On Thursday 20 May 2010 21:22:53 Marcus Moeller wrote:
Hi all.
I have noticed the Strategy Discussion on the news:
http://news.opensuse.org/2010/05/20/opensuse-strategy-meeting/
and would like to share some ideas. As I was off for quite a while (helping out on Fedora/CentOS as well, e.g. organizing this years FUDCon EMEA) I want to point those who don't remember me to my personal page on the wiki, first: http://en.opensuse.org/User:MarcusMoeller
But now back to the topic. The SWOT doc already contains some useful information, but first question I would like to ask is what are you heading for?
Imho there are two major points: the product itself and the community around it.
We'd like to create a strategy overall that includes the distribution, the tools - especially the build service - and for sure the community around them.
I have picked up some imported points from the SWOT and commented below:
Please keep in mind that the SWOT is the result of a brainstorming session - completly unfiltered or edit - and not a scientific text. So, I'm sure it contains a couple of errors.
W: Novell is not seen - like Red Hat - as Open Source friend `-> this is definitely true. Maybe Novell could act as Sponsor for more oS events. But first of all, Novell should communicate their aims
This is an interesting question in itself. Will throwing money at Open Source events help here?
clearly (besides 'We support Linux, as long we are making money from it', which is what a large part of the community thinks). Besides
Novell builds it's future on Open Source and that's more than supporting it. It sure wants to make some money with it otherwise I wouldn't get paid ;).
that, recently announced Novell products like 'ZENworks Application Virtualization' are only available for Windows and there are no clear statements if there will be a Linux version available, ever (which Red Hat clearly communicated to their community/customers with their latest virtualization product RHEV, where all components will be available for Linux, too.)
S: decent .net support with mono (?) `-> this is only visible for a real small part of the community. Most of them does not really accept the joint-venture with M$ (which has not been communicated very well in the past) and see not benefits in Mono. We have to point out the real advantages of interoperability, here. Maybe some good example (maybe even commercial) .NET apps that work on Windows as well as on Linux would help.
W: Bad QA `-> I once brought up the idea of an open QA group, where every interested contributor could take part. Afterwards it has been announced, but with limited slots (afair 30 ppl) Why that? If ppl want to contribute, please let them! Maybe: http://en.opensuse.org/Testing_Team has to be re-introduced, either in the news or in weekly newsletter. (which would be in general a good idea, to introduce team and is how we handle it at CentOS)
the 30 people was a result of the decision to use testopia - and we're currently going through a security audit so that we can open it up for everybody. 30 people was the *core* team - and I think it makes sense to start with a small team. Contribution is possible by everybody with reporting bugs. I expect this limitation to go away and if that does not happen soon, let's look for alternative tools that don't limit us!
W: lots of cool features are not documented, thus not used or integrated `-> At Fedora, the artwork team recently introduced the one page release notes, which contains the highlights of the newly released distribution. I would suggest to create one for oS, too (we need a good designer and one who has some Scribus knowledge for that, maybe gnokii or jimmac could help out there.)
Interesting idea - could you discuss that one on the opensuse-marketing list, please?
T: Distribution becomes a commodity and all distributions become more or less equal `-> yeah, it would be nice to only have one distro in the future, but I guess that won't happen :)
It won't happen soon indeed. Today more and more is done upstream instead of part of a distribution which is a good move - and that means some differences disappear.
S: no appstore `-> Gamestore could be taken as base. Pavol already did some nice work on that.
W: factory not very usable `-> I would suggest to release less, but better tested milestones and RCs
Another interesting point - let's discuss it separately.
W: no openSUSE community manager even when there is an openSUSE community manager `-> I think that's not fair for zonker. He had some good ideas and
As I've said this is an unfiltered version of brainstorm - not the consensus of the complete team.
spent a lot of effort in different areas. Maybe he was just not that known/visible outside the openSUSE community (and maybe even inside). I would also suggest to remove spotlight.os.org, lizards.os.org and only use the planet and the news. Besides that news should be also announced on social networks like identi.ca and linux.com. I spent
Do you follow @openSUSE on identi.ca? News are announced there.
some effort on that, but was quite alone, till now. (Besides that, if you like my ideas, you could try to hire me, but only part-wise as I like my main job :))
Join us in the marketing team and discuss your idea, please!
W: no organized (language-)local communities, nothing that connects them to the openSUSE.org project; Ambassadors not functional `-> the ambassadors project started quite chaotic. The main complaints where missing swag and support from Novell. But the groundwork has been done now and this is where the plants will grow.
Yes, for sure!
W: not enough presence on universities (but that applies for FOSS in general ...) `-> we are already doing oS install fests twice a year (on new students laptops) here at the ETH where usually about 40 ppl attend. Maybe we could just communicate it better, to motivate others to do the same. (Btw. asked for swag this year, but did not even get a reply since zonker is gone).
Mmh, I'm the default contact here and I try to answer everybody that asks - sorry if that one fell through.
O: alot of control ceded to the community in the past year and just need to be taken `-> this needs to be described clearly. Which are the areas where ppl can contribute?
The list of areas where people cannot contribute right now is far smaller - and we're working hard to make that list empty ;). So, assume that you can contribute everywhere :-)
E.g. package maintaining is very unstructured. first of all there has to be a mentor process, clear package guidelines, followed by a review process. Every approved packager should be able to do package reviews, afterwards, despises which 'package group' he/she is packaging for.
If you enough packagers like to go this way, then let's go for it and document the process etc.
Mentoring is necessary for the Ambassadors project as well.
Yes.
T: next gen is not interested in low-level stuff such as OSes any more, so we'll get an old community ... `-> Maybe not an OS community but at least a Ruby one :)
S: boosters team `-> clearly communicate what they are doing or hide it completely from the public. What's happening now is quite worse. (e.g. website updates not announced, will the wiki content be moved over via script or manually, as saigkill already started to move the weekly news manually, how is wiki i18n handled in the future). All that could be avoided with communication. If necessary, one needs to be hired blogging about what boosters are doing, regularly. A FAQ for the website renewal would also help.
So nough said for today (which is only a minimal subset of my ideas :))
Better bring them in one by one so that we can discuss and implement them without losing track ;) Thanks! Please note that the strategy discussion looks at the big picture first - and then we'll have to see what this means for all the details, Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, Program Manager openSUSE, aj@{novell.com,opensuse.org} Twitter: jaegerandi | Identica: jaegerandi SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126