# CentOS Board Nominations: January 2022

## Matt Jones

### Nominator statement

Head of Tech Strategy at Ford Motor Company, Chairman of COVESA (connected vehicle systems alliance - previously called GENIVI), initial founder of Automotive Grade Linux and past board member of the Linux Foundation. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattjonesprofile/

Keen to assist on the assist on the extension of Linux into new domains.

### Nominee statement

While I have a long history with open source and many Linux projects, I'm an outsider to the CentOS community.

Over the last 12 years I have been involved in many FOSS communities and professional nurtured many real-world systems (spanning the cloud, edge and device) based on the open-source projects. These collaborative projects include Linux Foundation board, Automotive Grade Linux, GENIVI / COVESA, Eclipse, FASTR and many more. Professionally I have focus on developing systems to enable next generation mobility : connected, autonomous cars; ridesharing; 5g VRAN; hyperloops; air transport. By hope is that I can use my experience to support CentOS to expand into any of these areas, and engage my network to promote CentOS.

* What things would you prioritize as a board member? Do you see the board as activist, or reactive, in nature? (i.e., should the board drive change, or only respond to demands from the community?)

My view, with any healthy alliance or project, is that the Board is there to enable the success of the endeavor. That's easy to say, but what does it really mean and how do you (or even should you) measure it. This is likely controversial, but the output of a community is almost like a product - it's there to meet needs, it's there to solve pain points. With any community there are the problems that the existing community recognize, and those that maybe adjacent. I see the role of the board to enthuse the team to deliver and improve the existing capabilities, extend those capabilities, and in some ways highlight adjacent opportunities (that may be blind spots) to the teams. Clearly there is then a promotional aspect, attracting new contributors, users and ensuring visibility.

My view on leadership is that it is about balance, but balanced towards an aligned and evolving vision. The board must be strategic, but not afraid to evolve the strategy; and at times board must be tactical. At times it should highlight diverse minority views, at times it should enable the community. The skills of the board members are critical to balance strategy vs tactics, democracy vs direction.

* What changes would you like to see in project governance, direction, … really anything?

I would answer that question with a slight pivot. It could be said that there are needs outside the core cloud and server ecosystem to enable the evolution of connected intelligent systems. This distributed 5G networks, autonomous vehicles, potentially even safety system. I would very much like to ensure that the project governance evolves to support the changes in the real world needs of the systems.

## Neal Gompa

### Nominator statements

*Note: Neal was nominated 4 times, and so these are 4 separate nomination statements.*

* Neal has a track record of technical leadership in many distributions. He's active in CentOS Stream and has interests in both community and enterprise use cases. He is well-respected in many communities for both his skill and humanity.

* Neal has been a strong advocate for open practice with a strong sense of history. He is also active in many communities and he has proven his dedication to CentOS as an active member of multiple SIGs. Neal is also active in Fedora Engineering. Furthermore, Neal represents the user as he is a user himself and reflects the enterprise goals and qualifications in his decisions.

* Neal is an active participant in the CentOS SIG and well known for asking the hard questions. He is willing to find common ground with all members of the community and represents not only the interests of the project, but also represents the perspective of the Enterprise user as he is actively working in the commercial space in operations and reliability.

* I've seen Neal across the Linux community, but especially in Fedora and CentOS development. He seems to have a level head and good technical knowledge as well. He understands community and contribution. I've no doubt he'd do an excellent job.

### Nominee Statement

I want to be on the CentOS Board because I want to help make the CentOS Project better. As a board member, I would prioritize reducing friction and enabling the community to do things within the Project, such as contributing to CentOS Stream, creating SIGs to deliver stuff built on CentOS, and so on. I don't think I would consider the Board as "activist" in the sense that I think you intend, but I would generally prefer to be proactive in supporting the community to do things, because in my experience people don't feel like they can ask for things that are needed to enable them to contribute. There's always going to be some reactive aspects, but by and large, I think the Board would need to be more proactive for a while as we transition to a more contribution-focused project.

I've done a lot in Fedora, openSUSE, Mageia, and OpenMandriva across contributor and governance levels of those projects, and I think my experience and expertise could help us steer towards a stronger Project where the community is empowered to build the best Enterprise Linux platform and collaborate to build solutions on top of it.

## Amy Marrich

### Nominator statement

None provided

### Nominee statement

I would like to accept my nomination to the board and below are my thoughts on what I have to offer.

I would like to serve on the Board of the CentOS project in order to help give back to a project I have used for many years. I feel the experience I have from serving on the boards of both Foundations and projects could be of benefit to CentOS by being able to give input on things that have worked or not worked in the past, but most importantly to help CentOS make decisions that are correct for it.

