On 2011-12-02 01:31:01 (+0530), Sankar P
I have a few very simple questions for the candidates. Please answer them with a soft-limit of 750 characters, per answer. Thanks.
0) Board and Foundation: Will board members be controlling the foundation too ? What roles do you see board members performing in the foundation ? will there be dedicated personnel [from/outside] the board for specific roles in the foundation ? I know that these have been asked in the foundation-list earlier but I am interested in knowing what your idea on this. Will you be interested in nominating yourself for any specific position, say Treasurer, Lawyer, Firefighter ?
That is quite a list of questions, and neither of them are simple :) So pardon me for taking each question separately (and probably break the character limit more than once :D). A little disclaimer rightaway though: Actually, I don't believe we're there yet, nor that we're ready for it. Also, things are looking to be working quite smoothly with SUSE/Attachmate on the aspects the Foundation is meant to fullfil (financial aspects, and only that, at least as a first step, even though everyone probably has different expectations and ideas about what the Foundation ought to be). We're not blind, we'll keep a good look at how things evolve, but I think that the way it is going to work soon will be the best balance between pros and cons (a Foundation has a lot of cons too). I believe we should rather see how it turns out, and re-evaluate having a Foundation in a year or two. But more on that later. And yes, I was the one who pushed for a Foundation (following up on an idea that was first voiced by Martin Lasarsch at a Hackweek in Nürnberg quite some time ago), but only fools never change their mind :) (And the context has changed a lot as compared to when the initiative was taken to have a Foundation.) (And thanks again for Cornelius and Coolo to raise that very good question at the openSUSE conference, as well as for the follow-up discussion, which made me change my mind on the matter.) That being said (and it needs a lot more explanation and details than the above)... * Will board members be controlling the foundation too ? Well, the original idea was to avoid having both the board and the foundation board, to avoid conflicts and to have a better clarity. *But*, in the mean time, and having given it more thought (time helps having a better perspective), and also after some discussions with AJ and Alan during the conference, it turns out that it might actually be better to have both: an openSUSE board (as of now) and a Foundation board. The reason is quite simple: of course, trust is involved in both cases, but I (and not just me) believe that we are looking at two different types of people. On the openSUSE board, you want "people people", who are good at handling conflicts, who have a good network in the project, who have experience with the project and its people, people who are respected for their contributions and whom you can trust to take the right decisions when decisions have to be taken. (At least, that's what I'm looking for in the openSUSE board ^^) On the Foundation board, you'll rather be looking with people who have experience running something like that. People who have some skills at "accounting" (or at least dealing with money, like spending it on the things that make most sense), as well as actively engaging and looking for sponsors. * What roles do you see board members performing in the foundation ? As explained above, I'm more enclined to have different people on both boards. * Will there be dedicated personnel [from/outside] the board for specific roles in the foundation ? At the very least, the accounting and legal matters will have to be outsourced to experts on the matter. * Will you be interested in nominating yourself for any specific position, say Treasurer, Lawyer, Firefighter ? I was willing to run for a Foundation board position in order to serve the community, because, frankly, there probably won't be many people who will volunteer to do so (it is very tedious, not really fun, and makes you legally responsible for what you do there.) But as explained at length above, in hindsight, we should rather make ourselves a better picture of how we want the Foundation to be run, and by whom, and not do it unless we have the right people. So, now, no, I don't think I would be a candidate for a Foundation board position, because I want to concentrate on other aspects (the people, communication inside the project, facilitating the teams, mentoring).
1) Financial Transparency: Assuming that the foundation will be setup soon, what aspects do you think that the financial processes of the foundation should have ? What level of openness do you propose ? Should everything be in black and white or there can be costs which are not shared public ? How often should a reporting be made in terms of the financial status ? Should we follow some other open source projects here ? Say GNOME/KDE ?
First of all, there is a very strong legal framework, and it already requires complete transparence on financial operations as the Foundation would obviously be a non-for-profit organization. But even so, yes, the Foundation must be extremely transparent, there are really no good reasons for not doing so. It is even more required as money is involved -- not just money that companies would donate/invest, but also money that regular people like you and me would donate. And the very least to do is to be transparent and honest. Reporting could be permanent and continous. And sure, we have been looking and will continue to look at what other comparable foundations have been doing. Some aspects fit our needs and what we would like to have, and some don't. Not learning from their experience, good or bad, would be foolish :)
2) Software Freedom in the era of cloud: Earlier people were locked into proprietary data formats (like doc, ppt) (before OOXML) but now people voluntarily lock their data (mails, photos) into cloud storage. Some feel paranoid about this. Some feel that this fear is much similar to the fear that people had when Banks were introduced to store people's money. Do you think that it is okay to trade a little freedom for a little free online storage, for some home users at least ?
That's really up to every single person. Me, personally, even though I don't see how it is of any importance :), I believe that it's perfectly okay for as long as you understand what it means, what the potential consequences are, and as long as it is stated very clearly. As an example, I believe that Google does a pretty good job at that: it's pretty easy to find out what they will do and what they won't do with your data. To me, it's a give and take: I give up a little privacy on certain things, but I get a pretty great service in return for free (in terms of financial aspects). If some believe that it's not worth giving up some privacy for that, that's perfectly alright. The options are there, use them or not. What is not okay, in my opinion, is that people are either fooled in thinking no one will use their data, or when people simply don't bother (which is the case for 99.9% of the population, sadly). Facebook is a prime example of the latter.
3) openSUSE Hosted Solutions: Do you think openSUSE should enter into hosting things and providing online services for users (like ubuntuone, gmail, dropbox etc.) ? We can charge users a small fee and promise to not spy/sell their data.
It's an idea, but it's an extremely expensive one. You need to invest a lot in order to keep those promises (a safe data center that is not on one of the current cloud providers). Personally, I believe that we have a lot more pressing and interesting challenges. It might be an added value to lure users, but I primarily care about contributors. "Market share" is of secondary importance to me, at best. I rather focus on a comfy and friendly atmosphere where everyone can contribute, interact, and learn. 改善(kaizen, continous improvement :))
4) Hypothetical Scenario: If Microsoft offers us a few thousand dollars as part of Bing marketing for making Bing the default search engine and homepage on openSUSE, will you accept it ? If no, Why not ?
Possibly. Depends on which strings are attached to it, and the quality of the service. I would probably be fine with it: if we take money, why not take it from them. To the doomsdayers out there: if you still believe that companies are like living beings and that a large corporation such as Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, HP, Apple, etc... has one goal and one objective, and that each of their actions are in line with that objective (e.g. "destroy linux"), then consider thinking again. That is really not how things work in the real world. I work for a company that is very large, and I can tell you that's really not how things work.
5) vim or emacs ? (Just trolling here. You can avoid. You'll get +10 points if you answer both)
I have used emacs for a very long time, actually, but have moved to vim. I'm not religious about either of them (nor much else I guess). Just use whatever you prefer, and it's not an election parole, it's what I really believe :) I actually typically use vim or eclipse, depends on the job :) [...]
Thanks a lot and All the best :-)
Thanks for the questions :) cheers -- -o) Pascal Bleser /\\ http://opensuse.org -- we haz green _\_v http://fosdem.org -- we haz conf