Hi, The following message is sent on behalf of the openSUSE Board. Following on from the recent discussion on this mailing list, the board's purpose is to: * Facilitate communication with all areas of the community * Facilitate decision making processes where needed * Initiate discussions about new project wide initiatives We do not believe it is solely the board's responsibility to move discussions forward; the strength of open-source projects comes from the community, as demonstrated by the number of really good ideas and suggestions we've seen in the discussions up to this point. As such we would like to create a working group to examine the following topics in more detail: * Models for project governance * Models for smother operations within the project * Resources required to successfully rebrand the project The goal of this working group is to create detailed proposals around these topics to focus further discussion within the broader community. By having a designated place for these discussions, we can both ensure that the discussion stays focused and on track, and that everyone who wants to participate has the opportunity to contribute. We would like the group to come back to the wider project via the project mailing list with a range of possible options within 90 days. While not changing anything is an option, it's not something that this working group should focus on, as we know what that looks like. The idea is to bring some alternate ideas back to the community. For example, the wiki page about the board[1] provides a guide to what the current board should be focused on, while the board election rules[2] provide the closest thing we have to a "constitution". This working group should work to create alternate versions of these, which will make it easier to understand what change might look like. The role of this working group isn't necessarily to reach a consensus on one proposal. Multiple suggestions have been put forward on the mailing list, and the working group can use those ideas to create multiple options that can be fleshed out and presented back to the greater openSUSE community as options to discuss and, ultimately, choose from. The reason to centralize these efforts in one space is to ensure meaningful discussions amongst the workgroup so that community avoids isolated spaces for this discussion that have a propensity to hinder progressing this topic forward. The discussion about the project's identity and branding is a difficult one to have without understanding the resources necessary to properly rebrand, what resources will be available, and where those resources come from - including what SUSE is willing and able to provide. The board has asked members of the forum and moderation teams to create a space for discussion. This space can be found here[3]. Participation in this space will require requesting access for participation, though the discussions themselves are publicly visible. This is to ensure that discussions stay on-topic and focused, and that everyone understands the ground rules for participation. We encourage those who are interested in these discussions to get involved in the discussion there. 1. https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board 2. https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election_rules 3. https://forums.opensuse.org/c/special-discussions/project-discussions