- openSUSE Project

Revising our Election Rules
by Gerald Pfeifer 12 May '25

12 May '25

Are you aware of, or maybe even familiar with, the openSUSE Board Election Rules - https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election_rules ? These cover the election of the board and various fundamental rules around the board. There's been a long standing item to cover different types of openSUSE members (active/regular ones, emeritus, resigned, deceased...) and how they relate to these Election Rules. Over the years we had some volunteers who in the end did not follow through, so I volunteered myself. For maximum transparency I am tackling this in two phases and multiple steps: Phase 1, which this mail is about, makes things more consistent (and addresses one corner case bug) and prepares for Phase 2, which will bring the actual changes to define the different kinds of membership. Attached you find the current election rules and the first three steps I am proposing. (For your convenience I am also attaching diffs for these individual steps.) 1/N consistently uppercases references to the "Board" and "Board Members" where we had both before. (The uppercase form is often used in this kind of material.) A diff ignoring case (`diff -i opensuse-rules-[01]`) turns up empty. 2/N consistently uses "Board Member" instead of a few occurrences of just "member" and one of "member of the Board" and simplifies language (for example using "nominees" instead of "nominated people"). Importantly it fixes one bug where it should read "at most 40 per cent of electable seats are controlled by [one] company or organisation" instead of "fewer than 40 per cent". The latter would admit only one elected Board Member from any company or organization, which never was the intention nor the case in many, if not most, of board terms. `diff -u opensuse-statutes-[12] | diff-so-fancy` nicely highlights the changes, or you can drop the last part for a classic diff. 3/N introduces and uses the term Active openSUSE Member, which are those with active and passive voting rights. On the way introduce a section on Members which will be the focus of the next changes. These changes are intended to be non-controversial, still more pairs of eyes may find things to improve or things missed - feedback most welcome! (There is two ways to change these Election Rules: vote by the membership and vote by the board. I'll wait three, four weeks and if this remains non-controversial here will ask the board to vote on it.) Gerald

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Meeting reminder: openSUSE Board meeting next Monday (14:30 Europe/Berlin)
by openSUSE Meeting Reminder 10 May '25

10 May '25

Hello all, The biweekly board conf call will be held in two days at 14:30 Europe/Berlin time 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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spec file copyright headers
by Andreas Stieger 07 May '25

07 May '25

Hello project, I would like to raise for open discussion the rpm spec copyright headers. Let's use the following as an entry example to see if we can find an general opinion or solution. This should not be considered escalation on the SR. systemd maintainer Franck declined my SR#1232931 [1] for boo#1234765 [2] with the following note: > Thanks. Can you please resubmit without changing the copyright ? > Allow me to lay out the following thoughts: openSUSE packages are licensed and distributed under an OSI approved license. Changes to the package by another party create derivative works. That copyright is not owned exclusively by the original creator, the part that the contributor added is owned by them. Or, verbatim from the standard header: > # All modifications and additions to the file contributed by third parties > # remain the property of their copyright owners, unless otherwise agreed > # upon. Many packages contain "Copyright (c) {{ year }} SUSE LLC" . The vim .spec template, spec-cleaner and the corresponding source service update this regularly. They also update the copyright year to the current year unless the right parameters are passed, and even so if no people employed by SUSE LLC are involved. My original packages contain my own copyright. As a contributor I am happy to license my works to anyone, including SUSE LLC, under an open source license. What I am not doing is assign exclusive ownership to SUSE LLC, neither for my original packages nor for my contributions. I believe this is in the spirit of FLOSS. We should clarify the obvious: assigning exclusive copyright to SUSE LLC is not a requirement for contribution for openSUSE, the text makes that clear. But there is no single best way to reflect that, and who owns what, if "SUSE LLC" keeps getting added, automatically, at the top (!), while we reject contributors adding their own. You can reject such submissions, what what message are we sending to openSUSE contributors that are not bound to assign their work to the company? The following points may need to be part of the discussion: Should spec-cleaner/format_spec_file have a mode, default, for non-SUSE contributors? Specifically, do not add the SUSE LLC copyright or update it's year unless the contribution is done on behalf of SUSE LLC. There may be a triviality limit for what constitutes a copyrightable contribution to an rpm spec, given that many constructs are trivial, tool generated, or copied from another package, distribution, or the wiki. There may be bit of a stylistic problem of proliferation of copyright lines. Changing/removal of any lines not your own should be avoided. The spec header refers to the license of the upstream package. Upstream packages are known to change licenses. That means that in these cases the license of the spec file changes, but the copyright holder can do that. And in the case of a community contribution, that is not "SUSE LLC" exclusively. Re-licensing this is different from creating a derivative work under a compatible FLOSS license. Finally, I do not want to leave you without a specific proposal. Here it is: > # Copyright (C) YEAR openSUSE project and contributors, see package > changelog. > Not the best idea, but one that includes the outside contributors. Happy to discuss, Andreas [1] https://build.opensuse.org/request/show/1232931 [2] https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1234765

