Hello again! Sorry, it's been a very busy month. From my initial observations I have
decided to move on from this project, but I wanted to share some feedback with you before
I go.
After spending some time getting to know Fedora and the community I came to see that not
only do Red Hat employees contribute to the project - which is known and expected - but
some of them appear to be taking leading positions. This gives the impression that a
private company has implicit control over the direction of Fedora, with employees assigned
to work on the project as part of their work responsibility. I hope that my impression is
wrong, because in my opinion it would not be an exaggeration to claim that implicit
control is implicit ownership.
Let's assume in the best case scenario that Red Hat employees are volunteering of
their own volition, completely outside of the realm of the responsibilities agreed upon
with their employer. This amounts to unpaid work provided to Red Hat indirectly by their
employees. More importantly, however, there would still be a division between paid and
unpaid volunteers. In any case, volunteers that are not employed by Red Hat are still
contributing their work to a private company. Thus, they are contributing to their
profits, which subsequently influences the salaries of those volunteers that are employed
directly by Red Hat.
To put it bluntly, from my analysis this could amount to an exploitative relationship on
multiple levels - between paid and unpaid volunteers, between Red Hat and its employees,
and between Red Hat and all volunteers. I may have misconceived the situation, but I am
suggesting that it is Fedora's (and also Red Hat's) responsibility to clear this
misconception in a public and easily accessible manner and to make the nature of this
relationship more explicit to prospective volunteers so that they not be misled or even
potentially exploited. It may even be helpful going forward to define new terms such as
POSS (Private and open-source software) so that the greater open-source community can
become conscious of - and possess greater discernment as to - whether or not they are
being taken advantage of.
Thank you for your time. Peace!