Moin, On Wednesday 05 August 2009 15:12:43 Martin Schlander wrote:
Onsdag den 5. august 2009 14:26:14 skrev Christian Jäger:
The problem here is a misapprehension of what a majority vote can and can not do.
You're completely off-beat with all of this. A majority decision has never been in the cards.
The decision will be made by openSUSE management and the openSUSE board (assuming noone higher up in the Novell hierarchy interfers). a) the openSUSE Board as of the Guiding Principles [1] is not supposed to make decisions but recommendations: Act as a central point of contact Help resolve conflicts Communicate community interests to Novell Facilitate communication with all areas of the community Facilitate decision making processes where needed b) I fear the decision has to be made by myself as the Product Manager of openSUSE. It's most likely a decision which just can be wrong. But it will be taken soon. Best M [1] http://en.opensuse.org/Guiding_Principles
a) discontinue the DVD-releases and only put out Live-CDs, thus avoiding the issue (a mild kind of split, as I don't think anybody would really want 'KopenSUSE' and 'GopenSUSE'...)
The exact same issues exist for the download page on the website as for the dvd installer. Besides solving nothing, discontinuing the dvd is also a bad idea because it's the preferred media by most.
b) treat both communities equally by NOT defaulting to a specific desktop (the zero-sum game is made a taboo)
Ahh, but you ignore the fact that the majority of our community don't see the current situation as being equal at all.
and there is always c) declare it someone else's problem (as in 'let Andreas decide' ;))
'c)' is not really an option because the new decision maker be it a maintainer of whoever - would face the same problems and consequences.
AJ's draft of a policy for the matter mostly takes care of the problem of the issue coming up again at random times:
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-project/2009-08/msg00196.html
But with a vote on a) or b) I think we would have it down to two meaningful, non-destructive options which don't align with the borders of the two 'camps'.
They're both quite destructive.
b) would mean everyone has to either accept that the openSUSE community as a whole is more important than their feelings
No, it would mean that the feelings of a small minority would be more important than the good of the project as a whole.
I am frankly quite amazed by the nonchalance with which a KDE-team member has brought up this explosive issue
He is not part of the openSUSE KDE team if that's what you mean. I don't think any KDE person close to the openSUSE project would have ever bothered opening this debate - cuz frankly everyone expected/expects that Novell politricks would overrule the interest of the block the correct decision from ever being made. Which is in itself one of many reasons why the status quo is quite destructive.
The gains of this whole discussion are close to zero, the damage has already been done
Again you ignore the fact that the status quo is doing damage every day, and has been doing so for years - for all the reasons already stated in the discussion.
If the correct decision is made, this whole thing is an opportunity for the openSUSE community to come out healthier on the other side.
-- Michael Löffler, Product Management SUSE LINUX Products GmbH - Nürnberg - AG Nürnberg - HRB 16746 - GF: Markus Rex