Hi! On 7 May 2015 at 09:13, Efstathios Iosifidis wrote:

2015-05-07 7:53 GMT+03:00 jdd :

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Le 07/05/2015 00:30, Efstathios Iosifidis a écrit :

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Hello my friends,

Unfortunately I couldn't make it to the conference due to family health problems.

I saw the project meeting and I totally agree with Henne. Actually I was preparing a post about part of what he said. Here it is: https://lizards.opensuse.org/2015/05/06/developing-developers/

It doesn't matter if the product is the best (SLEbased, SLEless, Tumbleweed). If there are no end users to use and promote it (because usually developers don't), then it's useless to have it.

Find out WHY you do what you do and just go out and engage people (as I mention, the term marketing leeds to profits-money). Go to events, bring more people (prefer end users) to community and just help them engage-grow.

Help end users to find themselfs in the community. If they like it, they'll become developers. If they're not interested in developing, they'll help make our project fantabulous.

The problem with this theory is that it just isn't backed up by reality. We have spent over 9 years targeting "Everyone, Everywhere" We do go to more events than we ever have before, with more materials, and much higher quality materials And sure, in terms of end users, this strategy has brought in more users than ever before, the statistics shown at oSC 13 showed that we were growing well 2 years ago, and more recently 13.2's Download numbers show that the trend has continued, and probably accelerated. But what about contributions? Technical contributions to Tumbleweed are skyrocketing - just look at the Changelogs posted each week, and that's great But technical contributions to the Regular Release are in decline. Building 13.2 fell on the shoulders of a few people. We had something like 14 bugs found during the 13.2 Beta phase. And anecdotally, I have a strong feeling that Bugs reported in 13.2 are less likely to get fixed, often because the contributors are focused on Tumbleweed, and if its fixed there, its hard to justify the extra work to get it working on 13.2 when (in our old development model) 13.3 would be around the corner And in the case of all of the other, non-developer contributions, the situation we face in our community right now is pretty ugly. We basically don't have a marketing team any more, the wiki doesn't get the attention and polish it deserves, our admin team are working at full capacity and need more help, and so on and so forth. We have lots of people willing to step up and complain about these problems, but when we look around and call for volunteers to actually help, like we did for the 13.2 release process, or oSC 15, we're very lucky if we get anyone helping at all Just saying we need to 'develop new developers' is a lot easier said then done - mentoring takes a lot of time and effort, and relatively few of our developer contributors have the extra time required to do that. And so, the current situation is not sustainable - we need to find a way of enticing the right people into our Project and to help us improve it, not just consume the awesome things we're outputting And so, the suggestion from the Board that we steer the Project in a direction that directly targets 'Makers', an audience which primarily encapsulates sysadmins and developers, but also users who overlap these audiences and/or aspire in that direction This is an area we're already strong in, technically, and we think we'll be able to attract the kind of people who naturally, and easily, are able to both use, benefit from, and contribute back to openSUSE This isn't an 'abandonment' of our other users, openSUSE will still work for them as well as it does today, hopefully better, but I think it's very important that openSUSE has clear direction, a clear target, which allows us to apply focus to improve our offerings for those people, and hopefully in return get more new blood into the community who can contribute back and continue the upward trajectory we currently have. Regards, Richard -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

* Henne Vogelsang [2015-05-07 15:57]:

Hey,

On 07.05.2015 10:23, Richard Brown wrote:

...

but when we look around and call for volunteers to actually help, like we did for the 13.2 release process, or oSC 15, we're very lucky if we get anyone helping at all

That's the point I was trying to inspire a discussion about. I think we need to think very hard and with a very open mind about what this means.

What are the reasons that people don't answer our calls for help?

I can think of a few reasons: - as long as things do not totally break down but still limp along, few people feel actully compelled to act (see e.g. release process) and even if, there is no guarantee that they will - tasks like release engineering or kernel maintenance are not very rewarding but laborious, time-consuming, and require a lot of skills and experience all of which are in general a scarce resource, hence it's hard to find unpaid volunteers for that (see e.g. the volunteer-driven Debian release process or FreeBSD's past problems with pusing out stable point releases) - a huge community does not imply that there are enough potential contributors with the right skills and enough spare time to sustain the project, it depends on the composition of the community, i.e. whom you attract (see e.g. Ubuntu and their problems maintaining the volunteer-driven Universe repo) -- Guido Berhoerster -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 On 05/07/2015 06:56 AM, Henne Vogelsang wrote:

Hey,

On 07.05.2015 10:23, Richard Brown wrote:

...

but when we look around and call for volunteers to actually help, like we did for the 13.2 release process, or oSC 15, we're very lucky if we get anyone helping at all

That's the point I was trying to inspire a discussion about. I think we need to think very hard and with a very open mind about what this means.

What are the reasons that people don't answer our calls for help?

Henne

How can I help? Are there concrete tasks that need to be done? Are they listed somewhere? Is there a general "we need help with X" wiki page? - -- James Mason Technical Architect, Public Cloud openSUSE Member SUSE jmason@suse.com - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SUSECon 2015: Register at susecon.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iQEcBAEBCAAGBQJVS5ZHAAoJEBs5UYhsRJAjSl8H/1H1jwFSQV23x9xjlJqOxXN4 CLcTlh9Vbuax3KRv1XkZY0Agz1V2Mls2wRm7hFpEGu6i5bjt6vqqz0orK6DmF0xy yxGyuy5HffNo8oDbELHX86mSgoS9bie6lrqtrC2XYqE+ojhjsgJhcDsZkpcODxeO 4rl7UoM0LVuyNIgrG3YHg4xurMK5ngvL2jVdmb3bxOZPtNOY+tbmfFienyFLG36P 4onHAvROiyA70pZy6r7xLjGsx50pgRH9+Rvt+clFOZ76lEKaxKzrhzkAoNz1an8Y yiqaC/l1X5RiZFh0DTMtyOghJzE//pTt4RnuG1FWQcL7S063r4VRq1u+k4pDuo4= =KjOl -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 07.05.2015 18:43, James Mason wrote:

On 05/07/2015 06:56 AM, Henne Vogelsang wrote:

...

Hey,

...

On 07.05.2015 10:23, Richard Brown wrote:

...

...

but when we look around and call for volunteers to actually help, like we did for the 13.2 release process, or oSC 15, we're very lucky if we get anyone helping at all

...

That's the point I was trying to inspire a discussion about. I think we need to think very hard and with a very open mind about what this means.

...

What are the reasons that people don't answer our calls for help?

...

Henne

How can I help?

Are there concrete tasks that need to be done? Are they listed somewhere? Is there a general "we need help with X" wiki page?

Technical tasks are probably visible at some OBS/wiki page, but that is still too hard to find and consume. Also, I often feel that as somebody not (any more) working for SUSE I always miss a bit of the background details, the plan and maybe the skills, as Coolo will always be faster in doing something himself than helping somebody to do the job. I know that'S hard to change (given brain capability conditions and available time) but.... that is still a problem. Maybe somebody is creative on how to improve on that... Last but not least, for many people it's hard to find motivation to work on a project that feels a bit ...lets say outdated meanwhile. That however, can change quickly, and this kind of discussion help with that. regards, Klaas -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Henne Vogelsang wrote:

Hey,

On 07.05.2015 10:23, Richard Brown wrote:

...

but when we look around and call for volunteers to actually help, like we did for the 13.2 release process, or oSC 15, we're very lucky if we get anyone helping at all

That's the point I was trying to inspire a discussion about. I think we need to think very hard and with a very open mind about what this means.

What are the reasons that people don't answer our calls for help?

