On 08.02.2016 17:52, jdd wrote: Hi, this is an interesting point, and came up a few times already, as Henni, the honorary chairman of the openSUSE oldtimer club, already said.
Reason to create the "Friends" (seen by jdd): Here is my first question: When I read "friends of openSUSE", this is not neccessarily the same as the heavyweight "foundation" discussions that we had before. Maybe you think more of the direction of a "fan-club", that does its own supportive actions around the project, but does not claim to work on the nifty stuff such as IP, trademarks, money and stuff?
The relation between openSUSE and it's main sponsor SUSE was never clear for openSUSE member (official or not). Whatever is true, almost everybody think that the orientation of openSUSE is very closely decided by SUSE. My idea is that it's partially true, but not by direct subordination, but by common interest. SUSE never managed to define this relation well, and also the openSUSE community was never able to come up with a definition of what would be good for the community. So it feels like a bit of a hen egg problem here: SUSE does not want to play an dominant role in this to not harm the community, and the community is waiting for something maybe, or at least is not able to come up with really to-the-point proposals that work for SUSE. No blaming here to the openSUSE community, that _is_ not easy, and other communities fail hard as well in much easier environments.
That has lead the openSUSE project into a pretty depressive situation. That lasts for long already, and at least for me that is one of the root reasons of the unattractiveness that openSUSE nowadays unfortunately has. But what can we make positive out of this? There is a group of people who bring up the energy to think about these questions, and that is great. What I would suggest, instead of discussing the pros and cons of a different organization, is to work on improving the situation with SUSE. It is GOOD for openSUSE to be with SUSE, that has so much benefits for either side (if we want to speak about sides anyhow). We should not let ghosts from decades ago shadow what is still fact today: - SUSE still sponsors openSUSE with so much like infrastructure, humans, ideas, conference, etc. - SUSE has never put hard constrains on how the openSUSE community has to move - openSUSE is the most open distribution that at least I know - many other details we all can think of. All we suffer from is lack of ideas of how to work on the positive overall perception of the relationship. Maybe. Yes, there may be some things that do not work properly yet, maybe the setup of the governance, ie. the board. I remember that the discussions about the setup of the board for example was controversial already back in the days when we discussed that in the first place. I am sure, if we as a community come up with a reasonable proposal to change that, we will find people in SUSE willing to discuss and change that, respecting the goals of each other. I think working on that is much better than going into the foundation discussion again. Takes too much time. Thanks jdd for your energy on that, I hope you can share some of my thoughts. Klaas
I'm largely convinced (without any proof, other than reading many posts) than many people are reluctant to engage more in openSUSE due to this perceived relationship.
Think than developers can benefit directly of the SUSE infra-structure to help them develop, so have a direct interest to subscribe OBS, for example.
But most non-developers volunteers do not get any direct benefit, other than glory and self satisfaction. They do not feels like having real direction on what openSUSE do.
Building an "Friends..." non profit organization could (may be, you will have to comment!!) make this better.
The goal of this organization would be non profit, that is the direction and members of the organization couldn't get any money from it. This do not mean the organization can't collect money, only it have to be used for the social object of the organization (promoting openSUSE).
See it like some "supporters" of sports squads - cheerleaders ones :-))
Every member would have to pay a small fee (10€??) as membership, for each year, so we would know exactly how many people really support the "Friends". They could also donate and the money could be used to support openSUSE where it's not already done. I think of more local support (french or Vanuatu one...).
More over, it could drive people to engage themselves a bit more. You know: you have more consideration for something you paid for than for something that was donated to you...
May be all this is a dream. Before making anything, we need to know if YOU would subscribe such organization. In France creating such thing needs three peoples and around 40€ for the creation publication, really cheap, but is it worth the fuss?
your time to write :-)
jdd
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