Stupid subject line, couldn't find anything more striking ;)
Beware, while this mail could sound like some big rant, it's to be
understood as a wakeup call.. or rather a kick in the wasp nest ;)
So, 10.0 has been spreading widely, 10.1 is about to be released after
a very long and tedious development cycle (I guess AJ and the YaST2
developers now know what it must feel like when a woman gives birth
after 20 hours spent in a maternity room ;))
As with 10.0, the (long) period of beta and RC testing/progress has
pretty much wiped all the other topics from our focus and the
mailing-lists, especially wrt the community, and we've had a
standstill since at least 2 months.
I would like us to start a few discussions on topics that concern the
community, not just the distribution, most specifically where we are
standing today and what we need to do and get in order to be much more
in the driving seat of this whole thing, not just sitting behind the
SUSE staff at the back of the car, watching and saying "you have to do
this, you have to do that".
Let's address and discuss problems, possible solutions, initiatives,
ideas, etc... I somehow have the feeling that we've not been very
creative nor taking a lot of initiatives ourselves, as a community,
mostly just waiting for SUSE staffers to do things.
With the exception of houghi's DVD script, almost all the mails in the
past two months on the lists have been about "my soundcard doesn't
work", "Xen doesn't work", and of course "zypp/zmd problem".
While that's fine on opensuse-factory or suse-linux-e, it's not on
this list, and there hasn't been anything else, at least not as far as
I can remember.
I have a couple of rants towards the current situation, which might
only implicate my very own vision of what the openSUSE community is
supposed to be(come), but I guess others share most aspects as well.
Personally, I don't find the current situation very satisfactory.
But the idea is to discuss those issues with positive criticism, and
address them one by one. For some, we might not be able to do anything
about it, but for most, I'm convinced that we can at the very least
come up with a realistic proposal or even immediate action.
Most notably, the staff dedicated to openSUSE at Novell is too small
in numbers. This has some implications, as we cannot tell Novell what
to do with its money (no jdd, we can't):
- we have to get more in control ourselves, commit as dedicated
volunteers on as many tasks as possible
- we have to think about what we need from Novell/SUSE to do that
(e.g. admin privileges, contacts, infrastructure, documentation,
sources, whatever)
- we have to develop our own initiatives
Just a few thoughts, off the top of my head:
- packagers: we need more packagers, don't forget that the whole thing
is happening around a distribution, made of packages
- howtos and documentation: have a look at Gentoo's wiki, IMO that's a
direction we can follow (grossly), by writing wiki pages e.g. about
how to setup LAMP on SUSE Linux, an IMAP server, stuff like that
- artwork: wallpapers, web icons, banners, logos, ... access to the
SUSE logo, clarify legal rights to use them or not, ...
- web forums: yep, that one, the current non-situation is just not
satisfactory, we have to discuss it again and involve the maintainers
of current forums into the discussion, right from the start
- information flow: not enough information between different parts of
the community, also about the wiki, announcements, changes, decisions, ...
Other, minor ideas, such as having @opensuse.org email addresses, to
show we're part of the community (this has been mentioned once on the
list, but hasn't been discussed further).
(let's start individual threads about those)
We really have the opportunity of making something a lot bigger out of
all this, and it's up to *us* to do it, not to the Novell staff.
I'm sick of having unanswered questions, waiting for the build service
to solve all problems, and waiting for folks at SUSE/Novell to do
things for us because they're busy with development, beta phases or
the many other things they have to do (note: this is not meant to be a
rant against the SUSE staff, they have a lot of work and not enough
people dedicated to openSUSE).
We have to get our act together, drive topics and initiatives on this
very list ourselves, then come up with agreed upon, realistic
proposals or requests to Novell, if needed.
Of course, it's even better when we don't have to.
And let's please discuss important issues first.
This is a benevolent dictatorship model, but that doesn't mean that we
should just sit back, rant and wait for things to be done by them.
At least that's my vision on how we should evolve as a community, and
I've been using SUSE since 5.0 (= quite some time), waiting for these
opportunities to happen. Maybe I'm just too impatient, I probably am,
but I objectively think we're pretty much stuck in inertia right now.
Feedback and comments are very much appreciated :)
cheers
--
-o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
/\\
Hi, Pascal
With the exception of houghi's DVD script, almost all the mails in the past two months on the lists have been about "my soundcard doesn't work", "Xen doesn't work", and of course "zypp/zmd problem". While that's fine on opensuse-factory or suse-linux-e, it's not on this list, and there hasn't been anything else, at least not as far as I can remember.
First, I'm sorry! I confused where to post a mail. I was about to post about my problem here, lucky I read your post before that. I'm going to subscribe opensuse-e and opensuse-factory now.... Then, the problem. there are too many entrances for opensuse mailing lists. I should mailto opensuse-e and opensuse-factory for subscription, receive confirming mail and reply and receive welcome mail and..... I don't think its good, either, one ML for any topic like a hoosh. It's not sweet to search my thread from hundreds of post in the first downloaded in the morning throuth the mailbox .... I wish if we could have somewhat like single-sign-on system for every lists belonging opensuse. -- noniko noniko@netbeans.jp Blogs: http://www.jroller.com/page/Noniko/Weblog (Broken English) http://www.myblog.de/noniko (Worse German)
On Monday 08 May 2006 13:08, Pascal Bleser wrote:
At least that's my vision on how we should evolve as a community, and I've been using SUSE since 5.0 (= quite some time), waiting for these opportunities to happen. Maybe I'm just too impatient, I probably am, but I objectively think we're pretty much stuck in inertia right now.
Feedback and comments are very much appreciated :)
cheers
While I share your vision for the community and I agree we can improve in lots of ways I do think being "sick" of our community is a bit harsh. The whole openSUSE thing is only 7-8 months old. A lot of people still don't even understand what it's all about - hence all those tech-questions on the opensuse-mailinglist. Most people I'm afraid think openSUSE is just the OSS version of SUSE Linux (including Michael Meeks judging from the latest issue of Linux Format) Also people need to learn that there's a real possibility of influencing the distro and community through their community efforts. Building a community takes time - and I believe we're moving in the right direction and we're growing. Maybe SuSE's history of being not so open is part of the reason that the community is pretty fragmented. But I expect it'll get better. I'm pretty sure that any other distro/community also has a lot of people who don't give a rat's ass about the big picture and only care about getting xgl on their box as fast as possible. That's just something you have to live with. Other than spending a lot of time beta-testing these last few months I've also been working on a beginner's guide to SUSE Linux. In it I try to encourage users to take part in the openSUSE community as I certainly enjoy being part of it. cb400f
Pascal Bleser wrote:
Most notably, the staff dedicated to openSUSE at Novell is too small in numbers. This has some implications, as we cannot tell Novell what to do with its money (no jdd, we can't):
did I ever say so?
I'm sick of having unanswered questions,
set up a subject on IRC meeting tomorrow
We have to get our act together, drive topics and initiatives on this very list ourselves, then come up with agreed upon, realistic proposals or requests to Novell, if needed.
our problem is number, we are a very small number here do you subscribe to opensuse-wiki? http://lists.opensuse.org/archive/opensuse-wiki/2006-May/ jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos
Martin Schlander wrote:
On Monday 08 May 2006 13:08, Pascal Bleser wrote:
At least that's my vision on how we should evolve as a community, and I've been using SUSE since 5.0 (= quite some time), waiting for these opportunities to happen. Maybe I'm just too impatient, I probably am, but I objectively think we're pretty much stuck in inertia right now.
Feedback and comments are very much appreciated :)
While I share your vision for the community and I agree we can improve in lots of ways I do think being "sick" of our community is a bit harsh.
I didn't meant to say that I'm "sick of our community". If I was "sick of our community", I wouldn't be on this list nor trying to kick off something ;)
The whole openSUSE thing is only 7-8 months old. A lot of people still don't even understand what it's all about - hence all those tech-questions on the opensuse-mailinglist. Most people I'm afraid think openSUSE is just the OSS version of SUSE Linux (including Michael Meeks judging from the latest issue of Linux Format)
ACK, I'm afraid most people don't get the "community" thing yet.
Also people need to learn that there's a real possibility of influencing the distro and community through their community efforts. Building a community takes time - and I believe we're moving in the right direction and we're growing.
A community also works as a "meritocracy". What mostly annoys me is people telling the Novell staffers "we need this", "you have to do that", "you must add that package in the distro", etc... That's just not how it works nor supposed to work. Get involved, make packages yourself, start discussion threads here to have something realistic and that fits most people, and then - when necessary - submit something to Novell staff that is as effort and painless as possible to implement.
Maybe SuSE's history of being not so open is part of the reason that the community is pretty fragmented. But I expect it'll get better.
Yes, that's the main reason for the current fragmentation of the community. The problem is very different than with most distros: SUSE *has* a strong community and a large user base (not large enough given its quality, but still). The problem is that it is very fragmented, because the link between them has been missing all those years. So IMO one of our top priorities should be to think about how to interconnect the parts of the community. Which kind of brings us to the web forum topic, amongst others. In this particular case, we failed, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try again, just differently.
I'm pretty sure that any other distro/community also has a lot of people who don't give a rat's ass about the big picture and only care about getting xgl on their box as fast as possible. That's just something you have to live with.
Sure. >90% just want to get, not participate, or don't have the time to do so. That's fine I guess, as we can't do much about it ;)
Other than spending a lot of time beta-testing these last few months I've also been working on a beginner's guide to SUSE Linux. In it I try to encourage users to take part in the openSUSE community as I certainly enjoy being part of it.
Great, now that's an initiative :)
Do you plan to sell it as a book or could it be turned into a
collaborative effort ?
When I was talking about a lack of information, this is an example as
well. Unless you've barely started with it, it should be mentioned on
the wiki and possibly even be opened to other community members who'd
want to participate.
I think the "projects" page on the wiki should be enhanced a little -
the build service isn't even mentioned: http://en.opensuse.org/Projects
cheers
--
-o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
/\\
jdd wrote:
Pascal Bleser wrote:
Most notably, the staff dedicated to openSUSE at Novell is too small in numbers. This has some implications, as we cannot tell Novell what to do with its money (no jdd, we can't):
did I ever say so?
Yep.
I'm sick of having unanswered questions,
set up a subject on IRC meeting tomorrow
The IRC meetings are very ineffective as far as communication is concerned. It's a one-way channel as long as it works by voicing, but there's probably no other option (so no pun intended). Haven't been there the last weeks though (Tuesday being the only day where I'm always away from home in the evening), maybe the modus operandi has changed.
We have to get our act together, drive topics and initiatives on this very list ourselves, then come up with agreed upon, realistic proposals or requests to Novell, if needed.
our problem is number, we are a very small number here
Which brings us back to the "linking community parts" topic. We are a large number as a whole... we're just no "whole" as of now, but isolated, smaller communities. The french-speaking community being a particular problem that deserves a thread of its own (and a large market to win for Novell ;)).
do you subscribe to opensuse-wiki? http://lists.opensuse.org/archive/opensuse-wiki/2006-May/
I'm already on opensuse, opensuse-build, opensuse-factory,
opensuse-fr, opensuse-opt and opensuse-packager, every single
evening/night on #suse, #opensuse and #opensuse-fr + I read
http://planetsuse.org every day.
I think that given the above, if there is important/interesting
information I'm not aware of, we have a communication problem (and
yes, I read almost every mail on those lists ;)).
I think this list is the "main" one, where everyone who's on other
opensuse-* lists should be subscribed to. Maybe we could have
volunteers who'd compile a weekly report of what's happening on the
other lists, and send them on this one ?
Just an idea...
Blogging about it would be even more effective IMO.
Anyone who blogs SUSE-related stuff sporadically and who isn't
aggregated on http://planetsuse.org ? If so, please contact James
Ogley (link is on planetsuse.org) to have him add your feed.
cheers
--
-o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
/\\
Pascal Bleser wrote:
Which brings us back to the "linking community parts" topic. We are a large number as a whole... we're just no "whole" as of now, but isolated, smaller communities.
right. I already share my experience. to bring people with us, we must identify small tasks, most people can do and ask people to do a user accepting a work, so small it is, may be a new active community member. I try to do so on Alionet forum (asking for advices, seeking for translators...)
The french-speaking community being a particular problem that deserves a thread of its own (and a large market to win for Novell ;)).
:-)
do you subscribe to opensuse-wiki? http://lists.opensuse.org/archive/opensuse-wiki/2006-May/
I'm already on (...)
weel, the wiki is the main community work. If you don't read this one, sure you miss someting. http://lists.opensuse.org/archive/opensuse-wiki/2006-May/0001.html http://lists.opensuse.org/archive/opensuse-wiki/2006-May/0042.html http://lists.opensuse.org/archive/opensuse-wiki/2006-May/0046.html http://lists.opensuse.org/archive/opensuse-wiki/2006-May/0065.html and more :-) jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos
Hi Pascal,
while I share your thoughts I'd like to say something about the topic
regadring packaging ...
Pascal Bleser
- packagers: we need more packagers, don't forget that the whole thing is happening around a distribution, made of packages
Obviously I started to create Webmin/Usermin-Packages for openSUSE some time ago, but I stopped developing because it is still too complex for me. Speaking for the developer of Webmin/Usermin (Jamie Cameron) directly I really would like to see Webmin/Usermin getting back into the distribution, but again it's too complex. So why it is too complex for me? I should guess that there is no need for gcc'ing something, because it is just a set of perl scripts to untar, then to sed/awk some stuff and to pack into a rpm. But this is not completely the core. The problem is documentaion which is too complex for me to understand, there is no easy one (or at least I do not find it). I should reach for opensuse-packaging to discuss the details I know, but what I really would like to see is something easy to use because I do not have the time to read into complex things. At least there is no good german advisory available. On will I could whitepaper my thoughts a bit more. bis dahin / kind regards Martin Mewes Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer: Messaging 2003 Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator: Messaging 2003 -- http://www.mewes.tv/ - Homepage http://mbox.mewes.tv/ - Mailinglisten zum Downloaden
On Mon, May 08, 2006 at 03:20:31PM +0200, Pascal Bleser wrote:
What mostly annoys me is people telling the Novell staffers "we need this", "you have to do that", "you must add that package in the distro", etc...
That's just not how it works nor supposed to work.
It is not, but there is at this moment only one way to get a package onto the distro and that is by asking them to do so. Wether by Bugzilla, by wiki or directly, it is the only way. On a lot of points it is SUSE that does things and we have very little influence in doing things. houghi -- Nutze die Zeit. Sie ist das Kostbarste, was wir haben, denn es ist unwiederbringliche Lebenszeit. Leben ist aber mehr als Werk und Arbeit, und das Sein wichtiger als das Tun - Johannes Müller-Elmau
On Mon, May 08, 2006 at 01:08:49PM +0200, Pascal Bleser wrote: <snip>
Just a few thoughts, off the top of my head: - packagers: we need more packagers, don't forget that the whole thing is happening around a distribution, made of packages
This is towards the extra repo's, I suppose, because I doubt if SUSE will let us be packaging at this very moment. So for this we have to wait for the build server. <snip>
Other, minor ideas, such as having @opensuse.org email addresses, to show we're part of the community (this has been mentioned once on the list, but hasn't been discussed further).
It has beeen asked and the answer was to first bring out 10.1. It had already been discussed internally. <snip> houghi -- Nutze die Zeit. Sie ist das Kostbarste, was wir haben, denn es ist unwiederbringliche Lebenszeit. Leben ist aber mehr als Werk und Arbeit, und das Sein wichtiger als das Tun - Johannes Müller-Elmau
Just a few thoughts, off the top of my head: - packagers: we need more packagers, don't forget that the whole thing is happening around a distribution, made of packages
The packages I lack are Yast modules. Now let's go to the second topic - docs:
- howtos and documentation: have a look at Gentoo's wiki, IMO that's a direction we can follow (grossly), by writing wiki pages e.g. about how to setup LAMP on SUSE Linux, an IMAP server, stuff like that
Here we totally lack good Yast Tutorials & Documentation. (unfortunately the *only* tutorial I was able to find was FOSDEM 2006) Nothing found - not what Yast does behide the scenes - and not how to program it's modules & new frontends for Yast itself (GTK, Web).
Other than spending a lot of time beta-testing these last few months I've also been working on a beginner's guide to SUSE Linux. In it I try to encourage users to take part in the openSUSE community as I certainly enjoy being part of it.
cb400f
Where can I find that effort ? I want to participate in writing the SUSE beginner's guide.
Alexey Eremenko wrote:
Here we totally lack good Yast Tutorials & Documentation. (unfortunately the *only* tutorial I was able to find was FOSDEM 2006) Nothing found - not what Yast does behide the scenes - and not how to program it's modules & new frontends for Yast itself (GTK, Web).
absolutely true. Yast being what it is, it's an emergency :-). Many yast pages are straightforward, but some are really cryptics :-) I already prtoposed a layout: http://fr.opensuse.org/Yast:Agent_de_transfert_de_mail but I waited for 10.1. Now we have it (yast wont change anymore) so we can go. I already begin to setup a web page with the "po" files (http://dodin.org/po/, copy paste the po file name in the url), but for translation use (that is why it's not on the wiki) jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos
noniko wrote:
Hi, Pascal
With the exception of houghi's DVD script, almost all the mails in the past two months on the lists have been about "my soundcard doesn't work", "Xen doesn't work", and of course "zypp/zmd problem". While that's fine on opensuse-factory or suse-linux-e, it's not on this list, and there hasn't been anything else, at least not as far as I can remember.
<snip>
Then, the problem. there are too many entrances for opensuse mailing lists. I should mailto opensuse-e and opensuse-factory for subscription, receive confirming mail and reply and receive welcome mail and.....
