* Bryen M Yunashko <suserocks@bryen.com> [2012-05-07 18:47]:
On Mon, 2012-05-07 at 17:07 +0200, Guido Berhoerster wrote:
I doubt that this has much practical significance due to the personnel overlap. The overwhelming majority of development work on the core distribution is already done by community members employed by SUSE, so this whole upstream - downstream distinction is more of a theoretical nature.
[*] e.g. ~80% of all changes to all Factory packages in 2010 and 2011 are authored by SUSE employees -- Guido Berhoerster
That's probably true statistically and probably will stay that way for some time. But I have witnessed many times over the years someone complaining about $something and when we tell them to contribute to a fix (knowing fully well that person has the capabilities) the person would respond with "that's SUSE's job, not the community's!"
You and I both know that openSUSE is not "SUSE's job" but everyone's job in the community. And openSUSE is billed as a "community-driven project." As long as we kept saying basis over the years, it was hard to convey and dispell such myths.
True, there seems to be a huge socket of people with just a handful of changes per year who probably maintain just a few packages or contribute a fix here and there. Due to OBS the hurdles to get involved or even to only make a drive-by contribution are probably lower than in any other major distro. Involvement of non-SUSE people is indeed only limited by the time they are able to invest, what I was pointing out is that the majority of work on the core distribution is still done by employees of the company that produces SLE.
With a simple word change "upstream" coupled by legitimate actions to demonstrate it, over time hopefully that attitude and perception will change. I believe the word change marks a significant step and not simply semantics, and I think what AJ and team are attempting to do also marks a significant step. Perhaps a year or two from now that 80% statistic will change. Not by decreasing SUSE contributions, but by increasing community contributions.
We can only hope and strive for that.
Fully agree since more diversity among contributors implies less dependence on the commercial success of its biggest sponsor. -- Guido Berhoerster -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org