Dear all, looks like xmas was a quiet time for new candidates, but the first week is getting busy! Already 4 applicants for 3 seats - lets make it 5. Herewith I apply for a seat in the openSUSE Board tl:dr Dr.-Ing. Axel Braun, nickname DocB electrical engineer by education, working as business consultant and project lead on software (mostly SAP/ERP) implementations mature age :-) Linux, openSUSE and KDE user since S.u.S.E. 5.3 Member of openSUSE community since 2010 Package maintainer for GNU Health, Tryton ERP Framework and various other packages Why Board: Serve, support and develop the openSUSE community, promote openSUSE as user-friendly and powerful distribution *Long Version* I have detailed out some personal computer and Linux history on my connect page [0] In the more than 20years I use Linux now, I tried various other distributions, but always returned to openSUSE. Since around 2 years I use Tumbleweed on my workhorse, a T520 Laptop, and very happy with it. openSUSE makes it quite easy for less experienced users to maintain their system, and this is the focus in the things I do within the community: making life easier for end-users. In 2013 I had the need for an (ideally free) ERP system, and while it was way too hard to install this from source, I started packaging it in OBS. After some time, Application:ERP:Tryton became an official repository. Currently there are 5 versions (3.8, 4.0, 4.2, 4.4, 4.6) with each around 120 packages maintained, and as announced during oSC 2018 [1], I'm looking for a successor for this. In between I'm concentrating more on GNU Health [2,3], which is now part of the standard Leap distribution. Additionally we had a Live-CD on Studio, but due to the shutdown and lack of time, this is currently not maintained. Nevertheless, I'm very happy to see how the two communities work together, and are sharing efforts to support healthcare on a free software basis. openSUSE is in between the platform, on which it is easiest to set-up and run GNU Health on, as all dependencies are resolved automatically, and the required setup-steps are handled by a script. This helps the medical doctor in Mali, who is not very technical, but leaves all option to the power users and admins in case they need to set up a database cluster.... A couple of new Python-packages for openSUSE were one of the side effects of packaging GNU Health and Tryton. *Why running for the board?* Serve, support and develop the openSUSE community, promote openSUSE as user-friendly and powerful distribution (Hm, did I say that already?) Generally speaking, the usage of Free and Open Source Software is an ethical imperative considering the proprietary spyware products ('mainstream') on the market. The four freedoms [4] leave the choice to the user, increasing his privacy and security. I fully support the openSUSE guiding principles [5], not only in the area of freedom. openSUSE is free software, and leaves the choice to the user to install unfree/proprietary additionally. This is clearly separated from each other, and this is not the case in all distributions. Thats what lifts openSUSE among others. This is one of the angles, next to the user-friendliness, where openSUSE is one of the most underrated distributions. We should try to change this, with our helpful and friendly community as multiplicator. A good community makes a big difference, and I want to help in developing this further. Additional to this, I have some experiences in leading teams in commercial and non-commercial environments, which may be a benefit as well. *Any questions?* Feel free to ask! Have a good time Axel [0] https://connect.opensuse.org/pg/profile/docb [1] https://media.ccc.de/v/1708-gnu-health-on-opensuse-a-community-view around minute 44:15 [2] http://health.gnu.org/home [3] https://build.opensuse.org/project/show/Application:ERP:GNUHealth [4] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html [5] https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Guiding_principles