I don't think its good, either, one ML for any topic like a hoosh. It's not sweet to search my thread from hundreds of post in the first downloaded in the morning throuth the mailbox ....
I wish if we could have somewhat like single-sign-on system for every lists belonging opensuse.
My vote for this idea. Present system is kind of complicated, but that is what I have seen on other lists too. BTW that was one reason that I didn't used mailing lists before. -- Regards, Rajko.
Pascal Bleser wrote:
[...] So, 10.0 has been spreading widely, 10.1 is about to be released after a very long and tedious development cycle (I guess AJ and the YaST2 developers now know what it must feel like when a woman gives birth after 20 hours spent in a maternity room ;))
Well, I think they're better off because they're being paid for it and they don't have to care about their baby for the next 18 years... ;-)
[...] With the exception of houghi's DVD script, almost all the mails in the past two months on the lists have been about "my soundcard doesn't work", "Xen doesn't work", and of course "zypp/zmd problem". While that's fine on opensuse-factory or suse-linux-e, it's not on this list, and there hasn't been anything else, at least not as far as I can remember.
From my point of view, a (SUSE) community might be all of what has been mentioned above (all people share interest in SUSE Linux and the openSUSE project) although some people might be more active than others, no doubt (sorry, but some people have to work hard and can't afford to spend the whole day playing with SUSE Linux betas or writing emails to
This is a general problem on mailing lists and it won't go away as long as people on this list really answer all of the (in principle) OT emails. It needs combined effort to achieve a solution. Coming back to the original subject, I have a simple question: what is "the community"? Is somebody part of "the openSUSE community" because (i) he creates RPM packages for SUSE Linux and serves other users, or (ii) he is an interested power user of SUSE Linux (or an interested beginner?), or (iii) he writes emails on the opensuse mailing list, or (iv) he helps others by answering SUSE-related questions in forums or on mailing lists, or (v) he submits bug reports for SUSE products, or (vi) <add whatever you like here>?? You wrote "we, the community" in the subject of this email - do you think I am part of it? the opensuse mailing list ;-)). Unfortunately, I get the impression that others here on this mailing list have a different opinion about that subject and a very restricted definition of "the community" (e.g. the inner secret circle actively developing the SUSE Linux distribution or some important SUSE-related software projects). The discussion about the opensuse.org email address points also in this direction (Or will "everybody" get an opensuse.org email address? Very unlikely.). From my point of view, for instance a beginner can also be a very valuable part of the community although he might "only" report things that are difficult to understand or software that is difficult to use, etc. I think it takes some time for a community to grow (together) and one cannot enforce something like a community. The openSUSE project is quite young, it just takes some time to get everything in place... Greetings from London, Th.
On Mon, May 08, 2006 at 08:46:15PM +0100, Thomas Hertweck wrote:
From my point of view, a (SUSE) community might be all of what has been mentioned above (all people share interest in SUSE Linux and the openSUSE project) although some people might be more active than others, no doubt (sorry, but some people have to work hard and can't afford to spend the whole day playing with SUSE Linux betas or writing emails to the opensuse mailing list ;-)).
The community is al SUSE users. Wether this is as an end-user or as a developer or packager, is irrelevant. Then there are several smaller groups. People who use openSUSE.org for communication and people who don't. The seems to segragate the groups. People at openSUSE tend to be a bit more involved in SUSE development (even if only through betatesting) and others eem to focus more on support for the end-user. I can immagine that many end-users are scared to join a higly technical mailinglist or think that their ideas won't be followed up on. Just a thought. It could be that I am completely and utterly wrong. houghi -- Nutze die Zeit. Sie ist das Kostbarste, was wir haben, denn es ist unwiederbringliche Lebenszeit. Leben ist aber mehr als Werk und Arbeit, und das Sein wichtiger als das Tun - Johannes Müller-Elmau
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Thomas Hertweck wrote:
Pascal Bleser wrote:
[...] So, 10.0 has been spreading widely, 10.1 is about to be released after a very long and tedious development cycle (I guess AJ and the YaST2 developers now know what it must feel like when a woman gives birth after 20 hours spent in a maternity room ;))
Well, I think they're better off because they're being paid for it and they don't have to care about their baby for the next 18 years... ;-)
+1 ;)
[...] With the exception of houghi's DVD script, almost all the mails in the past two months on the lists have been about "my soundcard doesn't work", "Xen doesn't work", and of course "zypp/zmd problem". While that's fine on opensuse-factory or suse-linux-e, it's not on this list, and there hasn't been anything else, at least not as far as I can remember.
This is a general problem on mailing lists and it won't go away as long as people on this list really answer all of the (in principle) OT emails. It needs combined effort to achieve a solution.
Yep. And it doesn't require being rude nor impolite. We've had that topic before on this list, and basically, AFAICR the outcome was: what's the point of always answering they should go to another list - if we reply, we can also give them an answer. While it isn't wrong, you can notice that when you reply to a query like that, it ends up in a thread of 6 mails at least, 30 mails at worse. So that's still traffic that doesn't belong to this list. The question is: if we kept up the effort of guiding people with such questions on another list, would we have more discussions and drive about community-centered topics or not ? I think we would, I somehow got the feeling the list was kind of drowned by support questions. But I might as well be completely wrong ;)
Coming back to the original subject, I have a simple question: what is "the community"? Is somebody part of "the openSUSE community" because (i) he creates RPM packages for SUSE Linux and serves other users, or (ii) he is an interested power user of SUSE Linux (or an interested beginner?), or (iii) he writes emails on the opensuse mailing list, or (iv) he helps others by answering SUSE-related questions in forums or on mailing lists, or (v) he submits bug reports for SUSE products, or (vi) <add whatever you like here>?? You wrote "we, the community" in the subject of this email - do you think I am part of it?
That's a very good question, and while I can't speak up for anybody else, my answer would be: any of those points. Being part of the community is not just using SUSE Linux, but also feeling committed to it, in a sense of wanting to participate into the joined effort such an open source project represents. And any of the items you wrote above qualifies wrt that. "Just take no give" doesn't make you part of the community. At least that's my very personal understanding of it.
From my point of view, a (SUSE) community might be all of what has been mentioned above (all people share interest in SUSE Linux and the openSUSE project) although some people might be more active than others, no doubt (sorry, but some people have to work hard and can't afford to spend the whole day playing with SUSE Linux betas or writing emails to the opensuse mailing list ;-)). Unfortunately, I get the impression that
I'm working 8 hours every day and still commit myself to spend a few more building a lot of packages, amongst others - which doesn't mean that I "expect" others to do the same. Why do I do it ? Might sound silly, but I do it for the people who use SUSE Linux, to save them work and from the complexity of building software from source. And also for the good of my favorite Linux distribution, in general. (not that I'm being against other Linux distributions or OSS efforts, I'm also one of the organization staff members of FOSDEM) I mean, the very essence of OpenSource and Free Software projects, at least from the "philosophical" point of view, is to contribute to a joined effort, with the time and skills you can dedicate to it. And BTW, that absolutely wasn't to push my example forward.. just look at Eberhard Moenke, he's breathing SUSE 24h a day ;D Just like many others. But that still doesn't give us something we might be lacking at the moment... could it be leadership ?
others here on this mailing list have a different opinion about that subject and a very restricted definition of "the community" (e.g. the inner secret circle actively developing the SUSE Linux distribution or some important SUSE-related software projects). The discussion about the
You're putting your finger in a wound that IMO has its cure in communication. That's not only lacking as far as we, non-Novell employees, are concerned but also from e.g. the SUSE staff. Historically, SUSE has been developed in a rather closed environment, communication with users and committers happening on a secret path ;) Nevertheless, they're very aware of the problem and are working on it. That's certainly the kind of thing that takes time, and a lot of progress has been made already since the opensuse.org launch, with people like AJ, henne, cthiel, skh, darix, Marcus Meissner and several others pushing internally for more and more openness and integration with the community (as of non-Novell employees). I absolutely don't want to criticize them on that, it's a big effort and it really takes time. And of course, it's also up to us to contact them directly, not waiting for them to make things happen. I'd really like to see us push some ideas, discussions and initiatives without them, to see up to where we can go, and possibly what tools we are lacking to make it work.
opensuse.org email address points also in this direction (Or will "everybody" get an opensuse.org email address? Very unlikely.). From my
That's what we'd have to discuss. I'd say active committers should be able to get an @opensuse.org email address. Who is going to decide who's active and who's not ? Firstly, being on this list is already a good sign ;D and secondly, several of our questions are answered by some form of leadership (oops.. yep.. the word is out again).
point of view, for instance a beginner can also be a very valuable part of the community although he might "only" report things that are difficult to understand or software that is difficult to use, etc. I
Sure, reporting bugs is taking part into the effort.
think it takes some time for a community to grow (together) and one cannot enforce something like a community. The openSUSE project is quite young, it just takes some time to get everything in place...
While it cannot be enforced, it always takes a number of committed
people to drive a community, to push it forward and take responsibility.
cheers
- --
-o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
/\\
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Martin Mewes wrote:
Hi Pascal,
Hey Martin
while I share your thoughts I'd like to say something about the topic regadring packaging ...
Pascal Bleser
wrote: - packagers: we need more packagers, don't forget that the whole thing is happening around a distribution, made of packages
Obviously I started to create Webmin/Usermin-Packages for openSUSE some time ago, but I stopped developing because it is still too complex for me.
Speaking for the developer of Webmin/Usermin (Jamie Cameron) directly I really would like to see Webmin/Usermin getting back into the distribution, but again it's too complex.
I tried to package Webmin once, that was quite some time ago, but Webmin really isn't suited nor made to be easily packaged, mostly because the setup is interactive (at least that was the only option at that time). Given that I now have a lot more experience with a lot more exotic packages, I'd say it's far from being impossible.
So why it is too complex for me?
I should guess that there is no need for gcc'ing something, because it is just a set of perl scripts to untar, then to sed/awk some stuff and to pack into a rpm. But this is not completely the core.
The problem is documentaion which is too complex for me to understand, there is no easy one (or at least I do not find it). I should reach for opensuse-packaging to discuss the details I know, but what I really would like to see is something easy to use because I do not have the time to read into complex things. At least there is no good german advisory available.
On will I could whitepaper my thoughts a bit more.
Yes please. opensuse-packaging is very, very low traffic... actually
that list is near useless at the moment, unfortunately.
Nevertheless, there are several experienced packagers subscribed to that
list, and I'd say that if you have a question regarding packaging, be it
specific to SUSE or not, or just want to discuss thing related to it,
join the list, let us know.
What kind of documentation are you looking for ?
About RPM, generally ?
About making RPMs specifically on SUSE Linux ?
cheers
- --
-o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
/\\
On Monday 08 May 2006 15:20, Pascal Bleser wrote:
Great, now that's an initiative :)
Thanks, maybe I should've mentioned it's in Danish, which of course limits it's relevance to ~6 million people ;)
Do you plan to sell it as a book or could it be turned into a collaborative effort ?
It'll be online - under the GFDL with no invariant sections.
When I was talking about a lack of information, this is an example as well. Unless you've barely started with it, it should be mentioned on the wiki and possibly even be opened to other community members who'd want to participate.
I had added a link to it here http://en.opensuse.org/Communicate a while ago. Seems somebody's deleted or moved all non-English references.. anybody got any idea where they might have been moved to? Actually I've been doing these beginner's guides since 9.3 - the prolonged 10.1-beta phase has meant I've had a lot of time to work on the 10.1 guide though ;) But I'm not much of a graphical designer or webdeveloper which shows - but it's definitely a lot better than my previous efforts. Getting all flattered by people showing interest I've put it online a bit early for y'all to see: http://suse.linuxin.dk/10.1 Of course you can't understand it - but I think you'll get the general idea - it's aimed at absolute beginner's and only contains very basic stuff. I'm considering translating it into English - but I'd need better hosting for that. Certainly could be turned into a community effort - could be put on the wiki with no problems - other than the screenshots perhaps(?). cb400f
Pascal Bleser wrote:
[...] While it isn't wrong, you can notice that when you reply to a query like that, it ends up in a thread of 6 mails at least, 30 mails at worse. So that's still traffic that doesn't belong to this list.
I have been active on the suse-linux mailing list for maybe over 6 years now, so I know all these problems. Most traffic per thread is usually caused by OT emails and discussions about the netiquette...
The question is: if we kept up the effort of guiding people with such questions on another list, would we have more discussions and drive about community-centered topics or not ? I think we would, I somehow got the feeling the list was kind of drowned by support questions. But I might as well be completely wrong ;)
Hmm, well, I get your point but I am not sure whether your conclusions are correct. I think there are already many discussions started on this mailing list, but most of the time I can't see any conclusions and any outcome of these discussions and that makes it inefficient and ineffective (example: what was the outcome of the loooong discussion about [open]SUSE forums?)- this is the main problem from my point of view. I have experienced this situation several times in the past, there were many discussions on suse-linux what could be done and what might be useful, etc. but nobody really did it - that was exactly the reason why I've written and published several howtos (for things I was/am committed to) on my private homepage. And I got really a lot of positive feedback for it. And some others on suse-linux have done similar things, that's for instance how the suse-linux-faq started off. So I absolutely agree with you that it needs some kind of "leadership", volunteers doing the actual work. Leaders (in this case) are not elected, they just grow into this position. Something that evolves over time. When reading this (or other) mailing list(s) for some time, it's not too hard to figure out who currently grows into a community leadership position, or who already is one of the leaders (hint: hey, the guy started this email thread ;-). Usually, these people don't show up all the time, they just do their work in the background - however they speak up when it's the correct time and place and when it's important, and others know then it's now time to listen.
[...] Being part of the community is not just using SUSE Linux, but also feeling committed to it, in a sense of wanting to participate into the joined effort such an open source project represents.
ACK.
[...] I'm working 8 hours every day and still commit myself to spend a few more building a lot of packages, amongst others - which doesn't mean that I "expect" others to do the same.
Sure. I am, e.g., working about 10 hours every day and have some additional open source and community commitments, not to mention private life, family, etc. However, that also means that it's very hard to find some time to really take on a global openSUSE project, even when it's just a small one. And I am sure many other people have similar "problems". (By the way, this is e.g. also one reason why I think we did not have many forum owners/moderators on this mailing list for the correpsonding discussion - they spend quite a lot of time managing their forum, thus it's very difficult to get involved in yet another project.) It's not that people don't want or like to help, it's just sometimes very difficult to manage everything. To draw a conclusion here: I am not sure whether it would help but I could imagine that having a list of things to do (not just the big things that take half a year to finish, but also the things that are less important and cleared within half an hour) and mailing this "TODO" list to the opensuse mailing list (or other mailing lists as well?) could help to find people taking on some work. Most often people just don't know where to start or they are afraid of starting some work that might take years to finish. Having small tasks might help in this respect. However, we would of course also need somebody being in charge of this TODO list ;-) The wiki is, from my point of view, a highly inefficient way for communication - it's good for howtos, etc. but not for discussing things to do or gathering action points. People usually read their email every day, but they don't scan the wiki every day to look for updates...
Why do I do it ? Might sound silly, but I do it for the people who use SUSE Linux, to save them work and from the complexity of building software from source. And also for the good of my favorite Linux distribution, in general. (not that I'm being against other Linux distributions or OSS efforts, I'm also one of the organization staff members of FOSDEM)
I mean, the very essence of OpenSource and Free Software projects, at least from the "philosophical" point of view, is to contribute to a joined effort, with the time and skills you can dedicate to it.
And BTW, that absolutely wasn't to push my example forward..
Absolutely. I fully agree with you here, I feel very much the same.
[...] But that still doesn't give us something we might be lacking at the moment... could it be leadership ?
See my notes above concerning the leadership issue. Leadership is closely related to "management" - delegating work, organizing things, communicating with others, involving new people in projects, etc., it's not about doing all the work by oneself.
[...] That's not only lacking as far as we, non-Novell employees, are concerned but also from e.g. the SUSE staff. Historically, SUSE has been developed in a rather closed environment, communication with users and committers happening on a secret path ;)
ACK. Luckily, I know some of these secret paths ;-)
Nevertheless, they're very aware of the problem and are working on it. That's certainly the kind of thing that takes time, and a lot of progress has been made already since the opensuse.org launch, with people like AJ, henne, cthiel, skh, darix, Marcus Meissner and several others pushing internally for more and more openness and integration with the community (as of non-Novell employees).
I can see every day how difficult it is *within our own company* to communicate between the development centers and offices. It's even more difficult to communicate when 3rd parties are involved (I guess the "community" was a bit like a 3rd party for Novell when the openSUSE project started) - there are also some legal issues involved, sometimes you simply don't know what to expect, and some 3rd party people have really unrealistic expectations, etc., so it's difficult to find the right track. Hopefully, things will improve but this might take some time and needs also building up some trust between all the parties...
[...] While it cannot be enforced, it always takes a number of committed people to drive a community, to push it forward and take responsibility.
This is a very good closing remark! Greetings from London and Goodnight! Th.
On 08/05/06 22:43 +0200, Pascal Bleser wrote:
With the exception of houghi's DVD script, almost all the mails in the past two months on the lists have been about "my soundcard doesn't work", "Xen doesn't work", and of course "zypp/zmd problem". While that's fine on opensuse-factory or suse-linux-e, it's not on this list, and there hasn't been anything else, at least not as far as I can remember.
This is a general problem on mailing lists and it won't go away as long as people on this list really answer all of the (in principle) OT emails. It needs combined effort to achieve a solution.
