On 25.10.2011 21:56, Per Jessen wrote:
Robert Schweikert wrote:
Well "someone" made the decision to have KDE as the default desktop, and "someone" made the decision about the new numbering scheme, and "someone" made the decision about the release cycle, and .....
Right, like you say so eloquently, "someone".
I'll give you a hint, these decisions were not made by SUSE.
I don't remember the details, but KDE was made default on 11.3 (or .4?) again after some loud community complaints and some poll. Too bad, now I always need to check I don't accidentally use the default setting ;) For the numbering scheme there was a poll, at least amongst opensuse members. And I even voted, but I no longer remember what (as it wasn't important to me, i surely did not vote for the current scheme, I would have liked something like Mandriva/Ubuntu does better).
Don't be shy, give me more than a hint, how were those decisions made? For instance, for a while Frederic Crozat (formerly with Mandriva, now SUSE) has been in charge of coordinating/running/whatever the systemd integration targeted for 12.1 - I don't remember anyone publicly asking the community (paid or otherwise) for volunteers for that job? I don't even remember the community being asked if Frederic was a good candidate. (absolutely NO criticisms aimed at Frederic here).
That's simple. Nobody else wanted to do the work. It also works the other way round: had a Per Jessen come along and said "it is nice that Frederic does this, but *I* would really like to do that, may I?", then some discussion would have evolved and you now might be in the position to do all the systemd integration work... Having it as a default was IMHO based on an informal poll on the mailinglists. There surely was some discussion on -factory (I don't read the other lists) and people voiced their opinions. I cannot exactly say who finally decided on systemd being the default, but I'd guess it was coolo (as the project manager) and I do not feel like I had been excluded from that decision. Now you'll probably say that "all the important jobs like project manager are occupied by SUSE employees" and I will answer "go for it, if you want one of those jobs I will do everything I can to help you get it". If we then find out that those ugly SUSE bastards are glued to their seats and just don't want to give up anything to the community, well, then I'll happily support your claims.
We don't yet have a foundation,
That has nothing to do with the direction of the project. I am not sure why everyone thinks that having a foundation will be this "great liberating event".
I didn't suggest either. I do however submit that after several years, the lack of a foundation is a problem (although largely symbolic).
As far as I am concerned there will be a bunch of problems that the community has to deal with that we do not have today. Any volunteer for a treasurer yet?
Shhhh Robert, keep quiet. I'm happy that we don't yet have to do that stuff ;-)
Why is it so hard to just treat us, the SUSE employees as regular community members?
Because it, to us outsiders, is so very obvious that you're not. Especially when you insist you are. "The lady doth protest to much, methinks".
IMVHO the openSUSE project is very much a meritocracy: they who do the work also get to decide where the project is going. Right now, lots of work is still done by SUSE employees. But for example, we are right now seeing an old desktop (which SUSE as a company surely does not want to reappear on a product) re-emerge from the grave, because a community member is doing the job. When I stepped up and said "I want pdftk in the product and I volunteer to maintain it", there was no problem for me getting it accepted. People stepped up to add and maintain LXDE and XFCE and this were IIRC mostly non-SUSE people. Those are in the product. OTOH, those doing lots of talking tend to get ignored by the technicians (as I am one)... simply because our resources are limited, too :) Best regards -- Stefan Seyfried "Dispatch war rocket Ajax to bring back his body!" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org