My first priority would be to continue the work the community is already doing to help increase the understanding of how Stream works and the benefits of utilizing it to adjacent projects and End Users. An offshoot of this priority would be to help with the onboarding of both contributors and End Users and make sure we maintain a welcoming and inclusive environment for them.

As for the role of the board I think it needs to be both proactive and reactive as needed. For example, as far as I'm aware, the new Code of Conduct was proactive and the work on it did not wait until there was an issue it needed to address. At the same time, the board should be reactive in that the Community needs to have a say and bring things to the board, not just for final decisions but guidance for them to make their own decisions.

As for potential governance changes, I know there are several that have been mentioned in past Board meetings which I feel are important such as Board terms and the staggering of seats on the Board to help prevent a complete turnover of leadership at a given time. I'd also like to see the Code of Conduct committee with Fedora that has been talked about finalized, if it hasn't been already, so that with the combined authentication system both projects have input in the process which could result in someone's banning.

## Celeste Lyn Paul

### Nominator statement

Long term focus on usability in open source software.

### Nominee statement

It has been a few years since I have been active in the open source community, but it is a community near and dear to my heart. Since departing the KDE e.V. Board of Directors and and Kubuntu Council, my career has focused on technical leadership and development in the US Government. I have been fortunate to work in areas of technology that have allowed me to contribute to scientific technical knowledge. A benefit of government research is that it cannot be copyrighted and so a lot of my publications have remained in the public domain despite protest from big publishers. My organization has also released a number of technologies under a variety of open source licenses, including Apache Accumulo and Ghidra. It would be an incredible honor to apply my professional leadership experiences to serve the CentOS community.

Platform statement: The recent move to CentOS Stream makes this an incredibly interesting time to be involved in CentOS. For some who have been in the distro community for a while, it is a cultural shift from being a (semi) independent distribution to basically RD&T for the commercial RHEL product. This transition is heavy with philosophical dilemmas as the cCentOS community goals may have shifted from the personal goals of long-term contributors. Stream is an incredible opportunity to further integration and deployment of open source contributions into a commercial product. Getting as much good stuff into the hands of as many people is something that has driven open source contributors for decades. This model also provides an incentive for Red Hat to increase support on the open source side of the technology pipeline. As a board member, I would prioritize supporting that community cultural shift so that those who are involved for the sake of open source do not feel taken advantage of and are reenergized in their contributions. Retention of talent, in addition to developing the next generation, is a priority. At the same time, I would advocate for contributor interests to corporate sponsors so that commercial objectives can be met while preserving community values and standards. (There are a lot of lessons from Canonical/Ubuntu community growth (and pain) in the 2000/2010's that can be drawn from.)

## Leslie Hawthorn

### Nominator statement

Prominent member of the Google Open Source office, Conference organizer and Speaker.

*Note from Rich: Leslie is **not** with the Google open source office, but is part of the Red Hat Open Source Program Office. Nominator was presumably confused.*

### Nominee statement

Disclosure statement: I am an employee of Red Hat (specifically, Red Hat GmbH, the German subsidiary of Red Hat, Inc.), working in the company's Open Source Program Office in the Office of the CTO. I have worked on various matters related to the CentOS project as Red Hat’s employee from 2015 - 2019, both publicly as a community focused architect and privately doing Red Hat confidential activities related to the project. I am the manager of Jeff “Jefro” Osier-Mixon, who convenes the CentOS Stream Automotive SIG, and a team mate of Rich Bowen, a fellow member Red Hat's OSPO.

I am honored to hear that I received a nomination to join the CentOS Project Board of Directors. I would be privileged to bring the insights I have gleaned from working with open source projects over the past 15 years to serve the CentOS Board and community. Further, I have experience serving on open source boards as both a Board Member and Board Advisor. I am currently serving as Board Advisor for the Foundation for Public Code; I am Board Emeritus for the Open Source Initiative. Projects I have advised include CASH MUSIC, the Humanitarian FOSS Project, the Privly Foundation, and the Sahana Software Foundation.