I think the calls for help are too broad or too loose for people to feel attracted/inclined. Just a hunch. Personally, I see no problem in dedicating a few hours a week to the "13.x release process", but I need a todo-list from which I can pick the top item and then work it for e.g. an hour or so. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (20.9°C) http://www.dns24.ch/ - your free DNS host, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 11.05.2015 13:18, Per Jessen wrote:

Henne Vogelsang wrote:

...

Hey,

On 07.05.2015 10:23, Richard Brown wrote:

...

but when we look around and call for volunteers to actually help, like we did for the 13.2 release process, or oSC 15, we're very lucky if we get anyone helping at all

That's the point I was trying to inspire a discussion about. I think we need to think very hard and with a very open mind about what this means.

What are the reasons that people don't answer our calls for help?

I think the calls for help are too broad or too loose for people to feel attracted/inclined. Just a hunch. Personally, I see no problem in dedicating a few hours a week to the "13.x release process", but I need a todo-list from which I can pick the top item and then work it for e.g. an hour or so.

Like https://progress.opensuse.org/projects/opensuse-13-2-release ? Greetings, Stephan -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iEYEARECAAYFAlVQlAgACgkQwFSBhlBjoJZo7QCfWNmQj/L71LkpW4Q1rfKUyQmB /yYAn2UNpdKCXmmuWq9FjQRDJYIcO4RT =N9EW -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 11.05.2015 13:45, Jan Engelhardt wrote:

On Monday 2015-05-11 13:35, Stephan Kulow wrote:

...

...

...

What are the reasons that people don't answer our calls for help?

I think the calls for help are too broad or too loose for people to feel attracted/inclined. Just a hunch.

Like https://progress.opensuse.org/projects/opensuse-13-2-release ?

I first heard of that progress.opensuse.org subpage just this month. Or maybe I did hear it before, but never was asked to look at that website/use it in some way/ and so on.

http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-project/2014-09/msg00035.html

On the other hand, I have a real vivid memory of people randomly asking me on IRC just in the very moment I looked at the window (magic how they figure _that_ one out) to look into, say, various build failures in set @B after they made an update to $A. But at least this model works comparatively well, for me.

Yeah, because you like fixing build failures - and don't seem to like jump on "we need feature lists written". Just like any other packager :) Greetings, Stephan -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iEYEARECAAYFAlVQl/UACgkQwFSBhlBjoJY3aACgmRO2ewLDGKZu8Q44aLFge1oC LecAoImepmyn14I7dqKjVe1N1+W18TGC =Coh+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 11.05.2015 14:35, Jan Engelhardt wrote:

I have participated in calls to aid in writing https://en.opensuse.org/Features for some previous openSUSE release. I do remember some occassional mail that asks "what is important for you (as a packager) in openSUSE X.Y?".. it might have been it was not posted to only opensuse-project@.

Yeah, as such mails only make sense if you have someone organizing the mass mailing and collecting the feedback. It takes a lot of time Greetings, Stephan -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iEYEARECAAYFAlVQozYACgkQwFSBhlBjoJajbwCgs6WQMAWoIF//nWPwjoDiUEgO CEAAn3scoWvrMdQtnxLn3GjS4ZX2YIEn =AqLt -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Ancor Gonzalez Sosa wrote:

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Like https://progress.opensuse.org/projects/opensuse-13-2-release ?

Just in case somebody is about to complain that list is not visible enough.

Not a complaint, just an observation - it isn't anywhere near visible enough. Certainly not as the one central todo-list manager for the openSUSE release process. Every call for help should have a link to it, to begin with. It's a moot point, but where are the "calls for help" that reference http://progress.opensuse.org as the main todo list? "if you don't know what to do, here's the list: "

Can it be better? Sure. Is the lack of a list of concrete tasks stopping somebody to contribute? Absolutely not.

Lack of knowledge of the list is part of what stops people. Absolutely. Next I'll take a look at the old list and see if the tasks are sufficiently well-defined that I would be able to simply pick the next one and work it for an hour. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (25.9°C) http://www.dns24.ch/ - free dynamic DNS, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 05/11/2015 01:53 PM, Per Jessen wrote:

Stephan Kulow wrote:

...

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1

On 11.05.2015 13:18, Per Jessen wrote:

...

Henne Vogelsang wrote:

...

Hey,

On 07.05.2015 10:23, Richard Brown wrote:

...

but when we look around and call for volunteers to actually help, like we did for the 13.2 release process, or oSC 15, we're very lucky if we get anyone helping at all

That's the point I was trying to inspire a discussion about. I think we need to think very hard and with a very open mind about what this means.

What are the reasons that people don't answer our calls for help?

I think the calls for help are too broad or too loose for people to feel attracted/inclined. Just a hunch. Personally, I see no problem in dedicating a few hours a week to the "13.x release process", but I need a todo-list from which I can pick the top item and then work it for e.g. an hour or so.

Like https://progress.opensuse.org/projects/opensuse-13-2-release ?

There isn't much listed at the moment, when I log in I get a list of four tickets opened by myself. I clicked a few links and got a list of issues (all resolved/closed) - looks like that sort of tool, yes.

That's what I would expect from the list of tasks to do for the 13.2 release 6 months AFTER the release is done. There were plenty of open tasks BEFORE the release date. Many of them simply were closed because nobody stepped in and many of them were finally done by the same 3 guys. Cheers. -- Ancor González Sosa YaST Team at SUSE Linux GmbH -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Per Jessen wrote:

I can't help wondering if it was really a good idea to put the call for help and the url in "Minutes from Today's Project Meeting"? I _do_ read those minutes occasionally, but it's exactly a must-read for me.

but it's not exactly a must-read for me. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (25.8°C) http://www.dns24.ch/ - free dynamic DNS, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Robert Schweikert wrote:

...

Like https://progress.opensuse.org/projects/opensuse-13-2-release ?

With better advertisement and announcements the next time ;)

I bet that most people on this list would have to admit not knowing about the existence of this list.

I knew it was an/the issue tracker for for admin@opensuse.org - I gladly admit to having zero idea it was the main todo list for the release process. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (26.1°C) http://www.hostsuisse.com/ - dedicated server rental in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 07.05.2015 10:23, Richard Brown wrote: Hey,

The problem with this theory is that it just isn't backed up by reality.

We have spent over 9 years targeting "Everyone, Everywhere"

We do go to more events than we ever have before, with more materials, and much higher quality materials

Not sure where you take the "9 years" from, but openSUSE comes from a "linux for everyone and everywhere" approach, as that was the position SUSE Linux was owning back in the days. We came from there, and once Ubuntu was pulling away so many pure users, we had to try to refocus on "what can we do now if Ubuntu is more attractive to normal users?", which lead to this experienced users/developers idea. I know that marketing always works like "identify a market, and act on that" - but I think in our case of openSUSE that is wrong. We should more be proud of what we can and have, and present that openly and self confidently. We have a lot, and that will attract a lot of people such users, developers, bee keepers, automobile racers, etc if we tell them. We want all of them, there is no need to "preselect" on devs. Now people will say, "But you need focus", yes, and the focus of openSUSE for me always was clearly: - transparency and an open collaboration model between company and community - a strong free software focus - technical excellence in quality and system design - opportunity and room to realize "your idea" with rich free infrastructure - a nice welcoming community We do very well in (almost) each of the points. But we fail to present that. Nice "material" does not really tell people that. Enthusiastic community does.

And sure, in terms of end users, this strategy has brought in more users than ever before, the statistics shown at oSC 13 showed that we were growing well 2 years ago, and more recently 13.2's Download numbers show that the trend has continued, and probably accelerated. Hm, statistics... I am afraid that is self cheating. As somebody who has to provide packages for for all kinds of distributions of a popular software, I have to say that I get more question and remarks even about CentOS6 (as desktop system!) than about openSUSE. Really, I am sorry to see and say that, as I also spent a lot into openSUSE, but it's a fact. A completely not logic fact, because openSUSE is of course *way* better than many of the other popular Linuxes out there.

