Blowing off some dust here 
Following the 2022-10-26 Council meeting, I took an action to have a first draft of this doc by the Wednesday, 4 December Council meeting.
This made sense for me to pick up because I have many years in Fedora but it is my first time at Red Hat. So, I am coming in with specific goals I want to achieve with this documentation. I want to provide better guidelines on the following:
- What is a Red Hat contribution?
- What is a company contribution?
- What is a personal/independent contribution?
- How these three are both separate yet also overlapping.
A Venn diagram could be a useful visual aid. I think this brings a good opportunity to clarify how a Red Hatter can both be supported to contribute (i.e. paid), volunteer in Fedora separate from their primary role and responsibilities at Red Hat, or do both. Making this more clear is a good and useful thing for both the Fedora Community and Red Hat:
- For Fedora Community: There is greater transparency about the ways people participate in the Fedora Community. It is easier to recognize when someone is supporting the community as part of a paid role and when someone is acting as an independent volunteer. The community is better able to understand its important role and position to influence the Fedora Project. There are increased opportunities for all Fedora contributors to receive recognition and credit for their work and contributions to an established Free & Open Source project.
- For Red Hat: Red Hatters are better able to separate and identify contributions they make beyond what is required of them (if Fedora is part of their work) or asked of them (if Fedora is not part of their work). There are more opportunities for Red Hatters to participate in Fedora as part of a career development plan (e.g. learning a new discipline and working with a community of practice). It is easier to recognize Red Hatters for extraordinary contributions in Fedora that could support them in receiving valuable recognition in their career.
There could also be benefits to company contributors, who participate in a paid capacity outside of Red Hat. I would be all for supporting peoples’ careers at other organizations through recognizing them for their Fedora contributions. This also benefits inclusivity because newcomers are better supported through multiple stages of their career journey in new areas. But developing a recognition system is out of scope for this docs task. This would be a good follow-up discussion once a final draft of this doc is about to be published.
This is incomplete thinking, but I wanted to get my early thoughts down somewhere I could share them. 