Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-project (301 mails)

[Bryen M Yunashko <suserocks@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 2012-02-18 at 08:10 -0600, Mike McCallister wrote:
> On 02/17/2012 06:55 PM, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
> > I'm a bit puzzled by this discussion, as it seems to focus on the wrong side
> > of matters, i.e. how to move people away from the project, not on how to win
> > people to contribute to openSUSE.
> >
> >  From my point of view the rules should be very simple:
> >
> > * Everybody who identifies with the guiding principles of openSUSE is 
> > welcome
> > to join the project.
> > * People showing sustained contribution become official members of openSUSE.
> > * If a member doesn't vote for let's say two years the member becomes an
> > inactive member.
> > * The only difference of an inactive to an active member is that inactive
> > members don't have voting rights
> > * An inactive member can become an active member again by an informal 
> > request
> > to the membership officials team
> >
> > I don't see the need to introduce additional mechanisms or the need for 
> > people
> > to repeatedly justify that they earn member status. Remember, we want to be 
> > an
> > inclusive community. So let's just keep things simple.
> >
> > If you really see a need to clean the number of people eligible to vote from
> > inactive members, I would suggest to go with a simple process like described
> > above.
> >
> > But on the other hand it also would be worth to think, if this is needed at
> > all. The only case where it's really relevant is if a quorum needs to be met
> > for a vote. The only quorum amongst members we have is for a forced 
> > reelection
> > of the board. So this might be more difficult, if there are a lot of 
> > inactive
> > members. This might be or or not be worth the effort to "inactivate" 
> > members.
> >
> > But in any case, please keep it simple and inviting.
> Cornelius is right. While Robert's new proposal is much better than the 
> first, I still generally feel this is a solution in search of a problem.
>
> We want to encourage participation and contributions, both in a 
> technical sense and in governance. We want to recognize participation 
> and contributions by offering membership in the community. No one wants 
> to be told that "unless you do this, this and this, we're going to kick 
> you out of the community." Some people might react badly to that.
>
> While applying for membership may imply that people want to be involved 
> in governance, perhaps they just want recognition from the community 
> that they feel part of. Some genuinely feel that "politics is evil" and 
> just want to make their contributions without bothering with project 
> leadership. They should be allowed that right.
>
> I'm not entirely certain how I feel about members who just want to be 
> involved in governance without participating in the project in other 
> ways. We have come together as a community around this technology project.
>
> Mike McCallister
> openSUSE Ambassador

May I suggest we now move to a wiki page and directly collaborate on
editing the proposed text?   I also agree that Robert's proposal is much
improved from the last thread.  I also know that the wording could use
some improvement, as evidenced by my myriad questions earlier in this
thread asking for clarifications on some text.

That's not a reflection on Robert, mind you.  I don't think there's any
proposed rule (or such) that succeeds without some form of text
collaboration, and discussing it only via email isn't going to go
anywhere quite quickly.

Just my opinion.

Bryen M Yunashko
openSUSE Project

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