I am happy that this kind of discussion comes up again. All that can improve if we just do some work, and there is another thread already identifying why that is blocked here and there. Cool, lets get that more fluid again. regards, Klaas

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Torsdag den 7. maj 2015 10:23:58 skrev Richard Brown:

But technical contributions to the Regular Release are in decline. Building 13.2 fell on the shoulders of a few people. We had something like 14 bugs found during the 13.2 Beta phase.

You can't make too many conclusions on the basis of the 13.2 release process. It was the first release ever based on the new Tumbleweed. It was always clear it was going to be a bit bumpy. You had SLE12 coming out around the same time, the testing phase was excessively short, the roadmap wasn't known until the last moment, iirc a "13.2" product wasn't created in bugzilla, so a lot of factory/tumbleweed bugreports will have been actual 13.2 bug reports. The whole situation was chaotic. If you dismiss the model of Tumbleweed based openSUSE releases on this background, you never gave the model a fair chance. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 9 May 2015 at 15:14, Martin Schlander wrote:

Torsdag den 7. maj 2015 10:23:58 skrev Richard Brown:

...

But technical contributions to the Regular Release are in decline. Building 13.2 fell on the shoulders of a few people. We had something like 14 bugs found during the 13.2 Beta phase.

You can't make too many conclusions on the basis of the 13.2 release process.

It was the first release ever based on the new Tumbleweed. It was always clear it was going to be a bit bumpy. You had SLE12 coming out around the same time, the testing phase was excessively short, the roadmap wasn't known until the last moment, iirc a "13.2" product wasn't created in bugzilla, so a lot of factory/tumbleweed bugreports will have been actual 13.2 bug reports. The whole situation was chaotic.

If you dismiss the model of Tumbleweed based openSUSE releases on this background, you never gave the model a fair chance.

This is a fallacy. While we did rename Factory to Tumbleweed, we didn't revolutionise the development model for the Regular Release In fact, we didn't change a thing Things went into Factory, Factory had a snapshot, the release process kicked into gear, we pumped out a release The model for 13.2 was no different than the development model for every release I've ever been involved in, so I think I can make conclusions based on the 13.2 release process and those conclusions really boil down to a few things 1. The quality of Factory/Tumbleweed snapshots are awesome 2. The vast majority of our contributors interest is in Tumbleweed, not the Regular Release. 3. Despite every effort to remedy the situation, the amount of people working on openSUSE Regular Releases has continued it's decline which we already saw over the last few releases (just look at https://progress.opensuse.org/projects/opensuse-13-2-release vs https://progress.opensuse.org/projects/opensuse-13-1-release for a really stark illustration of how bad it is) We need a new Regular Release which either a) appeals to a new breed of contributors who will invigorate the Regular Releases or b) reduces the amount of work required so we can sustain producing regular releases alongside Tumbleweed as a rolling release - because frankly, right now, the status quo is not sustainable Luckily, the availabilty of the SLE Sources, in my opinion, gives us an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. By taking the Regular Release in a direction that favours stability, we can use the SLE Sources to make the work required to do that way easier. We get to shape it based on what we, the community, are able and willing to do, as brought up by the debate so far. Some bits will move faster, some bits wont, the bits that move faster will be on the communities shoulders to maintain, the bits that wont, we get to benefit from SUSE's work in this area and not compromise on the quality of what we actually provide our users. A specific stable distribution for a specific type of audience that is significantly different from our Tumbleweed user base -> Invigorated contributors working on a targeted project -> awesome, a) is handled A whole pile of SLE sources and maintenance updates meaning openSUSE won't have to worry about parts of the stack which, frankly, right now we really dont have many people maintaining heavily (eg. Kernel, GCC, etc) -> Reduced work for the openSUSE community -> awesome b) is handled Let me give you an example which illustrates my why I think our current model just doesn't work, from both a contributors and users standpoint. For this example, I'm going to use a topical example of KDE which has been also discussed heavily lately. openSUSE 13.2 has at least another 20 months of life in it, based on our Support Lifecycle, assuming we do the next openSUSE release in November 2015 and another in November 2016 It has KDE 4 KDE 4 will be effectively end-of-life in the eyes of Upstream before November 2015. That means no more maintenance, no security updates, nothing from upstream. We're on our own. In the minds of our contributors (the awesome openSUSE KDE team), this is a very uncomfortable position. In Tumbleweed, they see it as impossible to maintain KDE 4 any more, and so they are putting in Plasma 5. And I think they're right, for Tumbleweed. But look at how noisy our mailinglists have been because of it.. Quoting Raymond from the other thread "Why otherwise to upgrade from 13.2, if you get nothing newer in return." - This mindset "we must ship the latest of everything, because that's what's awesome" is a very prevalent mindset in our community. It could practically be the Tumbleweed development motto. It's why a lot of us get up every day and do stuff for openSUSE, there's this wonderful ecosystem of open source stuff and we want to package it up in a distro so we and other people can enjoy it. And there are certainly a good pile of users who feel the same way. And so, I think I've just described the driving force behind Tumbleweed But again look at how noisy our mailinglists have been because of this mindset We have other users who crave stability. Who pick openSUSE because we build stuff that works, not because we build stuff that changes all the time (and also works). These are the 'long tail' of people we know who are still using openSUSE 12.x, or openSUSE 13.1 and looking forward to an Evergreen release in the future. We've seen this come up time, after time, after time. Every major flamewar the openSUSE community has gone through, often ends up coming back to this topic, one group wanting stuff faster, one group wanting stuff slower. We had it with the release schedule discussions years ago, version numbering, systemd, moving from KDE 3->4, GNOME 2->3, and now KDE 4->5 And every time we've ended up with compromise solutions. Compromises are great, but ultimately they're agreements which piss off both sides equally. Using the desktop transitions I mentioned above, this often meant the actual contributors, actually working on the new stuff, reduced their speed of change, held themselves back, in order to try and satisfy the concerns of others who felt things was changing too fast. And, frankly, I dont think that's cool. It's demotivating for the contributors, it doesn't help upstream projects, in some cases it actually means more work for everyone involved. It's not ideal. I like the idea of an openSUSE Project that can keep up, and in fact lead, the open source world by having a distribution that works, but uses everything new as soon as it's possible. This is one of the things that really excites me about Tumbleweed, we're there already and we're able to take it to the next level now. So, if we're not compromising on speed because we have Tumbleweed, why should we compromise on Stability for our Regular Release? Why not have a Regular Release that, in November 2015, has KDE 4 still as an option? Users will be happy. Maintaining it shouldn't be hard if upstream aren't changing anything. The promise of 'you always get the newest of everything' might be broken, but this is a promise that is now fulfilled by Tumbleweed. Maybe we also are able to ship KDE 5 *as well*, because, with a more stable base, and an expectation from users that the openSUSE release will move less dramatically, less often, teams like our KDE team should be able to make sensible choices about what versions of awesome-upstream-stuff they want to keep in the Regular Release for a while The only 'flaw' in this plan, that I totally accept exists, is that for anyone who feels the current openSUSE regular release is 'perfect', then things might be changing for you in a negative way However, I'd ask those people, deep down, to identify the key reason they like the current openSUSE regular release. If you're primarily motivated because "every release I get all the new stuff", then please, use Tumbleweed, and if it's not perfect for you, help us make it better. If you're motivated to use openSUSE because "I want a Linux distribution that just works", then please, help us with this new Regular Release, in order to make it perfect for you use cases. my 2c -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Lørdag den 9. maj 2015 19:24:52 skrev Richard Brown:

On 9 May 2015 at 15:14, Martin Schlander wrote:

...

If you dismiss the model of Tumbleweed based openSUSE releases on this background, you never gave the model a fair chance.