To be fair, although this list is described as "opensuse General discussion about the openSUSE (development) project" on the wiki, it's has a slightly misleadingly moniker and has so from the outset. I've always thought it should be more implicitly named, e.g. opensuse-devel which leaves no grounds for confusion. Perhaps it's time to start afresh with a review of the mailing lists and hopefully draw more people who are interested in contributing to the development of the project but aren't particularly interested in day to day user support? Craig
On 08/05/06 22:48 +0200, Pascal Bleser wrote:
Yes please. opensuse-packaging is very, very low traffic... actually that list is near useless at the moment, unfortunately.
Nevertheless, there are several experienced packagers subscribed to that list, and I'd say that if you have a question regarding packaging, be it specific to SUSE or not, or just want to discuss thing related to it, join the list, let us know.
FWIW, I submitted my spec file for DenyHosts to that very list four days ago and have yet to receive any response. I'd like to get involved, but that was hardly encouraging. Of course I understand it's not a "right" to receive a reply, but I'd have felt less disheartened if someone had taken the time to review my work as I've lots to learn but plenty of enthusiasm. Craig
Pascal et al, I thought I would share an offlist email I recieved back in September from the Community Developement Manager of another distribution as it is quite appropriate, as the parent company created an open source distro that they base the commercial offerings on. You can guess which one. ----------------------- "Keep pushing like this. It took us a *long* time -- 18 months -- to build the necessary infrastructure for participation around <distro>. openSuSE will succeed only if you keep calling questions like this. Honestly, it's largely a question of gaining experience. See, here's the thing: <Company>, despite being good at picking packages and building distros, was *not* initially good at shaping a community. It took time and experience to make progress with <distro>. It'll take openSuSE the same thing -- but also pressure from folks like you. OpenSuSE is good for everyone. Keep working on them. :) <name witheld as it was offlist> ------- So even if we can expect that it will take similar time, it does require efforts like Pascal describes and won't just happen by itself by waiting. Peter 'Pflodo' Flodin.
Hi Pascal,
Pascal Bleser
Martin Mewes wrote:
Speaking for the developer of Webmin/Usermin (Jamie Cameron) directly I really would like to see Webmin/Usermin getting back into the distribution, but again it's too complex.
I tried to package Webmin once, that was quite some time ago, but Webmin really isn't suited nor made to be easily packaged, mostly because the setup is interactive (at least that was the only option at that time). Given that I now have a lot more experience with a lot more exotic packages, I'd say it's far from being impossible.
Well you need to use the src.rpm from the developer (right now: http://webmin.mamemu.de/devel/rpm/webmin-1.270-1.src.rpm) and repack on that one. For me it was a good start because of the interactive original setup. Be aware I run a mirror of Webmin and am not the developer ;-)
On will I could whitepaper my thoughts a bit more.
Yes please. opensuse-packaging is very, very low traffic... actually that list is near useless at the moment, unfortunately.
As I am mirroring this list (http://mbox.mewes.tv/mbox/ -> http://mbox.mewes.tv/mbox/opensuse-packaging/) but not had the time to actually read it I will follow my own guess and give it another try the next days.
Nevertheless, there are several experienced packagers subscribed to that list, and I'd say that if you have a question regarding packaging, be it specific to SUSE or not, or just want to discuss thing related to it, join the list, let us know.
What kind of documentation are you looking for ? About RPM, generally ? About making RPMs specifically on SUSE Linux ?
I think that if a packager wants to build packages for openSUSE a interactive build tool (IBT) should come up with something like this (more specific to read on opensuse-packaging soon): Step 01: Enter the path/download URL to the $name.src.rpm Step 02: IBT extracts the contents to ~/build/$name Step 03: As the src.rpm extracts the sources for $name.rpm provided by the developer it should be somewhat analyzable by IBT. IBT should actually see the install instructions and can present the sections part by part. Step 04: IBT should be able to have a set of directories builtin to give the packager good hints on how to change the install instructions. Example: Webmin wants to install to /usr/libexec/webmin by default, but the standards for openSUSE say that system packages should go to /opt/$package as example so the instructions for the installation regarding the installation path should be automatically altered by IBT. Step 05: In the end Webmin is managed over HTTP so the IBT should ask a couple of questions at the end, i.e. Is this a package to be managed remotely? [ ] Please enter the the needed port: ________ IBT can automatically add code to the package to open the managing port in the firewall. [ ] RPM-Commandline/YAST-Output: a) If you choose to leave this entry blank some code will be added to the package informing the end-user that he needs to open the given port in the firewall manually. b) If you choose to select this option code will be added informing the user that the given port will be opened automatically for him. As you may see "Step 05" is part of the IBT which is directly supporting openSUSE. To now it is Webmin-specific but I will render it to be more general. In the end there should be something like this: Step 06: openSUSE requires packages to be signed with a digital signature. If you do not have a GnuPG-key IBT will now build one for you. Please enter the following information: Full Name: eMail: Description: IBT will create the key and stores everything in a safe place to be used for future packaging. On will IBT will upload it to a key-server for you as well (highly recommended). This key should be used for packaging only. Huh, this is everything I have in mind so far, but it will be more specific and I will rewrite it to some HTML-slideshow. bis dahin / kind regards Martin Mewes Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer: Messaging 2003 Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator: Messaging 2003 -- http://www.mewes.tv/ - Homepage http://mbox.mewes.tv/ - Mailinglisten zum Downloaden
Thomas Hertweck wrote:
for instance how the suse-linux-faq started off. So I absolutely agree with you that it needs some kind of "leadership", volunteers doing the actual work. Leaders (in this case) are not elected, they just grow into this position.
not completely true. First, I don't really like the "Leadership" word. I don't see me as a leader (for the fr wiki I'm sysop of), that is my opinion is only important if it's the only one :-) - else I try to follow the majority will. second, sysop needs at least some admin rights (to be able to edit the front page, for example), and this can only be done by Novel. third, the forum stuff is a totally other beast, it needs admin rights at the server level (and the relevant knowledge), this is not to be done by volunteers. fourth, the sysop must be widely accepted by the other folks. This is natural on new wikis, of course it's him who open the wiki, most of the time, and the people that don't like it don't come :-(), but for the "historical" wiki it's an other story
Usually, these people don't show up all the time, they just do their work in the background - however they speak up when it's the correct time and place and when it's important, and others know then it's now time to listen.
well. the problem here is than there are several - not many, but 3/4. And this may lead to stagnation, because each one wait the others, fear to upset the others... and finally the important pages are not changed. this is visible with the documentation page; There is no large agreement on his layout. some people likes one that others dislike. On a wiki such thing is annoing, because the layout can go back and forth or stay still. Having an identified sysop (Novells or volunteer) I would let him decide in the end
[...] Being part of the community is not just using SUSE Linux, but also feeling committed to it, in a sense of wanting to participate into the joined effort such an open source project represents.
ACK.
+1
To draw a conclusion here: I am not sure whether it would help but I could imagine that having a list of things to do (not just the big things that take half a year to finish, but also the things that are less important and cleared within half an hour) and mailing this "TODO" list to the opensuse mailing list (or other mailing lists as well?) could help to find people taking on some work. Most often people just don't know where to start or they are afraid of starting some work that might take years to finish. Having small tasks might help in this respect. However, we would of course also need somebody being in charge of this TODO list ;-)
absolutely right...
See my notes above concerning the leadership issue. Leadership is closely related to "management" - delegating work, organizing things, communicating with others, involving new people in projects, etc., it's not about doing all the work by oneself.
good
I can see every day how difficult it is *within our own company* to communicate between the development centers and offices. It's even more difficult to communicate when 3rd parties are involved (I guess the "community" was a bit like a 3rd party for Novell when the openSUSE project started) - there are also some legal issues involved, sometimes you simply don't know what to expect, and some 3rd party people have really unrealistic expectations, etc., so it's difficult to find the right track. Hopefully, things will improve but this might take some time and needs also building up some trust between all the parties...
and don't forget the jump to Linux is probably a very important leap for _Novell_ (Novell was for ages synonym to net, as Linux is) and the company is also re-organising itself. don't mention Oracle annouces. The success of the 10.1/opensuse will probably be a very important thing for the future of many of us :-) jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos
Hi Martin, Am Tuesday 09 May 2006 08:33 schrieb Martin Mewes:
I think that if a packager wants to build packages for openSUSE a interactive build tool (IBT) should come up with something like this (more specific to read on opensuse-packaging soon):
You heard about the openSUSE Build Service ? I think almost everything you mentioned is there or is planned ... http://build.opensuse.org opensuse-buildservice mailing list may help you as well :)
Step 01: Enter the path/download URL to the $name.src.rpm
planned
Step 02: IBT extracts the contents to ~/build/$name Step 03: As the src.rpm extracts the sources for $name.rpm provided by the developer it should be somewhat analyzable by IBT. IBT should actually see the install instructions and can present the sections part by part.
we do not allow src.rpm upload, because we build also for Debian. But we could extend the command line tool to extract the src.rpm and to upload it automatically ...
Step 04: IBT should be able to have a set of directories builtin to give the packager good hints on how to change the install instructions.
rpm macros are doing this in general.
Example: Webmin wants to install to /usr/libexec/webmin by default, but the standards for openSUSE say that system packages should go to /opt/$package as example so the instructions for the installation regarding the installation path should be automatically altered by IBT.
IMHO a provided WebMin by openSUSE should install into /usr, but that may cause some conflicts ...
Step 05: In the end Webmin is managed over HTTP so the IBT should ask a couple of questions at the end, i.e.
Is this a package to be managed remotely? [ ] Please enter the the needed port: ________
IBT can automatically add code to the package to open the managing port in the firewall. [ ]
RPM-Commandline/YAST-Output: a) If you choose to leave this entry blank some code will be added to the package informing the end-user that he needs to open the given port in the firewall manually. b) If you choose to select this option code will be added informing the user that the given port will be opened automatically for him.
Good idea, maybe a YaST configuration template could be created, which can be configured by a simple file for each package ...
As you may see "Step 05" is part of the IBT which is directly supporting openSUSE. To now it is Webmin-specific but I will render it to be more general. In the end there should be something like this:
Step 06: openSUSE requires packages to be signed with a digital signature. If you do not have a GnuPG-key IBT will now build one for you. Please enter the following information:
Full Name: eMail: Description:
IBT will create the key and stores everything in a safe place to be used for future packaging. On will IBT will upload it to a key-server for you as well (highly recommended). This key should be used for packaging only.
We will have a global openSUSE Build Service key soon. We are not sure yet, if we really need the possibility to allow signing with user keys, but we spoke about a solution that you can sign the package provided by the Build Service via the command line tool (yes, without uploading the private key and without downloading/reuploading the rpms). bye adrian -- Adrian Schroeter SUSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nuernberg, Germany email: adrian@suse.de
Am Monday 08 May 2006 18:52 schrieb Alexey Eremenko:
Other than spending a lot of time beta-testing these last few months I've also been working on a beginner's guide to SUSE Linux. In it I try to encourage users to take part in the openSUSE community as I certainly enjoy being part of it.
cb400f
Where can I find that effort ?
I want to participate in writing the SUSE beginner's guide.
You should maybe ask on opensuse-doc ml -- Adrian Schroeter SUSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nuernberg, Germany email: adrian@suse.de
Am Monday 08 May 2006 18:19 schrieb houghi:
On Mon, May 08, 2006 at 01:08:49PM +0200, Pascal Bleser wrote: <snip>
Just a few thoughts, off the top of my head: - packagers: we need more packagers, don't forget that the whole thing is happening around a distribution, made of packages
This is towards the extra repo's, I suppose, because I doubt if SUSE will let us be packaging at this very moment. So for this we have to wait for the build server.
Hey, have a look at http://software.opensuse.org/download ;) These are packages from SUSE/Novell and other people starting to use the build service... I have the hope to have an open build service (not feature complete and not official stable) within the next two month ... bye adrian -- Adrian Schroeter SUSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nuernberg, Germany email: adrian@suse.de
Am Monday 08 May 2006 13:08 schrieb Pascal Bleser: ...
Most notably, the staff dedicated to openSUSE at Novell is too small in numbers. This has some implications, as we cannot tell Novell what to do with its money (no jdd, we can't):
I think the main problem here is that the distribution gets still compiled with the internal autobuild. Our plan is to move out the packages step by step to the public Build Service. I hope that we can develop 10.2 with the public build service which should improve this situation at least in regard of the distribution development.
- information flow: not enough information between different parts of the community, also about the wiki, announcements, changes, decisions, ...
Other, minor ideas, such as having @opensuse.org email addresses, to show we're part of the community (this has been mentioned once on the list, but hasn't been discussed further).
While I agree that there should become more people an @opensuse.org email address, I disagree that everybody should get one. Because not every user of openSUSE should be able to speak for the project. The question is, how we can decide/vote who should get one ? How many people should get one ? I would be very happy, if we could elect some committee for these questions ... Btw, a forward address for everybody could be someone@user.opensuse.org for using it esp in regard with the build service... How does this sound ?
I'm sick of having unanswered questions, waiting for the build service to solve all problems, and waiting for folks at SUSE/Novell to do things for us because they're busy with development, beta phases or the many other things they have to do (note: this is not meant to be a rant against the SUSE staff, they have a lot of work and not enough people dedicated to openSUSE).
Sorry for this, but the build service is already there for people, who accept bugs, problems, downtimes and so on. You can already build public packages.
We have to get our act together, drive topics and initiatives on this very list ourselves, then come up with agreed upon, realistic proposals or requests to Novell, if needed. Of course, it's even better when we don't have to. And let's please discuss important issues first.
This is a benevolent dictatorship model, but that doesn't mean that we should just sit back, rant and wait for things to be done by them.
At least that's my vision on how we should evolve as a community, and I've been using SUSE since 5.0 (= quite some time), waiting for these opportunities to happen. Maybe I'm just too impatient, I probably am, but I objectively think we're pretty much stuck in inertia right now.
Impatientness is a good motivation :) -- Adrian Schroeter SUSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nuernberg, Germany email: adrian@suse.de
Adrian Schröter wrote:
Am Monday 08 May 2006 13:08 schrieb Pascal Bleser: ...
Most notably, the staff dedicated to openSUSE at Novell is too small in numbers. This has some implications, as we cannot tell Novell what to do with its money (no jdd, we can't):
I think the main problem here is that the distribution gets still compiled with the internal autobuild. Our plan is to move out the packages step by step to the public Build Service. I hope that we can develop 10.2 with the public build service which should improve this situation at least in regard of the distribution development.
Would be awesome, yet we'll have to see whether the build service will be mature enough when 10.2 will start to get built, to avoid having a issues caused by the build service. Guess I'd better kick myself and start using it to trigger some bugs ;) I'll see what osc has to offer, seems to best fit for the way I work.
- information flow: not enough information between different parts of the community, also about the wiki, announcements, changes, decisions, ...
Other, minor ideas, such as having @opensuse.org email addresses, to show we're part of the community (this has been mentioned once on the list, but hasn't been discussed further).
While I agree that there should become more people an @opensuse.org email address, I disagree that everybody should get one. Because not every user of openSUSE should be able to speak for the project.
ACK, that's also what I was having on my mind.
The question is, how we can decide/vote who should get one ? How many people
Right, that's the only real issue.
should get one ? I would be very happy, if we could elect some committee for these questions ... Btw, a forward address for everybody could be someone@user.opensuse.org for using it esp in regard with the build service... How does this sound ?
Very good to me. +1 I didn't want to use that word until now, but I guess that electing some form of "steering committee" could be a very welcome step forward.
I'm sick of having unanswered questions, waiting for the build service to solve all problems, and waiting for folks at SUSE/Novell to do things for us because they're busy with development, beta phases or the many other things they have to do (note: this is not meant to be a rant against the SUSE staff, they have a lot of work and not enough people dedicated to openSUSE).
Sorry for this, but the build service is already there for people, who accept bugs, problems, downtimes and so on. You can already build public packages.
Yes, but Adrian, what I mean is that since openSUSE has been kicked off in October, many questions and topics have been put back because the build service was going to solve everything (and it might do so one day ;)). Other topics have also been put back because everyone was busy working on the 10.0 release, and it was pretty much the same the last month or two with 10.1 (agreed, that was a particularly hot one). The latter point being why I wrote we should get forward as a community without always waiting for you guys to take decisions, we can't just have a standstill while you're busy on a release. Now the build service is starting to take some shape, which is great, but it still lacks tooling (please, not the web UI ;)) and guidelines ([1] looks like chaos to me, and even inside subdirectories the names of distributions are varying from SL10 to SuLi10.0 to a few others) - but I've already addressed that in another mail (and just noticed your reply, thanks ;)). [1] http://repos.opensuse.org/opensuse/repositories/main/ I don't use it as of now, because I have my environment, my scripts, my repository, I need minimal effort to submit, build and retrieve packages, mostly because I manage an insane amount of packages during my free time and it has to be working as quickly as possible. While we're at it, as it comes to my mind right now, an example of lack of "community embracement" as far as packaging is concerned: SUSE Linux 10.1 now has signed installation sources, supports an enhanced RPM-MD (aka yum) format with YOU-alike information. That's great, I love it, I really do but... it hasn't been advertised on any relevant list (I'm on opensuse, opensuse-build, opensuse-packaging and opensuse-factory, I guess I would have noticed ;D), there is no documentation available, no howto. Well, for the signed repos, some information has been put together (don't have the URL at hands atm). The enhanced RPM-MD thing kind of popped up by chance as Christoph mentioned it while discussing something loosely related. When such things are discussed and developed, I would expect it to be public, e.g. on opensuse-packaging. While it isn't really of much interest for users, it is for 3rd party packagers like the packman team, myself, and many others. 10.1 is going to be released in 2 days and I have no idea how to sign my repositories to avoid big warnings showing up in end users' YaST2 when they add my repo. I guess I'd be able to do so by spending half a day with trial+error, but I don't quite have that time atm, and I was actually expecting something more or less spoon-fed to be written for us. Don't take me wrong, it's not supposed to be a useless rant for the fun of it, I'd just like to point out some things that seem problematic to me ;)
We have to get our act together, drive topics and initiatives on this very list ourselves, then come up with agreed upon, realistic proposals or requests to Novell, if needed. Of course, it's even better when we don't have to. And let's please discuss important issues first.
