Fedora Strategy 2028: a topic index for our planning process

[mattdm (Matthew Miller)]

We’re developing a high-level strategy for Fedora for the next five years. This post serves as an index to various posts about this — both existing and planned. (It’s everything in strategy2028, with context.)

TImeline update (18 July)

Note: the loss of the Fedora Program Manager role as well as the Red Hat funded position to help with Code of Conduct issues^[1] has temporarily stalled this work. We’ll pick it up again after Flock, though!

Background

• From the State of Fedora 2022: strategic plan high-level goals
• Theory of Change: how we plan (and explain our plans!)
• Fedora Strategy 2028: February/March Planning Work and Roadmap 'til Flock
• Fedora Strategy 2028: What is a contributor? What is a contribution?

Current Topics: Objective & Impact feedback and Discussion

Please start with Fedora Strategy 2028: Focus Area review guidelines, and then dive into the individual Focus Areas:

Next posts coming soon!

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Rough Schedule for Future Posts

Upcoming Objective & Impact feedback and discussion

Timeframe: February – September

Each topic will give a little more explanation into what each means, and then … we’ll talk. I’m planning on just one post for the a11y topics, because I think they’re connected particularly tightly. The rest will three separate topics — if things go as planned,^[2] I’ll schedule them for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday each week. We’ll have a month of discussion for each topic^[3] and then two weeks for the Council to create a final^[4] version.

When the following posts are available, I’ll move them to the section above.

Theme: We build on the success of Fedora.next.

Finding Leaders

Timeframe: September, October

We plan to find a specific person to be responsible for each Objective, as well as an Executive Sponsor from the Council for each. We’ll talk about this more as we get to May… probably not a topic for each, but… maybe! We will also think about the initiatives, projects, and programs that each Objective will require — the Outputs and Activities columns in the Logic Model. Those probably will be individual topics. (I’ll update this section as we get closer.)

Completing the Model

Timeframe: November, December

Council approval of Outputs and their links to the Objectives.

Complete definition of Activities and Resources for each Output.

Outlines for expected projects, programs, and initiatives related to all of this.

Scheduling Everything

Timeframe: January

• ?

Announcing the Plan

Timeframe: February, March,..

• No DevConf in February…

• Other messaging

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Earlier Discussion

Background

• Fedora in 2025: what do we want, and how will we get there?
• Fedora 2025 strategy: Improving Fedora mindshare in the Linux ecosystem
• Fedora 2025 strategy: accessiblity improvements in support of our vision?

Completed Focus Area Reviews

Theme: Fedora is for everyone

• Focus Area: Accessibility (February 17 – March 17)

  • Fedora Strategy 2028: Focus area review (Accessibility)
  • Includes:
    • Fedora websites and docs use the current best-practices for a11y.
    • Fedora Linux Editions use the best-available open source a11y tech.
    • Our project tooling follows best a11y practices.

• Focus Area: Reaching the World (February 27 – March 27)

  • Fedora Strategy 2028: Focus area review (Reaching the World)
    • Objective Review: Fedora Linux is available pre-installed on more systems from more vendors
    • Objective Review: Fedora Linux is widely available in cloud providers and CI services
    • Objective Review: Fedora maintains a strong network of thriving local communities around the world

Theme: Fedora leads in Linux distribution development.

• Focus Area: Community Sustainability (March 13 – April 13)

  • Fedora Strategy 2028: Focus area review (Community Sustainability)
    • Objective Review: Everyone in Fedora has a mentor, and everyone in Fedora is a mentor
    • Objective Review: We have insight into community health and trends through meaningful metrics
    • Objective Review: Modernize our communications tooling

• Focus Area: Technology Innovation & Leadership (March 20 – April 20)

  • Fedora Strategy 2028: Focus area review (Technology Innovation & Leadership)
    • Objective Review: Fedora is a popular source for containers and Flatpaks
    • Objective Review: Immutable variants are the majority of Fedora Linux in use
    • Objective Review: We integrate programming language stack ecosystems
    • Other proposals:
      • Fedora Strategy 2028 Proposal: Fedora Linux is as secure as macOS (open for comments through April 27).

Theme: We build on the success of Fedora.next

• Focus Area: Editions, Spins, and Interests (April 12 – May 12)

  • Fedora Strategy 2028: Focus area review (Editions, Spins, and Interests)
    • Objective Review: Each Edition has a story for each release
    • Objective Review: It’s trivial to create and maintain a new Fedora Spin or Remix
    • Objective Review: More (active) SIGs, fewer images

• Focus Area: Ecosystem Connections

  • Better collaborative workflow with CentOS Stream and RHEL.
  • Get people working on Amazon Linux directly involved in Fedora as an upstream.
  • Collaborate on tooling, practices, and offerings with peer distros and upstream projects.

Miscellany

• Logic models vs. OKRs (Logic models give a better picture and are more useful!)
• I let chatgpt have a go at creating our project strategy

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1. fortunately, the amazing and dedicated people who had these jobs are still around Fedora! ↩︎

2. You know what they say about plans… ↩︎

3. Each will be set to close automatically — if you have something to add after that point, create a linked topic as followup ↩︎

4. As noted in the Roadmap post, “final” in the sense of “this is the plan we’re deciding on now” — of course we’ll adjust over the next five years ↩︎