This is a fallacy. While we did rename Factory to Tumbleweed, we didn't revolutionise the development model for the Regular Release

In fact, we didn't change a thing

Things went into Factory, Factory had a snapshot, the release process kicked into gear, we pumped out a release

The model for 13.2 was no different than the development model for every release I've ever been involved in, so I think I can make conclusions based on the 13.2 release process

Technically it wasn't different, but procedurally it was - for starters people weren't used to only a 3 week window for testing and bugreporting. The time that openSUSE was branched off of Tumbleweed (effectively "feature freeze") wasn't known well ahead of time etc. And regardless, whatever problems 13.2 had, will only become worse by basing on SLE, and alienating the Tumbleweed contributors further from the stable openSUSE releases. We need to fix the issues, and not venture into some radical experiment, that I can't see succeeding.

We need a new Regular Release which either a) appeals to a new breed of contributors who will invigorate the Regular Releases or b) reduces the amount of work required so we can sustain producing regular releases alongside Tumbleweed as a rolling release - because frankly, right now, the status quo is not sustainable

Luckily, the availabilty of the SLE Sources, in my opinion, gives us an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

I fail to see how basing on SLE does either. It'll be much more work initially creating a distro based on SLE than on Tumbleweed, because of the lack of packages and the heavy need for backporting. With Tumbleweed, everything is already there, it just needs some polishing. The subsequent maintenance of the distro might be a bit less work with a SLE base, since SUSE will maintain the core of that. The new breed of contributors barely exist. Ask Debian Stable, CentOS and Evergreen.

We have other users who crave stability. Who pick openSUSE because we build stuff that works, not because we build stuff that changes all the time (and also works). These are the 'long tail' of people we know who are still using openSUSE 12.x, or openSUSE 13.1 and looking forward to an Evergreen release in the future.

Those users tend to have an extremely consumeristic approach and won't ever contribute a damn thing.

So, if we're not compromising on speed because we have Tumbleweed, why should we compromise on Stability for our Regular Release?

Because those are the two extremes that each appeal to very few people. Others have tried this before (Gentoo, Arch, Debian Unstable on the one side, CentOS and Debian Stable on the other). Most people don't want bleeding edge or enterprise grade stability. They want the middleground, i.e. a good balance of reasonable stability and reasonable (consumer) hardware support and fairly up-to-date applications.

The only 'flaw' in this plan, that I totally accept exists, is that for anyone who feels the current openSUSE regular release is 'perfect', then things might be changing for you in a negative way However, I'd ask those people, deep down, to identify the key reason they like the current openSUSE regular release.

Easy. Like I said above, you get decent stability, up-to-date software and hardware support. And you can easily install updated applications, without jeopardizing your stable base. Because it's pretty easy for Tumbleweed packagers to provide tons of backports for the stable releases with minimal extra work. The current situation is far from perfect, but it is fully fixable and full of potential (26 months lifetime would be very attractive, Tumbleweed improving means stable releases improve etc).

If you're primarily motivated because "every release I get all the new stuff", then please, use Tumbleweed, and if it's not perfect for you, help us make it better.

Tumbleweed will never be an option, no matter how good it becomes, it will still be rolling. Hence I will not use it and I can barely recommend it to anyone.

If you're motivated to use openSUSE because "I want a Linux distribution that just works", then please, help us with this new Regular Release, in order to make it perfect for you use cases.

Well, if you're going to sell this idea, you need to show me how it'll be significantly different than Debian Stable (apart from having a few great tools like yast, zypper, obs of course ;-). Because from what I gather from the discussion, assuming anyone would actually step up and build this distro, it'll have: * a release every 2-3 years * it'll have outdated hardware support compared to any mainstream distro * old software (primarily talking about applications and desktop environments here, the stuff that people actually "see") * it'll be very stable * the lifetime will be at "least 3 years" (i.e. not 5-6-7 years) So to me that sounds very much like Debian Stable. And people have already voted with their feet on that. There is very limited interest from users and developers alike - apart from the home/small office server niche. On the desktop it is virtually non-existent. If you could convince us that this distro could somehow achieve competitive hardware support of random newish cheapo laptops (wifi, power management etc.) and have applications that don't represent the state of the free software world of 2-4 years past - while maintaining hyper stability. Then maybe it could become interesting. But I can't see how that's possible. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Søndag den 10. maj 2015 11:40:18 skrev jdd:

Le 10/05/2015 11:26, Martin Schlander a écrit :

...

Those users tend to have an extremely consumeristic approach and won't ever contribute a damn thing.

may be we don't work enough in that direction :-)

Like I said, Debian, Evergreen etc. already tried that.

...

Tumbleweed will never be an option, no matter how good it becomes, it will still be rolling. Hence I will not use it and I can barely recommend it to anyone.

why not? It seems for me, but I'm pretty exterior of it that tumbleweed is more tested than some very appreciated openSUSE regular release of the past...

Even if we assumed for the sake of argument that Tumbleweed never had any bugs, it is still more annoying adapting to intentionally changed behaviour in Tumbleweed on a daily basis when you're trying to get things done, than it is to find a workaround for an unintended bug in stable openSUSE once every 9-12 months.

...

...

If you're motivated to use openSUSE because "I want a Linux distribution that just works", then please, help us with this new Regular Release, in order to make it perfect for you use cases.

Well, if you're going to sell this idea, you need to show me how it'll be significantly different than Debian Stable (apart from having a few great tools like yast, zypper, obs of course ;-).

why should it be different?

Because if it's not different, it will achieve the same results. Creating a marginally better Debian Stable, with a lot fewer packages, won't get us anywhere. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Am 10.05.2015 um 12:56 schrieb Martin Schlander:

Søndag den 10. maj 2015 11:40:18 skrev jdd:

...

Le 10/05/2015 11:26, Martin Schlander a écrit :

...

Those users tend to have an extremely consumeristic approach and won't ever contribute a damn thing.

may be we don't work enough in that direction :-)

Like I said, Debian, Evergreen etc. already tried that.

...

...

Tumbleweed will never be an option, no matter how good it becomes, it will still be rolling. Hence I will not use it and I can barely recommend it to anyone.

why not? It seems for me, but I'm pretty exterior of it that tumbleweed is more tested than some very appreciated openSUSE regular release of the past...

Even if we assumed for the sake of argument that Tumbleweed never had any bugs, it is still more annoying adapting to intentionally changed behaviour in Tumbleweed on a daily basis when you're trying to get things done, than it is to find a workaround for an unintended bug in stable openSUSE once every 9-12 months.

I think there is no point in continuing this discussion: rolling releases aren't for everyone and for every use case - even a perfectly rolling release won't. The question is more: what users/contributors we take out of the regular openSUSE release user pool by making TW a perfect rolling release? And my answer: enough to warrant rethinking our regular release's scope. Of course from a happy user's perspective there is little reason for openSUSE to change. But those that actually have to deliver your suggestion of "just maintain it for 26 months" actually do see a reason. Greetings, Stephan -- Ma muaß weiterkämpfen, kämpfen bis zum Umfalln, a wenn die ganze Welt an Arsch offen hat, oder grad deswegn. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Am 10.05.2015 um 15:15 schrieb Martin Schlander:

It must motivate at least some Tumbleweed contributors bringing their packages to hundreds of thousands of people, and not just a limited group of Tumbleweed enthusiasts.

You could say the same about upstream developers. Why don't we see tons of upstream developers packaging? I make it easy (for me): because motivation doesn't work this way.

The SLE based openSUSE releases would mean that there's a gap of 1-3 years or more, between doing some work in Tumbleweed and the work reaching end users. And most likely a significantly smaller group of end users than now.

