On 3/17/22 06:56, Axel Braun wrote:
Hello Simon,
On the original question i'm not going to say what board members should or shouldn't work on in there own time thats up to them. But as a project i'd be uncomfortable signing up to such a statement.
If you feel we need a vote on this, please mention this clearly.
Sure let me elaborate further, I don't think we should have a vote on this specific issue because that would set the precedence that we should do such for every issue. But before we sign such a thing as the project I believe we need to agree as a project to the new expanded scope of the project then it will be clear in any case such as this whether we as a project should sign up without needing to put it past members. If you consider the following which we wrote as a part of the charter for our foundation proposal: The openSUSE Foundation is a not for profit organisation that believes in empowering its Contributors so that the user community can benefit from the best, most-sustainable and most-innovative open source software. And from our wiki page: The openSUSE project is a worldwide effort that promotes the use of Linux everywhere. openSUSE creates one of the world's best Linux distributions, as well as a variety of tools, such as OBS, OpenQA, Kiwi, YaST, OSEM, working together in an open, transparent and friendly manner as part of the worldwide Free and Open Source Software community. The project is controlled by its community and relies on the contributions of individuals, working as testers, writers, translators, usability experts, artists and ambassadors or developers. The project embraces a wide variety of technology, people with different levels of expertise, speaking different languages and having different cultural backgrounds. Now compare that to the FSFE's Mission statement: Free Software Foundation Europe is a charity that empowers users to control technology. Software is deeply involved in all aspects of our lives. It is important that this technology empowers rather than restricts us. Free Software gives everybody the rights to use, understand, adapt, and share software. These rights help support other fundamental rights like freedom of speech, freedom of press, and privacy. Free Software Foundation Europe: helps individuals and organisations to understand how Free Software contributes to freedom, transparency, and self-determination. enhances users' rights by abolishing barriers to Free Software adoption. encourages people to use and develop Free Software. provides resources to enable everyone to further promote Free Software in Europe. While you could argue that the statement you'd like the project to sign fits under "The openSUSE project is a worldwide effort that promotes the use of Linux everywhere" at a stretch this action seems far more consistent with the FSFE's mission so before we go down this path i'd like to see the openSUSE Membership vote to adopt more of the language in the FSFE mission statement into our own to make it clear that this kind of advocacy is a core part of the project.
Maybe because in a past life I worked for a manufacturing company so I understand more choices mean significantly larger costs such as QA, warehousing more complex production processes all of which for choices that likely won't make that money back and would therefore impose a cost that would be passed onto all customers making things more expensive for everyone.
We talk about freedom here, and freedom is never for free (as we learn in Europe the hard way...). Coming form manufacturing and Supply Chain myself I would not overrate this. You may buy support for a free system, as you pay a license fee for a proprietary one. In the end it may be a draw.
I don't really think the focus here is Freedom, because the reality is I can buy pretty much any laptop / desktop where the manufacturer only ships Windows and I have complete freedom to install whatever OS I want and it won't impact my warranty etc. So freedom is largely already there on the other hand there are many other devices that have far less freedom and manufacturers that will actively try and block you from installing something else think most iOS and even Android devices gaming handhelds etc so if this really is about freedom why are you focusing on devices that have relative freedom already rather then ones that have none at all.
In reality the only way you could do something like this and actually have it work is not by requiring Vendors to "offer a choice" but rather a model where consumers could hand there OEM keys back to Microsoft and get a rebate in return.
That could be a potential second step as well. But it would still help only the educated consumers
I think this comes back to the other fundamental issue I see with this proposal which is if our products were truly good enough they would stand on there own and we wouldn't need government regulation to make it work. I am also concerned that this could easily create a negative image of openSUSE ie rather then openSUSE trying to create products that stand up they are bitter about Microsoft's dominance and are trying to use government regulation instead. Saying it would only help "Educated Customers" is also kinda saying that our marketing efforts to educate people have failed and now were taking the lazy approach of making the government educate people for us.
Like Richard I don't really think this sort of political activism is the current role of the openSUSE project but I think its a good thing that we support organizations such as FSFE who's roll it is to look at such things. I'd also be happy if a vote of members found that we should adjust our role / vision to include such things.
Our community members are free to decide where they put emphasis on - those who do, decide.
Yes they certainly are I don't disagree with that, but that is a very different proposition from the project as a whole signing onto something. Ie signing the partition as an openSUSE Project vs Individual members signing it and saying they are openSUSE Members. If you remember back to the FSF partitions last year this is much more like the Project deciding to sign one or the other vs individual members doing so. Its a completely different thing to me say deciding that I think the latest GNU Health should work on Leap so i'm going to sit down and work on getting it working. Just like members are free to work on a partition on a particular topic but the fact that a group of members work on such a thing doesn't mean that the project as a whole should endorse it. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B