On 4 October 2015 at 23:06, Cornelius Schumacher <cschum@suse.de> wrote:
On Sunday 04 October 2015 11:50:51 Richard Brown wrote:
KDE e.V and the GNOME Foundation for example have Boards. These boards are elected by a subset of their wider community, which in both cases call themselves 'Members'.
The comparison with KDE e.V. and the GNOME Foundation is misleading. The organizations and the governance are very different from what we have in openSUSE.
For both KDE and GNOME, the non-profit organizations are the legal representative of the community. The organizations own the assets of the community and they are the only formal body providing governance. They have formal power and responsibility. That's why they have a formal structure with all the required rules and legal consequences.
I don't think it is misleading at all, we model ourselves on those well established projects that many of our members also participate in. While openSUSE may not own assets, IIRC we do have legal guarantees that SUSE will not change in any way assets that the project requires (I would need to go through my archives to confirm, but I'm fairly certain of it).
openSUSE is a single-vendor community. Its assets are owned by SUSE. From a purely legal point of view the governance is very simple: SUSE controls what is happening under the openSUSE name. The company has all the formal power, such as owning the trademarks, the domains, the servers, financing events, employing core contributors, etc.
I strongly disagree with the assertion that openSUSE is a single vendor community. Yes, SUSE is our Foundational sponsor but this does not preclude any other vendor from participating in whatever shape or form they desire.Just look at the bottom of our homepage. SUSE may influence how things happen, but they by no means dictate what does/does not go on.
Now SUSE has made a strong commitment to running openSUSE as open project and letting the community take control about a lot of what is happening following the principles of open source. This takes building conventions, procedures, and communication structures to enable the community to work effectively in an open way.
Yes and it's not only a verbal commitment, and we the Board make sure that they are reminded of that commitment regularly.
When we wrote the guiding principles our goal was to express this, to capture the values and the desired culture of the community as well as the commitment of SUSE. This is the base for the collaboration in the community. Later some more concrete procedures were added to define how the board elections are handled in detail, that's where the membership was introduced.
But the nature of the procedures we have is very different from those of a formal organizations which has legal rights and responsibilities. In openSUSE it's about communication, about social contracts, about culture, and conventions how to organize work. The role of the board is not about executing the necessary work to run a formal organization but about communication, especially with SUSE as the company standing behind the community.
The role of the openSUSE Board, just as it is with the GNOME/KDE Boards, is to executing the plans, discussions, and desires of the respective communities to the best of the Board's ability. There is no difference there. We may not have the same funding/legal cover as our peers, but we have the same remit - represent our community to the best of our ability. The problem arises when we that are elected by the community, and those within the community, no longer know who our constituents are. We don't have any state/county boundaries to cross, we don't have buses traveling around extolling our virtues. Communities are organic, they grow and shrink; one time our community is a fat healthy caterpillar, next it is a sleek dainty butterfly - neither is better, but both are just as important and crucial. Without taking stock of who is involved how are we all supposed to improve our community and move things forward?
I think this is the core of the discussion we are having here and had at other places before. We need to develop clarity about the kind of community we have, and not pretend we are something different.
To me it sounds like you're trying to bring up the discussion of an official Foundation again, a topic that you were strongly opposed to.
We have a huge asset with SUSE being behind openSUSE. There is alignment between SUSE's business interests and the interests of the community, so it helps SUSE to have this community and it helps the community to have SUSE. This provides a lot of momentum. It is a powerful setup. We should embrace it and focus on where we can make a tangible difference through openSUSE.
Yes we do, and we don't forget it, nor do we try to think it doesn't exist. I like to think that SUSE also knows and doesn't forget our relationship.
P.S.: Thanks for the good discussion. Debate can help to create insight, and I think this is happening here.
Whilst discussion is indeed good, let's try and not loose sight of what it is we are discussing. Regards, Andy
-- Cornelius Schumacher <cschum@suse.de> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
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