Hi Sarah, I feel there are a number of factual inaccuracies and tonal concerns I wish to raise with your answers
Background: I was asked really often at open source events how another company can sponsor openSUSE. We had to say that it would not possible because all of our money is going via a SUSE credit card and the money would be lost (same with the GSoC money, which has to be transferred to other organizations because of this issue). No company wants to pay Open Source Developers with such a background of an open-source project. Therefore, most openSUSE Contributors are working for SUSE or SUSE Business Partners. This topic popped up more than 3 times during my last Board Membership (really created by SUSE employees each time!).
There are a number of other ways besides money that other companies and projects can, do, and have sponsored openSUSE. I disagree with the implication in the above that openSUSE is not able to recieve any such sponsorship. Obviously I agree that direct monetary sponsorship is currently problematic, but given openSUSE is rarely short of money for the activities we do, I do not think it's the highest priority for the Project at this time.
Solution: Creation of the foundation! I had to suggest this solution more than 3 times before that was accepted by SUSE employees in the Board. I told about all the benefits how we can manage our own money then, receive new sponsors, SUSE can use more money for their own, SUSE can sponsor us continuously and we would be able to receive more Contributors.
The idea of an openSUSE Foundation has been a recurring topic for the openSUSE Project since before 2011. I outright reject the statement that you "had to suggest this solution more than 3 times that was was accepted by SUSE employees in the Board". There is no difference between the Board members who are democratically elected by the community, and I think it is inappropirate for a potential Board member of to express a "them vs us" outlook between those elected Board members employed by a certain company and those who are not.
2) openSUSE infrastructure in Provo Background: I am one of the Founders of the openSUSE Heroes Team and was allowed to coordinate our first wiki project between Germany and Provo. The openSUSE infrastructure is in Microfocus hands and they need very long to respond on issues and we are not allowed to receive access as a community. Additionally, SUSE is not part of Microfocus any more which makes it more difficult to receive good support in the future. Solution 1: Migration of all openSUSE systems from Provo to Nuremberg / Prague (perhaps missing space?) Solution 2: Migration of all openSUSE systems from Provo to any German hosting data centre with access for openSUSE Heroes
It is my personal and professional experience that issues I report to admin@opensuse.org are no more likely to be resolved if they relate to openSUSE infrastructure in Nuremberg than if they related to openSUSE infrastructure in Provo. openSUSE also recently experienced a prolonged outage of one piece infrastructure hosted by a German hosting data centre with access for openSUSE heroes. Therefore I disagree that moving anything from Provo to Nuremberg or anywhere else is mandatory or necessarily helpful in order to fix anything. I agree that openSUSE needs to have vastly improved support of its infrastructure, but I do not think the Board should be demanding the details of what steps should be taken to reach that solution. I strongly feel the details should be left to the volunteers and sponsors who will be responsible for providing that support.
3) Bad reputation of openSUSE Leap & openSUSE Tumbleweed Background: We are the openSUSE project with many different sub- projects. We don’t offer only Linux distributions, but we are well known for that and most people are associating us with that. I had given many presentations about openSUSE during my last Board Membership and represented us at different open source events. The existing openSUSE Board does not do that very much. They have another focus at the moment. Solution: We need more openSUSE Contributors representing openSUSE and I can do that as an openSUSE Board Member again. After that, we can be one of the top Linux distributions again. 😉
I disagree that you need to be a Board member in order to represent openSUSE and I dislike the implication that those two roles are somehow linked. I think it would be a much better to encorage that anyone can, and should, represent openSUSE regardless of their status in the Project.
3. What should the board do differently / more of?
The existing openSUSE Board is working mostly on the topic with the foundation. That is good. Thank you! But the role of a Board Member contains the representation of the community, too. We would have one less risk with that.
As I state above, I agree the Project needs more ambassadors, advocates, and cheerleaders but I think the representation of openSUSE can and should be handled by anyone in the Project. I'd rather see Board members spend their time on tasks requiring the trust and responsibility vested in them by the electorate. I hope my fellow voters elect people based on their ability to handle tasks the community could not otherwise easily solve themselves. Regards, -- Richard Brown Linux Distribution Engineer - Future Technology Team Phone +4991174053-361 SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, D-90409 Nuernberg (HRB 36809, AG Nürnberg) Geschäftsführer: Felix Imendörffer -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org