This is a benevolent dictatorship model, but that doesn't mean that we should just sit back, rant and wait for things to be done by them.
At least that's my vision on how we should evolve as a community, and I've been using SUSE since 5.0 (= quite some time), waiting for these opportunities to happen. Maybe I'm just too impatient, I probably am, but I objectively think we're pretty much stuck in inertia right now.
Impatientness is a good motivation :)
Definitely ;)
Personally, atm, my mindset is "I want everything and I want it now".
Of course not meant for real, but as a perspective to try to find out
what to do and what we're missing.
Let's raise issues and ideas, discuss them, make decisions and/or
proposals to you folks (when necessary) and see when, how and if we
can get those things done. Of course, doing them will take time, but
at least we'd have a big TODO list.
cheers
--
-o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
/\\
Pascal Bleser wrote: ...a lot of things, one of them being stupid: [...]
10.1 is going to be released in 2 days and I have no idea how to sign my repositories to avoid big warnings showing up in end users' YaST2 when they add my repo. I guess I'd be able to do so by spending half a day with trial+error, but I don't quite have that time atm, and I was actually expecting something more or less spoon-fed to be written for us.
My bad, this pretty much looks like it, at least as far as signed yast
repos are concerned:
http://en.opensuse.org/Secure_Installation_Sources
cheers
--
-o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
/\\
On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 11:27:25AM +0200, Pascal Bleser wrote:
Pascal Bleser wrote: ...a lot of things, one of them being stupid:
[...]
10.1 is going to be released in 2 days and I have no idea how to sign my repositories to avoid big warnings showing up in end users' YaST2 when they add my repo. I guess I'd be able to do so by spending half a day with trial+error, but I don't quite have that time atm, and I was actually expecting something more or less spoon-fed to be written for us.
My bad, this pretty much looks like it, at least as far as signed yast repos are concerned: http://en.opensuse.org/Secure_Installation_Sources
YUM too, just look at the end. Ciao, Marcus
Marcus Meissner wrote:
On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 11:27:25AM +0200, Pascal Bleser wrote:
Pascal Bleser wrote: ...a lot of things, one of them being stupid:
[...]
10.1 is going to be released in 2 days and I have no idea how to sign my repositories to avoid big warnings showing up in end users' YaST2 when they add my repo. I guess I'd be able to do so by spending half a day with trial+error, but I don't quite have that time atm, and I was actually expecting something more or less spoon-fed to be written for us. My bad, this pretty much looks like it, at least as far as signed yast repos are concerned: http://en.opensuse.org/Secure_Installation_Sources
YUM too, just look at the end.
Yep. But about RPM-MD I was referring to the format used by YOU, that
includes additional metadata (changelog-alike).
cheers
--
-o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
/\\
Helle, all, I'm really very busy nowadays but I think I should say something here... There are really many good ideas in that topic ... but how can a newbie or opensuse beginner start help? He need tutorials, very simple documents and interactive help to learn about the things he may help with? I've RHCE but I don't know how to build a quite complex RPM package from source code ... I need a tutorial to learn "how" .. many people likes to help but that are just disappointed when then read complicated advanced stuff... simplicity is a must .. I've already helped opensuse by making teaching movies.. I started with opensuse 10 installtion, then some linux essentials and I'll continue for advanced stuff ... it's on my Arabic website www.linuxeyes.com ... that's all what I could do .. I want to do more but I couldn't 'coz of complixety of management or inability to go with direct helping stuff ... sorry for my bad english Greetings from Cairo, Egypt :)
On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 11:18:00AM +0200, Pascal Bleser wrote:
Would be awesome, yet we'll have to see whether the build service will be mature enough when 10.2 will start to get built, to avoid having a issues caused by the build service.
What I udnerstood is that the build service would be something for end of this year. I can imagine that it is then too close to a 10.2 release, so it could be for the version after that. If I am wrong, please tell me so.
While I agree that there should become more people an @opensuse.org email address, I disagree that everybody should get one. Because not every user of openSUSE should be able to speak for the project.
ACK, that's also what I was having on my mind.
I disagree. People who have a login at Novell/openSUSE should get an email adress as an extra. At this moment there is nobody, exept suse.de, who can speak for openSUSE.org I don't see the opensuse.org email adress as anything official. I see it as a gift. I have a gmail adress, but when I send mail with that adress, I hardly speak for gmail.com. I have several other adresses and with none of those people will think that I am somehow resposible for anything.
The question is, how we can decide/vote who should get one ? How many people
Right, that's the only real issue.
People who file bugreports in bugzulla. Making the adress available only to some is a bad move that will seperate the community even more to haves and have nots. houghi -- Nutze die Zeit. Sie ist das Kostbarste, was wir haben, denn es ist unwiederbringliche Lebenszeit. Leben ist aber mehr als Werk und Arbeit, und das Sein wichtiger als das Tun - Johannes Müller-Elmau
houghi wrote:
On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 11:18:00AM +0200, Pascal Bleser wrote:
Would be awesome, yet we'll have to see whether the build service will be mature enough when 10.2 will start to get built, to avoid having a issues caused by the build service.
What I understood is that the build service would be something for end of this year. I can imagine that it is then too close to a 10.2 release, so it could be for the version after that.
It's a moving target in development. It's already usable right now. The question is rather: will it be tested, and have enough features to be viable for building 10.2 at some early stage (of 10.2).
While I agree that there should become more people an @opensuse.org email address, I disagree that everybody should get one. Because not every user of openSUSE should be able to speak for the project. ACK, that's also what I was having on my mind.
I disagree. People who have a login at Novell/openSUSE should get an email adress as an extra.
Sure, @users.opensuse.org as Adrian suggested.
At this moment there is nobody, except suse.de, who can speak for openSUSE.org
Sorry but that's exactly the "I'm sitting here and waiting for things to happen" attitude I was referring to. I think I can speak for opensuse.org because I'm an active part of that community. So can any other active committer. Stop considering us non-Novell employees as minor elements of the community.
I don't see the opensuse.org email adress as anything official. I see it as a gift. I have a gmail adress, but when I send mail with that adress, I hardly speak for gmail.com. I have several other adresses and with none of those people will think that I am somehow resposible for anything.
I'm afraid you don't get the point. It's not just an email address for convenience like gmail. You contribute actively to the community (and probably more than just reporting 2 or 3 bugs), you're part of it, and you want to show it. Don't underestimate the effect of it, it also helps a feeling of belonging to the active core of the community. We're going to have leadership, we're going to have people who will come out of the mass and do more than others, deserve more credit and respect than others (I mean wrt their work), that's just how opensource communities work and evolve naturally. We won't be an exception, like it or not. Having an opensuse.org email is just natural to that evolution as a community. Actually, anything else is awkward.
The question is, how we can decide/vote who should get one ? How many people Right, that's the only real issue.
People who file bugreports in bugzulla. Making the adress available only to some is a bad move that will seperate the community even more to haves and have nots.
Read above. There will be differences, that's how it works, always,
like it or not.
And I don't agree that anyone who reports a few bugs on the bugzilla
has the same degree of involvement in the project as a packager, a
forum or wiki moderator/sysop, or even someone who committedly and
thoroughly tests factory or beta releases and reports several dozens
of bugs, makes large contributions to the documentation, writes
several howtos on the wiki, spends a lot of time translating, etc...
OpenSource projects always work as "meritocracies".
cheers
--
-o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
/\\
Hi Adrian,
Adrian Schröter
Am Tuesday 09 May 2006 08:33 schrieb Martin Mewes:
I think that if a packager wants to build packages for openSUSE a interactive build tool (IBT) should come up with something like this (more specific to read on opensuse-packaging soon):
You heard about the openSUSE Build Service ? I think almost everything you mentioned is there or is planned ...
opensuse-buildservice mailing list may help you as well :)
Step 01: Enter the path/download URL to the $name.src.rpm
planned
Cool ...
Step 02: IBT extracts the contents to ~/build/$name Step 03: As the src.rpm extracts the sources for $name.rpm provided by the developer it should be somewhat analyzable by IBT. IBT should actually see the install instructions and can present the sections part by part.
we do not allow src.rpm upload, because we build also for Debian. But we could extend the command line tool to extract the src.rpm and to upload it automatically ...
Cool ... I will have a look at it. Thanks for pointing this out.
Step 04: IBT should be able to have a set of directories builtin to give the packager good hints on how to change the install instructions.
rpm macros are doing this in general.
RPM macros are subject to be written by the user. The IBT should give the user a common guideline throughout the complete build to help him finding solutions for fitting the package for openSUSE.
Example: Webmin wants to install to /usr/libexec/webmin by default, but the standards for openSUSE say that system packages should go to /opt/$package as example so the instructions for the installation regarding the installation path should be automatically altered by IBT.
IMHO a provided WebMin by openSUSE should install into /usr, but that may cause some conflicts ...
Well /opt was just a good guess ;-)
Step 05: In the end Webmin is managed over HTTP so the IBT should ask a couple of questions at the end, i.e.
Is this a package to be managed remotely? [ ] Please enter the the needed port: ________
IBT can automatically add code to the package to open the managing port in the firewall. [ ]
RPM-Commandline/YAST-Output: a) If you choose to leave this entry blank some code will be added to the package informing the end-user that he needs to open the given port in the firewall manually. b) If you choose to select this option code will be added informing the user that the given port will be opened automatically for him.
Good idea, maybe a YaST configuration template could be created, which can be configured by a simple file for each package ...
Yepp ...
We will have a global openSUSE Build Service key soon. We are not sure yet, if we really need the possibility to allow signing with user keys, but we spoke about a solution that you can sign the package provided by the Build Service via the command line tool (yes, without uploading the private key and without downloading/reuploading the rpms).
First I will take a look around the Build service and see the status. I really would like to get more involved in packaging if the Build service really makes things more easy for me. bis dahin / kind regards Martin Mewes Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer: Messaging 2003 Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator: Messaging 2003 -- http://www.mewes.tv/ - Homepage http://mbox.mewes.tv/ - Mailinglisten zum Downloaden
On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 12:11:14PM +0200, Pascal Bleser wrote:
I disagree. People who have a login at Novell/openSUSE should get an email adress as an extra.
Sure, @users.opensuse.org as Adrian suggested.
I disagree. That is just ugly.
At this moment there is nobody, except suse.de, who can speak for openSUSE.org
Sorry but that's exactly the "I'm sitting here and waiting for things to happen" attitude I was referring to.
I think I can speak for opensuse.org because I'm an active part of that community. So can any other active committer.
Stop considering us non-Novell employees as minor elements of the community.
I am not. I am also an active part of the community, as is everybody else who uses SUSE. Who decides if there comes a forum and when? As I see it we can expess our wishes, yet it is Novell that decides in the end wether or not things happening. I don't think that is a bad thing. It just needs some improvemenet.
I'm afraid you don't get the point. It's not just an email address for convenience like gmail.
I DO get the point. It IS just an email adress. That was my reason of asking a while ago in the first place. To have it as a forwarding emailadress when you subscribe to either openSUSE or to bugzilla. It would be very sad if only some selected few would be able to get one. You want to have people join openSUSE community. Giving them an emailadress is then a thank you for doing so. Otherwise people will think that they are still not a real opensuse member, because they don't get the adress. houghi -- Nutze die Zeit. Sie ist das Kostbarste, was wir haben, denn es ist unwiederbringliche Lebenszeit. Leben ist aber mehr als Werk und Arbeit, und das Sein wichtiger als das Tun - Johannes Müller-Elmau
houghi wrote:
On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 12:11:14PM +0200, Pascal Bleser wrote:
I disagree. People who have a login at Novell/openSUSE should get an email adress as an extra. Sure, @users.opensuse.org as Adrian suggested.
I disagree. That is just ugly.
At this moment there is nobody, except suse.de, who can speak for openSUSE.org
Sorry but that's exactly the "I'm sitting here and waiting for things to happen" attitude I was referring to.
I think I can speak for opensuse.org because I'm an active part of that community. So can any other active committer.
Stop considering us non-Novell employees as minor elements of the community.
I am not. I am also an active part of the community, as is everybody else who uses SUSE. Who decides if there comes a forum and when? As I see it we can expess our wishes, yet it is Novell that decides in the end wether or not things happening.
I couldn't disagree more. While using SUSE Linux somehow makes you part of the community at large, that's not the part of the community I'm talking about. That means you're using it and it doesn't imply that you are spending some of your free time to make things better for the others who use it. Sorry but it _does_ make a difference. People should be rewarded for their efforts. It's not about pushing down people who don't, it's about pushing up people who do, that's a subtle but very important difference. "It is Novell that decides in the end whether or not things happen" It's the current situation because some people seem to be fine with that and because tons of on- and off-topic mails are flowing on the list but we aren't able to take decisions in the end. I'm afraid the web forum topic is very characteristic. We don't want that situation (well, at least, I don't) and Novell doesn't want it either, it isn't a benefit to anyone. If that's the idea, then we can stop the whole opensuse.org thing right now. The goal is to go beyond that as fast as possible so that we can directly contribute to the project: documentation, translations, testing, packaging, helping out and moderating on IRC, forums and mailinglists, developing YaST2 modules, submit source code patches, create artwork, etc etc... Some of that is already possible, most is still quite cumbersome, and a smaller part isn't possible just yet. The benefit is for both sides: 1) we non-Novell employees can contribute directly and influence our ecosystem and our distribution (wrt packaging once the build service is mainstream for building SUSE Linux) 2) Novell gets a lot of manpower and skilled people to contribute to their business, indirectly, by spreading the user base Really, one goal should be to take away as much work as possible from the openSUSE staff at Novell. They're not keeping their hands on it because they don't want to give control away, but because we haven't been able yet to produce a community structure where it is possible. I'm sure they'd be more than happy to give away some or most of the many tasks and responsibilities they have to take care of now/ As I wrote in an earlier mail, it's a benevolent dictatorship, but we can nevertheless be in control side-by-side with Novell, together, on most aspects, as equally leveled partners.
I don't think that is a bad thing. It just needs some improvemenet.
No, it has to change completely. This is an interim situation, this is not what we should aim for.
I'm afraid you don't get the point. It's not just an email address for convenience like gmail.
I DO get the point. It IS just an email adress. That was my reason of asking a while ago in the first place. To have it as a forwarding emailadress when you subscribe to either openSUSE or to bugzilla.
Could be one use for it, but that's really minor compared to the "I'm part of the community" aspect.
It would be very sad if only some selected few would be able to get one.
"selected" yes, but "few".. not necessarily. What's sad about that ? It's how it works. You really want to tell me Linus Torvalds shouldn't be regarded as more respected, committed, deserving as a Linux newbie who installed SUSE Linux 2 days ago ? (granted, those are extremes ;)) Is that a reason to dismiss or consider that Linux newbie as an inferior human being, as you seem to imply into what I wrote ? Of course not. Couldn't that newbie one day contribute a lot to the community and be respected and deserving as well ? Obviously, yes. (well, as much as Linus would be pretty tough ;D) I'm not sure you have a realistic vision of how OpenSource communities (or communities in general) work. But to make this very clear: it's not because someone spends a lot of time and energy e.g. making packages or writing documentation for thousands of SUSE Linux users that I would [or anyone else should] consider him a better human being or superior to anyone else. It's just that he is more committed to the community than others, and that he's spending a larger part of his life, his free time and his passion for the good of the whole community (including the many many SUSE Linux users who benefit from that). In a community like ours or as with any OpenSource project or distribution I know of, he deserves more respect for his work and contribution (not that others don't), his voice should have more weight... and he should get an opensuse.org email ;D
You want to have people join openSUSE community. Giving them an emailadress is then a thank you for doing so.
Right, @users.opensuse.org Personally, and that's really only my very own opinion, I don't really care much about someone installing SUSE Linux on his PC but who doesn't care about getting involved in it and who never will. Nice for him he gets a stable, polished distribution as well as a friendly, helpful and qualified community. But should I really care about it ? Not much. Sure, I guess the larger the user base, the better for all of us, but there's not much beyond that. The people I care about are those who take part into "doing" the community, helping out, contributing to the mutualized effort. I don't see anything wrong in that. Does it mean I don't respect the end-user who's not involved into the effort ? Of course not. Does it mean I won't spend my free time to also make his "computing experience" easier and nicer ? Neither. Frankly, if I would, I don't think there would be some 7 GB repository of RPM files at http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
Otherwise people will think that they are still not a real opensuse member, because they don't get the address.
IMO that address is not a gift for doing nothing, it's something that
has to be "deserved", kindof.
You become "a real opensuse member" when you participate, there are
many ways to do so, and a lot of people do.
Really, what's wrong or "ugly" with that ?
