January 2024 - openSUSE Project - openSUSE Mailing Lists

RE: [Notice] - openSUSE Regular Board election 2023 - Patrick's Answers to Questions
by Patrick Fitzgerald 15 Jan '24

15 Jan '24

A good example of our communications infra needing a bit of work... -----Original message----- From: election-officials-owner(a)lists.opensuse.org <election-officials-owner(a)lists.opensuse.org> Sent: Saturday 13th January 2024 11:00 To: Patrick Fitzgerald <patrickf(a)i-layer.com> Subject: RE: [Notice] - openSUSE Regular Board election 2023 - Patrick's Answers to Questions Your message to the Election Officials mailing-list was rejected for the following reasons: Header … [View More]

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Community Meeting: Week 3
by ddemaio openSUSE 15 Jan '24

15 Jan '24

Hi all, You can find information about openSUSE meetings at https://calendar.opensuse.org. As a reminder, after our community meeting tomorrow (Tuesday) at 14:30 UTC (60 minutes), we will have a workshop for this year’s Google Summer of Code application and mentorship efforts. It will start at 15:30 UTC. Community Meeting 2 is scheduled for Thursdays at 20:00 UTC. The openSUSE Conference 2024 is scheduled to have a Business Focused Networking Event on June 26 with the technical portion … [View More]

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Appllication for the openSUSE membership
by Alexander Orlovsky - Orlovsky Consulting GbR 15 Jan '24

15 Jan '24

Hi folks! I would like to participate in your openSUSE project. Here you can find my application at https://code.opensuse.org/project/membership/issue/57 Best Regards Alexander

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[Notice] - openSUSE Regular Board election 2023 - CORRECTION
by Ariez Vachha - openSUSE 14 Jan '24

14 Jan '24

Dear openSUSE members, openSUSE Board Election 2023 [1] It's time to elect new Board members to fill empty seats on the openSUSE Board for 2024. This time we are looking to fill two seats in accordance with our Election Rules [2]: 1. Maurizio Galli, and 2. Patrick Fitzgerald, who are both still eligible for re-election. ## Phase 0 15 November 2023 * Announcement of the Board Election 2023 * Call for Nominations and Applications for Board candidacy * Membership drive 30 November 2023 * … [View More]

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Reminder to vote in the openSUSE Board Election
by ish＠sysadmin-journal.com 14 Jan '24

14 Jan '24

Dear openSUSE Members, This openSUSE Board Election is scheduled to end at January 15, 2024, 11:59 p.m. (UTC). If you not voted yet, you still have until tomorrow to do so. We have sent a reminder via the Election Platform to all those who have not yet cast a ballot. Regards, Ish Sookun // On behalf of the Election Committee

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Reminder meeting : openSUSE Board meeting next Monday (13:00 Europe/Berlin)
by openSUSE Meeting Reminder 13 Jan '24

13 Jan '24

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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RE: [Notice] - openSUSE Regular Board election 2023 - Patrick's Answers to Questions
by Patrick Fitzgerald 13 Jan '24

13 Jan '24

Hi all, Good questions Gerald, and my answers are in-line below. FYI my bio is here: https://en.opensuse.org/User:Pfitzgerald -----Original message----- From: Gerald Pfeifer <gp(a)suse.com> Sent: Friday 12th January 2024 18:34 To: project(a)lists.opensuse.org Subject: Re: [Notice] - openSUSE Regular Board election 2023 - Start of Phase 1 - Update On Mon 2024-01-01, ish(a)sysadmin-journal.com wrote: > Voting will end on 15 January 2024. > > I … [View More]encourage you to ask the candidates questions about the project, their > vision and ideas for the future. This must be the most silent election we ever had? Four strong candidates for two seats. With nobody else asking any questions (and sadly quite some delay) allow me to ask some questions: 1. If you have been on the board before, what do you see of your key contributions related to that board role (not openSUSE as such)? What, if anything, would you change if awarded a time machine? The time machine is only required if members resist change... so assuming they don't: * Given the confusion even surrounding this election process, I'd say it would that an complete overhaul of the communications infra is in order. * IMHO too much of the boards time last year was spent in member dispute resolution. This needs to change - possibly via an automated solution. 1'. If you have not been on the board before, what do you think you might have contributed (or done differently) based on your recollection of those past years? 2. What would you like to contribute specifically related to the board role? And what you see as opportunity cost, that is things you won't be able to cover (or cover less of) due to the board obligations? * I've had 30+ years of management and consulting experience. So I think that both are contributions. * I am lucky enough to be able to spare time for both the Geeko Foundation (https://geekos.org) and openSUSE, as much as a day or two weekly. 3. What are you biggest concerns about openSUSE (or you serving on the board) or risks for openSUSE? How would you tackle those? The openSUSE risks becoming irrelevant due to: * Lack of funding - which is why we started the Geeko Foundation. * Poor communications - as a relatively new member of openSUSE I've found it difficult to get information without asking around. It seems that I'm not alone in this. * Contributors come in all shapes and sizes, including donors, developers, marketers, artists, consultants and users. We need to build the organisation around that reality, or have Geeko take over that responsibility 4. If you had a blank voucher from the SUSE CEO for one wish, what might that be? Working with a small team from SUSE, openSUSE and Geeko Foundation build a low cost, supportable end-user solution that is certified on selected hardware from a couple of the largest vendors (HPE, Lenovo, Dell). I think this worth exploring, especially with the growth of browser based applications. SLED is too expensive and doesn't move fast enough. Whilst I there is a lot of resistance inside SUSE (t seems) I think my experience as an outsider would provide a different perspective. I hope to be lucky enough to receive your vote! /Patrick Thanks, Gerald [View Less]

