On Tuesday 2010-06-29 07:51, Per Jessen wrote:

Pavol Rusnak wrote:

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openSUSE - Mobile and cloud ready distribution ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ [snip]

3.) Background:

We have discussed our expectations for the future and we understand the "Google vision" where Google (as well as other companies but Google is the prime example here) hosts all data that then follows mobile users to wherever they are and whatever kind of (mobile) device they have. Our tweak here is that we think some customers do not wish to use the public infrastructure for their data.

I don't think openSUSE belongs in the space - this sounds like a proposal to turn openSUSE into a service provider.

For the rest, I think it will make for a very narrow, very focused distribution.

And there is no foothold to gain. There are already enough other distributions to fill that area. Of course it would be great if openSUSE were as omnipresent as Microsoft products, but if, as the strategy wants, anything outside the mobile world is forgotten that just can't happen logically. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

On Tuesday 29 June 2010 09:55:11 Martin Schlander wrote:

Tirsdag den 29. juni 2010 01:32:05 skrev Pavol Rusnak:

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openSUSE - Mobile and cloud ready distribution ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm immediately sceptical for privacy and freedom reasons. Personally I have no interest. Probably a very large part of existing users and contributors won't have either.

That's why this strategy includes the "private cloud server" - to exactly answer the privacy and freedom questions. Why not have a private cloud server running at home that connects your smart phone, your laptop and your desktop machines?

Who would create this stuff? Novell employees? I don't see a good chance of volunteers suddenly wanting to do that.

As with all proposals: This is something for the openSUSE community. Novell employees might work on one or the other items but we should not count on them to do everything. So, if nobody volunteers for this one, then it won't happen. Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, Program Manager openSUSE, aj@{novell.com,opensuse.org} Twitter: jaegerandi | Identica: jaegerandi SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126

Per Jessen wrote:

Guido Berhoerster wrote:

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having a new stratgey is an end in itself while completely disregarding the existing community structure and the needs and preferences of users and contributors.

I think the issue is that we have no suitable method of ascertaining those needs and preferences.

methods exist to learn the needs and preferences of developers, contributors, long time users and drive-by Redmond Ship Jumpers out shopping for something better, and 'free'.. i believe this exercise began with trying to satisfy the first two of those groups and to date i've seen little desire or effort to use any methods available to learn about the last two.. [though (imo) very little that could be learned by polling the last group would be beneficial to the Community (unless we wanna become Ubuntu II, which i don't think anyone really wants)..] a problem i feel is many on this list (who are the voting base) see only two groups: devs/contributors and a bubble gum crowd of worthless, mindless, helpless talkers and takers.. by so doing the leadership misses a large segment of long time S.u.S.E., SUSE, SLE_ and openSUSE lovers/supporters who might never appear in the forums or on the mail list.. dd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

Andreas Jaeger wrote:

On Tuesday 29 June 2010 13:36:01 Per Jessen wrote:

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Guido Berhoerster wrote:

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I find this one exemplary for the arbitraryness of the whole strategy debate

To me it looked more like "the impossible option", which is only there to put more focus on the others.

No, it's not impossible.

I meant "impossible to choose", not "impossible to implement". A bit like Sarah Palin in the US election. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (27.9°C) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

Guido Berhoerster wrote:

* Per Jessen [2010-06-29 13:36]:

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Guido Berhoerster wrote:

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I find this one exemplary for the arbitraryness of the whole strategy debate

To me it looked more like "the impossible option", which is only there to put more focus on the others.

...

which seems to be centered around the notion that having a new stratgey is an end in itself while completely disregarding the existing community structure and the needs and preferences of users and contributors.

I think the issue is that we have no suitable method of ascertaining those needs and preferences.

IIRC there was a user survey recently, I don't know if the results have been/are going to be published. It should give at least a hint at current usage patterns and community structure altough the the representativeness of such an online survey about freely obtainable product is of course questionable.

