Hello, Am Freitag, 3. Juli 2020, 08:20:26 CEST schrieb Carsten Hoyer:
Whilst I am not a member sadly and not allowed to vote, I am a long- time user and I have some professional experience in governance, management and legal questions. I would like to let you know, if any of you wish to consider a non-member opinion whilst voting, that I respectfully disagree to the below.
That's ok - I don't expect everybody to agree with me, and even if we clearly disagree, I won't take that in any negative way. Actually I'm always happy to hear different opinions ;-)
The best for OpenSUSE would be to move on from the unprofessional infighting and baseless accusations, to continue working with the professional board we already have
Well, that's your opinion of the current board and the events during the last months. Sadly it doesn't match what happened, and I don't think that for example shouting down and kicking out a newly elected board member - and even shouting down any attempt to explain the claimed offense - matches the description of a "professional board" :-( If someone would have asked me in January if I'll ever resign from the board, then I would have called that person insane and told him/her that this will never happen. I'd be *very* happy if I could still think this way - but then the board did the above-mentioned things (and some more that never became public) that were completely against my principles and beliefs. This gave me some sleepless nights, and I had a hard fight with myself (and a discussion with the other board members) before I finally decided to resign. Needless to say that this was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to take - and still, I'm sure that resigning was the right thing to do.
and focus on actual project questions and challenges that lie ahead.
That's something I fully agree with, and from what I see at various places, nothing can stop our contributors :-) - for example (and that's just the most visible thing), we just released Leap 15.2.
It should be clear for everyone that the Board is not and shouldn't be a closed shop where individuals can only follow their personal agenda, it is a governance body, where some basic governance skills and abilities are required, as well as a professional manner. Given the style and content of messages and communication of a small number of ex-members of the Board, who whish to topple this current Board, those members are not suitable for a governance position and should never have been a Board member in the first place.
No offence taken, but please have a look at the responses to the resignation mails again, and then tell me if you are still sure about this statement (especially the last two lines) ;-) Also have a look at what some of the current board members wrote in public - I remember some mails that (diplomatically spoken) didn't match the communication style you'd expect from a board or community member :-( I also remember at least one public mail from a current board member that would have been worth a complaint for a code of conduct violation - but I didn't file such a complaint because a) I didn't want to add more fuel to the fire and b) such a complaint with me as sender would come with a strange smell.
The non-confidence vote seems to serve solely their own, personal agenda without any consideration that it may further damage the OpenSUSE project.
I know I might look (or even be) biased, but I can assure you that my primary concern is a good future of the openSUSE project, not any personal interest.
Please all keep in mind that we are not isolated - the outside world is following the trials and tribulations within the project and the fallout of continued infighting may be severe.
I know that a full board re-election would cause some fallout. OTOH, there were some board actions that clearly damaged openSUSE and already caused severe fallout. Therefore I'm quite sure that a clean restart would be much better for openSUSE than continuing with the current board. (And that's something I don't write easily.) Just for completeness: The non-confidence petition wasn't started by me or another ex-board member. I also avoided to take part in the discussion as much as possible [1] to avoid influncing the public opinion too much, and I'm sure I could easily have influenced the discussion much more.
OpenSUSE will be stuck in the past if this continues, lose members and users, or, at least, not be able to efficiently manage the future challenges and to grow further.
The same - especially loosing contributors - can also happen if the current board stays. (And I hope we are both wrong with that fear.) There's also a point I agree with you: having such an issue pending over months is indeed a serious problem. Without intending to blame anyone [2] - it took too long until the voting started. So - in whatever way this vote ends, the important thing is that we come to an end, can continue the good work on openSUSE and, most important, can live our motto "Have a lot of fun" again ;-) Regards, Christian Boltz PS: Carsen, looking at one of your later mails, I hope that - while we obviously disagree - this mail doesn't add to your dissatisfaction with the tone on this mailinglist. [1] Yes, "as much as possible" is obviously based on my personal judgement, and if someone disagrees with that, that's more than ok. [2] I can imagine that this wasn't easy for the election officials, and while I don't know much of what was going on, I know a few (non-public) bits that indicate that there were (also?) reasons outside of the election officials that caused some delay. -- In most cases, XSLT is good enough. But I agree, for some parts you need Aspirin. ;-) [Thomas Schraitle in opensuse-doc] -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org