Sorry, the openSUSE regular releases would be *based* on SLE sources - they are not SLE, there is still a lot of openSUSE in there. Greeings, Stephan -- Ma muaß weiterkämpfen, kämpfen bis zum Umfalln, a wenn die ganze Welt an Arsch offen hat, oder grad deswegn. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 On 2015-05-10 16:10, jdd wrote:

Le 10/05/2015 15:31, Stephan Kulow a écrit :

...

You could say the same about upstream developers. Why don't we see tons of upstream developers packaging? I make it easy (for me): because motivation doesn't work this way.

because so many people do this for them. If every distro stopped packaging, what would developers do?

Starve :-)

do not under evaluate your own work :-)

Absolutely! :-) - -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" (Minas Tirith)) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) iF4EAREIAAYFAlVZR4YACgkQja8UbcUWM1wePAEAiWcWmhriG3Wezb0vbT0PL0P+ qWqvFTDhbqMq8xz54BAA/RIyiNWyDiAP3MoEBAMTGCNTgZSDwdcJr3RLrj0OjMT7 =gTbe -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Søndag den 10. maj 2015 13:32:26 skrev Richard Brown:

On 10 May 2015 at 11:26, Martin Schlander wrote:

...

* a release every 2-3 years

Wrong - we're talking about an openSUSE 'minor release' every year, based on SLE Service Packs (current planning within SUSE expects SLE12 service packs at the end of each calender year) A major release would be about 3 years into the future, around the same time as SUSE building SLE 13. SUSE intend to build SLE 13 by starting with a snapshot of Tumbleweed when they need to start building the next version of the enterprise distro.. I guess I forgot to mention that, but it might go some way to express the reliability Tumbleweed has these days.

If this were to be true you would end up having 3-4 different stable openSUSE releases alive to support at any given time. And in the case of SLE11->SLE12 it would actually have been 5 years between major releases.

...

* it'll have outdated hardware support compared to any mainstream distro

Wrong - SLE Service Packs always have baked in hardware enablement, and sometimes may include full Kernel version changes. openSUSE Releases will benefit from this work.

If this were true it would mean I could go and get SLE11 with the latest servicepack and it would have hardware support comparable to openSUSE 13.2 for cheapo consumer laptops and other consumer hardware. I find that hard to believe. Guess I should try and get the trial of SLE11SP3 to see how bad things actually are towards the end of SLE major cycle. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 05/10/2015 08:43 AM, Martin Schlander wrote:

Søndag den 10. maj 2015 13:32:26 skrev Richard Brown:

...

On 10 May 2015 at 11:26, Martin Schlander wrote:

...

* a release every 2-3 years

Wrong - we're talking about an openSUSE 'minor release' every year, based on SLE Service Packs (current planning within SUSE expects SLE12 service packs at the end of each calender year) A major release would be about 3 years into the future, around the same time as SUSE building SLE 13. SUSE intend to build SLE 13 by starting with a snapshot of Tumbleweed when they need to start building the next version of the enterprise distro.. I guess I forgot to mention that, but it might go some way to express the reliability Tumbleweed has these days.

If this were to be true you would end up having 3-4 different stable openSUSE releases alive to support at any given time.

And in the case of SLE11->SLE12 it would actually have been 5 years between major releases.

...

...

* it'll have outdated hardware support compared to any mainstream distro

Wrong - SLE Service Packs always have baked in hardware enablement, and sometimes may include full Kernel version changes. openSUSE Releases will benefit from this work.

If this were true it would mean I could go and get SLE11 with the latest servicepack and it would have hardware support comparable to openSUSE 13.2 for cheapo consumer laptops and other consumer hardware. I find that hard to believe.

Guess I should try and get the trial of SLE11SP3 to see how bad things actually are towards the end of SLE major cycle.

Well, one point in the whole thing is that an openSUSE release based on SLE sources would never get toward the end of the SLE life cycle. Generally as SLE approaches the mid-term of a life cycle a new version is released. Thus, openSUSE based on SLE sources should not reach the long tail. But the concern is valid as not all HW that needs support and has drivers upstream is of interest to SLE and thus backports would potentially lacking. If there is a commitment from SUSE to backport also those drivers that are not important to SLE into the source tree for SLE that openSUSE would be based on that would be an "easy" fix to address this concern. Later, Robert - -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJVUK9NAAoJEE4FgL32d2UkaSIIALGsQ8RPC7u1c6f3E6z4kedA Iw2j+zQHHs4995Hipms+NBP4Y3UPQ7sF6S2HxfyP3kDqE8AlB4AtxiK7w3q4Wprj CWBsO6n1ccZ1rpkGBaRw2YgsJarUzadxWAg2IJhGjDh6rD207c3U3QYK9IJk0xF3 CYMddQPGzU9wq64tw+HTkso2HXMJf2gCQVreionK33s2C3t1c55BCJl0TsaEMtfP 6CgGnEC3YeE1DbvF8G5Fpl8cNlBm/FkgYXK/rNsgBCKlkN8YgpE5XLa4SQmdLask qfGh1m5v3iHRQYCHs+jev2x0Ix39/WZH4UBD5RavYiYyw15s+4FHcFLoK0QmhpM= =IkEY -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 05/11/2015 09:44 AM, Klaas Freitag wrote:

On 11.05.2015 15:31, Robert Schweikert wrote:

...

...

Guess I should try and get the trial of SLE11SP3 to see how bad things actually are towards the end of SLE major cycle.

Well, one point in the whole thing is that an openSUSE release based on SLE sources would never get toward the end of the SLE life cycle. [...]

Doesn't this branch of the discussion steal away the thread from it's original question?

Yes, but I would claim this happened long before I responded. Later, Robert - -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJVULSbAAoJEE4FgL32d2UkqAYH/2xqHpenuG0wArVZWuvg7D/8 oPPZ8PTn3JVeD7a8UQS5LPCV8jbLfELd+Kim9DEPCDezu4C/yPZwfjiwFIZeeKFH odyRsVERrtN9RD5TluCWJNW2NX2FTGxW7BmR+E/hyjE3j48I+XByDM6x2v4Zdk2/ FJ6XpbzOnrOfu6lEzdb2+ZVyu9mmhOK2dkbBEOf7qmTKEuuxnMtGLlWsRMEJWc7p IPIB5tNLKlS5usikLNJS5hwE6F5oTOwLzqMM4dTysq4rSCBPJ1qVpr8pHb2JIq/e 7kprn0YE+d+NC9MJF+8jhF6azAcQUoDdUxLwzhnJxb2szcUSYjgwfpXrhQXwFrY= =PHLo -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 On 2015-05-11 15:44, Klaas Freitag wrote:

The original question was something along "Why do less people contribute? How do we change that?".

Well, my small contribution is only on the stable release, not on factory. - -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" (Minas Tirith)) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) iF4EAREIAAYFAlVZSTkACgkQja8UbcUWM1y7GwEAmc6MDKxAyguWi7uR3CLr10XF 3OD/EgnFyfBzBEBPBiMA+gLhC/BW0+1OIRov+/NmPQTAjQR8sX/rw53it1XVjlYh =LZ/v -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Le lundi 18 mai 2015 à 04:04 +0200, Carlos E. R. a écrit :

On 2015-05-11 15:31, Robert Schweikert wrote:

...

But the concern is valid as not all HW that needs support and has drivers upstream is of interest to SLE and thus backports would potentially lacking. If there is a commitment from SUSE to backport also those drivers that are not important to SLE into the source tree for SLE that openSUSE would be based on that would be an "easy" fix to address this concern.

My concern as well.

I understand that SLES is designed for certified hardware, not any kind of hardware.

"designed for certified hardware" doesn't mean anything. We ensure SLE works fine with some hardware, and then, this hardware is flagged as "certified". Not the other way around.

Not the kind of hardware that consumers buy, anyway, but rather professional grade hardware.

