On 7/10/24 09:19, Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Hey,
On 08.07.24 22:11, Jeff Mahoney wrote:
1. The perception that SUSE owns openSUSE and contributing to openSUSE is like working for SUSE for free [...]
openSUSE has maintained a relatively small community compared to other popular but similar projects (e.g. Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch) since its inception. I think there are a few big reasons for that. 2. The lax governance leads to inconsistent expectation [...] > 3. The project doesn't have a clear mission
This list is not only incomplete, it's misleading. The reason we are only able to sustain a small (shrinking) community is that we, as a community, do not invest too much into growing our community. Full stop.
You can change any legalese, governance mumbo or branding jumbo in any way you want. The gist of it is: If there are not enough people in our community, that contribute to growing our community in meaningful ways, we are dying out. This is the way of any community.
There are not so meaningful ways to grow our community:
1. Change for the sake of change. And/or trying to change decisions for which the arguments for or against have not really changed.
2. Try to build a structure to gain the power to tell people what to do in our community ("the board", directing efforts etc.).
3. Try to build a structure to gain the power to tell people what to do with the things the community produces (trademark legalese, branding bureaucracy etc.).
4. Try to build a structure to gain the power to do the above by hanging some monetary incentive over peoples heads.
Don't get me wrong, those are things that may need to happen in one form or another. Power also will have to be exercised in one form or another in bad situations. But those activities have next to *no* effect on the sustainability of this community.
While I don't agree entirely here (described in a different email), structure (or formalization) and building power are not necessarily connected. Formalization can also protect open and democratic processes from abuse. You raise some really good points below...
But there are also meaningful ways to grow our community:
1. Address the crumbling state of our community infrastructure by *doing* the maintenance that is needed. Not by talking about it, not by inventing bureaucracy how to do it, not by solving it theoretically but by getting your hands dirty with tedious work and by organizing how other community members can help you.
This work is mostly about the content *inside* the tools we use for this community. Examples: the Wiki, many Factory devel projects on OBS, web pages, blog posts, translations groups, social media accounts etc.
For one simple reason: If those things have a functional and inclusive community of maintainers behind them, they stop being a hindrance to new contributors and start being the door that new people will enter the community through.
2. Recruit contributors manually. We can't wait for people to come to us. *We* have to go out and get them.
For one simple reason: We need a constant intake of new contributors because we loose contributors all the time too life happening. A.k.a. changing interests, a new hobby, a new job, a new partner, a new home, a baby born.
I agree, but I contend that formalization of communication and open democratic processes will help here. I am not necessarily advocating the Debian model, but it worth considering part of it.
3. Make existing contributors happy. Our contributors should feel that contributing to openSUSE was one of the best choices they ever made. We should be racking our brains to think of new ways to delight them and make them do *more* contributing.
For one simple reason: We need them to stay as long as possible because... see the point above.
This is the work that desperately *needs* to be done and that will decide our fate as a group of people doing things together. There is no one else that can do this for us. Not SUSE, no foundation, no leader.
And that is also *precisely* the reason we should refrain from any activity that takes effort/time away from the current contributors to sustain our community. Activities like mind-numbing discussions about the (trivial, pardon my french) job of the board solving conflicts, other forms of "governance", our brand or even money.
My suggestion to all members of the openSUSE Community: Stop talking about grand ideas, get to work. Make it easier to attract new contributors in general. Then attract new contributors to the area you work in. Then make them as happy as you can so they stay around.
Grand ideas and changes are not making this community sustainable, they make it go extinct faster.
Henne
-- Tony Walker <tony.walker.iu@gmail.com> PGP Key @ https://tonywalker1.github.io/pgp 9F46 D66D FF6C 182D A5AC 11E1 8559 98D1 7543 319C