On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 12:23 PM, Vincent Untz
Hi,
As you all know about a year ago the Boosters Team was disbanded and a new team of SUSE employees dedicated to the openSUSE project was formed, the openSUSE team at SUSE. For us within the community it is of course the other way around, the SUSE team within openSUSE, or short, the SUSE team ;).
The transition has not been easy, neither for SUSE nor for us as a community. This transition and discussion thereof took as significant chunk of time at the board face to face meeting in Nuremberg. While the overall direction this is taking is very positive for us as a community, the communication about the changes has been sparse and thus we had some awkward situations in the recent past. We as the board now have a better understanding of things, and hopefully the following will shed some light on the big picture for everyone.
Before we get to big picture however, it is important to know that communication paths have to change. Things you may have previously sent to the boosters to get help should now go to the board mailing list or to your Local Coordinator, the new Local Coordinator program was announced recently. Please keep this in mind. If you send random requests to the SUSE team you will be forwarded to the Board (except in very special cases).
The Boosters team was chartered with undirected boosting, basically jumping in wherever a fire was burning and being there for everyone and for everything as much a possible. Generally the Boosters team was comprised of members that were well known within the community and thus all of this led to organic growth in many areas. Contributions from non SUSE employees to the project now outnumber those of SUSE employees and the contributions of non SUSE employees have steadily grown over the last 3 years. This shows that the Boosters had great success and that openSUSE has truly become a community project.
With the community growth, the Boosters' approach doesn't scale anymore: the Boosters team turned into the default address for anything and everyone that wanted/needed some kind of help, may it be for event participation/organization or other "hand-holding" activities. As we all know a certain amount of hand-holding is required at times, but too much of it leads to complacency.
The new SUSE team has a different charter. Rather than undirected boosting, the team is focusing on areas of perceived need. Currently there is a significant effort to work on openQA, documenting and possibly stream lining the release process, and we have already heard about the new TSP web app. Another item of focus was/is the shipping of merchandise. With the changes, the impact of the SUSE team on the project will be much different than we as the community were used to from the Boosters team.
In addition to taking a directed approach to contributing to the project the SUSE team does not believe that it should be the default address for everything that might ail someone, but believes that the community can take over. This is a very understandable position as this would take significant amount of effort away from the new directed approach. This in the end is a positive change for us as a community as it will force us to take on more responsibility for our project. While this change has basically already taken place it was not well communicated and we ended up in some tough spots in the recent past, as mentioned previously. However, as we now have an understanding of this change we can fix the problem. First and foremost it is important to remember that if anything ails you, please do not send an email to the SUSE team, rather get help from a local coordinator, or send a message to the board.
Other changes we can expect are financial responsibility and transparency. As mentioned in the meeting minutes of the face to face meeting, our project has a cost center and we will have a budget. As these details emerge we will communicate accordingly. The Local Coordinator program has already been announced as well as the change in merchandise shipping. Please help out with these programs and provide feedback to allow the programs to grow and evolve in a way the meets the our needs.
The SUSE team is of course still part of the community and has no special status and you will see contributions from the SUSE team members to the project or upstream projects, such as openQA predominantly at the moment. If people would like to have a short intro of the SUSE team members please ask as a reply to this message, rather than having a large number of requests fill up Agustin's inbox.
As always, if you have questions or concerns please reply to this thread or send a message to the board list.
Thanks,
Your openSUSE Board
Thank you for posting this update, it is very thoughtful to the community. It sounds as if things are becoming more structured and defined. I like these changes and ideas. I look forward to meeting the new local coordinator. -- God bless ! Scott DuBois www.ROGUEHORSE.com openSUSE -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org