May 2023 - openSUSE Project - openSUSE Mailing Lists

[opensuse-project] How we will use the GSoC money
by Vincent Untz 18 Jul '24

18 Jul '24

Hi, (let's see how a public discussion about money goes :-)) The Google Summer of Code brings us great students, but also means that the openSUSE project will get $8000 (if I'm not mistaken) at the end of the summer. That's $500 per student. A while ago, I requested comments on my blog about what to do with the money, but didn't get any feedback. So I take this as "do what you feel is best", and this mail is about the plan. As a reminder, the main issue is that we will likely not have the openSUSE Foundation created in time for this. For instance, Google would like us to get some form filled before the end of June; this is not a mandatory timeline, but I think it shows that we won't be ready with the Foundation for that. The current plan is to give that money to another organization we feel close to, and I have two candidates in mind: - the Software Freedom Conservancy (http://sfconservancy.org/) it's a really nice org that provides a home for various cool projects (see http://sfconservancy.org/members/current/) and those projects help make openSUSE a great project. - the Desktop Summit (https://www.desktopsummit.org/) it's one of the biggest event this year, and this would help us have some more visibility (since we'd be sponsors, I guess). I'm sure they would welcome this to secure their budget. Note that an alternative solution would be to leave the money to Google for a future GSoC or similar program, but I feel it's better to use the money where it can make a difference today. Now, it's not too late to change the plan. If you have a better suggestion, please tell us. There's no need to argue forever about it, just explain why you think it's good. Keep in mind that if we cannot receive the money ourselves, this also means that we cannot use it to buy stuff for openSUSE. Pavol and I will take the final decision since we are the GSoC admins for openSUSE. Thanks, Vincent -- Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe(a)opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help(a)opensuse.org

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Ask your openSUSE Board candidates questions
by ddemaio 17 Jun '24

17 Jun '24

Hi all, Per a conversation some of us had at the community meeting last Thursday, we wanted to get discussions for the project started regarding this year's openSUSE Board elections. We listed a few questions in the minutes at https://etherpad.opensuse.org/p/weeklymeeting20221103 You can find some of those questions in the 1103 meeting minutes between lines 48 and line 54. Please ask your questions (Ask us Anything) in this thread so we can keep the conversations focused and centralized for all the candidates and members who want to ask questions of the candidates. All the candidates are in cc and you can find their profiles at the board election wiki. https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election v/r Doug

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List under moderation
by Simon Lees 01 Jul '23

01 Jul '23

Hi All, Due to recent discussions from the factory mailing list moving to this list we have preemptively decided to put all incoming emails to this list under moderation. To be clear discussions related to the code of conduct are on topic for this list and will be allowed as long as they are not clearly violating the code of conduct. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B

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Codices of Conduct: A fundamental critique
by Wouter Onebekend 05 Jun '23

05 Jun '23

Hello, We've recently had a bit of a tussle on the Factory list over LGBT flags, on the OpenSUSE subreddit to put it mildly. In that tussle, the code of conduct was used as a very blunt instrument in a bid to silence people who disagreed with flying such flags and/or forcing people to fly flags in general. I'd like to share a few observations about codices of conduct in general and the OpenSUSE one in particular (point 6 does not apply to it) that allow the very abuse we have seen: 1) The definitions of good and bad behavior are vague allowing for a lot of executive discretion in constructing actions or utterances as violations. 2) Enforcement is intransparent and arbitrary. There's a moderation team with "processes in place". Processes that are not even public! Determining and sanctioning violations is at the sole discretion of the executive (moderation team and openSUSE board - I'm not sure if these two are even separate/overlap free). 3) There is no appeal to an independent authority. The executive is judge, jury, executioner and authority for appeals. 4) It is insanely broad in scope: "openSUSE reserves the right to take actions against behaviors that happen in any context, if they are deemed to be relevant to the openSUSE project and its participants.". Yes, you can totally be Brendan Eiched for donating to the wrong political party under that rule. 5) Snitching is confidential and there are no codified repercussions to wrongly accusing or smearing somebody that way. 6) [This is not the case in the OpenSUSE code of conduct]: there usually is a err-on-the-side-of-caution clause that mandates removing people deemed in violation even while their guilt or innocence is still being determined. That is a reversal of the legal convention "innocent until proven guilty" democratic states have been operating on since Roman times. In summary I think codices of conduct are a horrible idea and should be done away with. They are regularly abused to force people to agree with or at least never speak out against the political ideology termed 'woke'. They create a climate of fear and division that simply has not existed before. Everyone is on constant notice, and has to weigh their words very carefully. Except for the ideologue themselves. They can abuse and denigrate everyone who speaks up against their ideology at will and will face zero repercussions for it. Regards, An Anonymous Techie

