Notes on the Fedora board election

The Fedora Project recently held an election to fill four seats on its governing board. This is the first vote to happen since Red Hat decided to let the community elect the majority of the board's members. The results of this vote surprised the Fedora community in a couple of ways, leading to an extended discussion on how this community should be governing itself - and whether it can do that at all.

In the end, Tom Callaway, Jesse Keating, and Seth Vidal were elected to the board for two release cycles, and Jef Spaleta for one cycle. The fifth elected seat is currently held by Matt Domsch; three of the appointed seats are currently held by Bill Nottingham, Karsten Wade, and Harald Hoyer. Red Hat has not yet announced who will be put into the fourth appointed seat. The newly-elected members are all well-known Fedora contributors who have done a lot for the project. So why are there questions? It comes down to two points:

• Three of the four representatives elected to the board are employed by Red Hat. So, while Red Hat has given up its ability to directly appoint the majority of the board, that board will still be dominated by Red Hat employees.

• Of the 4069 Fedora community members who were entitled to vote in this election, only 250 actually turned in ballots. A 6% turnout strikes many as being somewhat lower than one would expect from a fully-engaged community.

Though nobody said so directly, some people apparently suspected that Red Hat employees voted in rather larger numbers than anybody else, and that they duly elected some of their own to fill the board seats. The truth of the matter is probably not so simple; what we are seeing is a middle stage in the Fedora Project's ongoing effort to become a more open, community-oriented effort.

A few possible reasons for the low turnout were put forward. One had to do with how the election was conducted. The self-nomination process evidently does not sit well with some people, who would rather see candidates nominated by their peers. The range voting mechanism used by the project seems complex and intimidating - though it still seems simple compared to the Condorcet scheme employed by Debian. There were also some complaints that the election was not run in a sufficiently high-profile manner, to the point that many community members might not have known that an election was underway at all.

Greg DeKoenigsberg put forward a different hypothesis to explain why so few people voted:

In this point of view, everybody is so happy that there's no need to get involved in the process. There is a contrary point of view which is also worth considering, though:

By this line of reasoning, instead of everybody being happy, the community is in despair and sees no point in participating in a process which seems unlikely to change anything.

The truth of the matter is almost certainly somewhere in between. The Fedora project has clearly opened considerably in recent years, to the point that it is one of the most transparent and active distributions out there. The community contributes a lot of work and certainly participates in discussions about the future of the project. But Red Hat still holds considerable sway; the fact that it employs a great number of Fedora developers is, by itself, enough to ensure that.

Red Hat's large presence is also enough to explain the large number of Red Hat employees elected to the board. Those are the people who have the luxury of working on Fedora full time; it is not surprising that they tend to be the most prominent developers in the community. Additionally, there is a certain tendency for outsiders who become strong community members to eventually become Red Hat employees as well. Red Hat has been increasing its investment in Fedora and hiring a number of people to work on it; the fact that they would be inclined to hire people who are already doing good work with Fedora should not be surprising.

So when Fedora developers look at a ballot and think about the names found there, chances are good that they will vote for the people they have seen working hard and accomplishing things within the community. And those people, at this point, are likely to be Red Hat employees. Until a time comes when other companies find it worthwhile to pay full-time Fedora developers, this situation is not likely to change much.

The free software community is full of examples of company-dominated projects. The bulk of these projects are subject to a high degree of control by the sponsoring company. That is natural; these companies have specific needs which they expect their development projects to meet. Making such projects truly open can be hard. Red Hat has gone farther than many in its efforts to make Fedora open, even if said efforts have come later than some would like.

Hopefully Red Hat will continue to follow that path, but, to a great extent, the next steps have to be taken by others. When the investment into Fedora from outsiders exceeds Red Hat's investment, Red Hat will be less of a dominant force. Until then, efforts to increase the number of people voting board elections - while being worthwhile and welcome - are unlikely to significantly change the results of those elections.

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"The fifth elected seat is currently held by Matt Domsch"

See? When good people are paid to work full-time on Linux, and have their employer supply them
with material means, it's pretty difficult for part-time hobbyists to compare. It does not
matter if the employer is named Red Hat or Dell.

The only reason I'd see for someone else to get elected nowadays would be for one of the
employers in question to make obvious unfriendly moves, having the community react.

The total absence of some other companies that sell Fedora derivatives (Oxxxxe…) says volumes
about their real commitment to the system.

Very few successful free software projects are run based on democracy and voting.  The world
is a better place for having Debian, but we don't need another.  A benevolent dictator or
oligarchy seems to work better, provided it's run by people with good taste and commitment to
the project.

Most people don't bother to vote in these elections because if you're unhappy with a Linux
distribution progress you vote with your feet and move to another.  It's good to have them
(what other method could be used to appoint board members?) but low turnout is not a bad sign.

We also use Condorcet in Gentoo and it's worked very well.  It's nice to be able to express
things like, say, 'i like these four guys and don't really have a preference about the rest,
except for that one bozo who i really don't want elected'.

a
b
c
d
efghi
j

And if you have no preference, simply say so by putting all the nominees on the same line.

I didn't get involved (if indeed I was eligible) simply because I don't care.  Sure, I saw
some mention of it on LWN, and I saw Spot announcing his candidacy. But my interaction with
the board on a day to day basis is precisely zero, so the makeup of that board is pretty much
irrelevant to me. Do I think any of the candidates are going to make a noticable difference to
the distribution compared to their opponents? No. So there's no incentive for me to get
involved. Sure, the distribution has its problems, like all distributions do. But overall, the
Fedora project is churning out regular high quality releases, and will no doubt continue to do
so.

That said, had I noticed that Matt Domsch was standing, I'd have voted for him. But he was
elected without my vote anyway, so it all worked out in the end :-)

The election process is a sign that the distribution is opening up to more community
involvement, which is good, but much like with Debian and local politics, the public in
general just aren't bothered. The low turnout here doesn't bother me in the slightest. Ask
yourself this: can you point to a DPL and say "yes, their tenure was much better than the
slacker we had before -- the distribution's in much better shape because of their leadership"?
I can't, and barring major upheaval, the same will apply to Fedora.

While you might not be able to point out any DPL as significant better, I can certainly cite
Max Spevack as a good FPL (Fedora Project Leader) who has significantly improved Fedora
visibility and brought on changes that has been key to the continuing success of Fedora. 

A lot of people weren't even aware Fedora Project had a single leader before

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FPL

This isn't a single person's achievement obviously and the community on the whole including
Red Hat has been responsible for the changes too. 

There is also something I've heard called "rational ignorance". The bottom line is that people
don't spend a lot of time informing themselves about candidates because the chance that their
vote will change the outcome of the election is very small. Therefore it simply isn't worth
the effort to become informed and cast an informed vote, and if you don't know what you're
voting for then it's not worth voting. This is often used to explain the relatively low
turnout in US political elections.