Does it sound like apartheid ? ;)
BTW, do I sound arrogant or harsh to you ? Well, I'm trying to push
things forward and at some point it involves making statements and/or
speaking on behalf of others, either to be agreed upon or to trigger
reactions, discussions, decisions and actions (in that order ;D).
cheers
--
-o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
/\\
Adrian Schröter wrote:
Hi Martin,
Am Tuesday 09 May 2006 08:33 schrieb Martin Mewes:
I think that if a packager wants to build packages for openSUSE a interactive build tool (IBT) should come up with something like this (more specific to read on opensuse-packaging soon):
You heard about the openSUSE Build Service ? I think almost everything you mentioned is there or is planned ...
may I state than beeing quite involved here, having made some (even hex) programming, using quite often to compile my packages and having written part of a course on LDP 101 (junior admin) I still don't know what this build service is about? may be somebody could take some time to explain to non programmers what this is going to do? for example, I understand very well (I guess :-) what the Sourceforge compile farm is, but what the heck is the suse build service? I see the ending point is a rpm or deb file :-), but what is the way from my one page php script to this rpm through the build service? (I could do myself by hand on 2/3 hours, I hope :-) what advantages? let's beg you have XEN farms? but then? thanks jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos
On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 02:53:06PM +0200, jdd wrote:
Adrian Schröter wrote:
Hi Martin,
Am Tuesday 09 May 2006 08:33 schrieb Martin Mewes:
I think that if a packager wants to build packages for openSUSE a interactive build tool (IBT) should come up with something like this (more specific to read on opensuse-packaging soon):
You heard about the openSUSE Build Service ? I think almost everything you mentioned is there or is planned ...
may I state than beeing quite involved here, having made some (even hex) programming, using quite often to compile my packages and having written part of a course on LDP 101 (junior admin) I still don't know what this build service is about?
may be somebody could take some time to explain to non programmers what this is going to do?
for example, I understand very well (I guess :-) what the Sourceforge compile farm is, but what the heck is the suse build service?
http://en.opensuse.org/Build_Service Ciao, Marcus
Adrian Schröter wrote:
Other, minor ideas, such as having @opensuse.org email addresses, to show we're part of the community (this has been mentioned once on the list, but hasn't been discussed further).
While I agree that there should become more people an @opensuse.org email address, I disagree that everybody should get one.
please, can we use this as an example. we need badly to keep peoples with us. People come on the wiki, edit some pages and go. how can we glue then to openSUSE :-) * we can't pay them, too expensive and beyond the open philosophy :-) * we can't do nothing, because most of them wont stay and between the two? some kind of reward? giving an opensuse.org mail could be one step reward. Let any sysop the opportunity to ask a user: I see you have made some work on opensuse, would you mind to have such address? To be written as "staff member" on a blocked page (that is a bit more official than the wiki team page) could be made at the same time. and any such people should be asked to choose a particular task: edit/maintain some part of the wiki (some category, for example), giving sometime on a Linux forum with the opensuse mail as signature... then we could add some "time" reward: may be the one staff member for 6 month can have a chocolate medal :-) or a SUSE pin, or better a unexpected gift as you did for beta testers
Impatientness is a good motivation :)
some times. I was asked to be sysop in November and the wiki opened in february. I was near to give up and take work elsewhere. Voluteers can find work very easily, you know :-) however, moral rewards are the betters. simply a personal message from a sysop can be rewarding :-) thanks jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos
Marcus Meissner wrote:
sorry, but this one is nearly unusable. looks like a man page :-((()). please give us _one_ example. If you want, give me some access and I will try to describe this from a semi-external point of view jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos
houghi wrote:
I don't see the opensuse.org email adress as anything official. I see it as a gift. I have a gmail adress, but when I send mail with that adress, I hardly speak for gmail.com.
Because gmail.com offers free email to anyone who wants it. opensuse.org doesn't. Anyone with a @opensuse.org email-address will have a strong implied association with opensuse. It can't be just a user. /Per Jessen, Zürich
Craig Millar wrote:
To be fair, although this list is described as "opensuse General discussion about the openSUSE (development) project" on the wiki, it's has a slightly misleadingly moniker and has so from the outset. I've always thought it should be more implicitly named, e.g. opensuse-devel which leaves no grounds for confusion.
I second that. /Per Jessen, Zürich
Per Jessen wrote:
Craig Millar wrote:
To be fair, although this list is described as "opensuse General discussion about the openSUSE (development) project" on the wiki, it's has a slightly misleadingly moniker and has so from the outset. I've always thought it should be more implicitly named, e.g. opensuse-devel which leaves no grounds for confusion.
I second that.
Maybe even rename opensuse@ to opensuse-project@ to be more clear. Looking at other -devel lists, it seems that people think they get technical help there, so I expect confusion to become worse if we rename opensuse@ to opensuse-devel@. I changed the template a bit (in the hope of making it clearer). However, I think we should also rearrange the order of the lists. Suggestion: * suse-linux-e * opensuse-factory * opensuse-announce * opensuse * opensuse-doc * opensuse-optimize * opensuse-buildservice * opensuse-packaging * opensuse-commit * opensuse-wiki * suse-security-announce * suse-security * suse-kde * suse-ppc And also a rewording the following entries would make sense: * opensuse-factory Discussion about factory/alpha/beta/RC versions of SUSE Linux. * suse-linux-e Discussion about released SUSE Linux versions. Regards, Carl-Daniel
On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 01:36:47PM +0200, Pascal Bleser wrote:
BTW, do I sound arrogant or harsh to you ?
Yes you do. It is uncalled for. And because of the arrogance I see no reason to reply to anything you said. houghi -- Nutze die Zeit. Sie ist das Kostbarste, was wir haben, denn es ist unwiederbringliche Lebenszeit. Leben ist aber mehr als Werk und Arbeit, und das Sein wichtiger als das Tun - Johannes Müller-Elmau
Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
I changed the template a bit (in the hope of making it clearer).
and make all the lists available from the same screen (lists... one of the problem with suse-e is the great number of OT. the number of posts is very annoying for anybody that have not a high bandwith connexion. I question if we should not have _also_ a moderated list - I could be a moderator, strictly technical help jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos
Really, what's wrong or "ugly" with that ? Does it sound like apartheid ? ;) ^^^^^^^^
Am Dienstag, den 09.05.2006, 13:36 +0200 schrieb Pascal Bleser: [snipped lot of stuff about deserving an email address] I can't believe you guys are arguing about who should get what kind of email-address. How about we have Novell create a new mailing list: emailornot@opensuse.org has a nice ring to it, does it not? Well, I just started contributing to opensuse by translating a couple of pages on the wiki (oh, darn, I should post that to the opensuse-wiki mailing list I guess), so according to you I would not (yet) be eligible for an opensuse email address, but if it was up to houghi, I would actually get one. Guess what? I couldn't care less about another email-address or not. What I care about is that I virtually can't find any information on opensuse.org that goes beyond how to download the latest release. I occasionally see a link posted here or on another opensuse mailing list i subscribed to, and i keep asking myself: how did he (or she) find that particular bit of information? i keep trying, but either I get dead-ends or I'm drowned in search results. Another thing: I find a page, see that it has already been translated and move on to another page. The next day I happen to visit that same page again, it looks the same, only the link to the translated page is suddenly gone. What kind crap is that? No matter if a wiki (and opensuse is a wiki, right?) is an ever-evolving thing or not. As a user I prefer some stability. When I visit a webpage I expect to find it again tomorrow, even more so when it's a corporate webpage. And I get annoyed when one of the main pages changes daily, like it happened with http://en.opensuse.org/Documentation. that was totally out of line. smiley or not.
BTW, do I sound arrogant or harsh to you ? Well, I'm trying to push things forward and at some point it involves making statements and/or speaking on behalf of others, either to be agreed upon or to trigger reactions, discussions, decisions and actions (in that order ;D).
No, not arrogant, but losing yourself (and some really good points in your original posting) in imho totally fruitless discussions about some really. really, really (may I say it again: really!) unimportant things. -- Andreas
I have a hard time finding things on the wiki, perhaps it's just because I don't use them much, but I have not had much luck with them personally. I find forums much easier to search. I did start up a forum for opensuse, www.opensuse.us . I emailed novell's legal division and recieved permission to use the opensuse logo. I realize that opensuse.org will eventually "probably" have forums, but I too like to have a place where the information can't be randomly changed. Don't get me wrong, I think that the wiki admins do a great job of keeping track of things, but on a personal note, I hate it when something i write gets re-written by someone else. I run several forums, and they are a great way of "storing" information for retrieval, and google loves to index them.... making a websearch return some useful links. I'm not sure how a wiki works in that regards, but when you keep "changing" the page..... googles index of the page might not match the actual current one...... if you lucky, google "might" have a cached version of the one it indexed... and the final purpose of it all of course is to have the information readily and quickly available for someone looking for it in the first place ;)
jdd wrote:
[...]
First, I don't really like the "Leadership" word. I don't see me as a leader (for the fr wiki I'm sysop of), that is my opinion is only important if it's the only one :-) - else I try to follow the majority will.
second, sysop needs at least some admin rights (to be able to edit the front page, for example), and this can only be done by Novel.
third, the forum stuff is a totally other beast, it needs admin rights at the server level (and the relevant knowledge), this is not to be done by volunteers. [...]
jdd, I think you didn't get my point. I was talking about "leaders", not about system admins, moderators, sys ops, maintainers or whatever. Don't take it personally, but I (that's of course only my opinion, others might have a very different opinion) would not consider you as a "leader". Cheers, Th.
Andreas wrote:
[...] Another thing: I find a page, see that it has already been translated and move on to another page. The next day I happen to visit that same page again, it looks the same, only the link to the translated page is suddenly gone. What kind crap is that? No matter if a wiki (and opensuse is a wiki, right?) is an ever-evolving thing or not. As a user I prefer some stability. When I visit a webpage I expect to find it again tomorrow, even more so when it's a corporate webpage. And I get annoyed when one of the main pages changes daily, like it happened with http://en.opensuse.org/Documentation.
Well, it's a wiki, isn't it? And from my point of view, wikis have assets as well as drawbacks. You describe one of the drawbacks. I have made quite a lot of negative experiences with wikis as more or less everybody is able to change the pages. One day you add something, the next day it's gone. One day you fix a description in the wiki (and you really know what you're doing there), the next day somebody has removed your fix and replaced it with the old (and wrong) text because he thought he knew better. And so on... I like the idea that everybody can contribute, but wikis also need some sort of "quality control", some "stability" as you describe it. I (that's my personal opinion) would much prefer a managed system over a wiki, but I guess there are not enough resources to achieve something like that. Cheers, Th.
Andreas wrote:
Guess what? I couldn't care less about another email-address or not.
I don't care neither, but if some people do...
What I care about is that I virtually can't find any information on opensuse.org that goes beyond how to download the latest release.
I agree with you that there are not enough pages on the wiki. and than find them is difficult. so I try to find a better way. but it's difficult. In fact the best way I have found yet is the google link there: http://en.opensuse.org/Documentation http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&q=site%3Aopensuse.org&btnG=Recherche+Google&meta= and I try to write doc, but, sorry I write much more in french than in english :-) http://fr.opensuse.org/Utilisateur:Jdd but don't forget opensuse is very young :-) jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos
houghi wrote:
[...]
I disagree. People who have a login at Novell/openSUSE should get an email adress as an extra. At this moment there is nobody, exept suse.de, who can speak for openSUSE.org
I disagree with that. I have an opinion which I can express whether I have an opensuse.org email address or not. This, from my point of view, is absolutely irrelevant. If everybody has an opensuse.org email address, it's maybe some kind of marketing and advertisement for opensuse and SUSE Linux, but nothing more. I would not consider somebody speaking for the whole community just because he has an opensuse.org email address. And by judging emails on this mailing list, I am really glad that (at least at the moment) not everybody can get such an address. I think some people with such an address might (unfortunately) also shed some bad light onto the openSUSE community and SUSE Linux... Unfortunately, this discussion has again drifted away from the important things (I personally do not consider opensuse.org email addresses as important). By reading Amr Hamdy's email again (MSG-ID <5043bb0e0605090244o2f66c997r8210d8e35706ec17@mail.gmail.com> this morning), I think that the idea of a TODO list (for details, see one of my previous emails in this thread) might help to solve some problems and to get more people involved, starting with some simple tasks cleared within half an hour. At least such a list, regularly sent to this mailing list (or others?), might provide a starting point. However, it would require somebody managing the TODO list. And no, unfortunately I don't have the overview and time to manage something like that. Cheers, Th.
Am Dienstag, den 09.05.2006, 13:30 -0500 schrieb Dave Crouse:
I did start up a forum for opensuse, www.opensuse.us .
it's in my bookmarks :)
Don't get me wrong, I think that the wiki admins do a great job of keeping track of things, but on a personal note, I hate it when something i write gets re-written by someone else.
I would like to have more control over "my" article too, but then again, the dynamics of a wiki usually plays out just fine. As I understand it, a "critical mass" of active contributors is vital for a wiki to actually work. Maybe that is part of the problems the opensuse wiki has.
I run several forums, and they are a great way of "storing" information for [...]
-- Andreas
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Andreas wrote:
Am Dienstag, den 09.05.2006, 13:36 +0200 schrieb Pascal Bleser: [snipped lot of stuff about deserving an email address]
I can't believe you guys are arguing about who should get what kind of email-address. How about we have Novell create a new mailing list: emailornot@opensuse.org has a nice ring to it, does it not?
The point wasn't so much about the email address or not, it was more about a structure, process, whatever to try to get discussions into a somewhat more effective path. Up to now many threads get somehow diluted into sticking on 2-3 unimportant details, ad nauseum, making the actual topic irrelevant and in the end, nothing agreed upon, nothing decided, 1 step forward, 2 step backwards. Too bad I had to try to explain "meritocracy" down to nitty gritty of one example (opensuse.org emails, in this case). Seems that exactly the same thing happened again.
Well, I just started contributing to opensuse by translating a couple of pages on the wiki (oh, darn, I should post that to the opensuse-wiki mailing list I guess), so according to you I would not (yet) be eligible for an opensuse email address, but if it was up to houghi, I would actually get one. Guess what? I couldn't care less about another email-address or not.
What's the problem, if you don't care about it ? ;)
What I care about is that I virtually can't find any information on opensuse.org that goes beyond how to download the latest release.
Right. And it's probably the biggest challenge as far as a large wiki is concerned: how to organize and categorize pages to find them easily, say, on looking at 2 or 3 (index) pages at most. Not that the challenge is wiki-specific, it's just related to documentation in general. Indexing is an art of its own. [...]
Really, what's wrong or "ugly" with that ? Does it sound like apartheid ? ;) ^^^^^^^^ that was totally out of line. smiley or not.
Ummm... well, you're picking a single line totally out of context. Thank you for trying to make me look like an ass, that's a particularly nice and appreciated move.
BTW, do I sound arrogant or harsh to you ? Well, I'm trying to push things forward and at some point it involves making statements and/or speaking on behalf of others, either to be agreed upon or to trigger reactions, discussions, decisions and actions (in that order ;D).
No, not arrogant, but losing yourself (and some really good points in your original posting) in imho totally fruitless discussions about some really. really, really (may I say it again: really!) unimportant things.
Probably. I guess I just shouldn't have reacted to some replies in the
first place that were picking single, unimportant elements of the mail
and spending too much time on explaining those until they become irrelevant.
I just wonder whether it's tactics or not. I'll try not to fall into the
same trap again.
How about giving your opinion about the "really good points" in the
original posting ? Maybe it's still possible to not dismiss the whole
thread just because of that.
cheers
- --
-o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
/\\
Am Dienstag, den 09.05.2006, 19:53 +0100 schrieb Thomas Hertweck:
Well, it's a wiki, isn't it?
That's one of the things I didn't understand right away. It's not that long ago that I visited opensuse.org the first time, and I did *not* know that it was a wiki, I assumed it was a corporate website, like a successor of suse.com.
And from my point of view, wikis have assets as well as drawbacks. You describe one of the drawbacks. I have made quite a lot of negative experiences with wikis as more or less everybody is able to change the pages. One day you add something, the next day it's gone. One day you fix a description in the wiki (and you really know what you're doing there), the next day somebody has removed your fix and replaced it with the old (and wrong) text because he thought he knew better. And so on... I like the idea that everybody can contribute, but wikis also need some sort of "quality control", some "stability" as you describe it.
The idea of "protected" pages like the opensuse front page is a step in the right direction I think. Drawbacks aside, I can see the advantages a wiki can have over a traditionally maintained website. I used them myself by making some quick changes to articles.
I (that's my personal opinion) would much prefer a managed system over a wiki, but I guess there are not enough resources to achieve something like that.
I really don't know if that's the problem. The greatest advantage of a wiki is imho how easily people can add their contributions, which in turn makes them a lot more connected to the particular community. -- Andreas
On Wed, May 10, 2006 at 12:08:01AM +0200, Pascal Bleser wrote: <snip>
How about giving your opinion about the "really good points" in the original posting ? Maybe it's still possible to not dismiss the whole thread just because of that.
The good points are ignored, because otherwise you get a <ME TOO> mentelaty. The bad points are forcefully and arrogantly defended by you. So what do you want? That we just all happily agree with you? Or perhaps I am again too stupid and don't understand things. houghi -- Nutze die Zeit. Sie ist das Kostbarste, was wir haben, denn es ist unwiederbringliche Lebenszeit. Leben ist aber mehr als Werk und Arbeit, und das Sein wichtiger als das Tun - Johannes Müller-Elmau
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 houghi wrote:
On Wed, May 10, 2006 at 12:08:01AM +0200, Pascal Bleser wrote: <snip>
How about giving your opinion about the "really good points" in the original posting ? Maybe it's still possible to not dismiss the whole thread just because of that.
The good points are ignored, because otherwise you get a <ME TOO> mentelaty. The bad points are forcefully and arrogantly defended by you. So what do you want? That we just all happily agree with you? Or perhaps I am again too stupid and don't understand things.
