovely Denise students at that point and I said, that is a bunch of crap. Right. This project has grown from being very small to, you know, basically driving the majority of the revenue for what was now a billion dollar company and we still have one person dealing with this. So as I can do my letter saying me too, I'm like the, you know, X number burnout in a row not burnout but you know just like I need to get back to having a life and like seeing my family and doing something else because I cannot sustain 80 hours a week and the emotional labor of this job. But I hope, in fact, I almost kind of require that you get some help for the next person, Red Hat can afford it. And that was really important to me and it took about a year after I left before they, I mean, they said they were going to and they did eventually made good on it. And lo and behold, how long have you been FPL now like I want to think that those things are big related. It's, it's seven years now and it is directly related. That's actually one of the other questions is how. Birds with one stone but, you know, the rest of us our question for you is exactly how the heck have you managed this right like you're the you're the you're the star of the meeting dude. Thank you. A lot of it is I really had a lot of help and it's I think not not just the thing that Robin set up with the, the, what we call the F cake, which is a unwieldy name we settled the role with because we didn't like the idea of community manager for Fedora because that didn't seem to fit what Fedora is, but we couldn't come up with a better name so Fedora community action and impact coordinator it is. So that like that position has been very helpful and then just a lot of support from Denise and Mike and people in Linux engineering and across the company I really. And I think a lot of that Robin like you you set you set me up for success in all of that support so I really appreciate that and you know from from the community as well. That's, that's been great. Also, I really love it. So that's been sustaining as well. On vacations I see this on Facebook you're like on vacations which is something that. During my time and that like you have someone who can put out fires if you're away that's amazing. Or you know sometimes things are just on fire for a little bit because they're always going to be on fire, right exactly it's the nature of things in Fedora to be lightly on fire. And, you know, I realized somewhere in there that it's okay to sometimes, you know, walk away from some of those things let, let, let, you know, see if see if that one burns itself out and what happens because there always is more work than can possibly be done. So, I, you know, if I I'm never going to carry it all so I can go on vacation sometimes. And, you know, Matthew while you're, while you're talking, I guess in the subject of like continuity and setting future leaders up for success and that's something that I felt very strongly about when Max kind of handed the baton to me. One of the things that changed radically. When I came on board was the first, you know, they had somebody who was not a redhead or yet who was hiring the job. That was, that was me I was the first FPL in that situation. And one of the things that changed that was really radical was that the job moved in internally in red hat to be part of engineering and at the time I was reporting to Tim Burke, who preceded Denise as the head of Linux engineering Denise preceded Mike McGrath who's now my manager as I mentioned, and doing that I think ended up being like a stroke of brilliance and I think it's fair to say here. I think that really kind of has has cemented the relationship between what red hat does internally and what red hat works on in the community and of course the red hat is open source everything we do everything externally in the community. And as far as you know, as far as our source work and when we acquire something we, you know, one of our first things is hey, what are we going to do about our open sourcing this. The fact that Max had had this and had set up for this role to move to engineering. The results of that are over the last, you know, 13 plus years. The word fedora is said, at least once a paragraph in any conversation about any engineering effort that happens, at least in the role department, and it frequently happens elsewhere as well so I mean that that that in the engagement and that I think were really cemented by that moves that's something that was really important. Paul, if I could expand on that for a second that was really awesome to hear you say that but but it also kind of steals, not steals but that gets into what was going to be kind of my answer to. So, I don't even remember the question that that that that posed at this point but I think the fact that the fact it was a it was a big moment for fedora. You know, Michael Michael a minute ago was talking about how, you know, his example of a moment where it was that crew that crucial moment right of was was red hat serious about this or not I think I think hiring the first fedora project leader as an external was another one of those crucial moments and and and and and a really big deal that that sort of double down and and assured the kind of credibility of what red hat was was doing was doing with fedora and and, you know, a lot of credit to Matthew Zulek for that as well, being so immediately recognizing of the importance of something like that and and willing to consider strongly, you know, handing handing over the keys of fedora to someone who was a first time red hat that was there at the same time. Yeah, but I was, I really wasn't, you know, I was just one, I think of several people, right, max who who, you