Fedora Mindshare Committee

Fedora Mindshare Committee takes care of some responsibilities held by other teams, adding some more strategical responsibilities to make sure communication and sharing of ideas, actions and projects can be guaranteed. We track ongoing work through Issues. This ongoing work includes the following:

Many basic decisions are made through a process known as "lazy approval", in which general consent is assumed unless valid objections are raised within a period of time — generally three to seven days, although the timeframe should be stated each time and should be proportionate to the impact of the action. This process is used for decisions with short-term consequences and which can be easily reversed. Any project member can ask for the deadline to be extended or the decision escalated to require full consensus.

More significant decisions are made through a process of full consensus. In order to pass, these decisions need three positive votes (+3) and no negative votes (-1). A negative vote immediately halts the process and requires discussion. Therefore, in order to remain valid, negative votes must be supported with a specific concerns about the proposal, and suggestions for what could be changed in order to make the proposal acceptable. A vote of "0" is sometimes used to indicate a disagreement but willingness to stand aside; this should also be accompanied with an explanation.

This model matches Fedora’s "Friends" foundation, which calls for finding acceptable consensus to serve the interests of advancing free software. It works because we work together in a community of mutual respect even when we disagree.

In general, Fedora Mindshare Committee conducts business in public discussion, and any Fedora project member can add more opinions and thoughts. It is the duty of the Fedora Mindshare Committee to take concerns raised in this way into serious consideration, but only Fedora Mindshare Committee members' votes are binding in the final tally.

The Fedora Mindshare Committee uses the following communication platforms:

The Discourse forum is best for asynchronous communication. This means it is best for questions or topics that someone may respond to later. It is better for longer, threaded discussions.

The Fedora Mindshare Committee Matrix room is best for synchronous communication. This means it is best for quick feedback, like a conversation. It is helpful for real-time discussions or getting someone’s attention more quickly. For convenience, the Matrix room is also bridged to an IRC channel on the LiberaChat network:

The Fedora Mindshare Committee operates in a ticket-based workflow. Our open tickets are in our GitLab repository. New tasks are added as "issues" into GitLab.

This is a public issue tracker. If you have a privacy- or security-sensitive issue, check the This issue is confidential box when creating the issue.

The Fedora Mindshare Committee holds regular text-based meetings in a Matrix room to discuss current issues, clear through anything outstanding which can be quickly resolved, and ensure that nothing important is left in limbo. The meeting format is intended to be quick updates and long discussion. It is a good opportunity to check in with other members of the team in real-time and understand what is going on in their area, while allowing anyone in the public to observe how the Fedora Mindshare Committee operate.

Find our next meeting on our calendar!

The meeting minutes are published automatically on Fedora Meetbot Logs.

Fedora Mindshare Committee has appointed and elected members, and initially there will be 9 seats:

Note: The minimum of elected representatives is two. Three representatives are elected when the number of seats would otherwise be even.