But again, SLE will work fine on a lot of regular hardware (we don't disable much hardware support, even more if you look at SLED, which ships most of drivers which are available from vanilla kernel). -- Frederic Crozat Enterprise Desktop Release Manager SUSE -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Le dimanche 10 mai 2015 à 13:32 +0200, Richard Brown a écrit :

On 10 May 2015 at 11:26, Martin Schlander wrote:

...

Well, if you're going to sell this idea, you need to show me how it'll be significantly different than Debian Stable (apart from having a few great tools like yast, zypper, obs of course ;-).

Because from what I gather from the discussion, assuming anyone would actually step up and build this distro, it'll have:

* a release every 2-3 years

Wrong - we're talking about an openSUSE 'minor release' every year, based on SLE Service Packs (current planning within SUSE expects SLE12 service packs at the end of each calender year) A major release would be about 3 years into the future, around the same time as SUSE building SLE 13. SUSE intend to build SLE 13 by starting with a snapshot of Tumbleweed when they need to start building the next version of the enterprise distro.. I guess I forgot to mention that, but it might go some way to express the reliability Tumbleweed has these days.

...

* it'll have outdated hardware support compared to any mainstream distro

Wrong - SLE Service Packs always have baked in hardware enablement, and sometimes may include full Kernel version changes. openSUSE Releases will benefit from this work.

...

* old software (primarily talking about applications and desktop environments here, the stuff that people actually "see")

Wrong - The discussions so far on this topic with our Desktop Teams all show an interest of putting newer desktops ontop of this platform.

For everybody knowledge, I was successful in ensuring GNOME 3.14.x packages from GNOME:Factory (before 3.16 landed on Tumbledweed) could work on SLE12 sources a few weeks ago. Few changes were needed on SLE12 for this (I only required one Intel driver update, which was fixing a deadlock, trigger by GNOME > 3.10) and some changes in GNOME packages (mostly disabling Wayland when building on SLE12) which were integrated on GNOME:Factory. I don't envision a lot of issues with GNOME 3.16, I'll try to rebuild it on top of SLE sources, to see which adaptions are needed (probably not much). And maybe, if I have some time, I might even try to do a spin of SLE sources on OBS with GNOME 3.16 on top of it, just to see how a new openSUSE Regular release could look like ;) -- Frederic Crozat Enterprise Desktop Release Manager SUSE -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Le lundi 11 mai 2015 à 08:00 -0500, Malcolm a écrit :

On Mon 11 May 2015 10:25:53 AM CDT, Frederic Crozat wrote:

...

I don't envision a lot of issues with GNOME 3.16, I'll try to rebuild it on top of SLE sources, to see which adaptions are needed (probably not much). And maybe, if I have some time, I might even try to do a spin of SLE sources on OBS with GNOME 3.16 on top of it, just to see how a new openSUSE Regular release could look like ;)

Hi Frederic If you need a tester/helper, can check with intel and amd gpu's.

Thanks for the offer, I don't have AMD hardware around me :)

Maybe a workstation type extension like on SLES 12?

Not really worth doing the trouble for openSUSE.. We have project for OBS which can work a bit similar ;) -- Frederic Crozat Enterprise Desktop Release Manager SUSE -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Le lundi 11 mai 2015 à 22:57 +0200, Christian Boltz a écrit :

Hallo Leute,

Am Montag, 11. Mai 2015 schrieb Frederic Crozat:

...

I don't envision a lot of issues with GNOME 3.16, I'll try to rebuild it on top of SLE sources, to see which adaptions are needed (probably not much). And maybe, if I have some time, I might even try to do a spin of SLE sources on OBS with GNOME 3.16 on top of it, just to see how a new openSUSE Regular release could look like ;)

That would mean you'll be (at least) the second one who rebuilds SLE from its sources - Marcus is already doing that in home:msmeissn:sle12.

I really want to avoid that ;) We can already start building packages against SLE_12 directly, without using rebuilding ourself the source code from SLE12. This is not ideal but until we decide where we put the cursors between packages from SLE12 and from Factory to create new openSUSE Regular release, building against SLE12 is a safe bet and would help discover things which might require a more recent version of packages. -- Frederic Crozat Enterprise Desktop Release Manager SUSE -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 05/10/2015 05:26 AM, Martin Schlander wrote:

Lørdag den 9. maj 2015 19:24:52 skrev Richard Brown:

...

On 9 May 2015 at 15:14, Martin Schlander wrote:

...

If you dismiss the model of Tumbleweed based openSUSE releases on this background, you never gave the model a fair chance. <snip> And regardless, whatever problems 13.2 had, will only become worse by basing on SLE, and alienating the Tumbleweed contributors further from the stable openSUSE releases.

We need to fix the issues, and not venture into some radical experiment, that I can't see succeeding.

Agreed

<snip>

...

If you're motivated to use openSUSE because "I want a Linux distribution that just works", then please, help us with this new Regular Release, in order to make it perfect for you use cases.

Well, if you're going to sell this idea, you need to show me how it'll be significantly different than Debian Stable (apart from having a few great tools like yast, zypper, obs of course ;-).

Because from what I gather from the discussion, assuming anyone would actually step up and build this distro, it'll have:

* a release every 2-3 years

The releases would probably be malingered with SLE SP releases. The current public time frame for those is 16-18 months. Thus it would be a bit faster than 2-3 years.

* it'll have outdated hardware support compared to any mainstream distro

This would most likely apply only to plugin stuff or consumer grade HW. On the server side SLE kernels enable a lot of hardware along the way. Thus this argument has to be considered from both viewpoints. However, as I have stated elsewhere I am very concerned about the enablement of drivers that are not of interest to the enterprise team and how we would get those backported.

* old software (primarily talking about applications and desktop environments here, the stuff that people actually "see")

I think the idea is to have the "latest and greatest" DEs on the SLE Core. Thus the outdated applications may not necessarily be as big of a concern as is being stated here. Later, Robert - -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iQEbBAEBAgAGBQJVUKxpAAoJEE4FgL32d2UksoAH+JLx5a0uaCz2zRPXxT1DHJt8 DqW9GjKVD2j5q6f18pKAng7rnB9AhcztVlIsJ0JrvSifxj+zSJsPzcdPZGJuu3gL 0zNaosi2H506mB8U7S5kKqV6mwzrEpKCRPqJ6SuMLGi7TgCmMtrbbit0tqbpmlCK PFtcjHjfwy9zVwO5IpM+OeZx7UzahpomOKK/beBzL6dlJaBDfSX7MdvQNmxFIlWy RLBuiQm81OJqAV+l2x6UApbAHPssUTYr6vxXI5oauGmGGkCXJjxwMg4t2q+FXAfZ jo7KJXg/BvyAFf9rdzxJjq5MLWH0PuLmRAb5pJvTve0UvaTKG8vhYHSZF7yYGQ== =dXLb -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 05/11/2015 12:50 PM, Greg Freemyer wrote:

On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 9:19 AM, Robert Schweikert wrote:

...

...

* it'll have outdated hardware support compared to any mainstream distro

This would most likely apply only to plugin stuff or consumer grade HW. On the server side SLE kernels enable a lot of hardware along the way. Thus this argument has to be considered from both viewpoints. However, as I have stated elsewhere I am very concerned about the enablement of drivers that are not of interest to the enterprise team and how we would get those backported.

There is both SLES and SLED.

Does that practically mean that a wider set of hardware enablement is backported than it would if there were only SLES?