I think it probably does give a hint of the current status, but that's not necessarily what we desire. I'm sure we all have our own agendas wrt openSUSE, but one important idea of the strategy discussion is that we disregard those for a bit and think of how we can best define "openSUSE, the Linux distribution". The current status is somewhat important, but it doesn't really have many distinguishing features. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (27.8°C) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

Andreas Jaeger wrote:

See here for the results of the survey: http://en.opensuse.org/UX/openSUSE_Survey_2010

interesting, especially the part about: "One third does participate -- not bad at all. Forums are the most important piece -- is this a typical ENTRY PATH to start contributing? USER -> FORUMS/MLs/IRC -> BUG REPORTS -> Wiki or Packaging ??? If so, what do we do to encourage the transitions to the next step? Do we celebrate our contributors?" how could it be possible to answer your "is this a typical entry path" since the forums are less than 2 years old and, from what i've seen in this ML, many (most?) here consider the forums as a pure waste of time/energy and therefore no sense in trying to find or 'grow' any contributors there..(just a bunch of useless non-contributing idiot "forum talkers").. so, by and large there has been ZERO attention to spotting and developing/mentoring contributors from the helpless swamp named Forums. the loss of two years in which to learn the answer of your very on target question comes due to a techo-bigoted attitude and refusal to seek answers amongst the low life.. will it go that way for another two years? DenverD -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

* DenverD [2010-06-30 13:27]:

Andreas Jaeger wrote:

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See here for the results of the survey: http://en.opensuse.org/UX/openSUSE_Survey_2010

interesting, especially the part about:

"One third does participate -- not bad at all. Forums are the most important piece -- is this a typical ENTRY PATH to start contributing? USER -> FORUMS/MLs/IRC -> BUG REPORTS -> Wiki or Packaging ??? If so, what do we do to encourage the transitions to the next step? Do we celebrate our contributors?"

Be careful with drawing strong conclusions, this is not a representative sample of the openSUSE population. A prominent announcement in the forum may lead many forum users to take the survey, people with very shallow involvement might be less inclined to participate etc. -- Guido Berhoerster -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

On Wednesday 30 June 2010 15:32:34 DenverD wrote:

Pavol Rusnak rightly noted this discussion of the results of the strategy survey should be in its own thread, therefore:

Andreas Jaeger wrote:

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See here for the results of the survey: http://en.opensuse.org/UX/openSUSE_Survey_2010

Also the Strategy pages contain some insights from the survey: http://en.opensuse.org/Documents/Strategy/Process

interesting, especially the part about:

"One third does participate -- not bad at all. Forums are the most important piece -- is this a typical ENTRY PATH to start contributing? USER -> FORUMS/MLs/IRC -> BUG REPORTS -> Wiki or Packaging ??? If so, what do we do to encourage the transitions to the next step? Do we celebrate our contributors?"

how could it be possible to answer your "is this a typical entry path" since the forums are less than 2 years old and, from what i've seen in this ML, many (most?) here consider the forums as a pure waste of time/energy and therefore no sense in trying to find or 'grow' any contributors there..(just a bunch of useless non-contributing idiot "forum talkers")..

so, by and large there has been ZERO attention to spotting and developing/mentoring contributors from the helpless swamp named Forums.

We did the survey in February 2010, found this result and documented it. The strategy team did a lot of work and this is one result - and now it's time to react on it. There have been good interactions in the past and our intend with posting the strategy statements to the forums was exactly to acknowledge their importance and ask for feedback in that media as well. It was eye opening to see the the current state - and it's something that is noted and I expect to be addressed in due time.

the loss of two years in which to learn the answer of your very on target question comes due to a techo-bigoted attitude and refusal to seek answers amongst the low life..

will it go that way for another two years?