I'd rather say you're manipulating. You're stating the total opposite of
what I wrote in my mails.
WTF are you trying to do ?
- --
-o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
/\\
Am Mittwoch, den 10.05.2006, 00:08 +0200 schrieb Pascal Bleser:
The point wasn't so much about the email address or not, it was more about a structure, process, whatever to try to get discussions into a somewhat more effective path. Up to now many threads get somehow diluted into sticking on 2-3 unimportant details, ad nauseum, making the actual topic irrelevant and in the end, nothing agreed upon, nothing decided, 1 step forward, 2 step backwards.
and at least one step sideways. That's what happened to this particular thread, and after seeing that you made quite some valid points with your original mail that opened this thread, it seemed to be leading nowhere with the email-discussion. I was hoping to set you guys "on the right track" again.
Too bad I had to try to explain "meritocracy" down to nitty gritty of one example (opensuse.org emails, in this case).
Well yeah, I never heard (or saw) that word either :(
Seems that exactly the same thing happened again.
yep, and the discussion thread deserved better imho.
Well, I just started contributing to opensuse by translating a couple of pages on the wiki (oh, darn, I should post that to the opensuse-wiki mailing list I guess), so according to you I would not (yet) be eligible for an opensuse email address, but if it was up to houghi, I would actually get one. Guess what? I couldn't care less about another email-address or not.
What's the problem, if you don't care about it ? ;)
see above.
What I care about is that I virtually can't find any information on opensuse.org that goes beyond how to download the latest release.
Right. And it's probably the biggest challenge as far as a large wiki is concerned: how to organize and categorize pages to find them easily, say, on looking at 2 or 3 (index) pages at most. Not that the challenge is wiki-specific, it's just related to documentation in general. Indexing is an art of its own.
I couldn't agree more. And I certainly hope we have the right kind of artists for that job.
Really, what's wrong or "ugly" with that ? Does it sound like apartheid ? ;) ^^^^^^^^ that was totally out of line. smiley or not.
Ummm... well, you're picking a single line totally out of context. Thank you for trying to make me look like an ass, that's a particularly nice and appreciated move.
you are very welcome ;). And Apartheid is one of the *very* few trigger-words that are not to be used in any other context than their own historical one. period.
BTW, do I sound arrogant or harsh to you ? Well, I'm trying to push things forward and at some point it involves making statements and/or speaking on behalf of others, either to be agreed upon or to trigger reactions, discussions, decisions and actions (in that order ;D).
No, not arrogant, but losing yourself (and some really good points in your original posting) in imho totally fruitless discussions about some really. really, really (may I say it again: really!) unimportant things.
Probably. I guess I just shouldn't have reacted to some replies in the first place that were picking single, unimportant elements of the mail and spending too much time on explaining those until they become irrelevant. I just wonder whether it's tactics or not. I'll try not to fall into the same trap again.
It sometimes looks like it is intentional, yet I strongly believe it isn't so. It's just very easy to get stuck in detail discussions only because you tried to explain your statement with an example.
How about giving your opinion about the "really good points" in the original posting ? Maybe it's still possible to not dismiss the whole thread just because of that.
I am far from dismissing it! On the contrary, I support a lot what you are trying to achieve, and being one of the beneficiaries of your contributions in form of an entire software repository I sure do appreciate your work. Let's get to the things you mentioned in your posting: (I only mention the ones I have an opinion about) ------------------------------------------------- - we have to get more in control ourselves, commit as dedicated volunteers on as many tasks as possible yes, absolutely. After we have identified these tasks. - we have to think about what we need from Novell/SUSE to do that (e.g. admin privileges, contacts, infrastructure, documentation, sources, whatever) well, that - I hope - will come natural once we find out what we want to do and once we are working on the projects. Example: If someone actually works on an article explaining in depth the boot process of, say, suse 10.1, I expect Novell to help by opening their own internal docu about it. - we have to develop our own initiatives I think there are enough larger and smaller tasks at hand. Let's worry about initiative when it's needed (or wanted). - howtos and documentation: have a look at Gentoo's wiki, IMO that's a direction we can follow (grossly), by writing wiki pages e.g. about how to setup LAMP on SUSE Linux, an IMAP server, stuff like that It's a start. And I understand that it's *very* difficult to find the right structure, not mention the right way to index our wiki. No matter how we eventually organise the wiki, I want to urge everyone here to write their howto's, guides, etc. and publish them on the website, regardless of the wiki having a working structure or not. The more articles we have, the easier it is (or so I hope) to actually categorise and index them in a way that makes sense. - web forums: yep, that one, the current non-situation is just not satisfactory, we have to discuss it again and involve the maintainers of current forums into the discussion, right from the start Another ACK. And from what I read, you managed to involve at least one forum maintainer: David Crouse from http://opensuse.us - information flow: not enough information between different parts of the community, also about the wiki, announcements, changes, decisions, ... I would want to attribute this to the history of how suse used to develop their distribution and to the fact that the opensuse project is still relatively new. Friction is inevitable and I believe it will diminish over time. ------------------------------------------------- There are some huge tasks to take on, and to actually tackle them I want to go with what was already said on this list or on the wiki one, can't remember right now: * Make things as simple as possible for people to contribute. * Break down the big tasks into many smaller ones. * Let's get a TODO-List together and publish it on one of the lists or the wiki itself (I would prefer the mailing list). -- Andreas P.S.: Sorry, I really didn't intend for this to be such a long posting. pheeew ;)
At 11:20 PM 8/05/2006, you wrote:
Martin Schlander wrote:
On Monday 08 May 2006 13:08, Pascal Bleser wrote:
At least that's my vision on how we should evolve as a community, and I've been using SUSE since 5.0 (= quite some time), waiting for these opportunities to happen. Maybe I'm just too impatient, I probably am, but I objectively think we're pretty much stuck in inertia right now.
Feedback and comments are very much appreciated :)
cut I wonder if the problem is because of the duplication of tasks and programs between the SuSE / Factory and what we are trying to deal with on openSuSE. Maybe what we should be doing is logically separating us? As an example of what I mean: Lets leave the creation & supply of the BASIC SuSE Linux packages to Novell SuSE and the Factory systems. After all they do that now far better than we ever could! Let us split our community away to handle tasks such as:- a) assist with small useage \ new idea packages and unexpected extension requirements to existing packages. b) assist as we do now in "field" testing through the beta program, but not only SuSE's but other packages that need larger variations of testers. c) assist as we do now in the problem fix process. d) documentation, not only "how to use" types, but "using this with these extensions this way allows you to do this" as well as "this plus this plus this and either this or this but not including this" makes a "qqqq" server. I, for example have decided to spend my available time this year in creating a "Mini-Command Useage" Manual that lists commands, what they are, their extensions plus a number of standard used matrixes (such as ls -la) and what they give you back. It will be able to be printed out as a mini-manual (a5/2 flip) or a cardfile format for pda's etc. But I will say more on this when I have my thoughts in propper order and under an appropriate subject header (of which this is not). e) design and create the direction specifications of what we think users will be wanting in the near future. f) provide support to our communities across the world by assisting with technical translation of ideas and "command formats" This is what I thought the openSuSE community was created for? just my thoughts scsijon
On Wednesday 10 May 2006 05:20, scsijon wrote:
Let us split our community away to handle tasks such as:- a) assist with small useage \ new idea packages and unexpected extension requirements to existing packages.
b) assist as we do now in "field" testing through the beta program, but not only SuSE's but other packages that need larger variations of testers.
c) assist as we do now in the problem fix process.
d) documentation, not only "how to use" types, but "using this with these extensions this way allows you to do this" as well as "this plus this plus this and either this or this but not including this" makes a "qqqq" server. I, for example have decided to spend my available time this year in creating a "Mini-Command Useage" Manual that lists commands, what they are, their extensions plus a number of standard used matrixes (such as ls -la) and what they give you back. It will be able to be printed out as a mini-manual (a5/2 flip) or a cardfile format for pda's etc. But I will say more on this when I have my thoughts in propper order and under an appropriate subject header (of which this is not).
e) design and create the direction specifications of what we think users will be wanting in the near future.
f) provide support to our communities across the world by assisting with technical translation of ideas and "command formats"
g) marketing/promotion h) writing code/patches I like this idea of splitting things up - but I think we need some kind of formalized leadership/organization (call it what you want). I don't necessarily believe in "leaders manifesting themselves naturally". I think we need to form some kind of teams - with (elected) leads. And a wikipage where you can see who are members of a certain team and how to join - and what the tasks/responsibilities are, etc. Of course everyone who's not in a team would be free to contribute in any way he/she pleases. cb400f
Martin Schlander wrote:
On Wednesday 10 May 2006 05:20, scsijon wrote:
Let us split our community away to handle tasks such as:- a) assist with small useage \ new idea packages and unexpected extension requirements to existing packages.
With "package", you really mean RPMs ? So it would be a restructured/extension of the current wishlist: http://en.opensuse.org/Package_Wishlist Packages requested there should not (only) mean "I want it in the distribution", but could be solved by: - a package (+link) to the build service and/or Factory - a package in a 3rd party repository (packman, guru, suser-*, ...) (although for the latter, we have to keep potential legal implications in mind)
b) assist as we do now in "field" testing through the beta program, but not only SuSE's but other packages that need larger variations of testers.
That's a good idea. I'd sure like people to also test my packages (and those in Packman) ;D Though it is difficult to think about it now, it is highly dependent on how 3rd party packagers will work with the build service or not. Maybe all packages on Packman will be done through the build service, maybe not. Well, all of them can't be managed in the build service, because of legal reasons (mad, lame, mplayer, ...)
c) assist as we do now in the problem fix process.
Could you elaborate a little what you mean with that ? "Fix process" as in beta test phase or as general help to end-users, i.e. web forums, suse-linux-e, suse-factory, IRC ?
d) documentation, not only "how to use" types, but "using this with these extensions this way allows you to do this" as well as "this plus this plus this and either this or this but not including this" makes a "qqqq" server. I, for example have decided to spend my available time this year in creating a "Mini-Command Useage" Manual that lists commands, what they are, their extensions plus a number of standard used matrixes (such as ls -la) and what they give you back. It will be able to be printed out as a mini-manual (a5/2 flip) or a cardfile format for pda's etc. But I will say more on this when I have my thoughts in propper order and under an appropriate subject header (of which this is not).
Right. I would dub this the "howto collection". I think that part is very important, both for helping end-users but also for spreading SUSE Linux. "High level" HOWTOs, e.g. (I mentioned them before, but they're rather good examples IMHO): - how to set up LAMP on SUSE Linux: - SUSE packages to install (possibly with screen shots or CLI) - where/how to configure Apache, SUSE style (YaST2, SUSE's apache2 configuration scheme) - how to start/stop/reload Apache, SUSE style (rcapache2 ...), how to have it started at boot time (chkconfig ...) - how to enable/disable Apache modules - how to set up MySQL - how to create a MySQL database (not SUSE specific) - how to start/stop/reload MySQL, SUSE style (rcmysql ...), how to have it started at boot time (chkconfig ...) - what PHP packages do I need (many php4/php5-* subpackages on SUSE) - where to configure PHP (=> /etc/php.ini) - how to tell Apache to use mod_php* for .php files ? how to do that per vhost ? - how to install/set up PEAR, where do the files go, can I use the pear CLI installer, ... - how to set up an FTP server on SUSE Linux: - install vsftpd or pure-ftpd - how to enable vsftpd at startup (/etc/xinetd.d/vsftpd=>disabled=no + chkconfig xinetd on) etc... etc... Basically, all that information is already available, but spread into various places: - the internet, project homepage (e.g. apache website/documentation), various existing HOWTOs (TLDP, gentoo, ubuntu, fedora, blogs, other) - on other SUSE community websites (e.g. suselinuxsupport.de wiki, alionet, ...) - in the package documentation files (/usr/share/doc/packages/*/*) But there's no complete overview, and most less experienced users will struggle to - find all that information (especially the package documentation files) - use a HOWTO that's not related to SUSE Linux: wrong package names, obsolete information (e.g. recompiling the kernel, not needed on SUSE), wrong file/directory locations, etc...
e) design and create the direction specifications of what we think users will be wanting in the near future.
Could you elaborate ? I don't quite understand what you mean with this one.
f) provide support to our communities across the world by assisting with technical translation of ideas and "command formats"
Same as above ;)
g) marketing/promotion
Yep.
h) writing code/patches
As well. In the same category: making packages ;)
I like this idea of splitting things up - but I think we need some kind of
We definitely have to categorize/split up those topics, which _could_ mean (just off the top of my head, maybe it's completely inadequate ;)): - specific mailing-lists per topic - specific "homepages" (or index, rather) on the wiki - some kind of structure of teams
formalized leadership/organization (call it what you want). I don't
Yes... "some kind of structure of teams" ;)
necessarily believe in "leaders manifesting themselves naturally". I think we need to form some kind of teams - with (elected) leads. And a wikipage where you can see who are members of a certain team and how to join - and what the tasks/responsibilities are, etc.
Exactly. Topics, needed skills and interests are way different, which means we have to somehow split/organize/structure them. Splitting also means it's easier to structure and cope with goals, tasks, people. Of course, they're not totally independent and linking must happen where appropriate. And some tasks involve several topics/teams.
Of course everyone who's not in a team would be free to contribute in any way he/she pleases.
Yes, obviously. The "team lead" (or whatever) is not there to decide
who may participate or not, it's there to coordinate tasks and
communication, and possibly, in extreme situations, take a decision if
no agreement can be found inside the team.
cheers
--
-o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
/\\
Hi, On Wednesday, May 10, 2006 at 11:19:16, Martin Schlander wrote:
I think we need some kind of formalized leadership/organization (call it what you want). I don't necessarily believe in "leaders manifesting themselves naturally". I think we need to form some kind of teams - with (elected) leads. And a wikipage where you can see who are members of a certain team and how to join - and what the tasks/responsibilities are, etc.
I find this approach very confusing. The problem we face at the moment is that there are not enough active members in any of the "teams". We are struggeling to get things done because there are only a handfull of people doing stuff. And i mean actually doing somthing not talking about it. Look for instance in the support database. Martin imported a lot of articles from the old one. Its the perfect place to add small amounts of documentation. There even is a HOWTO on writing an sdb article, there is a style guide, there are lots of old articles you can learn from. So its really easy to add SDB articles. Now we are close to 10.1 and im sure there are some rough edges in it that need explenation. Did anyone write any article about something in 10.1 yet? No. Or another case. The Download page. Everybody knows that we will release 10.1 tomorrow. Everybody can see that the Download pages is not up to it yet. Its needs some work to reflect the new media layout, maybe a new template or things like that. Is it hard to do? No. Is anyone doing it? No. Or the best example ever. The Taks page. Did anyone do anything from the task page yet? No. Yesterday the first task got done and that page is there since a month. Its even linked from menu. So its not very hard to find (1 click!). What im trying to say is that we are short on active members. We are not short on leadership, we are not short on things we have to do, we are not short on entry points for pepole that want to do something, we are not short on documentation on how to do things. And what i really want to say is: GET YOUR ASS UP AND DO SOMETHING!!!! Henne And just a small sidenote: In fact there is already a strong leadership in most of the areas Wiki content: Pflodo, jdd, CuCullin, Beineri, Rajko Wiki infrastructure: Martin, darix Packaging: Pascal, Packmans, James, Peter Buildservice: Adrian, mls, schiele, Cornelius Meetings: me, darix, cboltz General: skh, adrianS, cthiel and so on, and so on. They dont need to be declared. They are just leading by scratching their own itches that they have with the openSUSE project. So youre already proved wrong in when you object that "leaders manifesting themselves naturally" because they already have... -- Henne Vogelsang, http://hennevogel.de "To die. In the rain. Alone." Ernest Hemingway
On Wed, May 10, 2006 at 01:00:36PM +0200, Henne Vogelsang wrote:
In fact there is already a strong leadership in most of the areas
Wiki content: Pflodo, jdd, CuCullin, Beineri, Rajko Wiki infrastructure: Martin, darix Packaging: Pascal, Packmans, James, Peter Buildservice: Adrian, mls, schiele, Cornelius Meetings: me, darix, cboltz General: skh, adrianS, cthiel Anoyance: houghi
:-D houghi -- Nutze die Zeit. Sie ist das Kostbarste, was wir haben, denn es ist unwiederbringliche Lebenszeit. Leben ist aber mehr als Werk und Arbeit, und das Sein wichtiger als das Tun - Johannes Müller-Elmau
Hi, On Wednesday, May 10, 2006 at 13:25:38, houghi wrote:
On Wed, May 10, 2006 at 01:00:36PM +0200, Henne Vogelsang wrote:
In fact there is already a strong leadership in most of the areas
Wiki content: Pflodo, jdd, CuCullin, Beineri, Rajko Wiki infrastructure: Martin, darix Packaging: Pascal, Packmans, James, Peter Buildservice: Adrian, mls, schiele, Cornelius Meetings: me, darix, cboltz General: skh, adrianS, cthiel Anoyance: houghi
Heh no. You are doing vital things too i couldnt categorize that fast. There are others too, if i didnt name you dont be offended. I could go on and on for hours. There are Benjiman, aka_druid, Nermal, the_dude and all the others on IRC, there are David, Manfred, Thomas, Helga, Martin and more on the german users list, there are Carl, Carlos, David, Gil and all the others on the english users list, there are all the people from the forums i dont know the names of, there are the guys from the suse newsgroup and so on and so on. All leading their individual parts of the openSUSE community. Henne -- Henne Vogelsang, http://hennevogel.de "To die. In the rain. Alone." Ernest Hemingway
Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Hi, The problem we face at the moment is that there are not enough active members in any of the "teams".
good point. but this should lead you to the question why? and what can we do to enhance things. shouting will not :-) a beginning of answer is: * cut the tasks in smaller chunks. Wiki is good for that. may be we could try to find some "page mainteners". people that could look at one page (or one category) and help keep them con,sustent (people, for example, identified in the discussion page) * gives rewards. the e-mail thing. I dunno if it's a good idea. but may be and such thing have to be made by somebody. somebody have to get a look at the recent pages (who don't, here :-). and when he see somebody repetidly writing a page ask him if he wants to take this in charge.
