FESCo Meeting (2026-01-13): New Members, New Meeting Time, and Re-voting on ptrace

Project Discussion
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Hi Fedora folks! :waving_hand: Here is a summary of the recent meeting of the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo) held on Tuesday, January 13, 2026. The Fedora Engineering Steering Committee is responsible for the technical direction and guidance of the Fedora Project, overseeing the work of the various Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and working groups within the Engineering branch of the project.

Topics discussed in this meeting:

  • Administrative: Welcome to new members and establishing a new meeting time.
  • Policy: Updates to Packaging Guidelines regarding File System Hierarchy and FESCo election policies.
  • Infrastructure: Addressing ignored CVE bugs and setting resource limits on builds.
  • Change Proposals: Re-evaluating the ptrace restriction proposal and deferring others (Podman 6, AArch64 DTB selection).

Note: AI (Google Gemini) was used to summarize the Meetbot-generated HTML log of the public meeting. I edited the AI-generated output before making this Fedora Discussion topic. If you notice mistakes, please provide a correction as a reply to this topic.

Executive Summary

Administrative & Process Updates
FESCo welcomed new members @duffy and @siosm, and thanked departing members @fale and @jednorozec. A consensus was reached to change the weekly meeting time to Tuesdays at 18:00 GMT to better accommodate member schedules.

Policy Discussions
Two significant policy discussions took place:

  1. File System Hierarchy: The proposal to base Packaging Guidelines on the “Linux File System Hierarchy” instead of the FHS is stalled. FESCo decided to move the discussion to a new mailing list thread to resolve the impasse regarding upstream activity versus current practice.

  2. Election Policy: FESCo discussed prioritizing first-timers for FESCo seats. The consensus leaned toward implementing term timeouts (e.g., sitting out one term after X consecutive terms) rather than reserving specific “newbie” seats. @dcantrell will draft a proposal for this approach.

Technical Changes & Infrastructure

  • Build Resources: FESCo discussed issues with users spamming scratch builds and causing resource starvation. @salimma volunteered to file a Koji RFE to implement resource/concurrency limits.

  • ptrace Restriction (F44): FESCo voted to revert the automatic approval of the “Restrict ptrace for unprivileged users” Change. The original approval occurred via a single vote during the holidays; FESCo wishes to discuss and vote explicitly next week.

  • Deferrals: Due to time constraints and requests for further data, decisions on Podman 6, Qt updates, Java 21 removal, and AArch64 DTB selection were deferred to the next meeting.

Action Items

  • @dcantrell to write a proposal to FESCo ticket #3507 with the idea of term limits and mentoring strategies for “off-cycles”.
  • @salimma will file a Koji RFE about implementing some kind of resource usage limit for users.
  • @salimma to chair next week’s meeting.

Detailed Meeting Log

Init Process & New Members

The meeting began with introductions and a welcome to new members Máirín Duffy (@duffy) and Timothée Ravier (@siosm). FESCo also thanked departing members for their service. Administrative checks on group membership in Zodbot and FAS were confirmed.

Update meeting time

FESCo reviewed poll results for a new meeting time. Finding a slot that worked for everyone proved difficult due to timezone spread (US/EU).

  • Decision: The committee agreed (+8, 0, -0) to schedule the meeting on Tuesday, 18:00 GMT going forward. This provides a consistent offset, though it will shift relative to local time twice a year due to DST changes.

#3490 Change Packaging Guidelines to be based on the “Linux File System Hierarchy” instead of the FHS

Discussion resumed regarding updating guidelines to match the “Linux File System Hierarchy.”

  • Discussion: There was debate over whether to wait for the “upstream” FHS working group to become active or to adopt the LFHS which might better reflect current Fedora reality.
  • Outcome: The ticket is stalled. FESCo decided to move the “bikeshedding” to a new thread on the mailing list rather than continuing in the meeting or the ticket.

#3507 FESCo election policy which prioritizes first timers

FESCo discussed a proposal to encourage new blood in FESCo.

  • Discussion: Ideas ranged from reserved seats for newcomers to term limits. The group found consensus around a “timeout” mechanism (e.g., after two terms, a member must sit out one term). This avoids the stigma of a “newbie seat” while naturally opening the pool.
  • Action: @dcantrell will post a concrete proposal regarding term limits/timeouts in the ticket for a vote.

#3512 Let’s do something about ignored CVE bugs

  • Status: FESCo is waiting for updates from inside Red Hat regarding resources and processes for handling the 5,900+ low/moderate severity bugs. No new action was taken this week.

#3520 F44 Change Proposal: Restrict ptrace for unprivileged users to child processes to match kernel default

  • Context: This change had technically passed via “lazy approval” (one vote after 2 weeks) during the holiday break.
  • Discussion: Members felt this change was significant enough (potential breakage of debug tools, crash reporting) to warrant an explicit discussion and vote, which the holidays prevented.
  • Decision: The committee voted (+5, 3, 0) to REVERT the automatic approval to allow for a proper discussion and vote next week.

#3497 Update qtkeychain, qxmpp and Kaidan on f43 and f42

  • Discussion: There was confusion regarding the exact request (e.g., update policy override?) and the status of dependency checks.
  • Decision: Defer to next week (+8, 0, -0) to allow time for COPR build checks and clarification.

#3519 Do we need an ability to set resource limits on builds?

  • Context: A user submitted many scratch builds simultaneously, starving resources for others.
  • Discussion: FESCo discussed if Koji could enforce limits. It was noted that this is a “contributor experience” issue if one user can block the queue.
  • Action: @salimma will file an RFE for Koji to implement user-specific resource/concurrency limits.

#3526 Change: Java21RemovedEarlierThenScheduled

  • Discussion: This topic was briefly touched upon, specifically regarding “unnecessary logging” in scriptlets which concerned some members.
  • Decision: Discussion deferred to next week. Members are encouraged to leave feedback in the ticket regarding the packaging issues.

Deferred Topics

The following topics were deferred to next week due to time constraints or the absence of key stakeholders:

  • #3530 Change: Podman6.
  • #3533 Change: Automatic_DTB_selection_for_aarch64_EFI_systems.

Open Floor

  • @salimma volunteered to chair the next meeting.
  • @decathorpe was thanked for his 6-week tenure as chair.
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Hm … it looks like people were confused by timezones here (quelle surprise) - we actually explicitly said we want to avoid shifting the meeting time when DST changes occur, so pinning to a timezone that has DST builtin was the whole purpose of not pinning to UTC itself - but reading up on it now, GMT is basically equivalent to UTC and doesn’t do DST either. So I think we well need to re-clarify this to say “meeting time is 18:00 UTC+EU-DST” instead.

EDIT: Followup: https://pagure.io/fesco/issue/3535#comment-999133

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