Thanks for your email Agustin, below are my thoughts, responses, and further questions: On Wed, 2013-11-27 at 17:40 +0100, agustin benito bethencourt wrote:
What do we want to achieve? Goals =================================
1) Add focus to increase alignment among contributors.
Why? for what purpose and to what end? Does that alignment include finding ways to make openSUSE and SLE more aligned such as introduced by Ralf Flaxa at oSC 14? How do we address the obvious concern that adding 'focus' might disenfranchise contributors who do not agree with the chosen direction for that focus?
2) Foster the community and the user base. - Starting from our current community, we want to keep increasing the number of contributors, specially those working on core parts of the distribution/project.
Sounds good, I agree
- The openSUSE user base needs to grow. We propose to be even more open to new niches.
Why? More users is never a bad thing, but why do we *need* to grow the users? We could be a distribution by our contributors, for our contributors. What's the case that makes it clear we *need* to grow the number of users?
3) Catalyze openSUSE maturity process. - openSUSE has an interesting number of contributors. Now we think it is time to reinforce our structures.
What is 'interesting' about the number of contributors? They've doubled in 3 years http://lizards.opensuse.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/obs_data_crop.png
- Having more solid structures/groups will allow openSUSE to assume more responsibilities and deliver. - In general, we think we need few rules but good ones, easy to follow and analyze.
If we're talking about encouraging people to coalesce and work in 'Teams', similar to the way the GNOME team currently operates, I can certainly say it works very well for us and I can happily support the idea of promoting the approach to other parts of the Project.
4) Attract new players by becoming more attractive to new players. - The Free Software ecosystem is now full of companies/non-profits that use, deploy, develop and/or understand Free Software and its benefits. - We want to support ideas toward increasing our value for them so they come to openSUSE and become good citizens of the project.
An interesting idea, I'd certainly like to see/hear more about that.
Based on these goals, there are 4 aspects we propose to focus on:
Enhanced Factory ================
We would like to put effort in Factory in the following direction:
* New process getting the best of Factory, Tumbeweed and devel projects. We need everybody contributing in a single point for a single purpose. We are just too few to spread efforts.
I can certainly see the benefit of such an idea. Are we talking about effectively 'obsoleting' Tumbleweed by making this 'new Factory' a stable, usable, rolling release?
* Improve development process based on our strengths. What are we very good at? Let's base the new process on that.
What are we good at? That's a huge question that could be debated for some time. My opinion, put as briefly as possible, would be that we're best at being a 'Swiss-army knife' distribution - We're able to do everything (Desktop, Server, CrazyProject#942, whatever) well, meaning you can learn openSUSE in one environment and then apply that knowledge and use openSUSE in many other use cases. OBS really is a big part of that capability, with its support for building and publishing stuff as working 'add-in' repositories.
* Clarify roles and responsibilities. Redesign processes so we increase the community participation in key areas. Teams instead of champions.
Sounds good, but how about we aim for increasing community participation in *all* areas?
* More stability and QA. Testing before submitting. Factory should be usable.
* Rolling distribution based on release early/release often principle.
This proposal will be more in depth described tomorrow on Factory mailing list where we will expand the bullet points mentioned here.
Sounds good, I'm looking forward to it
Overhauled openSUSE Release ===========================
All sounds very ambitious. I'm interested in hearing more
Open Governance Model =====================
While I think I get where you're coming from and don't disagree with some of the specifics you're proposing (The evolution of SUSE from Owner to eventual Patron), I strongly believe that the Governance of the openSUSE Project is an issue for the openSUSE Board and our openSUSE Membership. I don't want the changes you've proposed to be seen as SUSE imposing its will on the Project. I hope your proposals will be seen by our members as food for thought, a starting point for discussion, which might possibly lead to changes down the road from here.
* Technical governance model adapted to our new development processes: very few but clearer rules. Mentoring ecosystem.
This is certainly an area I'm interested in seeing what the rest of our community feels. Our current Governance body (The Board) is strictly forbidden from making Technical decisions. I understand the philosophy for Technical Governance to date has largely been 'those who do, decide'. If changes are made in this area, I'd like to think they can keep that spirit, the idea anyone can get involved and that changes are made on their technical merits, not political ones (eg. does the submitter sit on the right steering group? who is their employer?)
Share your thoughts ===================
There are some questions we would like you to answer:
1) Do you agree with the proposed goals?
See my responses above. With the way they are currently presented, I would say that my agreement is 'mixed' with a general positive interest.
2) Are there any other aspects relevant in this discussion? Can you summarize them?
The openSUSE Team at SUSE are making a lot of proposals. Assuming broad community acceptance of these ideas, how much of this work are you expecting your team to shoulder, and how much of the burden will the 'wider community' be expected to pick up?
3) Which are the major risks you see in this view?
With the discussion from yesterdays thread still going on I think there is a risk of all of these ideas & thoughts & proposals getting 'lost' in each other, especially as its Thanksgiving for our American contributors. Once your promised mail about the changes to -factory hits tomorrow, I'd suggest at least a few days to let everyone digest this very large turkey dinner of new information and ideas. - see what I did there? :)
4) How do you think we should proceed in order to go from these ideas to real actions?
Let's start by talking about them first.. I'd really like to see what everyone else thinks about these large emails before I can really make any suggestion about a sensible next step.
5) What suggestions do you have for this "New Factory" and "New Release"?
I think I need to see the detailed proposal promised tomorrow for 'New Factory' before I can make any sensible suggestion. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org