Dear Community, many of you have witnessed discussions and allegations of different kinds on this mailing list, some very offensive and disrespectful towards the community and the values that bond it together. In order to not add further discussions, to not nurture the chaos already present, and aiming to have a fair and unbiased vote on the "motion of no confidence", as a board we agreed to not comment on individual emails during the period of the poll. Now we feel that we need to disclose some background and provide clarification over how this all started. Sarah Julia Kriesch, former member of this board, has repeatedly moved heavy accusations against some members of this community during her first term on the board 2017-2019. In each case these accusations were unfounded after in-depth considerations. The measure taken after the first incident was a formal warning in alignment with the openSUSE Community Guiding Principles. [1] The second time lead to a vote on her removal from the board, where she maintained her seat after a narrow vote. Unfortunately Sarah's behavior has continued and the board received complaints, despite repeated efforts by several members of the community to carefully explain and council Sarah on her behavior and its implications on others. To handle the situation with minimal impact on the parties involved a moderate solution was sought: Sarah was offered the opportunity to step down instead of being removed and the complete background being disclosed. Even though "mutual confidentiality" was agreed between all parties, Sarah decided to violate this agreement that same evening and also started making false accusations about her stepping down. All this, together with some base speculation, then led to the motion of no confidence and what followed. We would like to assure you that with every action the board has undertaken, the well-being of all involved parties has been a main priority. As a community, and on the board, we spent a huge amount of time on this topic in the last half year and we have learned some lessons. Two of these are to 1) defer handling a complaint against a community member to the following board meeting (not on the same day), and 2) in case of extremely severe decisions taken, even if undelightful for the person affected, provide transparency to the community about the actions taken, keeping confidentiality as much as possible but not at all cost. [1] https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Guiding_principles