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Leap 15.5 update
by Lubos Kocman 01 Jun '23

01 Jun '23

Hello openSUSE! I just received a heads up that SLES 15 SP5 has a confirmed GMC. So big congratulations to the SLES team. This implies that the Leap 15.5 build which is currently being cooked in OBS is our (first) Gold Master Candidate. So far everything suggests that we can keep up with the current https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Roadmap and have GA on June 7th. These are currently top issues under our radar https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Most_annoying_bugs_15.5 See you at the oSC2023! Best regards Lubos Kocman openSUSE Leap Release Manager

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Am I banned from posting to openSUSE mailing lists?
by Bryan Lunduke 31 May '23

31 May '23

Earlier today I sent an email to the Project list. As a past openSUSE Board Member (and someone who spent years promoting the project around the world), I assumed that would be allowed. My email was rejected on the grounds of it containing "bad stuff". No naughty words. No hate. Nothing derogatory or dehumanizing against any group. Simply a criticism of current openSUSE leadership. Am I simply not allowed to speak at all to the openSUSE project? Or may I speak... but not when criticizing the current leadership? -Lunduke

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conference photos
by Peter Czanik 31 May '23

31 May '23

Hi, First of all: thanks for organizing yet another fantastic conference :-) I took a few photos at the openSUSE conference: https://photos.app.goo.gl/UqWVhtRCVsHPxztt6 As you can see, I'm not a people person :-) Peter

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Community Meetings: Week 22
by ddemaio 30 May '23

30 May '23

Hi all, We hope you had safe travels back from the openSUSE Conference. We will have two community meetings this week. Meeting 1 is scheduled for Tuesday (today) at 14:30 UTC (60 minutes) and Meeting 2 is schedule for Thursday at 19:00 UTC. You can find meeting notes at https://etherpad.opensuse.org/p/weeklymeeting and the meeting takes place in https://meet.opensuse.org/meeting You can see a list of the items where project's need help at https://etherpad.opensuse.org/p/help v/r Doug

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RE: Codices of Conduct: A fundamental critique
by Patrick Fitzgerald 29 May '23

