On 7/11/24 12:43, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:
Op woensdag 10 juli 2024 18:43:23 CEST schreef Henne Vogelsang:
I'm catching-up on emails...
Hey,
On 10.07.24 18:28, Tony Walker wrote:
I am a new person who is moving from years and years as a Debian user. I found Tumbleweed and decided to (slowly) get involved. While I did appear out-of-blue, I am very unusual and agree with Shawn.
Leaving Debian for OpenSUSE was a long journey worth discussing, but the much looser structure and communication caused me to pause.
And why did you pause? :-)
Like a lot of contributors, I am want to help a lot of people, be part of a well-functioning team, and be part of project that solves problems. Debian certainly has had far, far too many bar-fights, but OpenSUSE doesn't seem better to me. As you say elsewhere in this email chain, there are lots of problems that need to be solved, too much bickering, and not enough solutions. Bingo!
I have seen the entire ecosystem benefit from formalization of communication, structure, and governance over the years. In my opinion, it was necessary for the entire Linux ecosystem to become the world-scale team-effort it is today. A lot of contributors and users find the stability of that structure very comforting.
Your response can be taken as condescending, misses an important opportunity, and otherwise misses the point. Let's break it down.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by the "Linux ecosystem". However, let's assume you mean the Libre Software community.
OpenSUSE is a distribution that packages a the kernel and lots of software. Whether we are comparing distributions only, including the kernel, or all Libre software, the outcome is the same. I will come to that in a bit. You might be asking a legitimate question; however, the above paragraph seems overly pedantic. After reading it several times, I still feel like this a rhetorical trick often used to silence people. I don't care whether you like the work libre or the phrases OSS, FOSS, or FLOSS. I won't be baited into going into a never-ending argument of increasing minutia. Again, I will freely admit that I have completely misunderstood you.
What formalization of "communication, structure, and governance" are you talking about?
I was a Gentoo user when Robbins was forced out. I also attended a talk he gave shortly after that. I also remember when ESR wrote his essay on Linus being gifted (and undisciplined). Surely we all remember Heartbleed? These are just a few of the many bits of history I remember off-the-top-of-my-head. Again, this seems overly pedantic and a rhetorical trick. I don't care if you like these examples or not. I won't argue about them. But let's just one... The consternation around Linus, the question of what would happen if he was hit by a bus, and that so much was in-his-head did lead to a series of changes that help corporations and large institutions feel more secure in adopting and contribution to the kernel. If you really want another, Debian started as a one-man project. It isn't now. That's the main point.
You already noticed that Debian and openSUSE have very different "communication, structure, and governance".
You really missed the mark here. Not only do you seem to think I am stupid, you missed a big opportunity. I hoped that the wise project elders would take the opportunity to discuss things that are broken AND OFFER PROPOSALS FOR SOLUTIONS! You literally complained about exactly that. Recall your question about what gives me pause. Look at any other project
and you will find more variation of "communication, structure, and governance".
Let's see I started with Slackware and one million floppy disks. Then I ran Red Hat. I also ran FreeBSD in the mid to late 1990's. I switched to Gentoo. Sampled Ubuntu . Switched to Debian when I had enough CPU and RAM that I didn't need the Gentoo optimizations. I ran Debian primarily for about 20 years. I still used RHEL, Fedora, Ubuntu, and others as needed for work. Recently, I tried Ubuntu, Fedora, and RHEL as a Debian replacement. Each of those 3 topics is a very big and allows for
countless variations for people to choose from.
Yes, you had a lot of choices to take to have a discussion that leads to SOLUTIONS for the things that bother you. Too bad.
Henne
If getting new contributors ( like Tony is fyi )is that important, IMNSHO approaching them like this doesn't help.
Gertjan seems to be doing a really good job recruiting people. He offers advice that is worth considering. -- Tony Walker <tony.walker.iu@gmail.com> PGP Key @ https://tonywalker1.github.io/pgp 9F46 D66D FF6C 182D A5AC 11E1 8559 98D1 7543 319C