I would welcome the opportunity to do a number of things for the Board and CentOS community, including:

Serve as a Board member with a Red Hat perspective that is deeply balanced with my own personal commitment to ensure that decisions made in open source projects are in the best interests of the project and its community, regardless of whom employs me

Plan with the board activities focused on widening representation in the community of users and contributors beyond current active participants at most notably Facebook (Meta), Red Hat, and Twitter

Create more diverse representation on the CentOS Board, serving as the first woman member of the Board

To put it simply, I would like to support the CentOS community in the next phases of its evolution and to ensure that it is a welcoming community for all involved. (To name an example from my own experience this very morning, I would, for example, investigate why the language “...or information that Red Hat wishes to share with the Board, but is not yet public” is included in invitations to observe board meetings, rather than neutral language like “information anyone wishes to share with the Board.”) While I do not advocate for a full-fledged activist stance for the CentOS Board, I do believe that the board has the ability to undertake activities that will further foster the community’s growth, such as streamlining some of the current governance processes and rethinking how the community might wish to operate in the future.

With the release of CentOS Stream in the past year and the more recent retirement of distinguished and long-contributing Board members, I believe that now is an excellent time to evaluate what has served the community well over time, what could be improved, and to take in feedback directly from the community about how their lives working with the CentOS Project may be improved. I look forward to the opportunity to use my position as an individual with some knowledge of the CentOS project but without a deep personal connection to its history, code base, and community processes to foster a neutral and useful dialog about how the CentOS Project may best serve its users and contributors. Having closely seen the initial success of the CentOS Stream Automotive SIG - and following from afar the progress of the Hyperscaling SIG - I am very excited about the potential for the CentOS project to incubate genuinely innovative collections of stakeholders and technologies to improve the overall state of the art of for various industries, especially those that are just now coming to understand how open source software and development practices can solve their problems (e.g. Automotive).

Last but not least, I note that there are a number of CentOS Dojos that occur worldwide, and while my ability to travel is somewhat limited even without the spectre of a global pandemic around us, I would be honored to present at any of these events virtually - and physically when possible - should my skills as a public speaker be of value to the community.

My thanks to the Board for their consideration of my nomination. Should you have any follow up questions for me, I welcome them via email at [e-mail]. You can review an up to date, though by no means comprehensive, list of my past professional and community accomplishments on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesliehawthorn/.

## Matthew Miller

### Nominator statement

As Fedora Project Leader, Matthew would be able to help the two projects find more opportunities for collaboration. He has a long history of technical and leadership skills, particularly in open source communities. As the Board works to become more open in how it operates, Matthew's experience here would be invaluable.

### Nominee statement

So, I think you all may remember some from last attempt a few months ago. I don't remember _exactly_ what I said, but I'm sure it all still stands. But here's more!

I want to help CentOS succeed in the post-rebuild world. I want to see it grow as a community project, and as an essential part of making RHEL.

I think an activist board, as Rich describes it, is useful — but at the same time, it can't just be a "declarative" board. Action comes from the people doing things. Board member _should_ do things to help the project, but, also should listen to and support _everyone_ in the project who is doing things -- and in that sense, be reactive as well.

I think that CentOS _might_ benefit from a distinction between technical leardership and project governance, like Fedora has our Council and FESCo. But, I'm not interested in pushing "how we do it in Fedora" on CentOS; both projects have different needs.

One thing I'm _particularly_ interested in right now is how both projects provide requests to and receive services and support from CPE. Candidly, I don't feel like the process is great. That's something I want to help make better, and I think as Fedora Project Leader, I'm in a good position to make sure we get a process that fits the different requirements of both projects and also is reasonably consistent.

I'd also like to help build Fedora-CentOS bridges wherever we can. There's so much overlap -- and so much to do!

## Jack Aboutboul

### Nominator statement

Maintaining a healthy pipeline to the rebuild community is good.

### Nominee statement

Thank you to whomever nominated me. I am honestly humbled by the opportunity to even be considered for nomination.

I think most of what I sent last time still rings true. Joining the board for me, is really all about being able to empower people. CentOS is certainly shifting in more than just one way, not just the distribution, but also the board and the community dynamics and there exists a tremendous potential and amount of opportunity to help affect change and help people do good.

I see the board as striking a balance between being reactive and activist. Recent changes like allowing open board meetings and moving towards more transparency are something which I would like to continue. Now with the advent of Stream, I think that it will be more possible to react positively to community feedback and we should investigate and invest in the mechanisms for making that a reality. Continuing to support and encourage the SIG work is also a prime thing for me and doing more to grow that part of the community would be a priority. The CentOS social game is kinda weak too and I think we can leverage existing platform to grow engagement and help build the reputation of the project.

What I can contribute is my experience in the community, my passion for actually seeing the ecosystem succeed and my desire to keep helping and enabling people.

## Nominations declined

* Megan Byrd-Sanicki
* Emma Jane Hogbin

## No response yet

* Michelle Murrain
* Akkana Peck