Look for instance in the support database. Martin imported a lot of articles from the old one. Its the perfect place to add small amounts of documentation. There even is a HOWTO on writing an sdb article, there is a style guide, there are lots of old articles you can learn from. So its really easy to add SDB articles.
honestly I question why anybody should worry about SBD. SDB was a very good thing in others times, but I think it's not so consistent with the wikiway. it's too unusefully strict, this frame, in my advice, get the people out of it. wiki is a freestyle system and this is good. Now we are close to 10.1 and im
sure there are some rough edges in it that need explenation. Did anyone write any article about something in 10.1 yet? No.
how could we write things about something that change all the time???
Or another case. The Download page. Everybody knows that we will release 10.1 tomorrow. Everybody can see that the Download pages is not up to it yet. Its needs some work to reflect the new media layout, maybe a new template or things like that. Is it hard to do? No. Is anyone doing it? No.
a bullet in your foot :-) we don't know how 10.1 will be setup, how could we explain this? did you not have at hand a new template?
Or the best example ever. The Taks page. Did anyone do anything from the task page yet? No. Yesterday the first task got done and that page is there since a month. Its even linked from menu. So its not very hard to find (1 click!).
it's new and not that well defined. task for who, wish list?
What im trying to say is that we are short on active members. We are not short on leadership,
yes, we are. too many things have bneen discussed, seamingly solved and no see. The leader is the one that say:do. as long as nobody say we must go in this direction, nobody will go. why take days of work if this work is to be refused?
And just a small sidenote:
In fact there is already a strong leadership in most of the areas
I'm a leader of the french wiki, because I can say to others "I'm the french wiki sysop". I can prove it by changing pages others can't change. I was asked to by Novell, and If ever Novell said I'm completely wrong in some circomstances and I don't like it, I will resign. (but I try not to get in such a cicumstance). don't think this have no importance. I'm very cautious when I make changes, I play an "opensuse" forum on Alionet http://www.alionet.org/index.php?showforum=88 where I ask for users opinion (and the new front page layout I used was very well appreciated - but the fact I asked was appreciated also). I follow the recent page and contact the authors. I hope all this will step by step make people come to us. Novell employees can do this, volunteers can't without a minimum official support.
project. So youre already proved wrong in when you object that "leaders manifesting themselves naturally" because they already have...
so why can't Novell (the benevolent dictator :-) make this official. take one, ask him if he wants to be the "documentation" page maintener and let him do his work (even blocking the page if he thinks it's usefull)... I don't care what the page is, I can still use the discussion page as a whish list :-) jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos
Thomas Hertweck wrote:
jdd, I think you didn't get my point. I was talking about "leaders", not about system admins, moderators, sys ops, maintainers or whatever. Don't take it personally, but I (that's of course only my opinion, others might have a very different opinion) would not consider you as a "leader".
may I say that as a teacher and politically involved people I once studieds group management. I know how somebody can become a leader, but I hate that. I learned that to be able to prevent some to do so. A group can be managed to let one people command (commander in chief - what a bad title for a TV movie :-), but it can also be managed to make the people give they best. of course the second is the only usable here. let's try to do so jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos
On Wed, May 10, 2006 at 01:41:06PM +0200, Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Anoyance: houghi
Heh no. You are doing vital things too i couldnt categorize that fast.
Even catagorizing me is an anouance. ;-) houghi -- Nutze die Zeit. Sie ist das Kostbarste, was wir haben, denn es ist unwiederbringliche Lebenszeit. Leben ist aber mehr als Werk und Arbeit, und das Sein wichtiger als das Tun - Johannes Müller-Elmau
On Wednesday 10 May 2006 07:41, Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Wiki content: Pflodo, jdd, CuCullin, Beineri, Rajko Wiki infrastructure: Martin, darix Packaging: Pascal, Packmans, James, Peter Buildservice: Adrian, mls, schiele, Cornelius Meetings: me, darix, cboltz General: skh, adrianS, cthiel
Anoyance: houghi
I think this is a brilliant side-note, Henne. How about building this list out into a proper online 'org chart'? One of the biggest problems I've had (and continue to have) is recognizing what 'projects' or 'teams' exist and how they relate to each other. Carl
Hi, On Wednesday, May 10, 2006 at 08:04:13, Carl Hartung wrote:
On Wednesday 10 May 2006 07:41, Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Wiki content: Pflodo, jdd, CuCullin, Beineri, Rajko Wiki infrastructure: Martin, darix Packaging: Pascal, Packmans, James, Peter Buildservice: Adrian, mls, schiele, Cornelius Meetings: me, darix, cboltz General: skh, adrianS, cthiel
Anoyance: houghi
I think this is a brilliant side-note, Henne. How about building this list out into a proper online 'org chart'? One of the biggest problems I've had (and continue to have) is recognizing what 'projects' or 'teams' exist and how they relate to each other.
Erm http://en.opensuse.org/Teams ??? :) Henne -- Henne Vogelsang, http://hennevogel.de "To die. In the rain. Alone." Ernest Hemingway
On Wednesday 10 May 2006 13:00, Henne Vogelsang wrote:
What im trying to say is that we are short on active members. We are not short on leadership, we are not short on things we have to do, we are not short on entry points for pepole that want to do something, we are not short on documentation on how to do things.
And what i really want to say is:
GET YOUR ASS UP AND DO SOMETHING!!!!
While I think you're right that we lack active members - I still think more or less formalized teams would help make it more accessible for people to join in. Also of course one of the prime tasks for any team would be to recruit/encourage new members.
And just a small sidenote:
In fact there is already a strong leadership in most of the areas
Wiki content: Pflodo, jdd, CuCullin, Beineri, Rajko Wiki infrastructure: Martin, darix Packaging: Pascal, Packmans, James, Peter Buildservice: Adrian, mls, schiele, Cornelius Meetings: me, darix, cboltz General: skh, adrianS, cthiel
All these people have my utmost respect - and I would happily accept any of them as team leads - I'm not asking for something extremely bureaucratic - but I'm reluctant to start making major changes to the wiki-download-page for example - if I don't know if someone else is working on it already - or if tomorrow someone's going to alter it completely again. For people to want to get involved we need some coordination. cb400f
On Wednesday 10 May 2006 08:22, Henne Vogelsang wrote:
??? :)
Thanks for the link! Technically speaking, that's a list... not a chart. ;-) I guess I need to spend more time over there... I lost track quite some time ago! Carl
Hi, On Wednesday, May 10, 2006 at 13:49:03, jdd wrote:
Henne Vogelsang wrote:
The problem we face at the moment is that there are not enough active members in any of the "teams".
good point. but this should lead you to the question why?
There is a simple answer for that. Because there are not enough people that do things. Not everything has a technical reason. Sometimes you have to take things like they are and you have to accept that you cant fix them by implementing, or discuss about implementing, some technicality. You have to lead by example and bring people to follow you. Thats why im doing the download page now and stop discussing this topic :) Henne -- Henne Vogelsang, http://hennevogel.de "To die. In the rain. Alone." Ernest Hemingway
Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Thats why im doing the download page now and stop discussing this topic :)
may be keep the 10.0 somewhere? jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos
Andreas wrote:
[...] I really don't know if that's the problem. The greatest advantage of a wiki is imho how easily people can add their contributions, which in turn makes them a lot more connected to the particular community.
Sure, I agree with you. That's the positive aspect of a wiki. The question is, how to minimize the negative aspects of a wiki. I've now already seen several people saying that links were removed, changes that have been made to improve the pages were revoked, and that it's hard to find information in the wiki. Unfortunately, I don't have solutions for all of these problems, but there is clearly something that could be improved. Just to add one experience I've made: when searching for SDB articles, I don't like how the search results are presented. Here is an example searching for "yast" (DE-version): SDB:YaST Installationsquellen erzeugen (7719 Byte) 2: SDB:original_name: /sdb/de/2004/02/yast_instsrc.html 3: SDB:original_title: YaST Installationsquellen erzeugen 7: [[Category:SDB:YaST|Y]] 22: ... YaST. <code>Plain Cache</code> und "echte" <code>YaST</code> Quellen. [...] The old SDB and the way how search results were presented there, well, from my point of view it was much more concise and clearly arranged. As a simple user, I am not interested in "SDB:original_name", or "SDB:original_title", or "[[Category:SDB:YaST|Y]]" - that's just unnecessary information at that point (it might be useful information for a developer etc., no doubt). Well, just an observation... Cheers, Th.
Henne Vogelsang wrote:
[...]
I find this approach very confusing. The problem we face at the moment is that there are not enough active members in any of the "teams". We are struggeling to get things done because there are only a handfull of people doing stuff. And i mean actually doing somthing not talking about it.
ACK. But, you know, maybe those people who are already active in some way (whatever that is, there are many ways you can contribute and serve the community) can't handle more than what they already do. Having said that, the logical conclusion should be how we can find more people taking on some "work" ("work" is maybe not the best term here). If anybody had a proposal, well, that would be fine!
[...] Look for instance in the support database. [...] Or another case. The Download page. [...] Or the best example ever. The Taks page.
Henne, I think that the focus is too much on the wiki. The wiki is one part of the project (and surely an important one), it's great for howtos etc. but a wiki is not ideal for other things. From my point of view, it's e.g. not particularly suitable as a communication platform. In many emails where we discuss things to do, you can read at the end of the discussion "I'll put it on the wiki" - and that's it (the end of the story; the actual work is never done). I think we need a better way for this kind of communication. Just as an example, I would much prefer having meeting minutes (etc.) sent by email (in addition to writing a wiki page) - at least for me (I can't speak for others), that would make life a bit easier. If a had some comments, I could just reply by email and ask for clarification, or for additional info, etc. instead of communicating via wiki. As usual, it's much easier to find people doing something if you approach them directly, i.e. in a much more personal way. While a mailing list is clearly not really a personal way of communication, it might be better than an "anonymous" wiki page. I hope you know what I mean, it's a bit difficult to express those thoughts in a clear way... Any other ideas how to involve more people are, of course, highly appreciated. Cheers, Th.
Am Mittwoch, den 10.05.2006, 20:10 +0100 schrieb Thomas Hertweck:
Andreas wrote:
[...] I really don't know if that's the problem. The greatest advantage of a wiki is imho how easily people can add their contributions, which in turn makes them a lot more connected to the particular community.
Sure, I agree with you. That's the positive aspect of a wiki. The question is, how to minimize the negative aspects of a wiki. I've now already seen several people saying that links were removed, changes that have been made to improve the pages were revoked, and that it's hard to find information in the wiki.
I did actually "complain" about these things too. So yes, I do cherish the advantages, but would of course also like to have the drawbacks eliminated.
Unfortunately, I don't have solutions for all of these problems, but there is clearly something that could be improved. Just to add one experience I've made: when searching for SDB articles, I don't like how the search results are presented. Here is an example searching for "yast" (DE-version):
SDB:YaST Installationsquellen erzeugen (7719 Byte) 2: SDB:original_name: /sdb/de/2004/02/yast_instsrc.html 3: SDB:original_title: YaST Installationsquellen erzeugen 7: [[Category:SDB:YaST|Y]] 22: ... YaST. <code>Plain Cache</code> und "echte" <code>YaST</code> Quellen. [...]
The old SDB and the way how search results were presented there, well, from my point of view it was much more concise and clearly arranged. As a simple user, I am not interested in "SDB:original_name", or "SDB:original_title", or "[[Category:SDB:YaST|Y]]" - that's just unnecessary information at that point (it might be useful information for a developer etc., no doubt). Well, just an observation...
Mind if I take this (and other suggestions for improvement) over to the opensuse-wiki list? I guess if we all want things to change, we got to start somewhere. -- Andreas
Andreas wrote:
[...] Mind if I take this (and other suggestions for improvement) over to the opensuse-wiki list?
Well, feel free to do so... I am only subscribed to this opensuse mailing list (it's just too difficult to keep an eye on everything), so I don't know what's going on over there ;-) Cheers, Th.
Martin Schlander wrote:
On Wednesday 10 May 2006 13:00, Henne Vogelsang wrote:
What im trying to say is that we are short on active members. We are not short on leadership, we are not short on things we have to do, we are not short on entry points for pepole that want to do something, we are not short on documentation on how to do things.
And what i really want to say is:
GET YOUR ASS UP AND DO SOMETHING!!!!
While I think you're right that we lack active members - I still think more or less formalized teams would help make it more accessible for people to join in. Also of course one of the prime tasks for any team would be to recruit/encourage new members.
And just a small sidenote:
In fact there is already a strong leadership in most of the areas
Wiki content: Pflodo, jdd, CuCullin, Beineri, Rajko Wiki infrastructure: Martin, darix Packaging: Pascal, Packmans, James, Peter Buildservice: Adrian, mls, schiele, Cornelius Meetings: me, darix, cboltz General: skh, adrianS, cthiel
All these people have my utmost respect - and I would happily accept any of them as team leads - I'm not asking for something extremely bureaucratic - but I'm reluctant to start making major changes to the wiki-download-page for example - if I don't know if someone else is working on it already - or if tomorrow someone's going to alter it completely again. For people to want to get involved we need some coordination.
cb400f
Hi Martin, use the wiki to announce your ideas. At present it can happen that article stay untouched for a long time, just because there is no many people active, but believe it that is seen by somebody. Make skeleton of an article and fill in as much as you can. There is no need for notes about work in progress, to be delivered, just leave it as is and if there is somebody with similar ideas you'll see his/her work. Another wiki principle is that if you think that words and expressions need expansion for some readers, just put double square brackets around it and it will appear as link. That will be reminder for you and any other that is willing to jump in to open the link and write article. Work on side and delivery at once is not really wiki style. Make your ideas available and improve on the fly. -- Regards, Rajko.
my notes at specific points with cuts to keep the size down you may need martin's earlier message if you haven't followed this At 08:57 PM 10/05/2006, you wrote:
Martin Schlander wrote:
On Wednesday 10 May 2006 05:20, scsijon wrote:
Let us split our community away to handle tasks such as:- a) assist with small useage \ new idea packages and unexpected extension requirements to existing packages.
With "package", you really mean RPMs ?
Not primarily, preferably new programs that need assistance, such as helping a designer to turn a program that is small market due to designers initial limitations or initially only wanted for themself to something that can spread, so definitely not just converting existing rpm's between systems such as deb, rh, etc. although that would be part of it
b) assist as we do now in "field" testing through the beta program, but not only SuSE's but other packages that need larger variations of testers.
That's a good idea. I'd sure like people to also test my packages (and those in Packman) ;D
Though it is difficult to think about it now, it is highly dependent on how 3rd party packagers will work with the build service or not.
Maybe all packages on Packman will be done through the build service, maybe not. Well, all of them can't be managed in the build service, because of legal reasons (mad, lame, mplayer, ...)
My original thoughts were along the lines of "to field test" anything we know how to use currently against the new beta version's basic system and document changes and differences with regard to expected outcome vs actual outcome. I am slowly becoming of the opinion that there needs to be a Linus / ?W3 standard on how a source package shall be formed and made available.
c) assist as we do now in the problem fix process.
Could you elaborate a little what you mean with that ? "Fix process" as in beta test phase or as general help to end-users, i.e. web forums, suse-linux-e, suse-factory, IRC ?
report problems, and help in their duplication and fix as we do now
d) documentation, not only "how to use" types, but "using this with these extensions this way allows you to do this" as well as "this plus this plus this and either this or this but not including this" makes a "qqqq" server. I, for example have decided to spend my available time this year in creating a "Mini-Command Useage" Manual that lists commands, what they are, their extensions plus a number of standard used matrixes (such as ls -la) and what they give you back. It will be able to be printed out as a mini-manual (a5/2 flip) or a cardfile format for pda's etc. But I will say more on this when I have my thoughts in propper order and under an appropriate subject header (of which this is not).
Right. I would dub this the "howto collection". I think that part is very important, both for helping end-users but also for spreading SUSE Linux.
how-to is only a small part, what I believe is needed is a "grow" manual that allows you to start with the basics (eg the command only "ls"), add the meanings and results of the generally used extensions (ls -l) and provide the commonly used major commands (ls -Ralph). It would also have the needed links to man, info, online refs etc. so as you become more comfortable with what you are doing your able to expand. Most of what was listed below, can be found already BUT in a format that needs an expert level of knowledge, i'm more interested in something I could give to any person with either a pre-installed system or the dvd that will COMPLETELY create a basic system and work from there knowing the person will gain confidence as she/he uses their inquisitiveness.
"High level" HOWTOs, e.g. (I mentioned them before, but they're rather good examples IMHO):
cut
e) design and create the direction specifications of what we think users will be wanting in the near future.
Could you elaborate ? I don't quite understand what you mean with this one.
What will we dream?, wifi was a dream a few years ago, can we create an active memory shrinker for packages so there is no waste memory space?, lcd glasses that reflect images on the retina are in use by the various armed forces today, why can't we do the same with the laptop and kill the screens?, what about doing away with hard drives and use the memory stick memory?, gloves instead of mice and keyboards (as you can do for joysticks and games), do we have the capabilities if one became available at a decent price to make use of it today?, and on I could go.. and i've only talked about hardware!
f) provide support to our communities across the world by assisting with technical translation of ideas and "command formats"
Same as above ;)
any translator will tell you that the biggest problem in translating is not converting the "words" across, it's getting the "meaning of intent" or idea across as it all has to be in words so someone reading it raw understands exactly what is meant.
g) marketing/promotion
Yep.