29 May '23

Hi Anonymous Techie. I'd just like to point out just about every group, organisation, and company has a terms of service document, which usually include a code of conduct terms. This includes your email provider - Protonmail. Just in case you haven't read theirs -though you have certainly have agreed to them- they can found here: https://proton.me/legal/terms. In particular I think point 4 is interesting: 4. Harassing, abusing, insulting, harming, defaming, slandering, disparaging, intimidating or discriminating someone based on gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, race, age, nationality or disability; That doesn't sound "woke" to me. Just sensible. To quote my favourite film: "...the needs of the many outweigh needs of the few. Or the one." Hence the need for a code of conduct. I could go on, but I've got code to write. Just saying. Patrick -- -------------------------------- -----Original message----- From: Wouter Onebekend <wouter.onebekend(a)proton.me> Sent: Monday 29th May 2023 15:16 To: Jacob Michalskie <hellcp(a)opensuse.org> Cc: Simon Lees <sflees(a)suse.de>; project(a)lists.opensuse.org Subject: Re: Codices of Conduct: A fundamental critique Hello, > On Mo, Mai 29 2023 at 07:28:30 +0000, Wouter Onebekend > wouter.onebekend(a)proton.me wrote: > > > I can only speak for myself, but so far what did get rejected was a > > version of the post with rather pointed (let's make that razor > > pointed) language commenting on the situation at hand, so I guess > > that's fair enough as long as it applies to both sides of the debate. > > And while, on that basis I trust the current moderation, I wouldn't > > trust the board with an appeal, given the rather strong political > > attitudes they showed on that other thread. Moderation that blps > > o*t swr w*rds I can live with, barely (I do like my cussing, after > > all). What I'm worried about is going beyond that, i.e. moderation > > that censors opinions like the ones I sketched in the start of this > > thread. > > I feel like I might be a bearer of bad news but the board seems to be > far more neutral of an entity than the moderation team. I only have the one moderator I interacted with to go on and I could not complain about that experience. As far as the board is concerned I only have some board members' comments on that infamous factory thread to go on and these definitely were not fostering an inclusive climate for anyone disagreeing with the usual far left talking points. > > Now that is something, sure. But independent of who sits on the > > board, I'd like to see stronger protections of free speech. And > > sanctions on the kind of smear campaigns commonly referred to as > > cancel culture. I.e. a strong statement of "What happens here stays > > here, and if we ever find anybody reporting someone to their employer > > or an organization they are a member of for something they said here > > we exclude them." > > > > This kind of thing has been happening a lot to people disagreeing > > with any tenets of woke political ideology, even though the > > perpetrators like to deny it (just google "there is no cancel > > culture"). This makes for a very toxic social environment and it > > needs to stop. > > The role of the moderation in the project is restricting free speech to > some extent. We don't want to be overrun by spammers, stalkers, people > who aim to discredit others in the project for whatever is specified > within our standards. It does not mean that the goal is to cancel anyone > though, the goal is community building, we don't want to end up in a > scenario where half of the community hates the other half based on their > identity, family or beliefs, so people that represent that do have their > speech revoked for a limited amount of time or until they show > improvement. The standard for that "improvement" is agreeing with the set of far left views commonly described as "woke". Departing from that set of values or indeed publicly disagreeing is dangerous. As long as that - rather unbalanced - situation persists, you will have a situation where there is (a) Radical leftists (I have never seen anyone on the right side of the political fence propose a code of conduct, ever) calling the shots. (a) A group of people who are not radical leftists and secretly hate the radical leftists calling the shots but cannot ever speak up for fear of getting excluded from the open source project and or losing their job because a smear campaign will usually be launched against anyone who angers group (a) with their real name attached. > > Yes, that is one of the problems with private complaint mechanisms > > that have absolutely no repercussions for somebody leveling a > > complaint in bad faith. If you can rally 20 people to all voice the > > same complaint (and you absolutely can if you are organized) you can > > get someone you like into deep trouble. Especially if the arbiter of > > wrongdoing has got vague criteria for wrongdoing to work with and > > happens to be on your own side of the political fence. > > I'm not really sure what your expectation here is, the board was voted > in by the project members, and so presumably reflects the views of the > majority of the project, including their politics (the board is a > political body by itself after all). Do you want the board to reflect > the views of the minority of the project that did not vote for them? Is > this the will of the people? Well. Do minorities not preserve protection? Or do just the minorities that happen to be the radical left's current revolutionary subject deserve protection? My expectation is for codices of conduct to be abolished, period. I am quite radical about this. For they sow exactly the sort of discord outlined above. They only ever are introduced at the request of vocal, radical leftists. And they are then being used to threaten and/or silence those who disagree with that particular demographic. In a pre code of conduct world, people were free to speak their mind. In a post code of conduct world anything can be interpreted as a violation of the code of conduct. I believe this is not an accident, especially given how suddenly this concept sprang up and how it spread like wildfire throughout the tech world, always justified the premise that the tech world was "toxic" and a "patriarchate" run by "old white men", to borrow the leftists' parlance. I disagree with this premise, and more so, I happen to think that this "cure" being peddled over the past five years or so created a quite toxic, divided environment. > > Yeah. The process outlined in these two my main gripe. The decision > > rests with the board which is on one side of the political dividing > > line that runs through this community. There is no balance of powers. > > The board is not accountable and there is no oversight beyond the > > board. Who watches the watchers? > > You probably should have read the election rules that Simon sent, there > are quite a few options for the community to step into the process and > mend the situation. The problem already begins with being able to talk about the situation, with campaigning for such change. I am posting under a pseudonym because I am worried about smear campaigns (including tens to hundreds of emails and Tweets getting directed at my employer, telling them I'm unbearable and should be fired). I've seen that happen before, to a guy who disagreed with the woke mob in public. His employer eventually fired him. Codices of conduct enable that very strategy or rather make it easier to apply because anyone out there can misconstrue something the target said in public to be in violation and launch an outrage campaign. Pretty much any employer/organization will fold in the face of such an assault and a code of conduct increases the attack surface even more. Regards, An Anonymous Techie

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moderation? Really?
by L A Walsh 29 May '23

29 May '23

On 2023/05/27 09:09, Neal Gompa wrote: > Hello all, > > Due to the recent continuous inappropriate behavior on the factory@ > mailing list... > You are letting a single thread result in a some level of a DoS (Denial of Service). Do people have such poor email-fu that they can't just ignore a thread/subject if they so wish? When reading this group in thunderbird, (which is already filtered down to the specific folders for the 'project' or ''factory' list, one thread only shows up as 1 line unless I expand it, otherwise, if I don't have time or interest, I can just skip that topic. It really isn't so difficult that a moderator should have to waste their time. It's sad that such a topic causes such high emotions -- on both sides! I suppose polarization is a sign of the times where "spaces" cater to their denizens and only show them topics which will keep them from leaving and keep them coming back. The off-topic topic didn't bother me, so much, but I'm capable of filtering (usually) to my heart's content. It some vocal group doesn't know how to do their own filtering. *sigh*. P.S. FWIW, if things got real nasty, I likely missed it, as I was no longer really following that thread... Cheers! -linda

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