August 2023

[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 … [View More]

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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 … [View More]

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Problem with openSUSE Bugzilla login?
by ddemaio 13 Oct '23

13 Oct '23

Hi all, If you are having difficulties with the login to openSUSE Bugzilla (bugzilla.opensuse.org) please let me know and provide the name, user name & email you used to login in the the system previously. I realized that some people have had issues with it for various reasons including migration to the IDP. I've raise a ticket for this and am trying to fully address the issue, but we need to know the extent of the amount of people who are having issues with this. As simple reply to … [View More]

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Community Meeting: Week 35
by ddemaio 28 Aug '23

28 Aug '23

Hi all, The next ALP meeting is still pending the outcome of an organizing poll. The survey is in its last week, so please take the survey at https://survey.opensuse.org/index.php?r=survey/index&sid=277484 if you have not done so already. Community Meeting 2 is schedule for Thursdays at 19:00 UTC. Read last week's info or get meeting notes at https://etherpad.opensuse.org/p/weeklymeeting Meetings takes place in https://meet.opensuse.org/meeting You can see a list of the items … [View More]

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openSUSE Board minutes 2023-08-14
by ddemaio 28 Aug '23

28 Aug '23

https://en.opensuse.org/Archive:Board_meeting_2023-08-14 = Board Meeting Monday 2023-08-14 13:00 CEST = * Present: Doug, Gerald, Gertjan, Neal, Patrick * Excused: Mau * Missed: * This week's report to be sent by: Doug * Guests: Marcel R (luriv) == Update from Patrick == * Patrick finds he's not go enough time to pursue the Foundation * (which was the primary reason to apply for the board). * Feels cannot do both at the same time. == Form complaint template == * Will do a separate meeting to … [View More]

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Reminder meeting : openSUSE Board meeting next Monday (13:00 Europe/Berlin)
by openSUSE Meeting Reminder 26 Aug '23

26 Aug '23

Hello all, The biweekly board conf call will be held in two days at 13:00 Europe/Berlin time (CET = UTC+1) Meeting will be in the regular Board Meeting Room https://meet.opensuse.org/OSBoard Current Topics: https://code.opensuse.org/board/tickets/issues?status=Open&tags=meeting Board Members: If you cannot participate, please advise by replying to this mail.

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Observations and some concerns about contributing to openSUSE
by Dominik George 23 Aug '23

