Hi,
Disclaimer, I am on the board, this email is my opinion not that of the board in general. I'm also intentionally choosing to comment only in general rather then on anything specific.
hi,
i'm not an openSUSE member, but am a new user/community member. I'm using openSUSE for current projects, with plans for the future, so i care what happens and am a little concerned with all of this. I think most of the problems demonstrated by recent events, could be reduced by better adherence to the Guiding Principles.
from the guiding principles:
... openness as in open collaboration, open communication, open development, open distribution, open source code, and open mind. and
... transparency of the decision making processes, transparency of communication and transparency of work and collaboration processes. That includes openly answering questions, providing all relevant information, and actively keeping all involved parties informed. We are convinced that a transparent culture whose inner workings can be understood by everybody provides the most efficient and rewarding environment to reach our goals.
Considering the above, I would think that all board meetings and other official business should have recorded video, audio or auto-generated transcripts (as tech allows and at the board's preference) made publicly available (or available to members behind login) on a consistent basis. I've seen other software projects do this, and it seems this would inspire confidence in the project, and promote participation, courtesy, professionalism, fairness and accountability. The current meeting summaries are a good start, but not enough, IMHO. Maybe good enough for the completely public (non-member) account of events, if the project chose to have two tiers.
How are members supposed to be informed voters if they are not allowed to actually get to know the board members' past/current openSUSE legislative, executive, judicial, and behavioral/human interaction record (if you will)? Also, look at what has happened by trying to keep the recent events private. I doubt very seriously, that having the interactions public or member-accessible from the beginning, wouldn't have been better for the project. Just the fact that it would be public, might have changed how things manifested in the first place. Maybe not, idk what happened...
(i don't think the fact that the discord channel could have been joined by anyone is relevant in this context. Participants likely felt it was somewhat private. I'm talking about the difference between how things are handled now, and publishing all official business in full, in a prominent place every time, so people can start consuming it at their leisure, and participants know this will happen, in advance.)
I've never been on any board, so if there are people who think there are good reasons to not make official openSUSE business available to members (seemingly per the Guiding Principles), then an example scenario might be helpful. "Trust us, it's better this way" could be true, but doesn't alleviate concerns very well.
All this being said, i'm not advocating that the current situation gets exacerbated with a No Confidence vote, or retroactively enforce more complete transparency. I'm just suggesting that things might could be clarified and improved going forward, so that this occurrence didn't happen in vain, and might can be avoided in the future. Due to the nature of what we mostly deal with as the board it isn't always possible to make everything public, the board is often presented with ideas or proposals from companies etc that are still under NDA or in many cases most of there employees don't even know. They do this because they value our feedback and input, having to publicly disclose all parts of all meetings would mean the board would no longer be in a
On 3/15/20 2:51 AM, ITwrx wrote: position to provide input on such things and in some cases would lead to the loss of some opportunities for the openSUSE project. I would think these meetings or sections of meetings could be redacted from the record. Perhaps, as long as promises/final decisions weren't being made in private meetings.
The second thing is the majority of the project has decided that its best for everyone involved if conflicts between maintainers remain as private as possible at least in most cases which is why the board tends to keep these matters private. This is what i don't understand/disagree with, in the sense that, how/why are these interactions private to begin with? How is this not openSUSE business and taking place on official, public/members-only communication channels to begin with? (if maintainers: openSUSE bug
On 3/15/20 1:07 AM, Simon Lees wrote: tracker, git repos, etc) How is the current stance not contrary to the Guiding Principles? If openSUSE business were (mostly) public/members-only, then interactions would tend to be more professional and members would all know when something got out of hand, and all the info would be there for the decision making processes without all of the "cloak and dagger", secret confidentiality agreements that may not hold up under questioning, agonizing over what to *release* (i thought it was open?), possible community fallout, and bad PR for the project. Private/personal stuff would actually be private/personal (should never be brought into openSUSE business by third parties, unless maybe there were a protocol for egregious private occurrences), and not actual openSUSE stuff that is being kept from the public/members.
Beyond that we try to document as much as possible publicly in our minutes, i'll get back to polishing up the minutes from the last meeting (they got delayed due to holidays, other personal reasons and the board dealing with other things). Thanks for your work, but this is another benefit of just recording the meetings and publishing. Less liability too, as you could always be accused of the minutes being polished a little too well. :)
At least for the last number of years generally the successful board candidates have been people who are generally pretty active in other parts of the project so while you may not be able to judge a board member on absolutely every decision they make, hopefully you can generally see enough of peoples actions in the general community to decide if you think they would make a good board candidate worth voting for.
Cheers
Fair enough, but that requires more effort to research, where as a member could just watch/listen/read a few meetings, and get a good idea with whom they agree/like. --------------------- Thanks for your detailed response above. ITwrx -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org