Yes, however, target audience for SLED is not the "consumer general desktop" thus the backport concern is valid from an openSUSE point of view. Later, Robert - -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJVUOFfAAoJEE4FgL32d2UkHbMIALEAUCsVGlFu1+LXgQ2I3KWm 2JAnOCa4GHc/tFWjo39SmgikUQwk8EZoWgLRO58cnzTCN2SchQ4qagsuw3UwQrs6 s5vh5nqxCqmhlKspCTubW5AXZAFtHilL+ZGSDtwvoyMhRy31OxsGtADiREK3NYFw IdiksYqnZSHOJaFzddOOCieBStcvwgcnZqsvXkuPbqBjdgMBYBrgY+PU4KcHCkh5 vtYJDTUMCOc8dVl7DlF4O777cice7Als45bOu3CbJIo1NTXmOIw21GVt7UWzDihe DrSj1z1Oe8X+BfDCajVuH5qG91oS5uxIHo1NJdwGi2cpI05WdMdLws0VZo9ftGQ= =k+Ce -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Le 09/05/2015 19:24, Richard Brown a écrit :

1. The quality of Factory/Tumbleweed snapshots are awesome

I am right to think than the new tumbleweed release do not anymore need upgrade based on distro number like is was, being a true rolling relese? This "continuous" working is very iportant IMHO

2. The vast majority of our contributors interest is in Tumbleweed, not the Regular Release.

when you say "contributors", I understand "developpers", isn't it? If developpers do not mind to maintain they own products, I gues they are sending themselve a bullet in the foot...

3. Despite every effort to remedy the situation,

I didn't see on the mailing lists so may calls desperate for people...

https://progress.opensuse.org/projects/opensuse-13-2-release vs https://progress.opensuse.org/projects/opensuse-13-1-release for a really stark illustration of how bad it is)

the action numbers being zero in the two cases, I don't see the point :-(

KDE 4 will be effectively end-of-life in the eyes of Upstream before November 2015.

isn't this why ubuntu do not use kde at all (and SLED neither, I think)? What do the other distribution do?

If you're motivated to use openSUSE because "I want a Linux distribution that just works", then please, help us with this new Regular Release, in order to make it perfect for you use cases.

sur. based on this discussion, I see three kind of uses of openSUSE: * enthousiasts, that should love tumbleweed (new version) * professional desktop users (or they sysadmin) that do not want upgrades at all :-) * server user that need as few upgrade as possible newbies may be of the two first kind, depending on the people. for this two versions of openSUSE should be enough, Tumbleweed (may be could be renamed "regular openSUSE" if it's really as stable as it seems) and may be "granite openSUSE" for the long time support one :-). A solution should be found to the too frequent updates triggered by Packman, for granite :-). n some time could be spent to really define the tasks to be fulfilled, at any level and don't misunderstand me, I'm not against you (Richard) :-)I just think the two points of view (developers versus users) are both needed :-) jdd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Saturday 2015-05-09 19:24, Richard Brown wrote:

Let me give you an example which illustrates my why I think our current model just doesn't work

openSUSE 13.2 has at least another 20 months of life in it,[...] [but] KDE 4 will be effectively end-of-life in the eyes of Upstream before November 2015. That means no more maintenance, no security updates, nothing from upstream. We're on our own.

That does not seem too different from the many low-profile packages whose most recent tarball is already 10+ years old. Just because openSUSE 13.2 is called "supported" does not mean there are eyes on every package, like the one called "bb". The term "support" needs to be re(de)fined - right now, it is an "all or nothing" thing of boolean type: either openSUSE x.y is supported, or it is EOL. This model does not fit. If KDE4 goes out of maintenance by 13.3, so be it. Meanwhile, System/Base may still live on. At other times, I wanted to submit an update for an already-EOLd distro, simply because the update was so Low Hanging Fruit, but the maintenance guys rejected what I feel is just a button press (to accept + trigger the publisher) simply because "it's EOL". That, too, is sad.

Why not have a Regular Release that, in November 2015, has KDE 4 still as an option? Users will be happy. Maintaining it shouldn't be hard if upstream aren't changing anything.

My point exactly. Stable does not necessarily imply "is maintained", foremost it means "has been tried and found to operate well while it was being maintained". And that's ok.

However, I'd ask those people, deep down, to identify the key reason they like the current openSUSE regular release.

If you're motivated to use openSUSE because "I want a Linux distribution that just works", then please, help us with this new Regular Release, in order to make it perfect for you use cases.

That is all I ever did, and it works for me and my cases. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 On 05/11/2015 06:08 AM, Robert Schweikert wrote:

Lets put kGraft into Tumbleweed and my issue with Tumbleweed on my desktop will go away.

+1000 :D - -- James Mason Technical Architect, Public Cloud openSUSE Member SUSE jmason@suse.com - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SUSECon 2015: Register at susecon.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iQEcBAEBCAAGBQJVUNf8AAoJEBs5UYhsRJAjge4H/2+JZwIbF2o4Ylrav3j/vjV+ taN17bis7o2RxX2wgxqywWfHbhl60tc9Q5zAqYtf47c0/c+KxSDsLX5ySxgkp9bC z2ywTnpiE3ly6RRIaWjAVXphcz73SgIjLAJS8OmthUzIBEERO7gwNbMISyLYm1Sb XFYxHTPhtnwrrHcZH6WbRfdcWA+/Nj1H+q7X8FItJKvGRSTKWh9ipZ3btUNqMzta f/omtmIdz+lS9SbC1eVu6oGLrYsq63eQkVCi2ToRoms5auzPYn9VqLixwjJLh/rV 6dxFR/m+m8WnNa7DJCAilYEZWlbNxEhXIlcgh2/yC+D+Nzth81JF04JxYOn2/G4= =Ry3t -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Hi, On 07-May-2015 2:58 pm, "Richard Brown" wrote:

Hi!

And in the case of all of the other, non-developer contributions, the situation we face in our community right now is pretty ugly. We basically don't have a marketing team any more, the wiki doesn't get the attention and polish it deserves, our admin team are working at full capacity and need more help, and so on and so forth.

What has the existing community done to overcome this trend? What have they done to encourage the desktop users to contribute to the project?

And so, the suggestion from the Board that we steer the Project in a direction that directly targets 'Makers', an audience which primarily encapsulates sysadmins and developers, but also users who overlap these audiences and/or aspire in that direction

This is an area we're already strong in, technically, and we think we'll be able to attract the kind of people who naturally, and easily, are able to both use, benefit from, and contribute back to openSUSE

This isn't an 'abandonment' of our other users, openSUSE will still work for them as well as it does today, hopefully better, but I think it's very important that openSUSE has clear direction, a clear target, which allows us to apply focus to improve our offerings for those people, and hopefully in return get more new blood into the community who can contribute back and continue the upward trajectory we currently have.

Regards,

Richard --

Who'd contribute to non-technical aspects of project? Desktop Users I guess. And the technical contributions will be made by developers and system administrators. So, if openSUSE is made more developer centric then, how many users are going to use openSUSE. And how many users are going to contribute? I suggest before making openSUSE a developer centric project, the openSUSE.org website gets updated (as shown in Roberts keynote) with a link to contributions page on every *.openSUSE.org page. Then wait for sometime to see if users start contributing. I've been using openSUSE as my default GNU/Linux distro for last two years and have been visiting www.openSUSE.org at least once a month, but never came to know about https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:How_to_participate. I only came to know about it when I became interested in packaging. I googled "packaging on openSUSE" and one of the search results landed me there. And even though I somehow reached that page I didn't came to know about openFATE from wiki. I came to know about openFATE from forums.openSUSE.org And what does portal: how to participate tell - participate, document, develop, spread, lead, release it. I wish the page also described what those string of texts mean. Then it would have lead me (or other users) to click on those on those links. Else why would anyone want to click on those links. One more thing - the developers and system administrators are more competent than normal desktop users. So they can easily customize their system according to their need. Whereas if make a distro developer centric, the users will become less comfortable and will scare them away. -- Regards Akash Vishwakarma -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

* jdd [2015-05-12 18:38]:

Le 12/05/2015 18:32, Akash Vishwakarma a écrit :

...

