On Monday 05 October 2015 08:02:17 Andrew Wafaa wrote:
I strongly disagree with the assertion that openSUSE is a single vendor community. Yes, SUSE is our Foundational sponsor but this does not preclude any other vendor from participating in whatever shape or form they desire.Just look at the bottom of our homepage. SUSE may influence how things happen, but they by no means dictate what does/does not go on.
SUSE doesn't dictate what is going on, because SUSE has committed to an open development model. That allows others to participate and benefit, individuals as well as companies. But SUSE still clearly is the dominant player there, isn't it? Can you quantify to what degree the sponsors listed at the bottom of our homepage contribute compared to SUSE?
Now SUSE has made a strong commitment to running openSUSE as open project and letting the community take control about a lot of what is happening following the principles of open source. This takes building conventions, procedures, and communication structures to enable the community to work effectively in an open way.
Yes and it's not only a verbal commitment, and we the Board make sure that they are reminded of that commitment regularly.
If there is more than what is published on the web site and in the Wiki, it would be great to add it. Transparency is an important factor for an open community such as openSUSE. Could you dig that up, what you are referring to?
To me it sounds like you're trying to bring up the discussion of an official Foundation again, a topic that you were strongly opposed to.
I'm still opposed to an official foundation, because I know first hand that it
draws a lot of energy and can be quite a distraction. So unless there is no
other way, I would always recommend to not do it. openSUSE has SUSE to take
care of the things a foundation would usually cover.
And that's the whole point I want to make in this thread. Let's focus on doing
the great work the openSUSE community does, let's create our distributions and
get them to users. Let's not get distracted by formalities and bureaucracy.
We are in the luxurious position that we have SUSE as organization behind the
project. That provides us safety and power. We do need to take care of our
culture, but this is about communication and we can do that effectively
without having to introduce a lot of formal rules.
--
Cornelius Schumacher