Compliance questions about meetups

Project Discussion
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I wanted to inform you that, unfortunately, I will not be able to support the London meetup scheduled for October 2024. I realized I’d been spreading myself too thin in recent tasks I self-assigned in the Fedora Project. I cannot help organize meetup as I had hoped.

I appreciate all the hard work Chris and Ankur have put into organizing the event in 2024.

If my situation (and Fedora event budget) gets improved in 2025, I’ll be supporting the organization of event.

If there’s any way I can assist in the future, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

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Hi Hank! Thank you so much for all the work you have put into this in the past! There is no need to be sorry or so, I really appreciate that you made clear from the beginning of the “3rd project” that you currently have to prioritize other things, that was very comradely. I hope you can get done what you have on your to do list, and don’t overwork yourself. This community already owes you much :wink:

Nevertheless, maybe when things change a little till October, it would be nice to see you on the event. In any case, you have been a major facilitator of all that!

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Although I don’t actively partipate in the organization of meetup for the rest of the year, as an initiator of London meetup, I expect organizers of meetup to be aware when they are conflicted due to employment or other research projects they are involved in or affiliated with, they should ask for a second opinion from the Fedora Council. Pinging @mattdm @jflory7

Perceived conflicts of interest are important to address; as organizers, to ensure that decision making is
tenable even though they could unequivocally be unpopular or favorable to the interests of one group over another.

The discussion topics/presentations relating to one’s research project may be seen to be self-interested.

I don’t see if they are related to the interest of the Fedora Community.

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@hankuoffroad like everyone, you are free to read the chat and contribute. But please stop reading its content and then, without raising a discussion with us, posting here comments that indicate we are not able to fund our plans or that we conflict with the interests of Fedora.

If you have concerns, raise them at the place where we discuss it. If you then still think that we cause harm to Fedora, use more discrete means but posting such things here in public without a clear context. You can write a PM to @jflory7 or @mattdm or so, or contact the Council by other means if you think that is necessary. But for the beginning, in cases of a doubt, assume always that people do act in the best interest of Fedora and until there is a consensus that this is not the case, try to avoid means that undermine other people’s work and efforts.

Just writing such posts that look random to the public who follows here and that indicate we do something wrong or are not able to get our job done is not a nice behavior. It is not constructive as well, as it is unclear what you mean, especially in your recent post.

About your points:

You earlier raised the point that we have not sufficient funding for our plans: we get a room at the University College London (< 25 people), a perfect location in the middle of central London, well connected to all major terminals. You cannot have a better venue. This is everything we need. May it be with or without a 100 GBP sponsoring for snacks, we have what we need.

You now raise concerns that we create a conflict of interest of Fedora. Well, I am not sure if you mean my offer to do a presentation about my research that is partly about the role of Open Source and how to integrate it (and which I already offered here some weeks ago), or if it is about Patrick’s offer to present the goals of Gecko, which is by the way a registered Not-For-Profit in UK that has risen from OpenSuSE, is headed by one of its board members and supports and promotes Open Source communities and events: I do not see how any of the two topics poses a conflict of interest for Fedora. We did already events together with OpenSuSE in Germany, whereas Gecko is afaik intended to be independent of and not limited to OpenSuSE. The goal is to improve all communities and their activates. That’s in the interest of Fedora.

However, keep in mind that Open Source is much about presenting own’s work at conferences and such, not just at meetups. This is what we do and how we exchange ideas.

Also, keep in mind that it is not yet clear if we do a presentation at all, maybe we just create a rough agenda so that participants know what they are up against and have something that makes people talk.

Finally, we never affiliated Gecko or our private work officially with Fedora. I would be happy if Fedora supports my research officially though, but so far, I am just a Fedorian who offers to present his research. The same for Patrick. By the way, I already put forward 3 days ago the idea to discuss replacing the presentations by the rough agenda at all. Why did you not support that in the chat and made your point why that is better in your opinion? You didn’t raise anything about a conflict of interest.

This is intended as a meetup to collaborate and to exchange, to foster Open Source and to create and exchange knowledge, but also to have fun. It was initiated by people from Fedora, and now other communities get involved as well. More people to talk with/to. That’s just great. Nothing more.

If you read people’s comments in a chat that is not indexed and then link them to “conflicts of interests” or indicate they are not able to organize their proposed activities, you create deterrence and you make people think twice before they contribute. Please stop doing that but be more discrete if you think that something goes wrong, and even then, you maybe consider to raise your concerns in a discussion with the respective people before calling for the Council.

@mattdm @jflory7 The only ongoing conversation about the event is in the Matrix chat: https://chat.fedoraproject.org/#/room/#region-uk:fedoraproject.org

Feel free to review and let us know if you think there is a conflict of interest. If there is anything unclear or so, feel free to let us/me know. Imho, we act in the best interest of Fedora and aim to connect and exchange with other communities, and think about how to improve our activities. Any thought is appreciated anyway, as you have well experiences in that field :classic_smiley:

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I have moved this to a separated topic in order to avoid blurring the other.

A slight addition about this comment, you wrote an article about the first meetup concerning a contributor who presented their own work at the meetup, and suggested we should do events like that again. It would be nice to know the difference you see, as I really do not understand it :frowning:

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I wouldn’t go overboard with a question of perceived issue.

