16 Jan 2023: Apache Software Foundation, Pagure -> GitLab, A11y in Fedora

Howdy folks! The Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion team met today for our first meeting of the year. We had a full meeting with @ekidney, @csutherl, and @amsharma!

Here is a quick recap of the three main topics we had time to discuss:

Apache Software Foundation (ASF)

@csutherl shared this link as an announcement, but it ended up sparking a lively discussion about Indigenous communities in FOSS, and also how this relates to Fedora:

Coty gave context behind this discussion, why it is happening, and what the community reaction is. We thought about how Fedora could use our voice as a force for good in this conversation. Just like the Free Software Foundation conversation a year or two back, this is something very close to Fedora because we are one of the largest downstream distributors of software licensed under the Apache Software Foundation. Should the ASF change their name, this would have an impact on Fedora because it would create a lot of work for us to change names, labels, and license names across the entire project.

So, we thought that one option for us would be to voice our support for Indigenous communities in seeking a resolution with the ASF, and also offer Fedoraā€™s support as a downstream community in making a name change possible. Instead of a name change being perceived as friction, we could use our voice as collaborators and as partners for making a name change possible, should this be the final outcome of a decision. I really liked this approach for being a better ally.

@csutherl is also looking into this at Red Hat and will keep us informed about how things progress there. He will also open a ticket for the DEI team GitLab (below) to track this, and possibly make a request to the Fedora Council for making a statement if it makes sense:

Pagure ā†’ GitLab

We got our meeting attendees plugged into the DEI Team on GitLab. In addition, I shared an update about the work that @amsharma is leading on migrating our Pagure tickets to GitLab. Right now, our approach is to split our Pagure tickets into one of two places:

  1. A ā€œHomeā€ repo: For tickets about day-to-day work for our team. This is what will guide our meeting agendas and discussions.
  2. An ā€œInitiativesā€ repo: For longer-term initiatives and epics that span one or more Fedora releases. We will likely tie this to a metric like trying to complete 1-2 initiatives every year, or perhaps one initiative every Fedora release. This will take shape as we get used to the new tools!

A11y in Fedora

We gave @ekidney the floor to focus on how to get the Accessibility (A11y) work in Fedora spun out. We reviewed the notes last month from @siddharthvipul1, @bogomil, and @sarah-thornton about picking up from their discussion.

To start making space for Accessibility in Fedora, we mapped out four key tasks to make the space:

  1. Asynchronous discussion: A Fedora Discussion tag. Should we use dei or create a new, dedicated tag like #a11y? If we choose a new tag, we should be mindful of the pending migration of Ask Fedora and user support questions that will be on the site.
  2. Synchronous discussion: A Fedora Chat room on Matrix. Should we use the DEI Team room or create a new, dedicated room?
  3. Tickets & task tracking: There are already several GitLab repos in the Fedora namespace. We agreed it made sense to fold these under the DEI sub-team on GitLab, and to only have one A11y-related repo under the DEI space. We agreed to move the Issues repository to the DEI sub-team, then to rename it to a more general name.
  4. Documentation: I think this should be a sub-component / module of the DEI Team docs. But it could also be independent. This probably needs more discussion once the first three items are solidified.

2023 will be the year we get this going proper. It has been a long while, so letā€™s make the space! :100:

Until next time!

So, I am also planning to launch a new Whenisgood poll for us to find new meeting times that work better for our team. Iā€™ve heard feedback from many folks that our current times are a bit dated and that we should revisit. So keep an eye out for this!

In the meantime though, our next scheduled meeting is on Monday, 30 January at 18:00 UTC. Your browser says that will be 2023-01-30T18:00:00Z for you! Letā€™s aim for this one for now, and then find a new meeting time after the FOSDEM conference happens in February.

Thanks all for the lively discussion today! Feel free to keep it going here.

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Ah, shoot. I missed the meeting. What is the best way to get notified for it?

In the meantime, I opened a ticket to ask Fedora Infrastructure / red-hat-cpe for help in absorbing the Accessibility-related repos on GitLab:

https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/issue/11086

Good question. I think they are plugged into Fedocal but we probably need to get that checked out. I have a Google Calendar invite that I use, but this will only be valid until our next meeting on Monday, 30 January. You can also keep up with us in our Matrix room, #dei:fedora.im.

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