On 2011-12-02 14:34:46 (+0100), Henne Vogelsang wrote: [...]

1. What do you think the board is really doing? We all know the boards duties and goals as stated in the guiding principles but what do the board members do to fulfill and reach those? Please name as many tasks as you can and what they involve specifically.

I know what the board is doing, as I've been there for two terms already. Does my answer on that count too, then ? :)

2. What do you think is the most important thing that you personally as a Board member have to do? I'm not so much interested in goals you want to reach in the future but more in what you think is the most important part in your "job description".

* bring my experience with * being active in this community, * the people I know and the things I've done (and hence knowing my way through the maze), * and the trust many people in the community have in me. * my qualities in terms of * being not too bad at working on compromises (I'm belgian after all, and don't bring up the government topic, we can have that discussion around a beer ;)), * finding common sense solutions (I'm a software engineer) -- what you like to call "just do it", although I prefer a more verbose version of it (I'm a latin :)), * and interacting with people. I'm far from being perfect, mind you, and I surely don't want to make it sound like I believe I am, but I think that those are indeed a few things I can bring to the table :)

3. Please describe your view of openSUSE as a project. Which people/groups/functions are there and how do they work together? I'm looking for a structured list, a short text or an org-chart :)

Wow, where do we start ? Sorry, I won't give you either a short text or a structured list :) It is pretty much layered like an onion, which is a bit unfortunate, but probably impossible to avoid. At the core, it's mostly "developers" (in the broad sense), many of them being SUSE employees. I don't say that in a negative way, but it's simply because several core positions and some of the largest amounts of work that are contributed to the project come from people who are on the payroll of SUSE. Because they have been there since a very long time, because they're very good at what they do, and/or because having daytime to contribute to it also gives more possibilities. But it's not only people from SUSE, and I consider myself as also being part of that "core of the onion", amongst many others. Then there are many groups of people (who are actual groups because they're organized in teams, or because they work on the same domain, etc...) who have a varying connection to the people at the core. And with varying I rather mean to say insufficient. It's not a criticism towards them as much as it is an observation, and rather something "we", at the core, need to improve a lot. Examples being the marketing team, the artwork team, the forums moderators, etc... They certainly don't have the visibility and influence they deserve, let's hope we can improve that over time. And then, on the outer rims of the onion, there are people who'd like to contribute but don't know how, or whom to get in touch with. There are users (in the sense of "using but not contributing"), too. I won't give you an org-chart (is that a trick question ? :)), because there is no org-chart in openSUSE. As said, there are certainly "key positions" (Coolo and the release team, Adrian and Michael for the OBS, Jos as he manages the budget, you because you have always been the soul of openSUSE at SUSE, the forum admins, darix because he's so available and helpful as well as because he has his fingers in so many things, etc etc, ETOOMANYTOLIST, ...), but those are held through merit and skills. But nothing prevents anyone from stepping up, diving deep into a topic, contribute, and then end up being in charge of something (need to bring a few skills along, of course, at least for being in charge :)). I truly believe that is the case by now, even though there are other issues because of which it isn't that simple: * developers/packagers having more visibility and interest then people on the marketing team, for example, * very few women in the community which might put some additional barriers for them, and that may apply to other minorities too, * bikeshedding and a few trolls on the mailing-lists that make it very difficult to discuss topics with a broader audience, etc... I hope that answers your question, at least a bit :)

4. How would you describe openSUSE's relationship to its sponsors? What do we get from our sponsors and how? What do the sponsors get from us and how?

It's not too bad, I think, especially now that SUSE has become a more cohesive unit again (and all contacts with Michael Miller have been great, honest and productive so far). Other sponsors (such as B1) are not very visible in the project though, in the sense that they are contributing their share through funding and work force, but not so much "as B1" -- which can be good or bad. Another sponsor has proven to be a lot more difficult to deal with, but I'll leave that discussion for another time, and I have already been sufficiently vocal on that topic in the recent past, I think ;) Generally speaking, I would personally prefer a situation where we would have more sponsors, or at least a situation where SUSE isn't the "only big sponsor". Sure, we're dealing with many people who are doing a great job, and with quite a few of them who put the project and the community before their job (like you, for example). At least when you're in that "core of the onion" and when you get in touch a lot more often and a lot more closer with people at SUSE, there is a very trustworthy relationship. People who are more on the outside might be suspicious that it is the case, which is a pretty natural human behaviour, apparently, but I can really say that I've never encountered a situation where SUSE has tried to screw the community over (well, there was the ZMD incident ... ;)). But having a more balanced situation and not being at the mercy of a single company would certainly be beneficial, never mind how good the relationship with that company is. It would especially be better to the outside because, frankly, only few people (percentage wise) have the chance of being in the "core of the onion" and see first hand how good the relationship is. So what do we get from our sponsors? First of all, a lot of people who work on the project, or at least on its "technical" aspects. Sure, most of them also work on SLE, and there is a lot of synergy between openSUSE and SLE, obviously, but still. We get funding too, such as for the conference, for shipping material to volunteers who promote the project at conferences, at LUGs, etc... We get 99% of the technical infrastructure (hosting, the OBS build grid on build.opensuse.org, etc...). We also get support from the legal team at SUSE, specifically on the trademarks (but then again, the trademarks are owned by SUSE (or is it still Novell?), and it is their duty to enforce them, but they kindly delegate the decision to the openSUSE board). What do the sponsors get ? Many hundreds of people who contribute to the same codebase and project than they do, or which they make their revenue from (through selling, supporting, consultancy, etc...). Be it on a technical basis (packaging, testing, integrating, developing software, ...), less technical but not less important aspects (translating, marketing, artwork, promoting, ...), and obviously also in terms of support (forums, mailing lists, IRC, ...). I'm convinced that if we had to translate the amount of work from people who contribute to the project and who are not paid by one of the sponsors for doing so into money, it would end up in an amount that is orders of magnitude higher than what the sponsors are investing. cheers -- -o) Pascal Bleser /\\ http://opensuse.org -- we haz green _\_v http://fosdem.org -- we haz conf