An Interview with Greg DeKoenigsberg

Phoronix: As there appears to have been a few new additions to the Fedora development team recently, how many developers are dedicated to Fedora workings whether it is a paid position or voluntary?

Greg DeKoenigsberg: This really depends on what you mean by "dedicated to Fedora workings." In one sense, just about every developer in the open source community works on Fedora, and we try to keep that always in the front of our minds. But we've got about a half-dozen paid engineers at this point who spend most of their time on Fedora, and then a couple of hundred community members who perform various functions -- from localizing Fedora into their native languages, to packaging good software for Fedora Extras, to writing release notes and HOWTOs for Fedora Docs, to editing the wiki at fedoraproject.org. And then a few people like me who spend a lot of time in meetings with lawyers and stuff. :)

Phoronix: As GNOME v2.14.0 is also being released on the same day as Fedora Core 5, it has been said that it will ship with a stable version of the GNOME v2.13 development branch and the v2.14 official Fedora update will be available later. Is this v2.13 stable based upon the v2.13.92 release candidate or an early BETA release? In addition, is there any time frame until the end-users can expect an official GNOME v2.14.0 update?

Greg DeKoenigsberg: It'll be based on the latest stable release candidate available at the last possible moment. And then users can expect an update to 2.14.0 pretty quickly after its release.

Phoronix: There have also been speculations that KDE would not be bundled in Fedora Core 6 but would let the community handle it and/or move it to Fedora Extras. Is this move still scheduled to take place, which would make GNOME v2.16 the primary choice in the next release?

Greg DeKoenigsberg: We'll continue to bundle KDE. We're still working on ways to give the community more control over the maintenance of KDE, but KDE isn't going away anytime soon. If anything, it'll just be better.

Phoronix: Kadischi, the Fedora-based LiveCD generator, has been shaping up quite nicely as of late; however, do you have any comments as to its recent progress or future goals?

Greg DeKoenigsberg: Most of its long-term progress is tied up with the progress of Stateless Linux. The short-term progress has been great, though. People like J. Hartline and Chitlesh Goorah have been tireless in their efforts to make it better. But they could always use help, hint hint.

Phoronix: How has FUDCon, the Fedora user and developer conference, affected the Fedora Project and what sorts of comments have you received from doing such Fedora-centric meetings with users and developers alike?

Greg DeKoenigsberg: I think FUDCons have been absolutely essential to our success.

As Chris Blizzard and I rode around Delhi during our visit to FUDCon India, Chris said to me, "what if open source is just a side effect of people wanting to work together?" I think that this was a profound observation. To me, it's one of the most important reasons for having FUDCons. IRC is great, but having a beer with somebody -- or even having somebody tell you off to your face -- is an irreplaceable personal experience, and one that's central to building lasting communities.

So come to FUDCon Boston 2006 on April 7th. Go to fedoraproject.org/FUDCon for more details.

Phoronix: With four releases now under the Fedora belt, is there anything that should have been done differently from the start?

Greg DeKoenigsberg: Oh, sure. Plenty of things. It would have been great to have had a public build system for Fedora Extras from the day we launched. But there's also value in just trying stuff -- failing as fast as you can, so you can learn the painful lessons and get them out of the way. I like to think we've learned from our mistakes. I certainly hope so.

Phoronix: Although the final Fedora Core 5 release hasn't yet been released, are there any ideas going around with the Fedora developers as to what could potentially be anticipated for Fedora Core 6?

Greg DeKoenigsberg: I'll be happy to get FC5 out of the way first! But really, what I'm looking for in FC6 is a way to integrate community development work. Features aside, that's what I care most about. Others' mileage will vary.

Phoronix: In general, what item(s) are you most excited about when it comes to the future of Linux?

Greg DeKoenigsberg: Personally? I'm not sure that it's Linux that excites me most. I mean, Linux is great stuff, don't get me wrong -- but what's really exciting, to me, is bringing the collaborative model to the whole world, and that means Windows. Firefox and OpenOffice are beachheads in the open source application battle; web-based projects like Wikipedia are beachheads in the open content battle; Creative Commons is a beachhead in the copyright battle; Open Invention Network is a beachhead in the patent commons battle. We need to be fighting all of these battles to win.

Thank you Greg DeKoenigsberg and Fedora/Red Hat for this interview opportunity. Additional information on the Fedora Project is available here.