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[Notice] - openSUSE Regular Board election 2023 - CORRECTION
by Shawn W Dunn 12 Jan '24

12 Jan '24

Gerald Pfeifer wrote: > On Mon 2024-01-01, ish(a)sysadmin-journal.com wrote: > > Voting will end on 15 January 2024. > > I encourage you to ask the candidates questions about the project, their > > vision and ideas for the future. > > This must be the most silent election we ever had? Four strong candidates > for two seats. > > With nobody else asking any questions (and sadly quite some delay) allow > me to ask some questions: > > >&… [View More]nbsp; 1. If you have been on the board before, what do you see of your key > contributions related to that board role (not openSUSE as such)? What, > if anything, would you change if awarded a time machine? > > 1'. If you have not been on the board before, what do you think you > might have contributed (or done differently) based on your recollection > of those past years? > I don't really understand the question being asked here, but I'll try to answer what I think you're asking. In the terms of being a project contributor? I think if I were to be a new contributor, knowing what I know now, I'd be far less concerned with "asking for permission" on a number of things, I would have just done them. The relatively open nature of our development model can actually be a huge issue for new contributors, because I'm not really aware of another project out there, that *is* so unstructured, it can be rather intimidating to walk into the project for the first time, and ask "How can I help?" and be told "Have fun, and do whatever makes you happy!". It's something that takes a bit of getting used to, to just jump in and start contributing. > > 2. What would you like to contribute specifically related to the board > role? And what you see as opportunity cost, that is things you won't be > able to cover (or cover less of) due to the board obligations? > > From my perspective, one of the biggest issues we do have, as "The openSUSE Project" is what comes down to an almost total lack of unified communications, *as* a project. This isn't an impossible problem to solve, even if I don't have any concrete ideas yet. It's both a strength, and a weakness of the project. I certainly wouldn't want to get into a situation where we have some sort of "Official" communications team, and our developers and contributors have to run all communications through that team. I do believe we can be doing a better job of communicating internally though, and communicating with our community. Looking at the recent communications issues regarding the Logo vote, Leap and it's future, The renaming of Aeon and Kalpa out from under the "MicroOS Desktop" umbrella, as well as the ever present confusion over the relationship between SUSE and openSUSE, it's obvious that at best, our "messaging" is chaotic and all over the place. And that is coming from somebody that is active in our communications channels (Mailing Lists, Forums, Matrix and IRC, etc.). As to the second part of this question, I don't actually have a good feel for what the required time commitment of a Board Member is. I have the luxury, personally, of not being on anybodies payroll, so my time is relatively open and unspoken for. I don't really see that serving on the Board will impact that much, but I'm certainly prepared to be wrong about that. > 3. What are you biggest concerns about openSUSE (or you serving on the > board) or risks for openSUSE? How would you tackle those? > > Communication is probably my biggest concern, and potentially as the bigger subset of that *listening*. As a consequence of our project's nature, where those are doing the work, make the decisions, at times, can cause a very "fractured" experience as a contributor, or user. Something you might do when contributing to $project_A within openSUSE that is completely normal and acceptable, when applied to $project_B is something the maintainers there consider to be completely unacceptable, and most often, you won't know that, until you try, which can lead to an awful lot of feeling like you're spinning your wheels at times. One of my personal concerns, as a project member that's involved in an opinionated project under the openSUSE Umbrella (openSUSE Kalpa), is that the things I might say as a developer, might be taken as something "Official" for the openSUSE Project in general, just by virtue of being a board member. So this is something that I'm going to have to consider much more, should I be chosen to serve. > 4. If you had a blank voucher from the SUSE CEO for one wish, what might > that be? > > Funding for independent developers and contributors for the openSUSE project. Not SUSE Employees, but some measure of a pool of money provided by SUSE for contributors to the project, Ideally administered by the Geeko Foundation or similar group. Our volunteers do an awful lot of good work for the openSUSE Project, whether it's folks maintaining the wiki, signing up to help with the Heroes team, packaging software, writing documentation, bugfixes and triage, Posting things to places like news.opensuse.org, doing artwork for the project, or sometimes just being moderators on our communications platforms, to keep things running. None of this happens without people putting in the time. I don't really know what this system would "look" like, as I don't really envision "openSUSE Employees" when I rattle this around in my head, but as an ideal, I think there's merit in being able to compensate people for the work they put into the project, at a certain level. > Thanks, > Gerald Thanks for the questions, Gerald. I'm happy to try to answer any others, or clarify, if anything I've said here is unclear. [View Less]

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How build services make life easier for upstream developers
by Peter Czanik 10 Jan '24

10 Jan '24

Hi, I just published a blog about OBS (and Copr), why they are fantastic resources, from an upstream developer point of view: https://www.syslog-ng.com/community/b/blog/posts/how-build-services-make-li… I wonder what other projects took similar routes, and became official package maintainers from simple OBS users. Peter

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Mentorship Workshop For Google Summer of Code 2024
by ddemaio openSUSE 09 Jan '24

09 Jan '24

Hi all, will have a workshop on Jan. 16 at 15:30 UTC next week that will focus on the Google Summer of Code application and mentorship efforts. If you have any questions, please email me or follow the instructions of how to list a project on https://101.opensuse.org/#mentor It is just a matter of opening up an issue on https://github.com/openSUSE/mentoring. The projects should have at least two people to mentor. Mentoring will help to build the next generation of contributors and it can … [View More]

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