Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-project (67 mails)

[Christian Boltz <opensuse@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

(sorry for my late answer - and feel free to visit the events that 
have "stolen" my time in the last days, see .sig for details)

on Donnerstag, 5. Juli 2007, Martin Schlander wrote:
> Den Wednesday 04 July 2007 18:26:35 skrev Martin Lasarsch:
> > Let's discuss the new version ...
>
> Do we really need both a short and a long version? The long version
> is not that long.

In comparison, it is. I'm afraid that the long version won't be read by 
much people, so we have the choice of "read short version" and "don't 
read it". I like the short version more ;-)


Two minor issues:

We want to...
... live the SUSE motto at work and leisure: "Have a lot of fun ...".

IMHO, there shouldn't be a dot at the end of the line.

We value...
... quality by striving [...] providing thorough solutions to problems

"thorough" looks like a typo...


BTW: Did anyone notice what apokryphos has added on the discussion page? 
Mainly typos and minor text changes, but they should be fixed.


> > "We value... - free software..."
>
> Perhaps use "software freedom" here to avoid the common confusion a
> lot of people have about free as in freedom vs. free as in free beer.

"free software" is the wording which is usually used. I'm afraid that 
people are more confused if you invent a new term.


OK, now to the board.

> I'd like it to be clearer what the board can and cannot decide.
>
> It says the chairman has veto-power, I guess that means he can
> *reject* proposals. How about in a situation where, say, someone
> proposes to include some pre-alpha package management system late in
> development phase. Would the chairman's veto-power empower him to
> *force* proposals through?

"with veto power over any decision" probably means he can override any 
_decision_, which could also mean to force proposals through.

I understand that the chairperson should have some veto power, but I'd 
like to soften it so that he can't become a "dictator" ;-)
Proposal: At least one of the other board members needs to agree with 
the veto.

> What kind of transparency would there be for the board?
>
> Say, it's decided to include some extremely harmful pre-alpha package
> management system late in development phase, would it be public who
> voted for and against on the board? Or perhaps just the numbers (3
> yays, 2 nays, for example)

Good question.

Public votes have the advantage that you know who you need to call 
names, but they also have the disadvantage that everybody will call a 
specific board member names in case of problematic decisions...

I'm not sure what is better here. (In other words: I prefer public votes 
unless I'm elected as a board member ;-))

Opinions?
BTW: How do the boards of other open source projects handle this?

> Perhaps we could add something like: "The board decides on the
> general direction of the project/distro. But not on day to day
> technical decisions."

Hmm, the existing text more or less contains this information 
("shouldn't direct or control development").
Do you think this is unclear?

> > Novell appoints the initial members of the board with participation
> > of the community.
>
> This is of course the very tricky part. It would be nice if a
> procedure could be specified. And does "initial" mean that Novell
> won't appoint the next board? For how long are board members elected
> anyway? 2 years? 5 years?

Yes, this should be clarified.

IMHO the board members should be elected for max. 2 years, maybe 1 year 
is better.
Or do something between: elect half the board every year, so that people 
stay there for 2 years, but some new people can come in every year.

> Perhaps a few substitutes should be appointed initially also - so we
> don't have strange decisions in case someone is hit by a bus and
> needs to be replaced.

I hope that we never need a substitute for such a reasen ;-)  but we can 
still have some.
Related question: Should the substitutes only become active if someone 
is permanently unavailable or also if he is on vacation for some 
days/weeks?


Another question: With 5 persons in the board, we have probably "only" 
2 persons from outside Novell in the board. Do we need more? [1]

I know this is also a controversial question: with more persons, you get 
more ideas and knownledge in - but you also make discussions and 
decisions slower if everybody has a differrent opinion.

Opinions?

> Generally it's looking very good. And I think it's a very good
> initiative.

ACK.


Regards,

Christian Boltz

[1] based on the weak feedback here, there are two possibilities
    a) there aren't many people interested in the guidlines and/or the
       board, so we won't find more than two anyways
    b) the proposed guidelines are accepted as is by nearly everybody,
       so no feedback is needed
    ;-))

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