On Friday 06 August 2010 17:15:46 Egbert Eich wrote: Hi,
When I was talking to people at the Labs Conference and asked them why they did not bring up a certain topic on an openSUSE ML I heard more than once: 'Isn't this a discussion that should be had internally?'. (I strongly believe that this is a feeling that's shared by several other Novell employees working for OPS.) I believe that, and I guess that this opinion lives especially in the labs, but also at other people in OPS. Why is that?
Formerly, at SuSE times, we somehow had a spirit of being closed, even though we always worked on free software and were open to share the results of that work. That feels a bit strange to me, honestly, and the best example that comes to my mind were the discussions when we started to open up Bugzilla to the public (yes, we had a completely closed BZ fomerly!). But that has changed, and we have a very strong commitment from our management to be open. What else would we need? We all know that open work works best, is the healthy way of successful free software projects, so why are we so hesitant sometimes? Disclaimer: Yes, I know, there are cases, where one has to keep his mouth shut, but these are very rare. We shouldn't kind of hide behind that.
Indeed for someone working at a company like Novell for a while it may feel strange to discuss things with collegues in public: - Should one really openly 'flame' fellow Novell employees (AJ, Michael, coolo, the Boosters, ...) or decisions made by them? I think nobody should be 'flamed'. That given, of course you should discuss with your collegues. Why not? How would you feel if you weren't lucky enough to be employed by a company to work on free software, and you try to work together with some company guys and they behave as if they discuss their stuff at home under the blanket? I would leave the project, because that kicks you out.
- What things can a Novell employee say in public? How much are the things one says influenced by internal knowledge that's not ment for public digestion? Again, you have a your managements mandate to help driving this free software project openly, welcoming and 'true'. That taken, there shouldn't be much left which is so secret.
regards, Klaas -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-boosters+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-boosters+help@opensuse.org