I’m afraid you’re overacting. I have no intention to undermine you and your work.

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RISC-V is a key business driver for Red Hat. It fits in with Fedora’s Mission and Foundations ‘First’ principle.

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I think you misunderstood what Fedora is. It is not our job to only promote Red Hat products or their key business drivers and thus do only presentations about these products at Open Source events. And this is not what Red Hat expects from us. I have no doubts that every Council member will confirm that. I think this is maybe a topic you should get into a little deeper. It could be the root of a lot of misunderstandings.

This circle must end somehow. In the beginning, I explicitly asked for a consensus about making this a cross-community event. You didn’t object. There was no negative feedback, and you were involved in discussions. Once I reached out, you started to ask to stop this, to not do anything until permanent sponsorship from Red Hat is guaranteed and asked me to tell the people to whom I had already reached out to to end this.

Once the remaining team did not share your opinion, you approached me again by personal email and asked me to end this and to wait for full sponsorship by Red Hat. I already told you then that this is not how we do decisions in Fedora, and that you didn’t object when you had the chance. You have chosen to then leave the team with a public post that creates the perception we have not sufficient funding for what we do. Yet, it remained unclear what you want to get permanent Red Hat funding for and what we further need for an informal meetup that is so critical that we have to stop organizing until it is ensured to have funding permanently and only from Red Hat: we have one of the greatest venues you can have in London.

Now you returned, urged us again to request funding from Red Hat and to get continuity of support from them. Again it is unclear what it is you want to have guaranteed permanent funding for. As your opinion was not shared, your next action was posting that this meetup has a conflict of interest in the public topic, although my suggestion of the presentation has been there since the 7th August. A few days earlier, I suggested myself to consider to replace the presentations. You commented on the post, but said nothing that you think this is a good idea to avoid conflicts of interest.

Maybe you already read that I fear this becomes a recurring pattern, and we must stop that. You have to make your choice: contribute (as much as you want) or not, but if you do, this also means to compromise towards the majority and especially to stick with decisions that you have approved, and accept that sometimes the experiences of the majority go into other directions.

I do not know why you have such an emphasis on enforcing that this event is fully sponsored by Red Hat and only promotes Red Hat products and its business drivers as you called it, but this is not the idea of Fedora, and it is not what Red Hat expects from us: Our job is promoting Open Source, directly and indirectly, because it is a major driver for knowledge creation and transfer. This includes networking and exchanging, and as I said before, even with OpenSuSE there had been collaborations before (not to talk that our communities are strongly overlapping). Of course there are limits as Red Hat has to take the responsibility/liability for what occurs under the name Fedora, and obviously their support of us contains a self-interest, which is fine and intended. But we are far away from crossing any line in these respects.

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My position on community collaboration remains unchanged.

Regarding funding, I didn’t expect or say about permanent funding. That’s not true. I felt sorry to you and Ankur without reliable source of funding events.

Misunderstanding could happen. However, I don’t like the tone of your accusations and the choice of words, which don’t help bridging communication error.

There is no lecture required from you about how open source community works,

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When private conversations shared (in this case, misconstrued and altered) without the context of the subject, they should not be shared for safety.

When offering feedback or asking for clarity is called out as objections, I think there is a fundamental bias in communication.

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Maybe someone from Council can check if I caused a conflict of interest. I didn’t share contents of your mails but also had to add the context for your public assumptions. My point of Open Source was meant to help, as there seemed a misunderstanding about what Fedora is. Further elaborations from my side do not make sense I guess, that should be done by a neutral party. Feel free to let them know if you think something I said is wrong or so, or if we shall remove (parts or all) of this page after it has been checked, but I refrain from doing such invasive actions when I am somehow involved.

But I really hope that emails or public posts like this time can end in future. If you have something to add for their consideration or want to approach them, feel free. But conversations should end until someone neutral can verify.

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Hello @hankuoffroad and @py0xc3 ,
To be clear, if this is (felt) to be an issue for the Fedora Council to weigh in on it should be brought to their attention at Issues - Fedora-Council/tickets - Pagure.io. That is the place for Council issues, and unless you open a ticket about it, you’re not likely to get the answer you are searching for.

Now. as a long time Fedora community member, one thing I have observed is that people do work on their own projects using the tools available in Fedora, and often share the outcomes within the community, including even the source code / application. So I am having difficulty with how the perceived conflict of interest is manifesting. Perhaps you (two) could enlighten me.

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Hank triggered Justin and Matthew in his post about the conflict of interest. Maybe that informal way is sufficient to clarify things. I hope we don’t reach the next step. But thanks for sharing the link.

However, Hank, Stephen is for a very long time at Fedora (longer than me - and a former Council member I think to remember?), maybe he can also provide the neutral feedback and experience you were seeking from Council.

I want to avoid assumptions so I would leave this to Hank.

Thanks for taking care :classic_smiley:

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For me, as moderator, I don’t see anything wrong but a misunderstand between peers. I saw this happening all the time and it’s normal. I agree with @py0xc3 that this is not something to be discussed in public, you can just get into a call and solve it.

I know both of you had, have and hopefully will continue to have great contributions, so please solve this without external intervention. Thanks for your presence on the Fedora project

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