Fedora Community Architect (FCA)
The Fedora Community Architect (FCA) is employed full-time by Red Hat to lead initiatives that grow the Fedora user and developer communities. They also help make Red Hat and Fedora interactions more transparent and open. The Fedora community budget comes to us through the Red Hat Open Source Program Office (OSPO). This position facilitates decision-making on how to best focus that to meet our community’s goals and objectives. The FCA supports the Project Leader with all things "community" and works directly with the Fedora Leadership to help bring more Heat and Light to the project.
The FCA is appointed to the Community Architect seat on the Fedora Council, Fedora’s top-level community leadership and governance body. The Fedora Council is responsible for stewardship of the Fedora Project as a whole, and supports the health and growth of the Fedora community.
Meet the FCA
Justin W. Flory (pronouns: he/him) became the Fedora Community Architect in October 2022.
Justin is a creative maker. He is best known as an Open Source contributor and Free Culture advocate originally from the United States.
Justin has participated in numerous Open Source communities and led different initiatives to build sustainable software and communities for nearly ten years. This includes his participation in the Fedora Project since 2015. In Fedora, he co-founded and led the Community Operations team for four years and was a founding member of the Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Team. You can read more about Justin’s past and present Fedora activities on his website.
Previous to Red Hat, from June 2020 to September 2022, Justin supported the UNICEF Office of Innovation as the first Open Source Technical Advisor. At UNICEF, he supported the UNICEF Venture Fund and other Open Source activities within the Office of Innovation. Together with a team of mentors, Justin mentored twenty-three start-up companies of diverse start-up companies from nineteen countries and five continents.
Roles and Responsibilities
Fedora Council
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Work with other Fedora Council members to identify the short, medium, and long term goals of the Fedora community and to organize and enable the project to best achieve them
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Primary Fedora Council member with responsibility for the development of the annual Fedora community budget
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Participate in decision-making about use of trademarks, project structure, community disputes or complaints, and other such issues
Metrics
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Implement metrics for community engagement, participation, and satisfaction; create and execute projects to improve those metrics; report regularly on progress and adjust approach as needed
Opportunities
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Identify opportunities to engage new contributors and community members; align project around supporting those opportunities
Liaise between Red Hat and FOSS Community
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Communicate community needs to Red Hat and participate in regular meetings with internal Red Hat stakeholders; align Red Hat participation in Fedora beyond platform engineering
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Represent Red Hat’s stake in Fedora community success
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Improve on-boarding materials and presentation of Fedora to new Red Hat hires; develop standardized materials on Fedora which can be used at Red Hat globally.
Budget
The Fedora Community Architect works with the Fedora Council and Red Hat Open Source Program Office (OSPO) to determine the annual Fedora Budget.
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Ensure that budget is published and tracked transparently, with a public page indicating how each year’s budget is earmarked and its current state.
Fedora Event Planning and Participation
Participate in planning and organizing Fedora’s Flagship events each year, including:
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Flock, Nest, & Hatch
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Release Parties
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Fedora contributor hackfests
The Fedora Community Architect also represents Fedora at other major industry conferences and hackathons such as:
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All Things Open
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DevConf CZ, IN, US
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FOSDEM
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PyCon (and Sprints)
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LibrePlanet
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Red Hat Summit
Previous Fedora Community Architects
- Marie Nordin
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November 2019 – October 2022 (Fedora Linux 31 to 37)
- Brian Exelbierd
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October 2016 – November 2019 (Fedora Linux 25 to 31)
- Remy DeCausemaker
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February 2015 – June 2016 (Fedora Linux 22 to 24)
What about FCAIC and FCL?
The title of this role evolved and changed over the years since its inception in February 2015. The creation of the role was largely envisioned and advocated for by Robyn Bergeron, then the Fedora Project Leader. When the role was first created, the role title was Fedora Community Outreach and Impact Lead, which was often shortened to Fedora Community Lead (FCL). At the time, the FCL role provided needed separation of responsibilities with the Fedora Project Leader, including the role of organizing the annual Fedora contributor conference, Flock. However, the FCL title did not feel totally right either. Anyone can be a leader in the Fedora community, whether they are employed by Red Hat or not! We did not want to imply otherwise.
Later, in October 2016, the role title was changed to Fedora Community Action & Impact Coordinator (FCAIC). This title was lengthier but better captured what community engagement means in a large, globally-distributed community like Fedora. Over time, more projects, organizations, and companies working on Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) introduced new roles in community management and leadership. However, community work does not have an industry-accepted job ladder, as is more common with software engineering. Red Hat eventually settled on the title of community architect for community work in its pioneering Open Source communities.
Fast forward to 2023. The landscape has changed and evolved! So, it was the ideal time to reflect on the title for this role. The title was changed in January 2023 to Fedora Community Architect (FCA). Ultimately, the goal of changing the name was to better describe the role and what the FCA does in Fedora. The lengthy "FCAIC" title usually came with an explanation to others unfamiliar with Fedora and our community culture. FCA is also a handy shortening of the longer FCAIC acronym too!
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