#283 Proposal: re-align Fedora quarters to calendar year
Closed: approved 4 years ago by bcotton. Opened 4 years ago by mattdm.

Historically, Fedora has operated on a fiscal calendar which corresponds to Red Hat's. For whatever corporate blah-blah-blah reasons, RH's fiscal year ends at the end of February. This has the somewhat surprising result that most of 2019 is in FY20, and we'd normally be planning for FY21 starting in March.

However, with the IBM purchase, Red Hat will at some point be changing to the much less confusing "hey, quarters are the same as the calendar". Since the only reason Fedora did this the confusing way was to keep our finances lined up with our primary sponsor, it'd be extra silly of us to keep the offset calendar when that sponsor hasn't.

So, in 2020, let's call a quarter a quarter.


I believe our sponsor's calendar will change beginning calendar year 2021, so the upcoming fiscal year will be a fiscal 10 months.

+1 to this proposal whether we start in calendar 2020 or 2021.

Metadata Update from @bcotton:
- Issue priority set to: Next Meeting (was: Needs Review)
- Issue tagged with: budget, ticket-vote

4 years ago

+1 for changing, I think we should do it it in CY20 if we can

+1 for either calendar 2020 or 2021

FWIW, I suggest the project follow RH's conversion during CY20. This way the money flows easily for the FCAIC. The quarters have no real effect on project activity.

+1, happy to let the people it affects detail the timeline (likely FCAIC/FPL)

+1, this makes sense to me.

I have official information Red Hat's process (and permission to share it):

  • Red Hat’s FY20 fourth quarter runs December 1, 2019 through February 29, 2020.
  • Beginning in March, Red Hat will start the process of shifting to IBM's quarters. As a reminder, IBM’s fiscal year starts January 1 and matches calendar quarters, so their Q2 runs April through June.
  • The four-month span of March through June will function as Red Hat’s transition period.
  • Red Hat will fully shift to IBM’s quarterly schedule starting July.

So to break that down for 2020:

  • January, February: Q4 "Classic" FY20
  • March, April, May, June: Transition Period
  • July, August, September: Q3 2020
  • October, November, December: Q4 2020

The vote is (+5,0-0). The proposal is accepted. @riecatnor, you may budget accordingly.

Metadata Update from @bcotton:
- Issue close_status updated to: approved
- Issue status updated to: Closed (was: Open)

4 years ago

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