What has the existing community done to overcome this trend? What have they done to encourage the desktop users to contribute to the project?

I think not enough, obviously (my fault also) - I read also the end of your mail.

but let me ask to be practical: I began an other thread about "asking members for help". Are you a member?

You do not have to be a member to contribute, in fact it's supposed to be the other way around, you contribute and then eventually become a member. Although I'm wondering how many of the 577 members actually contribute to the project... -- Guido Berhoerster -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Le 12/05/2015 19:48, jdd a écrit :

http://dodin.org/owncloud/index.php/s/BRbESIDZYAuj55x

oh, no, this is the geeckos list, the list of people asking to be a member, still a good source to ask for help :) jdd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Le 13/05/2015 13:44, Akash Vishwakarma a écrit :

Any comments regarding second part of my mail?

about the "paticipate" in every page, it was the case some time ago: https://web.archive.org/web/20100316161403/http://en.opensuse.org/Welcome_to... be the wiki changed...there used to be a wiki team, I don't know what is it now (anybody here?) there is an opensuse-wiki list, not very active: http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-wiki/ my opinion was than the wiki have to be more open to contributions, even at expense of some lack of organization, but other people thought differently... there is certainly work to be done in the wiki! the "how to participate portal is on the bottom of the main page. https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:How_to_participate If you find the text not easy enough, feel free to add to it. be aware than the english version is the main one, other languages version may be a bit out of sync if you can't do this, ask jdd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Wednesday 2015-05-13 13:44, Akash Vishwakarma wrote:

On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 10:19 PM, Guido Berhoerster wrote:

...

* jdd [2015-05-12 18:38]:

...

but let me ask to be practical: I began an other thread about "asking members for help". Are you a member?

You do not have to be a member to contribute, in fact it's supposed to be the other way around, you contribute and then eventually become a member.

That's why I have still not applied for membership. I want to contribute first (currently I'm contributing at openFATE), to figure out where I fit the best. Then after that I'm going to apply for membership.

And after you have contributed years to openSUSE like me, you will notice that not having registered on connect.opensuse.org will not have been a loss. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

I just watched the oSC15 presentation about the admin infrastructure of openSUSE ... really impressive stuff. As a sysadmin, I like seeing what other groups are using. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp5vAaTI3wQ&index=29&list=WL Also, let is always be said, thanks to everyone who volunteers their time to contribute to the project. Simply amazing work you guys are doing. However, one slide had a listing of all of the different software being used, and it would be great to have two things: 1) a place listing all of the different sites/offerings currently an official part of the openSUSE Project 2) maybe work on looking at everything that is available and consolidating it down to fewer platforms to maintain (not sure if this is possible, I truly haven't put any thought into it) Eliminating confusion would be one aspect, I would think, of driving people to working as a part of the community. Also possible ... I'm nuts and you can ignore everything I just wrote. On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 9:16 AM, jdd wrote:

Le 13/05/2015 15:58, Jan Engelhardt a écrit :

...

And after you have contributed years to openSUSE like me, you will notice that not having registered on connect.opensuse.org will not have been a loss.

and may be this a a problem, what is connect for... or what could it be?

jdd

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-- Sincerely, Bob Martens Webmaster/Technician Martin Luther College http://mlc-wels.edu -- This electronic communication, including any attached documents, may contain confidential and/or legally privileged information that is intended only for use by the recipient(s) named above. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete the communication and any attachments. Views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent those of Martin Luther College. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Totally, it is something I will bring up again in the future. I thought it was pertinent in the idea of trying to find ways to get more desktop users to contribute. On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 9:54 AM, jdd wrote:

Le 13/05/2015 16:23, Robert Martens a écrit :

...

I just watched the oSC15 presentation about the admin infrastructure of openSUSE ... really impressive stuff. As a sysadmin, I like seeing what other groups are using.

Robert,

thanks for your post, but you should open an other thred on your subject (right clic on the mailing list mail in the headers and send to)

on this thread it will be lost :-(

jdd

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-- Sincerely, Bob Martens Webmaster/Technician Martin Luther College http://mlc-wels.edu -- This electronic communication, including any attached documents, may contain confidential and/or legally privileged information that is intended only for use by the recipient(s) named above. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete the communication and any attachments. Views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent those of Martin Luther College. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 05/13/2015 02:02 AM, Akash Vishwakarma wrote:

Hi,

On 07-May-2015 2:58 pm, "Richard Brown" wrote:

...

Hi!

And in the case of all of the other, non-developer contributions, the situation we face in our community right now is pretty ugly. We basically don't have a marketing team any more, the wiki doesn't get the attention and polish it deserves, our admin team are working at full capacity and need more help, and so on and so forth.

What has the existing community done to overcome this trend? What have they done to encourage the desktop users to contribute to the project?

...

And so, the suggestion from the Board that we steer the Project in a direction that directly targets 'Makers', an audience which primarily encapsulates sysadmins and developers, but also users who overlap these audiences and/or aspire in that direction

This is an area we're already strong in, technically, and we think we'll be able to attract the kind of people who naturally, and easily, are able to both use, benefit from, and contribute back to openSUSE

This isn't an 'abandonment' of our other users, openSUSE will still work for them as well as it does today, hopefully better, but I think it's very important that openSUSE has clear direction, a clear target, which allows us to apply focus to improve our offerings for those people, and hopefully in return get more new blood into the community who can contribute back and continue the upward trajectory we currently have.

Regards,

Richard --

Who'd contribute to non-technical aspects of project? Desktop Users I guess. And the technical contributions will be made by developers and system administrators. So, if openSUSE is made more developer centric then, how many users are going to use openSUSE. And how many users are going to contribute?

I suggest before making openSUSE a developer centric project, the openSUSE.org website gets updated (as shown in Roberts keynote) with a link to contributions page on every *.openSUSE.org page. Then wait for sometime to see if users start contributing.

I've been using openSUSE as my default GNU/Linux distro for last two years and have been visiting www.openSUSE.org at least once a month, but never came to know about https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:How_to_participate. I only came to know about it when I became interested in packaging. I googled "packaging on openSUSE" and one of the search results landed me there.

And even though I somehow reached that page I didn't came to know about openFATE from wiki. I came to know about openFATE from forums.openSUSE.org

And what does portal: how to participate tell - participate, document, develop, spread, lead, release it. I wish the page also described what those string of texts mean. Then it would have lead me (or other users) to click on those on those links. Else why would anyone want to click on those links.

I have similar questions, I was using openSUSE for 2 years before I realised there was a forum, and that was only because someone told me a issue was raised there on a package I was maintaining. I also don't understand what connect provides that isn't provided on the forum or social media or wiki etc, I always found it quite confusing. I think what needs to happen with our web presence is the board as the projects guiding presence needs to sit down and come up with a idea of what our web presence should be to best facilitate these goals there outlining, questions like what elements do we actually want and need. As well as who are we targetting, the last web front page concept I saw was targeting end users with very little for technical people or people looking for ways to contribute which is the opposite of who we are apparently now targeting. After there is some clear idea the board should then probably put out a call (blog, social media, forums) for a team to refresh the web infrastructure, as this is such a key component it would be ideal if this team was being lead by someone on the board. It would surprise me if we couldn't find some people in the community with the time and experience to help once there is a clear plan of what needs to be done. If people can't be found maybe the board needs to decide that this is a critical thing for openSUSE to succeed and approach some sponsors to help make it happen. In my opinion a well setup web presence is going to do alot more to attract new contributors then conferences etc, On a unrelated point I think if we are targeting power users we need to be careful not loose the ease of use of the stable distro because that will start to cause people to go other places particularly technical people new to Linux and such people should become a good target base for finding new contributors. Cheers Simon Lees openSUSE Enlightenment Maintainer -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org