know, for you were kind of critical to, you know, your story of success and fedora. I, you know, I said in the, when we were all chatting kind of before this and thinking about thinking about red hat overall, at least for me. For me, red hat has a very deep and never ending and special and loving place in my heart because my whole career is is exists because of the opportunities I had at red hat but when I when I think back now 10 years later of what I what I actually did as a red hat employee that had that had long lasting value to me the only answer to that question is all you getting hired might getting hired and another person who unfortunately can't be here today set the doll right like those three times when I walked into Matthew's office and said you just need to hire these people and I don't want any crap about it like I don't want any bureaucracy just do it. The answer every single time was yes, instantaneously. Think about the think about the resounding outsized impact of that a decade later right. When we, you know, my whole job was to find people in the community who were who wanted to do things and just say yes do those things you have, you have red hats permission to do those things even though at the time. I was giving that permission before I was officially fbl I was in literally no position to give that permission. And I gave that permission anyway because what were they going to do fire me go ahead it was better that they fire me. Then then we default on the promise that we were making about fedora being a community distribution and not following through on that promise was just not a not not a thing so you know so you know I just started, you know, for me the pivotal moment was when so I, I left red hat network for for for reasons. I was just like I don't want to do this job anymore. Actually no I'll be specific. The reason I didn't want to do the red hat network job anymore was because this tool called yum was kicking our ass and eating weight our value proposition and yum was written by this guy named Seth the doll. Like if there's one guy who can write this tool that gives this big chunk of our company such headaches trying to figure out how to how to how to make our product work. Then maybe I need to understand the open source model better. Right so I decided hey I'm going to go be the community guy. And there was a fellow Jeremy Hogan who had just left and there was a new community. There was the his community position was available so I decided I wanted to do that and see what it was like. And I got that gig and then at the time there was a thing called red hat magazine, which is, you know, has evolved many times and has essentially become open source calm now it's this great grandfather of that. I was going to write a red hat magazine article on the great success that Fedora was. And the first person I talked to was Seth the doll to say hey tell us some good things about all the stuff that's going on Fedora. He was like you don't want me to do that. I'm like, really? Why I don't understand I thought that Fedora was a smashing success. And he says, well, and you know, and Seth and I sat down over coffee or something and he gave me a very clear picture of all of the things that were not in his opinion a success. And mostly it was red hat standing in the way. And I think, you know, those of us who have been around long enough. I don't know if this is past more fully into Fedora legend but the, the fake IRC chat from icon reobtsev that described the picture of projects on the outside world. Anyone who is attending this session should read that for an underage. We're just pulling up the link right now I am 100. You know, and it was, and it was a perfect exam. It just showed an organization that that was saying a lot of the right things and had a lot of the good intentions, but did not as an organization understand what it was that we were trying to do really. You know, and I think sort of the engineers had the idea that what we wanted was a better Debian than Debian. Right. And so a lot of what I did in those early days was just look at what other projects that we're doing that we're doing real like we're being real open source projects and saying, can we do this can we do that can we do this. Can we have a Fedora documentation team, you know, who in the community is doing things. Well let's just create a mailing list and say to those people okay you have permission to do the thing. And for my tenure, which was I think less than a year officially because at some point. At some point Matthew Zulik came up to me while I was standing at the urinal in the men's room. And he said to me so looks like you're doing a whole bunch of Fedora stuff while I'm trying to do other stuff and I'm like, yeah. Well maybe you should just be doing that now. And I said, okay. And then he said, it's a big responsibility. Don't step on your Schwanz. And then he left. And that is how I became the Fedora project leader. He told me the same thing one time Greg not in the bathroom though but but I asked him for feedback on something and he said Max just do what you think is right and I'll tell you if you step on your Schwanz. I'm glad that was a go to phrase for him it was certainly effective in my context. I'm so glad that I had to run into him in a restroom. Right. So, a question from Mike McGrath, who might say something like that to somebody is, what is your favorite someone in red hat has an idea for Fedora that was absolutely bonkers. I've got one. I think I had been Fedora project leader for maybe two weeks or three weeks, and somebody came to me and it says we're going to we're going to we're going to pivot Fedora and we want Fedora to be all about online video and we're going to be the biggest rival to YouTube there is. Okay. You might win with that one. Hi opening to me. Spoiler that did not happen. That did not happen. I can't beat that Mike, Mike should paste what his answer to that question would be in the chat. Yeah, I'd like to get get Mike's idea on that. Who remembers, by the way, talking about things that that could have, could have, you know, maybe slightly or too early for their own good who remembers mugshot. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean that was like a social networking meme sharing thing way before it's time. Maybe not really the market red hat should have been going into so that was possibly a fortunate failure in one sense but definitely a before it's time idea. Yeah, I remember being at the second red hat summit in Nashville. Yes, finding mugshot and just being like all over and you know just pasting status is constantly during that conference wasn't pretty crying to be basically a social network aggregator. It was like it was trying to glue together like your various experiences. Yes, but you had to be running a Linux desktop to use it. What could go wrong. Yeah, well, there are people out there missing mugshot still did one away from from mugshot. I was like, I was like there was a thing with the number but I don't remember what that number was. Oh, I guess we know how that went. I'm amazed that nobody has come up with the that nobody has come up with that famous fedora IRC link yet. It was just posted. Oh, super. Okay. Yeah. Oh, there it is. Thank you, Smooch. I knew he can. Oh my God, Jack is here. Yeah. For the bonkers thing I can think of several but they mostly involve imagining that fedora is a Directable resource that can just do something that you know red hat would like fedora to fill that red hats not interested in doing like, you know, without any resourcing or anything for that idea. And I like, you know, red hat should be the number one Linux at universities. That's great. I agree. We definitely should be and I think that, you know, we've got on, you know, on the ground students who are interested in making that happen. But we're not going to become the number one anything anywhere without a sustained effort to do that and just like you should go do that from red hat is always been frustrating. It doesn't work that way. It's the opposite of what Greg was saying, the way things work. It's, you know, empowering people to do the things that they want to do and want to work on rather than telling people what to do. I think that's. This is definitely the lower part of being FPL, right? That particular lore is the lore of the magic wand, right? That it does not exist as a constant frustration but also reality. All right, so let me ask this question. If you did have a magic wand, what would you change about the Fedora project? Like what's one thing you would magic wand to be different? Well you're the current FPL none of the rest of us have been doing that job for a while. I mean I'd like to say that I pay attention to every little bitty detail about Fedora these days but I would say the one thing I would change was that it would be a foundation, except we tried that and we had to put a bullet in it. So I guess that's not the answer. Matthew, show us the stamp. I went to look for it. I'm not quite sure where it is right now. It's in a box, but I don't know where it is. We call it the football. I know the football is within 50 feet of me. I just don't know which box it's in and there's a lot of boxes. We made those stamps on Vista print and we brought them to all the Fedora board members as they just said approved, right? It was just the rubber stamp to It says Fedora board approved. As an extra entity, yes, exactly. I wanted to show you yourself with the stamp on it. I can come up with one thing that I would what it's related to one of my regrets. And that was that when Eric and I and Matt Wilson went off and started our path. We built a lot of automation around building packages. And I know that most things were just changed the version number and we had this really rich policy system where you can prove the fact that you can easily apply exceptions may just reduce the effort of building software. And one of the things I regret is that that ended up crashing and burning and not being able. Ultimately, some of those ideas influenced software packaging, I think. I think we lost a lot of opportunity to make the work of packaging software be a little bit higher level work. And if I have a regret it's that I didn't find a way when our path crash and burned to bring that bring some of those ideas and practices to Fedora in a way that would have helped Fedora out. Yeah, I think we could still use that particular magic wand. We've got some some things idea called source get, which is a little bit automating things into this get that are kind of like that. I think magic wanting that, you know, two years forward in the way where it is from right now would be would be something I do. I think I if I could magic want something in though I think a infinitely funded docs team would be where I would would go with with my magic because there's just so much use for that for everybody for users and for contributors and just all around keeping everything up to date and maintained. I don't know that I would you know every time you you know use a magic wand it's always at the expense of, you know, it's like the one thing changes in the universe and you know supposed to unfold actually unfolds in a completely. Right. Like, I don't know that I would change. I said a magic wand, not a monkey's paw, nor is still, you know, in a world where like, you know, rather than there being like 20 sizable open source projects to