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openSUSE Leap 16 Enters Beta
by Douglas DeMaio 30 Apr '25

30 Apr '25

openSUSE Leap 16.0 Beta is now available! Built from SUSE Linux Enterprise 16 and Framework One, Leap continues as a stable, full-featured Linux distribution. Try the new Agama installer, Wayland-only support, and modern tools. Leap Micro 6.2 now shares the same release cycle—perfect for containerized workloads. Test it today and help us find bugs and enhance the release. Read about it at https://news.opensuse.org/2025/04/30/leap-16-enters-beta/

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Pull request for landing page
by Douglas DeMaio 30 Apr '25

30 Apr '25

Hi all, I received a pull request to update the landing page opensuse.org and here is a preview of what it would lok like https://opensuse-landing-demo.netlify.app/ I appreciate the contribution from pieterdd in the PR, which you can find at https://github.com/openSUSE/landing-page/pull/270 I like the simplicity of it, the design and I like the links at the bottom. I'm curious to see what everyone thinks. Is any feedback we can provide to this PR? v/r Doug

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Meeting reminder: openSUSE Board meeting next Monday (14:30 Europe/Berlin)
by openSUSE Meeting Reminder 26 Apr '25

26 Apr '25

Hello all, The biweekly board conf call will be held in two days at 14:30 Europe/Berlin time 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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Board meeting minutes 2025-03-17
by Jeff Mahoney 17 Apr '25

17 Apr '25

= Board Meeting Monday 2025-03-17 14:30 CET = * Present: Gerald, Ish, Jeff, Rachel, Shawn, Simon * Excused: * Missed: * Minutes: Jeff == Moderation / Conflict resolution == * Email sent by Gerald (on behalf of the board) - Gerald will integrate feedback from Shawn and send == Wiki CoC violation == * a wiki CoC violation was raised * AI: Jeff to follow up * https://code.opensuse.org/board/tickets/issue/93 - Wiki edit was reverted - Initial update contained more of a personal opinion rather than representative of the community == openSUSE Membership Database == * Ish reviews the current situation using his experience as an election official * During elections, many attempts at communication via email are undeliverable * Membership email addresses and IDP account email addresses are out of sync * This used to be handled by "Connect" but that project has been shut down by Heroes * "Emeritus" membership for members who had past contributions but have been idle for some time * Manually reviewing is a huge task * Tool for managing elections is currently direct database access using SQL calls * Interest in creating a web platform to make this more usable * Same platform would be used to apply for membership * Using IDP directly is currently not practical, given SUSE's management of the platform * 40% of members are actually active * Discussion continuing on what constitutes an active contributing member * Previous discussion around creating emeritus members https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/project@lists.opensuse.org/message… == No Reminder email still == * Neal kindly updated the script and submitted a change request * Christian kindly tweaked and applied that Gerald following up with the Heroes - Python 3 issues. -- Jeff Mahoney VP Engineering, Linux Systems

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Reminder meeting : openSUSE Board meeting next Monday (14:00 Europe/Berlin)
by openSUSE Meeting Reminder 14 Apr '25

14 Apr '25

Hello all, The biweekly board conf call will be held in two days at 14:00 Europe/Berlin time (CET = UTC+2) 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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Board meeting minutes: 2025-03-03 14:30 CET
by Ish Sookun 26 Mar '25

26 Mar '25

= Board Meeting Monday 2025-03-03 14:30 CET = * Present: Gerald, Ish, Jeff, Rachel, Shawn, Simon * Excused: * Minutes: Ish == IT Topics == * Jeff is in touch with SUSE IT on tools used by SUSE development and openSUSE, including Bugzilla ** Private Bugs within SUSE Development are not by community bug reporters. ** Authentication / IDP * Discussed challenges to separate community authentication from SUSE IDP * AI Shawn to reach out to the Heroes for Authentication on the community's side ** https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Heroes

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Discount on SUSE eLearning for openSUSE Members
by Douglas DeMaio 20 Mar '25

20 Mar '25

Hi all, I reached out to SUSE's learning team and SUSE is offering openSUSE members a 20% discount on its eLearning platform. This came in response to a community request. The Coupon Code is TRAIN2025, which can be used at checkout. It will expire in the fall, but I'll reach out to them again for a newer code. If you want to share an article about it, you can find it at https://news.opensuse.org/2025/03/19/suse-extends-elearning-discount/ V/R, Doug

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