This week is the first annual Fedora Appreciation Week. As an extension of the How Do You Fedora? series, this article presents how past interviewees appreciate Fedora. The Fedora Project defines four common values that it encourages all contributors and community members to uphold. Those values are known as the Four Foundations. One such value, Friends, represents the vibrant community of contributors and users from across the world, all working towards the same goal: advancing free software.
Like any community, the Fedora community evolves over time. Each contributor’s story is a little different. That diversity is what makes the Fedora community so strong. Kernel contributor Justin Forbes puts it succinctly:
Fedora is the community. So much of what Fedora is now came as a direct result of community effort.
Fedora is successful today because of the many contributors, both past and present, who have put their time and effort into the project. Here are some of their stories, and how they appreciate others in the community.
You can click on any of the story headers to see our original interviews with these notable people.
Maria Leandro’s story
Fedora has been a huge part of my personal and professional life, so choosing a top moment would leave several fantastic stories behind. I do remember that first time I went to a Flock and meet personally people that I had been interacting, learning from and teaching for almost 5 years. For people like us who spend most of our time behind a screen, having that personal meeting can be life changing. That particular moment is not about the goals or the tasks that need to be done, that moment is the prize to people who work for a common well, for those who change people’s life without asking anything in return, it’s the moment when you put a face to those commits and bugs, to those wallpapers and docs; it’s the moment when we stop being a random robot name to be real… that moment when we hug each other and greet, that has to be the best moment in all Open Source History.
Maria has two favorite wallpapers from Fedora releases:
She sends a special thank you to appreciate Máirín Duffy, who leads the Fedora design team:
Definitely my hero, mo (mizmo). She pushed me to be the designer I am today, always had a chat to solve any doubt I had, and is the most friendly person you can meet.
Maria’s most memorable release was early on:
Probably Fedora 6, since it was the first time I did any artwork at all for the community.
Michael Larabel’s story
Without a doubt the best Fedora memory with friends would have to be celebrating the Fedora “Beefy Miracle” release back in 2012 at LinuxTag in Berlin where the Fedora booth played it so well and was serving up free hot dogs to go with the delicious beverages of the region. Lots of good catching up with open-source contributors, discussing new ideas, and more during the wonderful community-driven open-source events particularly in Europe.
Michael’s favorite Fedora desktop wallpaper will be familiar to current readers of the Magazine. It’s the brand new wallpaper for Fedora 29:
Michael also sent a special thank you to a very special contributor who died in 2013:
The late Seth Vidal earns much respect for his contributions to Fedora, Yum, and Red Hat communities. His technical achievements were great and he was a kind and interesting person at conferences, etc.
His favorite release was Fedora Core 3:
Fedora Core 3 certainly holds a special place in my heart as it was the first Fedora release I really became intrigued by as it was in much better shape than FC1/FC2. Since there it improved while overall from say Fedora 26 and newer, each release has felt particularly polished and keeps getting better — including Fedora 29 and my experience with it thus far on many test boxes.
Julita Inca’s story
Julita shared with us this photo from a recent Women in Fedora event, celebrating the positive impact and contributions of women in the Fedora community:
Her favorite Fedora wallpaper is from the Fedora 17 release:
Julita also took time to appreciate one of Fedora’s amazing Czech community contributors and organizers:
The person I admired since the beginning was Jiri Eischmann! He is a polite person and very active in his community. He continues to inspire me to this day! I hope to soon attend a celebration of Fedora in Europe where I am living now.
Author’s Postscript
As a fellow Fedoran I would like to thank each of the people who responded to my questions and all of the previous interviewees. Writing the How Do You Fedora? series has been immensely rewarding for me. I have learned about lots of new applications and uses of Fedora. The greatest impact of the series is that it reignites my faith in the goodness of the people who make up the Fedora community with each installment.