23 Aug '23

Heisan fellow Geekos, as some might have learnt from my technical discussion on library packages on the Factory mailing list, I am a Debian Developer currently collecting experience with how openSUSE works, both technically and as a community. I am not at all new to SUSE – SuSE Linu 8.2 was my first Linux distribution in 2003, but I left for Gentoo some time around 2008 because because YaST was a major annoyance at that time. First of all, let me say that I am impressed by the developments in … [View More]openSUSE, especially with Tumbleweed. And, hooray, openSUSE follows standards, and I can just ignore YaST ;)! As it happens, I am also the founder of Teckids, a community with (among others) the goal of helping very young people contribute to open source software. Our youngest contributor was 8 years old, and the average is 12 years. For reference, that's far from any record, given the youngest Linux kernel contributor was a 4 year-old girl [1]. [ If you are not interested in these ramblings, you can skip ] [ the next paragraph; if you wonder "why is this relevant", ] [ read on ] Some might wonder why ot os worthwhile to care about very young people as contributors. Granted, the contribution of 4 year-old Maisa referenced above can be regarded as having very little technical impact on Linux. But that is only one side of the coin. Considering what the impact might have been on Maisa, it probably was of unmeasurable value, because she experienced something very important: If you care, you can do something. The letter "s" being sad at 4 can easily grow to be a driver misbehaving, or community issues being brought to discussion and solved at 14 (although in the particular case, I can find no reference that happened). And, believe me – demonstrating to young people that technology and ocmmunities is something you can care about, and change, and control, is absolutely invaluable in a world where technology concerns spend millions on burrying that fact, making their living by assuming that people blindly consume instead of raising concerns. Therefore, my endeavour of finding out what contributing to openSUSE means to a big part entails looking at how high the barriers are for contributors. After giving you the background above, one might think that what I raise here is only relevant for very young contributors, but in fact, it is for adults as well (the difference being that for the barriers named hereafter, children tend to have no choice, while adults could potentially overcome them with some will and effort). Hence, please bear with me while I bring up some observations and concerns in regard of using and contributing to openSUSE. I'd be happy about any insights or helpful remarks – also, if there are points, or the topic of minimizing barriers towards (young) contributors, that someone would like to discuss with me or Teckids in person, please feel very welcome to ask! openSUSE infrastructure ======================= One (mostly technical) aspect of contributing to openSUSE is its build infrastructure. Coming from Debian, I find it delighting to have one tool do the job. Open Build Service and osc simplify onboarding a lot. I am not particularly fond of versioning tools that are not based on Git, but at least we have one platform used for development, where I can contribute to all packages, with quite well-defined workflows. Registration to OBS (and mailing lists, and everything else) is straight-forward: Single Sign-On is handled by the SUSE IdP Portal, which, to my surprise, does not even require consent to questionable terms of use. Pretty much anyone can register. So, no issues here until now – thanks for being that open towards contributors, and providing a clear path towards technical contributions! SUSE IdP and dependence on SUSE LLC =================================== I assume everyone is quite tired of questions like this ;). All openSUSE services relying on the SUSE IdP Portal for single sign-on is a dead giveaway that there is more dependence on SUSE LLC than "just" sponsoring. As it seems, should SUSE pull the plug at some point, openSUSE would lose money and a lot of server infrastructure, but also a lot of data. I know that plans to found a foundation for openSUSE comes up every now and then. Should that succeed at some point, would control over the single sign-on system be handed over as well? One major concern I have is SUSE's handling of personal data. As I said above, the IdP portal seems to be quite clean (except for a reliance on the Sentry cloud service, which, as I see it, is not GDPR-compliant). However, looking at the SUSE company website, the picture changes drastically: The website includes tracking service from around 25 domains (according to uBlock Origin) – it pretty much feels like a "let's track as much as we can by all means" take. To what extent can a contributor ignore the SUSE website? Is there any point where one would need to use a SUSE web service, except when using the IdP self-service portal? Upstream development on GitHub ============================== While investigating some inner workings of openSUSE, I found that development of openSUSE upstream code (all platforms like OBS and Kiwi, as well as system components, RPM patterns, etc.) is developed on GitHub. GitHub has its fair share of issues regarding software freedom [2], but for now, I'd like to focus on accessibility for contributors. GitHub, in contrast to the SUSE IdP, has strict limitations on who can use it: Explicitly excluded are people younger than 13 years (or 16 years, depending on jurisdiction), as well as citizens of countries currently under embargoes by the US. My concern is that contributions should be equally welcome in all parts of the project, and that the project should welcome everyone, independent of theire age or origin. The only limiting factor should be applicable regulations by law, and as it stands, children far under the age of 13 *can* in fact use online services, if their personal data is not abused there ;). Thus, relying on GitHub unnecessarily imposes additional limitations on who can contribute to the parts of openSUSE that rely on it Are there intentions to move to an independent Git service that is run under the same preconditions as OBS or the mailing lists? Now, I am quite curious to what extend these concerns might have already been discussed in the past, and how others in the community look at them. Thanks, Nik [1] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?… [2] https://sfconservancy.org/GiveUpGitHub/ [View Less]

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Build Service cut over 2023-08-24 16:00 UTC
by Marco Strigl 21 Aug '23

21 Aug '23

Hi All, TL;DR: starting 2023-08-24 16:00 UTC the buildservice instances will be down for moving to a new data center. We will announce when they are back up. The long version: The migration to the new data center will start Thursday 2023-08-24 at 16:00 UTC with a shutdown of the all service. This will be followed by the sync of the remaining file changes to the new data center. On Friday morning we will start with bringing up services again. As soon as all services are up and running again … [View More]

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Community Meeting: Week 34
by ddemaio 21 Aug '23

21 Aug '23

Hi all, The next ALP meeting is pending the outcome of an organizing poll that Lubos posted in his ACTION NEEDED: Understanding the current mood and trends among our contributors email at https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/project@lists.opensuse.org/thread/… Please take the survey at https://survey.opensuse.org/index.php?r=survey/index&sid=277484 to help us better understand the current mood and trends among our contributors and users. This survey is planned to close within … [View More]

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Brief note on this week's SUSE news
by Gerald Pfeifer 18 Aug '23

18 Aug '23

Hello fellow Geekos, by now you have likely seen the news that openSUSE's main sponsor, SUSE, is expected to delist from the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and once again become a private company: https://www.suse.com/news/EQT-announces-voluntary-public-purchase-offer-and… I have been personally assured this will have no negative impacts on openSUSE. SUSE's sponsorship of community projects like openSUSE is not changing. SUSE remains committed to supporting the openSUSE community. Any … [View More]

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