choose like I'm actually going to pick a project and go and do it like there's there's literally hundreds of thousands of like, you know, and you know, millions of you know crap repository but there are a significant number of places where you can invest your time. Most people, you know, they drive on by there's never really like this, the center of gravity or the sense of belonging that that sort of pulls you in and makes you want to continue to be with those people right that is the kind of thing that makes us all show up here like, I don't know what we're talking about like I guess they're just going to let us all talk, and we're going to all get to see each other and we're going to get to see our friends and, and I still care about all those people like, you know, I care about all of you guys and, you know, you don't get that in a lot of projects these days it's just you know, it's the hip new thing. Maybe I'll take my PR maybe not, but not every project has this, you know, family family field like the door does. Oh, yeah. Okay. Sorry. No, that's no sorry that's great. It's true. I'm staring at the face of some of my best friends in the world, like, all because of Fedora. Don't stare. You know we've talked a lot about the technical side of Fedora but I think it's as much the community that we've built around it is the important thing and the technical bits yeah they're, they're cool but they're not as important as is the community that we've built. AI robots take over the world we'll have a mailing list and wall still be here for each other. The robots turn it off. We are, we are at there. Yes, that is for friends. Yeah. One thing I want to talk about a little bit of the core and extras merge talking about Fedora lore kind of things that was a big thing that I think both Max and Greg worked on a lot like. How did that come about like that that was a big that was a big change and what was like what instigated that and how did you make how did you make that happen. Greg deserves Greg deserves to start this one. Can you tell the story for different projects Greg. Yeah. You know, we started Fedora extras. Well there's the there's the whole Fedora us thing and there is, you know, but fundamentally we had to figure out how we were going to empower our community to build anything at all. And so here's it. And this, this ties back into a couple of things. When I was hired at Red Hat I was hired as an engineering manager working underneath Gaffton. And when Gaffton interviewed me. You know we had a good interview and I'm like well I hope I get this job because Red Hat would be amazing and then he asked if I had any questions for him and I asked him what kept him up at night. And he leaned back and he said that our repositories get rooted and we send bad software to all of our customers. Right. And that was his constant concern for years and he was right to have that concern. So when it came time to come up with a build system, that was the perspective that Gaffton brought, and he was very careful about what he wanted to see and how he wanted to see that work. The problem of course is that the horse was already out of the barn in a lot of ways and people were already building packages that may or may not have been any good. And when I had that conversation with Seth the doll, the biggest thing that he impressed upon me was we need a build system. We need a build system that the community can have access to and we need to get moving and you know and we've been waiting for a year for this build system and we don't have anything. So I said well you're building packages right and he said yes, and I said well I guess build system now. So you know he and and and Elliot who we haven't talked about much but he was huge in those early days as well. They were just, you know, cranking out packages, and over time we ended up with a build system that came largely from the community that ended up being the incumbent because everyone was building with it and you know and and so that's kind of how it started right and then and then we realized that the community needed rules for how packages should look. The Red Hat didn't have those rules because package building at Red Hat was tribal knowledge. There were no clear thou shaltz and thou shalt nots. Right. There were a bunch of different places that you could, you know, pick up knowledge on how to build packages. And one of the earliest works of the fedora extras steering committee which then became the fedora engineering steering committee was to come up with those rules and to figure out how the community could build packages together that had some sort of bar of quality, some kind of standards. And then we discovered that frequently those packages that were being built in extras were as good or better than than Red Hat packages because those standards. The standards that we were adhering to and people in the community were rightly asking, why is it that there are these packages that are being built by Red Hatters that don't meet the basic standards that we hold to in the community. And that process sort of drawn out over many years was what led to ultimately the merging of those two entities. Right. Sort of how innovation starts at the edges because of need. And then if that innovation is powerful enough it sort of drives to replace the incumbent. And that went for versus extras, I guess it sounds like. Yeah, that was where I was hoping Max was going to pick up the story because I think someone even asked about this in the chat about what happened to core. Well, I, you know, the whole thing after that was not just not just unifying standards and practices but then it was breaking down the final barrier of people will remember the, the, the