openSUSE development is now even _more_ open than before. Factory development
is changing, and we're making it easier for contributors to take
responsibility for packages and to contribute directly to openSUSE. This means
contributors will be able to be directly responsible for packages, without
having to go through a Novell employee to make changes.
Factory development is being split into devel projects organized by topic
areas, such as KDE, GNOME, Education, Java, and so on. Devel projects are
responsible for sets of packages and will be able to organize themselves
rather than following a top-down model of management.
The idea is to allow teams to be self-organizing and for all contributors to
have equal footing in terms of being able to contribute to openSUSE Factory.
To get started, the current Novell and openSUSE package maintainers will be
working with each other to define responsibility within the devel projects and
how the team will work together. As time goes on, they will integrate new
maintainers into the teams and commit privileges will be based on merit and
not whether a person is employed by Novell.
How to Get Started
==================
If you're new to working with Factory and the openSUSE Build Service, you can
start with the Factory Packaging page on the openSUSE Wiki[1]. This explains
the Factory workflow, how to check out packages and submit changes, how to
create new devel projects, and so on.
Have questions or need help getting started? There are plenty of openSUSE
Factory contributors who'd be happy to answer questions and help you get
started. To learn more, join the opensuse-factory mailing list[2], or get
real-time help in the #opensuse-factory IRC channel on Freenode.
The policy changes that have been made with Factory are another step in making
openSUSE a more independent project, and allowing all contributors to take
equal responsibility. As Factory development and devel teams evolve, we hope
to see more contributors taking a lead role in leading openSUSE development
and shaping the openSUSE distro. Factory is open!
[1]: http://en.opensuse.org/Factory/Packaging
[2]: http://en.opensuse.org/Mailing_Lists
--
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier