Originally published at: Strategy 2028 Update – Fedora Community Blog
As we head into Flock, It’s time again to talk about #strategy2028 — our high-level plan for the next few years.
Since it’s been a while since I’ve given an update, I’m going to start at the top. That way, If this is new to you, or if you’ve forgotten all about it, you don’t need to go sifting through history for a refresher. If you’ve been following along for a while, you may want to skip down to the “Process section”, or if you just want to get to the practical stuff, all the way down to “Right Now”.
The Strategic Framework and High Level Stuff
Fedora’s Goals
Vision
The ultimate goal of the Fedora Project is expressed in our Vision Statement:
The Fedora Project envisions a world where everyone benefits from free and open source software built by inclusive, welcoming, and open-minded communities.
Mission
Our Mission Statement describes how we do that — we make a software platform that people can use to build tailored solutions. That includes offerings from our own community (like the Fedora Editions or Atomic Desktops) and those from our “downstreams” (like RHEL, Amazon Linux, Bazzite, and many more).
Strategy 2028
We also have a medium-term goal — the target of Strategy 2028. We have a “guiding star” metric for this:
Guiding Star
By the end of 2028, double the number of contributors1 active every week.
But this isn’t really the goal. It’s a “proximate measure” — something simple we can count and look at to tell if we’re on track.2
The Goal of Strategy 2028
The goal itself this:
The Fedora Project is healthy, growing, relevant, and ready to take on the next quarter-century.
But, goals aren’t strategy — they describe the world we want, and Fedora’s overall work, but not the path we’ll take to get there.
The Actual Strategy
During our Council Hackfest session, I realized that we haven’t really put this into writing — instead, we’ve jumped straight to other levels of the process. So, here it is:
1. Identify areas of community interest and effort which we believe will advance Fedora towards our goal.
The computing world changes quickly, and Fedora is a community-driven project. We can’t pick things out of thin air or wishful thinking. We also need to pick things that really, actually, practically will make a difference, and that’s a hard call. Making these calls is the fundamental job of the Fedora Council.3
2. Invest in those areas.
A strategy needs to have focus to be meaningful. The Council will devote time, energy, publicity, and community funding towards the selected areas. This necessarily means that other things won’t get the same investment. At least, not right now.
3. Check if the things we picked are working.
The “guiding star” metric is one way, of course, but we’ll need specific metrics, too. At the meeting, we agreed that we have been lazy on this in the past. It’s hard work, and when something isn’t working, can lead to hard conversations. We need to do better — keep reading for how we plan to do that.
4. When things are working, double down. When things aren’t, stop, change, or switch direction.
If we’re on the right track in one area, we should consider what we can do next to build on that. When something isn’t working, we need to take decisive action. That might be re-scoping an initiative, relaunching in the same area but with a different approach, or simply wrapping up. What we won’t do is let things linger on uncertainly.
5. Rinse, repeat!
Some of what we choose will be smaller bites, and some will be more ambitious. That means we expect to be choosing new initiatives several times a year.
The Process
Practically speaking, for each area we choose, we’ll launch a new Community Initiative. We know these haven’t always been a smashing success in Fedora, but the general concept is sound. We’re going to do a few things differently, driven by our Fedora Operations Architect. (Thanks, @amoloney.)
Better Community Initiatives
First, we will require better initial proposals. We need to see concrete milestones with dates and deliverables. There needs to be a specific plan of action — for example, if the Initiative intends to progress its technical work through a series of Changes, the plan should include a list of expected proposals with a brief description for each.4
Second, we will hold initiatives accountable. Each Initiative Lead should produce a monthly or weekly status report, and we will actively review each initiative every quarter.
Third, we will create “playbooks” for the roles of Initiative Lead and Executive Sponsor.
The Lead is responsible for the work, and the Sponsor is accountable for its success. We’re working on written guidance and onboarding material so that when we start an Initiative, the people involved at the Council level know what they actually need to do.
Finally, we will provide better support. We’ll help develop the Initiative’s Logic Model rather than requiring it as part of the submission. We will be better at broadcasting the leadership of each Initiative, so community members (and the leaders themselves!) know that they’re empowered to do the work. We’ll make sure Initiatives are promoted at Fedora events, and in other ways throughout the year. We will prioritize Initiatives for in-person Hackfests and other funding. And, we will will provide some program management support.5
Previously on Strategy 2028…
Our Themes
We started all of this a few years ago by asking for community input. Then, we grouped ideas we heard into Themes. These will be stable until the end of 2028 (when it’ll be time to do this whole thing over again). Under each theme, we have several Focus Areas. In bold, areas where we have a recently completed project, or something big in progress already. (See the footnotes.)
