On Wednesday 10 June 2015 09:43:19 Axel Braun wrote:
Beside of what others have stated in between, voting would be the least reason for me to join an openSource community. If thats your target, you better go to politic parties.
I completely agree that voting is not an important reason to join the openSUSE community. But that's not what is meant here. This is confusing being part of the community and being a formal "member". The status of being an official "openSUSE member" gives you voting rights, the email address and the IRC cloak, nothing else. So it is the equivalent of joining the "political openSUSE party" ;-) But there is much more than the "members", there is the whole community who does things and works on common goals or who just feels as part and uses openSUSE happily. This is the group which is important. We have reiterated many times that naming it "member" is misleading and has confused many people. My proposal to fix this is to lower the barrier of the membership so much that everybody who wants to be part of the community can be and is a member.
I think its more the spirit of community, maybe showing commitment and appreciation of the work being done. Bringing a project, based on shared ideas, towards a common goals. Having 'shorts tracks' to other members in terms of support and communication, compared to coming from outside. Building trust in people, even you may know them just from mailing lists or the OSC.
This describes very well how a healthy community feels and works. That's what
we should focus on.
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Cornelius Schumacher