drums oh the Well, who actually is allowed to maintain different packages and you have to have, you know, certain, you know, certain credentials or a paycheck from a certain person in order to work on certain packages and and and blowing blowing all of that kind of bias and and and baggage up was was kind of the next way which also which also led. It was also part of the idea of it wasn't just it wasn't just coji but it was also what was it composed to a punchy or whatever right and the idea being that the idea being that that we wanted a commons of packages and to give as much freedom as possible to anyone to be able to assemble those into whatever set they wanted from which spins was born. People people came around sometime the same way if we finally figured out how to build packages for fedora why can't we build some of the packages that are missing from rel. So much so much innovation, as well as kind of opportunity and growth of the community which was I think for all of us always success the success metric we looked at all traces its roots back to that initial thing that Greg described of kind of breaking down the the core and extras mentality which had outlived any usefulness that may or may not have had. Yeah, to me, I think that's the reason I bring it up is I think that's a defining moment in fedora success as a project. I think it's like that that that merge. I guess there's been a progression of things over the years that have made fedora successful and to me as especially someone who was in the project from outside of red hat like that that was fundamental to it being a real open source community project. And I think that also was sort of the turning point of, you know, when it used to be like, I'm going to go work over here on product stuff for like four months and I'm going to literally just ignore everyone and then, you know, oh I'm back it's time and everyone's like we've been waiting for you to like let me have permission to do something to, you know, employees actually just participating in those, you know, in the community and in the, you know, community sub communities on, you know, like a regular basis like we work upstream like not some time when we're not working on this other thing but like it sort of streamlined all of, you know, red hats, you know, how we make the sausage here I guess is the only phrase I can come up with. Speaking of sausages, I wonder how the other side is going. I knew Max was going to go there. I'm sure if we. Okay, so we've got about 10 minutes left here. I'm going to take advantage and say, ask, what advice do you have for me that I that I could, I could hear from you at this point or if you don't want to make it to personal like for the Fedora project going forward like things, things that you see going on you just want to be busy body about or just suggestions or whatever. So I got no advice for you. Have you committed any wisdom in the meantime, not FPL advice just whatever. Thank you, Robin. I've got one. And it's one that I believe. Well so when I was going to eventually be whatever. Jeremy's FPL and then it was like, someone's good someone and Greg came he's like you're gonna be the next FPL I was like, No, I'm not like just, just shut up like don't say that and I'm pretty sure it's probably, I think we said that to you Matthew and I'm pretty sure he may have also con Paul that way. So, get Greg to find the next FPL for me is that what you're saying. So I think that the point I was trying to make was, you know, like from day one, you should always start thinking about like, you know, who's after me, not not because you know, you can get eaten by a raptor at any, you know, God given moment, but, you know, it's part of the you know, how you also constantly remember to, you know, grow and nurture new leadership. And I find people and making sure that they're, you know, like the succession path I guess, if nothing else. And I will still tell you Matthew, you should always think about who might be next because one day you might decide to just table flip and like screw this I'm going home. One of my greatest hopes is that that fedora would serve as a place where we would find the next generation of leaders from outside of the company and use fedora as the mechanism to identify that talent and bring that talent inside of the community. It's one of the reasons that from very early days, I tried so hard to put real responsibility, not pretend responsibility, but real responsibility into the hands of volunteers with with as much support as red hat could reasonably give but make sure that people in the community were empowered. And the people who came out of that community are here right Paul came out of that community, Mike McGrath came out of that community I remember when he was at Orbit's, and I remember that chilly session interview with some waitress interactions that I won't go into now but it was a memorable lunch. And this is, you know, and fedora has traditionally from my perspective been successful in identifying those leaders and and and bringing them in to become leaders of red hat in the open source world. And my advice to you would be make sure you never forget that and make sure that a significant part of your emphasis on it as your job. Thank you. Okay, so for final thing. Let's have some fun things there's been a lot of questions here but I'm picking I'm picking this one. What was the most fun moment you can remember off the top of your head about being the fbl. I can give you one and so I remember getting changing it so let me step back a second so I came to red hat and to the fbl job after a long career elsewhere. I worked for a public service for the US government and official passport etc and I'll never forget