On Tue, 2009-09-01 at 22:26 +0200, Christian Jäger wrote:
Am Dienstag, den 01.09.2009, 12:02 -0500 schrieb Bryen M Yunashko:
As Michl mentioned in his announcement, he did talk to the teams involved. In fact, what happened was that we, the Board, brought together representatives from each team to a meeting just before the decision was announced. The decision was already made by the time the announcement was made, and in hindsight that is regrettable. But, the focus of the meeting was specifically the intentions you have outlined.
Both sides identified their perceptions and feelings and we opened up a great dialogue. This discussion is by no means completed and we intend to further this discussion at the openSUSE Conference coming up in Nuremberg this month.
I believe from this meeting, we achieved greater understanding of each other. It was clear from everyone present that we all want to work together in a more harmonious way that supports the success of each Desktop Environment on openSUSE.
Actually, that's the first I time anyone told about this in details. That's great, but why wasn't there a communique by the board or something? As the title of this thread says, a little more transparency wouldn't hurt.
There was no communique by the Board because this was no official action made by the Board. While many view this decision as political, it still fell under the purview of technical decision making, which is not currently in our hands. As Michl stated in his announcement, he did communicate with the teams. He did so in his capacity as chairman of the Board, along with the rest of us, who recognized that our role of the board is to resolve conflicts and strengthen community.
Well, seems at least _one_ thing went right. What's still missing to put my mind at ease is that we have to make sure that such a 'dictate of the majority' (or rather of the most vocal part of the community) as we saw here cannot happen again. We need a carther that guarantees the equal positions of GNOME and KDE communties in the openSUSE either by concrete measures (such as 'no default desktop') or by a 50-50-parity of seats on the openSUSE board.
What do you think?
Greets, Chris
Let me point out that there is already an unconference session scheduled during the openSUSE Conference focusing on governance issues. I expect we'll be doing a lot of hashing and rehashing as we look at how to better improve the way the Project is governed. It will very definitely be a very hands down-roll up your sleeves and let's get to thinking about it. And I'm looking forward to it. And the great thing is, this will be most definitely transparent as this is an open meeting. In all honesty, I am not sure having specific representatives of each camp is all that effective. It's counter-productive. For one thing, it reinforces the notion that KDE and GNOME teams are two separate distinct camps with their own agendas and goals. This is not the vision I personally have. Nor is it reality. I often see GNOMEies and KDE'ers collaborating. My vision is a representation that strives for the greater good of the overall Project, not specific factions. And to ensure that most of the perspectives of our community is heard. For me, everyone knows that I am a GNOME user. But when I am in board meetings, I _never_ sit there with the express goal of protecting and pushing for GNOME's interests. I'm there to represent the project as a whole. And that's what we all have to do. And I feel that most of us are looking in that direction already. One thing that I have always felt, even when I ran for Board last year, was that we do not have enough representatives from the community on the Board. In fact, there are only two community representatives. This doesn't mean the Novell representatives aren't conscientious about community. Far from it, I believe they are more aligned with community than Novell. But still, two isn't enough. Especially when one cannot make it to a meeting, and suddenly the weight of community is on one shoulder. The good news is that very recently, the question of adding a new community board position has been floated around the board and hopefully we'll make our recommendations on it soon. Likely, this will also be brought up for discussion and agreement at the Conference, and who knows, we might be able to get a new position in time for the upcoming elections. No promises. :-) But Chris. Please do know that the points you have made are on the minds of many already. We do need to do a better job of communicating our thoughts to each other and developing the transparency in a more suitable fashion. But we're working towards it. Trust me. :-) And I look forward to seeing all of you at the Conference to discuss these matters in more detail. -- Bryen Yunashko openSUSE Board Member GNOME-A11y Team Member www.bryen.com (Personal Blog) www.planet-a11y.net (Feed aggregator of the Accessibility Community) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org