Accessibility
- Make our docs more accessible (“Learn”)
- Make our software more accessible (“Use”)
- Make project tooling more accessible (“Build!”)
Community Sustainability
Edition, Spins, Interests, and Outputs
- Release Stories for Marketing
- Easier Remixes8
- Refactor SIGs
Reaching the World
- Preinstalled Systems9
- Cloud & CI Providers
- Local Communities
Technical Innovation
- Containers and Flatpaks
- Atomic Desktops and Image Mode10
- Programming Language Ecosystems
- AI
Ecosystem Connections
- RHEL & CentOS11
- Other Downstreams
- Peer Distros and Upstreams
What’s Next? (Time to get tactical!)
Right now
We spent the bulk of our time getting more specific about our immediate future. Under each theme, Council members identified potential Initiatives that we believe are important to work on next. We came up with a list of thirteen — which is way more than we can handle at once. We previously set a limit of four Initiatives at a time. We decided to keep to that rule, and are planning to launch four initiatives in the next months:
1. Editions block on a11y
Accessibility
This one is simple. We have release criteria for accessibility issues in Fedora Editions… but we don’t block on them. Sumantro will lead an effort to get all of our Editions in shape so that we can make these tests “must-past” for release.
2. GitOps Experiment
Communications/Collaboration Tools
This is Aleksandra’s project to demostrate how we could use a “GitOps” workflow to improve the packager experience from beginning to end. Matthew is the Executive Sponsor (for now!) Read more about this here: [RFC] New Community Initiative – GitOps for Fedora Packaging.
3. Gitforge Migration
Communications/Collaboration Tools
We’re moving to Forgejo. That’s going to be a long project with a lot to keep track of. Aoife is sponsoring the effort overall and will work with others on specific initiatives.
4. AI Devtools Out-of-Box
Tech Innovation
This is about making sure Fedora Linux is ready for people who want to work on machine learning and AI development. It isn’t about adding any specific AI or LLM technology. David is taking the lead here, with details in the works.
Next up
We can only focus on so much at once, but as current and near-future initiatives wrap up, these are the things we expect to tackle next, and an associated Council member. (That person may be either an Initiative Lead or an Executive Sponsor when the time comes.)
- Bugzilla Archive (David)
Red Hat is winding down bugzilla.redhat.com. There’s no planned shutoff date, but we should be ready. We are likely to move most issue tracking to Forgejo — it’d be nice to have packaging issues right next to pull requests. But, the current bugzilla database is a treasure-trove of Fedora history which we don’t want to lose - Discussions to Discourse (Matthew, for now)
This is part of our overall effort to reduce Fedora’s collaboration sprawl — and to set us up for the future. It’s time to move our primary discussion centers from the devel and test mailing lists. - Get our containers story straight (Jason)
The previous system we used to build containers was called “OSBS”, and was a hot mess of a hacked-up OpenShift, and not even the current kind of OpenShift. I know people are pretty skeptical about Konflux as a Koji replacement … but it can build containers in a better way. - Formal, repeatable plan for release marketing (Justin)
We have a great Marketing team, but don’t do a great job of getting feature and focus information from Edition working groups to that team. We should build a better process. - More Fedora Ready (Matthew/Jef)
Fedora Ready is a branding initiative for hardware vendors who want to signal that their product works well with our OS. Let’s expand this — and bring on more vendors with preinstalled Fedora Linux. - Mindshare funding for regional Ambassador planning events (Jona)
This is the first step towards rebuilding our worldwide local community Ambassadors. - Silverblue & Kinoite are ready to be our desktop Editions, with bootc (Jason)
We think image-based operating systems are the future — let’s commit. - CoreOS, IoT, and Atomic Desktops share one base image (Jason)
Right now, we’ve got too many base images — can we get it down to one? - Fedora, CentOS, RHEL conversation (Matthew/Jef)
See What everyone wants for more on this one.
See you all at Flock!
So, that’s where we are now, and our near-future plans. After Flock, look forward to more updates from Jef!