Btw. DenverD, it would help a lot if you would be a bit less controversial, I'm not continuing to discuss in this style, Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, Program Manager openSUSE, aj@{novell.com,opensuse.org} Twitter: jaegerandi | Identica: jaegerandi SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126

* Martin Schlander [2010-06-29 13:44]:

Tirsdag den 29. juni 2010 13:12:30 skrev Guido Berhoerster:

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I find this one exemplary for the arbitraryness of the whole strategy debate which seems to be centered around the notion that having a new stratgey is an end in itself while completely disregarding the existing community structure and the needs and preferences of users and contributors. Of course you can adopt a strategy in a top-down fashion, but who is going to sustain it at the end, Novell employees?

That's going a bit far I think. The strategy proposals are discussed openly and build upon an analysis of existing strenghts, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (swot) after all. So it's not really a top-down thing, and it's not completely disregarding existing reality either.

Yes, that is published and IIRC there was also an user survey, so there is some data (whatever its quality is) on current strengths, weaknesses and the userbase as well.

But I do agree that all the proposals are going from one extreme to the other. From basically having no explicit strategy/direction/mission whatsoever, to having an extremely narrow focus. And that is also going way too far :-)

Yes, they were about picking one arbitray, narrow focus from the list, explicitly at the expense of others. It treats the different objectives as mutually exclusive when they are not and neglects the fact that voluntary contributors cannot be shuffled around the project at will but have very diverse motivations and objectives which might clash with such a narrow strategy. -- Guido Berhoerster -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

* Andreas Jaeger [2010-06-29 14:56]:

We came up with these three large proposals and first tried to "blend" them together but could not find directly a really good combination, so decided to publish these as "pure" strategies.

We have two traps - a too narrow strategy and a too broad one. If somebody likes to propose a merging of two strategies, please go ahead and propose a new "blended" strategy.

I have made a proposal on this list for a more general, ecompassing strategy, delegating these "pure" strategies to those who would need to spend their free- or worktime to implement them. In other words it would consider openSUSE as an umbrella project targeting different audiences and integrating diverse subprojects into a coherent whole.

Regarding too broad: Let's be practical: Whom do we design the default installation for? Whom do we want to reach with the openSUSE wiki entrance

Even now there is not really a default install, sure, if you install from DVD KDE is preselected but three other desktops can be easily selected and there are different LiveCDs to choose from. I see it as a feature that users are given a choice and that we can accommodate KDE, GNOME, XFCE, and LXDE users (and assisting technical less capable users to make an informed choice is a matter of providing documentation if we desire to address them as a target audience). While there is a bias towards desktop usage today due to the short lifetime it does not preclude the possibility of forming a team providing LTS for a subset of packages as long as there are enough contributors sustaining such a subproject. Now for the wiki entrance page it would be simple to provide a short summary of the projects that the project consists of and then provide links to subsections directing _different_ target audiences to their area of interest which might be "Desktop usage", "Server/cloud usage" etc.

page? If we are too broad, we reach nobody because everybody feels lost. So, what's the right balance?

Isn't the core problem that it is currently unclear what openSUSE stands for? At least IMO there is a severe deficit in marketing, but I'm not so sure that it is simply a matter of adopting a new strategy, but rather of *communicating* existing strengths and unique features (i.e. competitive advantages) both of the product and the community. -- Guido Berhoerster -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

On Tue, 29 Jun 2010 08:21:37 -0400, Greg Freemyer wrote:

I seem to be the only one, but I think this strategy is critical.

I think there are important elements here - but perhaps this piece of strategy falls under the "base for derivatives" as this could be a subset of the overall openSUSE distribution. Cloud computing is here to stay - it's the next iteration of the cycle between "fat client" and "thin client", so I think it's important to acknowledge that and leverage that, or we'll be left behind. Ubuntu already has a cloud service they offer. Being able to leverage remote storage and processing is the way things are moving in the industry, so it's important to be part of that. Maybe because this is an industry trend it shouldn't be left to a derivative - but I think you make a good point, Greg, when you say:

I have to believe the low-end of computing systems (netbooks, droids, etc.) is just going to continue to get more important

One way or another, openSUSE will have to play in the cloud arena. It would not be good to be a late adopter. Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org