going with Max to basically pick up on a very quick basis, my regular. Plain old vanilla citizen passport just like you know every other, you know, Joe out there, and picking that up for the purpose of really quickly you know we were going to turn and go to the flood con that was being held in Berlin and I think at the last I think I discovered like, Oh, crap, I don't have a passport we need to get this handled. And so we got that handled. And, you know, very quickly I think just within a few days, you know, we were on a flight out to Berlin, and seeing the, the fun and the passion in a fedora in a completely I had never been to Germany before at that point. And, you know, being outside the US for, you know, purposes of fedora was very novel to me at that point like I traveled but never, you know, for open source purposes, and just seeing the passion that people had there was really cool. Got to meet a whole bunch of whole bunch of people where you know I still I'm still generally in contact with those folks today. And I just remember that as being a really, really fun trip. I'm going to say it was when Leonard introduced the idea of system D. Good times. No, I recall now like, you know, despite the fact that it's very, very, very, very cold, at least every time I go like going to Fosdham and seeing everybody there and being like, Oh my God, like a week with my European crew and, you know, fighting your way to the, you know, especially when you're like, excuse me, can we part ways so that I can please get a beer at Delirium. And then, you know, stand in the corner just, you know, being mad or being happy or, you know, hearing people's stories and, you know, meeting new people like people you never would have expected to have met and, you know, them just being like, all these things and how fired up you know, just certain items. I remember someone came up to me and they're like, they worked at Blizzard, they used Fedora, and they were just really mad that like they couldn't get like, I don't even remember what it was like they were mad that Rell and the cloud weren't really pals or something like that. And, oh, I remember it was it, they didn't have, or the cloud image had cups in it. And like, I think I was on a rampage about that for like, I don't know, four years and I think at some point, nodding eventually sorted out, you know, the comps situation for that but, you know, it was just, you know, those little stories sometimes just, you know, burn in your soul until you really want to convince somebody to fix it for you because I can't fix it myself. Robin, I like that's your idea of a fun time you had in Fedora was being angry at something. That's on brand. It is on brand. My answer to favorite memory was supposed to be post FPL but still red hat was supposed to be organizing the wiener roast at Southeast Linux fast in honor beefy miracle winning. And, and, and that that that remains to this day. The only time I tried to exert influence over the community and failed to get what I wanted. Let that be a lesson to you. I've got the artwork in the desktop from the community but I couldn't get a damn release name. Well, we did get it and then we did find, you know, a whole hot dog, you know, come out. Yeah, but that was later. Yeah. He dropped the van there though that time I think. Yes. We've seen the new beefy cartoon things the design team is coming up with there's we're going to see more beefy miracle in the future in fedora. I don't know that we need to. Young talent. That's all I'll say. Second generation talent. Legacy. She's my daughter's watching she is mortified right now that. I had Matt I had one one small comment I wanted to get in before that before the clock. Yeah, absolutely. Which is which is that I imagine the fedora community has some general idea of this but but I don't know if people realize it so strongly which is that I am convinced that if you look at the entire sphere of influence that that starts with the fedora upstream right. The fedora is the is the is the tip of what has to be the largest Linux install base on the planet by a mile and and and the the gravity of that both from a positive way and the responsibility of it and the opportunity of that continues to be for me. I think the most impressive, the most impressive and magical thing about the about the fedora community and and thought that was worth saying. Absolutely. And you know it's it's not just those people here but a lot of you are instrumental in making that happen making it happen that that thing there is a community led community directed project which is amazing. And of course, of course the community ourselves made that happen as well but it needed it needed some guidance and pushing and yelling at people at Red Hat and things to make it really happen. And so thanks to all of you for doing that. And I want to say thank God, I was gonna say I want to say thanks to everyone of you. As the founding fedora project leader for carrying this torch forward, and you're the reason that my kids now run fedora and manage their fedora systems themselves. It's that's generational. Thank you. That's amazing. Yeah, thanks everybody for coming here. I hope we can do this again in the future. I maybe I have a dream of doing this in person. Wouldn't that be awesome. That's right, Greg, you're in charge of organizing this. I don't think you understand what retired me. I'm tired all over again. I've got I've got anything I want to do, but not bad to do. All right, fair. Well, I've got I've got more talks to go off to here. There's a lot more of this conference to go. Again, thank you everybody. It's been a blast. Love you all so much. Thanks for putting this together, Matthew. Thanks. More hands. Great.