On 2011-12-02 11:09:32 (+0100), jdd
Reading the Pascal platform, I was concerned by his declaration about foundation. Not to say he's not right :-)
Well it's just my opinion (ok, not just mine), it's definitely open for debate, and I'm fine being proven wrong :) The only thing I would really like to see happening is a discussion about it. I firmly believe it was the right thing to do at the time where we took that decision, but I'm not convinced it still is right now: the situation has changed. Let's just make sure we're taking that decision in the current context for the right reasons, correctly weighing the pros and cons, not just because we started doing it.
I simply think that some ideas have to be discussed and may be the moment is there because it have impact on the vote for the board.
Does it? How so? :) You mean that if you disagree with what I wrote about the foundation, you wouldn't vote for me? :) There is really a lot more at stakes than the foundation, and whatever happens with the initiative to have a foundation depends on the opinion of everyone on the board, not just of a single person. I believe that the debate should happen (on whether we actually need one, or rather on whether having a foundation is the better option right now), with me on the board or not ;) And as said, it's not just me, there's at least Coolo and Cornelius who have the same view, as they were the ones who prodded me about it. I don't believe the in-depth discussion should happen right now though, let's keep that for after the board election. The then members of the board will hopefully have that discussion amongst themselves first, and then possibly have a discussion in a broader public. Or not, that's to the discretion of the members of the board.
* initially, the foundation was seen as a fund raiser. May be this is the error.
How is that an error? The idea was to 1) have a foundation to solve the most pressing issue: * budget under control of the community (through its board) * have the possibility of getting financially funded through other sponsors as well as individuals 2) start with that, which is already really tricky to get right, and not aim for "complete independence, own the trademarks, etc..." or whatever else one might think of, because that would be even more difficult, and a lot less likely to turn out into anything (so we wouldn't even solve problem #1) I believe it is the most practical and realistic option. What I wrote on my platform page is that the foundation has become a proverbial white horse, where everyone has a different understanding of what the foundation should do, control, decide, etc... That is definitely not good, but hard to get right, as it needs a lot of communication, over and over again. And it's not good because most people will inevitably be deceived by the result.
* the other openSOURCE project (Fedora, for example) have a structure, why should it be impossible for us (I mean why should it be so difficult to find people to manage it)
What do you mean with "structure" ? A top-down structure in who gets to decide what ? Or are you relating to a foundation ? The foundation has nothing to do with structure, in any way. NB: Fedora had a non-for-profit foundation for a short while, then killed it off again.
* one of the problem I see now in our work is that volunteers can see they work as a work for free in the benefit of the sponsor.
Sure, and the sponsors are investing a lot into the project too. For an idea on a few of them, please read what I wrote in my reply to Henne's questions to candidates :) http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-project/2011-12/msg00023.html
Don't read me bad. I like the way our sponsor help us, but the truth is we have absolutely no control on the ressource and this is not good. People who work should have some control. Of course we have to work in sinergy: make the sponsor happy is a good thing, but we should have an independent voice also.
Every single person in the project is an independent voice, including those who work for SUSE. It is precisely about synergy, it must be a "win-win scenario" (gah, did I just write that ? ¬¬) to work. Let's be realistic, it's the same with every other major open source project. Is it any different for Fedora, Ubuntu, Mandriva or Debian? (Debian has a somewhat different situation, because there isn't much of a "one big sponsor" (although... HP? :)) but still, many who work on Debian are paid to do so by sponsors.) You simply need a lot of money to run the show. Infrastructure (build, hosting), funding for travels, promo material, ... And, with a certain size (amount of contributors and users), you also need people who are paid full-time to work on it. So any sort of independence is always relative. But hey, don't be pessimistic: we (contributors) have a lot to put into the balance too. It is definitely not in SUSE's interests to piss us off by taking decisions or routes that go against the opinion or interests of a majority of the contributors. It's synergy and, by definition, it goes both ways. The critical thing we have to pay attention to here is to have a trustful and honest flow of communication going both ways.
* That's why I would like to see a "friends of openSUSE" non profit group as, for example, there are several for my ISP. These/this group could share free comments and make the basis for a may be future foundation. Of course this group would in no way receive massive amount of money nor hold the openSUSE name ownership, but could share and collect non official information (in both direction, to and from SUSE).
Umm... could you please explain what you mean with "non official information" ? Do you think there is some sort of paranoia master plan to go against the interests of the community ? Do you think that SUSE is holding back information ? I mean, the idea is interesting for funding (but I can tell you, it's going to be great fun with the tax office), but to "share free comments" ? And a future foundation must be a non-for-profit, which means elections. A foundation for the project *must* also have legitimacy, and trust, or it would be pointless. cheers -- -o) Pascal Bleser /\\ http://opensuse.org -- we haz green _\_v http://fosdem.org -- we haz conf