I actually see this as primarily a Novell Task, we should NOT be involved in marketing. Promotion on the other hand, we can assist with providing we are given the tools and materials we need, WHEN we need them, not weeks later when the direction has gone cold and lost.
h) writing code/patches
As well. In the same category: making packages ;)
this I consider part of (a) above
I like this idea of splitting things up - but I think we need some kind of
We definitely have to categorize/split up those topics, which _could_ mean (just off the top of my head, maybe it's completely inadequate ;)): - specific mailing-lists per topic - specific "homepages" (or index, rather) on the wiki - some kind of structure of teams
formalized leadership/organization (call it what you want). I don't
Yes... "some kind of structure of teams" ;)
necessarily believe in "leaders manifesting themselves naturally". I think we need to form some kind of teams - with (elected) leads. And a wikipage where you can see who are members of a certain team and how to join - and what the tasks/responsibilities are, etc.
I don't believe the need of "leaders" is warranted, what would be much more use is mentors and guides, you don't want someone to take control of these teams, you want someone who will keep them on direction and be able to write a spec.
Exactly. Topics, needed skills and interests are way different, which means we have to somehow split/organize/structure them.
Splitting also means it's easier to structure and cope with goals, tasks, people.
Of course, they're not totally independent and linking must happen where appropriate. And some tasks involve several topics/teams.
Of course everyone who's not in a team would be free to contribute in any way he/she pleases.
Yes, obviously. The "team lead" (or whatever) is not there to decide who may participate or not, it's there to coordinate tasks and communication, and possibly, in extreme situations, take a decision if no agreement can be found inside the team.
cheers -- -o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/ /\\
_\_v FOSDEM 2006 -- 25+26 February 2006 in Brussels
and that's my latest two bits oh, and by the way, for those that want a return, payment for this work should be in kudos not financials. scsijon ps i'm in house move mode for the next four/five weeks (428km each way and it's winter down here), i'll be online at least once a week but the reply may not return till the following.
On Wed, May 17, 2006 at 09:40:31PM +1000, scsijon wrote:
how-to is only a small part, what I believe is needed is a "grow" manual that allows you to start with the basics (eg the command only "ls"), add the meanings and results of the generally used extensions (ls -l) and provide the commonly used major commands (ls -Ralph). It would also have the needed links to man, info, online refs etc. so as you become more comfortable with what you are doing your able to expand.
Start looking at susehelp. Although I think we need to look at what is in there. Most of it is old and needs replacement. Kernell 2.4? Books from 96? Online Resources could use some update as well. I think the whole thing needs an overhaul. -- houghi http://houghi.org http://www.plainfaqs.org/linux/ http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
Today I went outside. My pupils have never been tinier...
scsijon wrote:
how-to is only a small part, what I believe is needed is a "grow" manual that allows you to start with the basics (eg the command only "ls"),
two things: * we need several levels. newbies don't need some info (in fact some info shouldn't be given, not to disturb them), experts don't need some info and this info should.. * until now, such effort was much too large for an infivisual. now, with the wiki, we can start right now. I did so (look for ALB in the fr wiki). giving first a frame, them completing as times permit. for the time on, I must stay on the fr wiki say, for 3/4 month, to let him start griwing alone; after that I will probably write mostly in english. My knowledge is writing for beginners/medium users. We are not a sufficient number to spread on all the localised wikis. LDP is stuck in licence problems and won't go ahead in a visible future, we can do
g) marketing/promotion
Yep.
I actually see this as primarily a Novell Task, we should NOT be involved in marketing.
marketting/promotion are two faces of the same problem. we _are_ involved, for the OSS part jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos
On Wed, 2006-05-17 at 14:22 +0200, houghi wrote:
On Wed, May 17, 2006 at 09:40:31PM +1000, scsijon wrote:
how-to is only a small part, what I believe is needed is a "grow" manual that allows you to start with the basics (eg the command only "ls"), add the meanings and results of the generally used extensions (ls -l) and provide the commonly used major commands (ls -Ralph). It would also have the needed links to man, info, online refs etc. so as you become more comfortable with what you are doing your able to expand.
Well, maybe it's time I start working on an old pet project of mine again. A long time ago I started a book project. People talked me into writing a book on SUSE Linux. Not the usual stuff on how to install it and where to click to get a web browser or an email tool, but something more technical. Kind of a behind he scenes guide to SUSE's Linux distribuition. We kind of finished the book in late 1999. But as it turned out, the book was never printed. There are many reasons to why it came that way, but it all boiled down to the fact that the publishing industry was (is?) not ready for content licensed under something like the Free Documentation License. So we gave up on all the fame and glory of a printed publication and settled with publishing it online. This at least made it available to a large audience and it seems we hit the nerve as we got , and still get, a good number of hits on these pages and quite some positive feedback. Now we have 6 years and who knows how many versions of SUSE Linux later and being based on SuSE Linux 6.0, the book is pretty outdated by now. So I set up a Wiki and planed to allow it to be edited by whoever feels like contributing. maybe you want to check it out and we can use it as a base for a in depth guide for openSuSE... The url is http://www.slgfg.de BB
On 2006-05-17 15:48:17 +0200, Bodo Bauer wrote:
We kind of finished the book in late 1999. But as it turned out, the book was never printed. There are many reasons to why it came that way, but it all boiled down to the fact that the publishing industry was (is?) not ready for content licensed under something like the Free Documentation License. So we gave up on all the fame and glory of a printed publication and settled with publishing it online. This at least made it available to a large audience and it seems we hit the nerve as we got , and still get, a good number of hits on these pages and quite some positive feedback.
Welcome Bodo :) it works pretty well if you choose oreily as your publisher. The svn book is available under an open license from http://svnbook.org./ As is the latest book from Karl Fogel: "Producing Open Source Software". The book is available from http://www.producingoss.com/. both are published by oreilly. hope this helps darix -- openSUSE - SUSE Linux is my linux openSUSE is good for you www.opensuse.org
On Wed, May 17, 2006 at 03:48:17PM +0200, Bodo Bauer wrote:
So I set up a Wiki and planed to allow it to be edited by whoever feels like contributing.
As it is about SUSE and it is a wiki, why not place it on openSUSE directly? -- houghi http://houghi.org http://www.plainfaqs.org/linux/ http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
Today I went outside. My pupils have never been tinier...
On Wed, 2006-05-17 at 16:18 +0200, Marcus Rueckert wrote:
On 2006-05-17 15:48:17 +0200, Bodo Bauer wrote:
We kind of finished the book in late 1999. But as it turned out, the book was never printed. There are many reasons to why it came that way, but it all boiled down to the fact that the publishing industry was (is?) not ready for content licensed under something like the Free Documentation License. So we gave up on all the fame and glory of a printed publication and settled with publishing it online. This at least made it available to a large audience and it seems we hit the nerve as we got , and still get, a good number of hits on these pages and quite some positive feedback.
Welcome Bodo :)
I've been the occasional lurker for a while... :)
it works pretty well if you choose oreily as your publisher. The svn book is available under an open license from http://svnbook.org./
As is the latest book from Karl Fogel: "Producing Open Source Software". The book is available from http://www.producingoss.com/.
both are published by oreilly.
At the time O'Reily was the worst of all and didn't want to hear anything about open licenses. Glad to hear they changed their mind.
hope this helps
I'm not really interested in having a printed copy anymore. That's why I put it out there... BB
On Wed, 2006-05-17 at 16:40 +0200, houghi wrote:
On Wed, May 17, 2006 at 03:48:17PM +0200, Bodo Bauer wrote:
So I set up a Wiki and planed to allow it to be edited by whoever feels like contributing.
As it is about SUSE and it is a wiki, why not place it on openSUSE directly?
It's already there and actually draws surprisingly much traffic. I'm hestiant about changing the location again... BB
On 2006-05-17 17:06:54 +0200, Bodo Bauer wrote:
On Wed, 2006-05-17 at 16:40 +0200, houghi wrote:
On Wed, May 17, 2006 at 03:48:17PM +0200, Bodo Bauer wrote:
So I set up a Wiki and planed to allow it to be edited by whoever feels like contributing.
As it is about SUSE and it is a wiki, why not place it on openSUSE directly?
It's already there and actually draws surprisingly much traffic. I'm hestiant about changing the location again...
the opensuse wiki got a bit faster lately. :) darix -- openSUSE - SUSE Linux is my linux openSUSE is good for you www.opensuse.org
Bodo Bauer wrote:
So I set up a Wiki and planed to allow it to be edited by whoever feels like contributing.
very good idea :-) however, I know (having done such things myself) that keeping a wiki with all the fuss of vandalism care and users not always so nice is not trivial. So to make your work more visible I see two ways: * make it a wikibook http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks_portal this will give it a very large audience, but not primarily technical. I don't know for sure the licence there, but this could be the best way to keep some part of the licence with you * put it on opensuse (or ask us to do so). Like this the licence go to Novell. This has avantages and drawbacks. advantages as if somebody try to copy it and restrict licence on the result, Novell is better armed to fight it, drawback if ever you want to take it back. of course, for now and opensuse, the second option is far better :-). of course we can stay on your wiki (with a link from us), but I fear you get far less readers/authors thanks jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos
Marcus Rueckert wrote:
the opensuse wiki got a bit faster lately. :)
much faster... jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos
jdd wrote:
of course, for now and opensuse, the second option is far better :-).
and of course (for me :-) the opensuse version should be updated on the fly to 10.0/10.1/10.2 jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos
Hi, On Wed, 17 May 2006, Bodo Bauer wrote:
On Wed, 2006-05-17 at 14:22 +0200, houghi wrote:
On Wed, May 17, 2006 at 09:40:31PM +1000, scsijon wrote:
how-to is only a small part, what I believe is needed is a "grow" manual that allows you to start with the basics (eg the command only "ls"), add the meanings and results of the generally used extensions (ls -l) and provide the commonly used major commands (ls -Ralph). It would also have the needed links to man, info, online refs etc. so as you become more comfortable with what you are doing your able to expand.
Well, maybe it's time I start working on an old pet project of mine again.
A long time ago I started a book project. People talked me into writing a book on SUSE Linux. Not the usual stuff on how to install it and where to click to get a web browser or an email tool, but something more technical. Kind of a behind he scenes guide to SUSE's Linux distribuition.
We kind of finished the book in late 1999. But as it turned out, the book was never printed. There are many reasons to why it came that way, but it all boiled down to the fact that the publishing industry was (is?) not ready for content licensed under something like the Free Documentation License. So we gave up on all the fame and glory of a printed publication and settled with publishing it online. This at least made it available to a large audience and it seems we hit the nerve as we got , and still get, a good number of hits on these pages and quite some positive feedback.
Now we have 6 years and who knows how many versions of SUSE Linux later and being based on SuSE Linux 6.0, the book is pretty outdated by now.
So I set up a Wiki and planed to allow it to be edited by whoever feels like contributing.
maybe you want to check it out and we can use it as a base for a in depth guide for openSuSE...
The url is http://www.slgfg.de
Welcome back home, Bodo! I can't wait to see an actualized presentation of the /proc filesystem tunables. Will you work on it? Cheers -e -- Eberhard Moenkeberg (emoenke@gwdg.de, em@kki.org)
Hi Eberhard, On Wed, 2006-05-17 at 18:06 +0200, Eberhard Moenkeberg wrote:
Welcome back home, Bodo!
You almost make me feel like I blew my cover by posting here. I'm actually back at SUSE for a while and didn't think it's such a secret... :)
I can't wait to see an actualized presentation of the /proc filesystem tunables. Will you work on it?
Unlikely. And by now it really should address /sys as well. I just don't find the time to keep all this up to date. That's why I thought a Wiki would be a good idea. BB
On Wed, 2006-05-17 at 17:23 +0200, jdd wrote:
Bodo Bauer wrote:
So I set up a Wiki and planed to allow it to be edited by whoever feels like contributing.
very good idea :-)
however, I know (having done such things myself) that keeping a wiki with all the fuss of vandalism care and users not always so nice is not trivial.
I know. Been there as well. And if you checked the link you'll see that the edit functions are still turned off until I find the time to put all the content I have on the site and I get bit more experienced with the control mechanisms if MediaWiki. If anybody has this experience and wants to volunteer as comaintainer, please step up ... :)
So to make your work more visible I see two ways:
* make it a wikibook
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks_portal
this will give it a very large audience, but not primarily technical. I don't know for sure the licence there, but this could be the best way to keep some part of the licence with you
That looks interesting, thanks for the link.
* put it on opensuse (or ask us to do so). Like this the licence go to Novell. This has avantages and drawbacks. advantages as if somebody try to copy it and restrict licence on the result, Novell is better armed to fight it, drawback if ever you want to take it back.
I'm very reluctant to sign give up rights to big corporations. And Novell doesn't really make a difference here. As with every publicly traded company, it's hard to trust anything in this environment...
of course, for now and opensuse, the second option is far better :-).
of course we can stay on your wiki (with a link from us), but I fear you get far less readers/authors
If that's the trade-off, I'm willing to pay... BB
Hi Bodo, On Wed, 17 May 2006, Bodo Bauer wrote:
On Wed, 2006-05-17 at 18:06 +0200, Eberhard Moenkeberg wrote:
Welcome back home, Bodo!
You almost make me feel like I blew my cover by posting here. I'm actually back at SUSE for a while and didn't think it's such a secret... :)
But it is the first time that you raise your hand here.
I can't wait to see an actualized presentation of the /proc filesystem tunables. Will you work on it?
Unlikely. And by now it really should address /sys as well. I just don't find the time to keep all this up to date. That's why I thought a Wiki would be a good idea.
OK, I had not dared to hope for a better answer. So please start a chapter "runtime tunables" or similar... Cheers -e -- Eberhard Moenkeberg (emoenke@gwdg.de, em@kki.org)
Bodo Bauer wrote:
If anybody has this experience and wants to volunteer as comaintainer, please step up ... :)
I can, if you don't ask for too much time. right now I give my best on the french opensuse wiki, but most of the mandatory work is done and I may distract some time fort your project. but there is still some layout questions :-). How do you entend to manage the different suse versions? one way could be to freeze (id est don't make editable) the old part and let users copy/paste the page they want to update on a similar frame for the "10" tree but we could discuss this elsewhere if you don't want this to take place on opensuse jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos
On Wed, May 17, 2006 at 06:59:08PM +0200, Bodo Bauer wrote:
* put it on opensuse (or ask us to do so). Like this the licence go to Novell. This has avantages and drawbacks. advantages as if somebody try to copy it and restrict licence on the result, Novell is better armed to fight it, drawback if ever you want to take it back.
I'm very reluctant to sign give up rights to big corporations. And Novell doesn't really make a difference here. As with every publicly traded company, it's hard to trust anything in this environment...
Pity if that is the only reason. Because it means that you will be also reluctant to do other things on openSUSE.org. Also time you spend on your own project won't be spend on opneSUSE.org, even though both are basicaly doing the same. :-( -- houghi http://houghi.org http://www.plainfaqs.org/linux/ http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
Today I went outside. My pupils have never been tinier...
On Wed, 2006-05-17 at 19:14 +0200, jdd wrote:
Bodo Bauer wrote:
If anybody has this experience and wants to volunteer as comaintainer, please step up ... :)
I can, if you don't ask for too much time. right now I give my best on the french opensuse wiki, but most of the mandatory work is done and I may distract some time fort your project.
Every bit helps I guess. Thanks for the offering this.
but there is still some layout questions :-). How do you entend to manage the different suse versions?
one way could be to freeze (id est don't make editable) the old part and let users copy/paste the page they want to update on a similar frame for the "10" tree
I was thinking about this as well and don't have a good answer yet. Different trees are an idea but there must be something better... :) Something like views or overlays would be ideal...
but we could discuss this elsewhere if you don't want this to take place on opensuse
That's probably best. Thanks, BB
At 10:22 PM 17/05/2006, you wrote:
On Wed, May 17, 2006 at 09:40:31PM +1000, scsijon wrote:
how-to is only a small part, what I believe is needed is a "grow" manual that allows you to start with the basics (eg the command only "ls"), add the meanings and results of the generally used extensions (ls -l) and provide the commonly used major commands (ls -Ralph). It would also have the needed links to man, info, online refs etc. so as you become more comfortable with what you are doing your able to expand.
Start looking at susehelp. Although I think we need to look at what is in there. Most of it is old and needs replacement. Kernell 2.4? Books from 96?
Online Resources could use some update as well. I think the whole thing needs an overhaul.
-- houghi http://houghi.org http://www.plainfaqs.org/linux/ http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
Today I went outside. My pupils have never been tinier...
already on the list of sources minds think alike scary isn't it :-) scsijon
participants (24)
-
Adrian Schröter
-
Alexey Eremenko
-
Amr Hamdy
-
Andreas
-
Bodo Bauer
-
Carl Hartung
-
Carl-Daniel Hailfinger
-
Craig Millar
-
Dave Crouse
-
Eberhard Moenkeberg
-
Henne Vogelsang
-
houghi
-
jdd
-
Marcus Meissner
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Marcus Rueckert
-
Martin Mewes
-
Martin Schlander
-
noniko
-
Pascal Bleser
-
Per Jessen
-
Peter Flodin
-
Rajko M
-
scsijon
-
Thomas Hertweck