I agree with where you are coming from, but some inline thoughts below: On 10 February 2016 at 02:08, Jim Henderson <hendersj@gmail.com> wrote:
I don't know that I entirely agree, Richard. If someone wants to step up and manage that collection of money, doesn't that fit into the "just do it" approach that we want the project membership to use?
Yes, but the 'cultural' impact on something is important to consider The last thing I want to see is an increase of people going to openSUSE mailinglists with an attitude of 'I paid for this, therefore you must do as I order' We have enough of a problem with that attitude still left over SUSE box-set buyers from the years before openSUSE even existed, I wouldn't want to see that added The way to get what you want in an open source project doesn't require money, but requires encouragement, negotiation, cooperation, and contribution.
Technical contributions are certainly important, but there are many ways to support the project that don't involve technical contribution. Visibility for the project is important to getting people involved and interested in supporting it with technical contributions.
So, for example, if an openSUSE fan club wanted to pull something like this together, collect funds itself, and then use those funds to make T- shirts to sell through an online store - getting the openSUSE name out there in front of people, that is something that helps the project.
Agreed, but we don't need a non-profit for that. We've had calls of help for marketing, branding, and other such help with materials for years, all bankrolled by SUSE. We have an online store where we can sell this stuff, already. And yet, we rarely actually any contributions to make that happen.
I live 15 minutes from Microsoft's main campus in Redmond (for the next 20 days, anyways, before I move to the other side of Puget Sound). The building I live in has Microsoft employees in it, and one of their main sales offices is walking distance.
I get looks when I wear my SUSE jacket - and not because Microsoft employees/fans hate Linux. Many seem to be thinking "I didn't know SUSE was still around" (and one person actually said that to me).
If I had thought to, I might've made myself an openSUSE t-shirt with a QR code and link on it to promote the cause here. If a group like the one being proposed did something like that, and the link/QR code went to a site that talked about the project and how to contribute to it, that certainly would help recruit talent to participate.
Or you could just buy a t-shirt from store.opensuse.org. or attend FOSDEM, SCALE, or openSUSE conferences where we give away as much as we can
Walking around the Collaboration Summit last year, I didn't notice a lot of openSUSE-specific swag being shown off by the attendees. There was some for Ubuntu, Fedora, and other distros, though.
The Collaboration summit is a bad example - as a Linux Foundation *invitation only* conference for their corporate sponsors, community representation is few and far between. I'd rather you consider events like SCALE (quote from Linux Unplugged podcast last night "Events like SCALE make you think Ubuntu and openSUSE are the only distributions out there) and FOSDEM, where we make our mark very obviously.
Seems like that's something we could be doing better with.
Yes, I agree, but we don't need a non-profit to do that, we need people to do it. We need people to localise materials, design materials, produce materials, distribute materials, attend events, advocate for openSUSE.. aka _CONTRIBUTE_ - not throw money at the problem and expect other people to do it.
If jdd has that itch and wants to scratch it, I think that's just as valid as if he wanted to create a x86 Leap distribution or wanted to provide translations to Manx Gaelic.
If jdd and others want to scratch their itch, yes, fine, but I don't want to give my consent without raising the issues that I see and making it clear that I do not believe the solutions being discussed resolve the issues that are being used to justify this train of thought "We should have a non-profit because we wanna do it" is a perfectly valid reason in my humble opinion "We should have a non-profit because people need to throw money at openSUSE in order to feel like they 'own it'" is not a valid reason, and I fear leads to problems with the attitude of those who embrace that mindset. "We should have a non-profit because openSUSE needs money for local materials" is not a valid reason when we have your local reimbursement fund sitting unused with thousands of dollars available to it "We should have a non-profit because that way we will have money to make developers do what we want" is also not a valid reason, because volunteer contributors do what they want (that's a fact that can't be avoided), and money isn't a motivator..but those other factors like encoragement, collaboration, negotiation and cooperation are.. and I don't see how a non-profit helps with that. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org