On Thursday 17 June 2010 12:05:17 Vincent Untz wrote:
Hi,
Le jeudi 17 juin 2010, à 11:34 +0200, Andreas Jaeger a écrit :
http://en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=Documents/Strategy/Community contains the following statement that we'd like to discuss and enhance as written in the introductory email (http://news.opensuse.org/2010/06/17/a-strategy-for- the-opensuse-project-proposals-and-discussions/),
Andreas
Looks like a good start!
A general comment first: is this a statement that will stay valid for, say, 5 years? Or just a statement that is valid now, while we're discussing the strategy?
Valid for let's say 5 years.
I'm asking this because if it's the former, some things might need to be reworded ("Establish the openSUSE Foundation" will be done at some point, so that won't be a goal anymore...)
It's an activity we should do during those years. Once it's done, we can change it to "run the foundation" ;)
We are the openSUSE Community - a friendly, welcoming, vibrant, and active community. This includes developers, testers, writers, translators, usability experts, artists, promoters and everybody else who wishes to engage with the project.
To grow the openSUSE Community, we will put contributors first and focus on
the following activities: * Build a lively and active community * Increase contributor visibility * Attract contributions by empowering our community to influence and shape
the Project in all aspects
* Make contributing easy by eliminating or greatly reducing bureaucratic
obstacles and having great governance
* Market the Project
This includes the following activities in order to excel in our goals: * Create tools that support community activities * Establish the openSUSE Foundation
(see my first comment)
* Improve visibility through announcements, news, blogs, tweets, etc * Give presentations about the Project
What kind of presentations? At events (what kind of events?)? On the web? Or do we want to keep this deliberately vague to cover all types of presentations?
Yes, it was kept vague as a high-level description. We had in mind events but the vague description helps here to let you think broader ;)
* Establish Events: Conference organization
Is this item about the organization of the openSUSE conference or about something else? It's unclear, so clarifying might be good :-)
Yes, openSUSE conference.
* Emphasize the value of communication and recognize cultural diversity
within our community
This goal sounds great, but, hrm, what does it mean in practice? :-) Do we have any concrete example of how we would achieve this? (It sounds more like a value than a goal to me)
That's what we need to discuss here ;)
* Foster governance discussions
(same comment as for openSUSE Foundation: once we have a good governance model, this will be less of a goal, I guess)
Yes, so it would then change to e.g. "live good governance"
* Mentor new contributors * Praise contributors (Publicity, bounties, ...)
I think just "Praise contributors" would be enough. I'm specifically wondering about the bounties here. Do we have bounties?
Bounties was an idea for an example of doing it but we don't have them now.
We will also do the following activities: * Events: Attend shows, set up booths, have openSUSE Community rooms * Raise funds for the Project through the openSUSE Foundation * Helping new users and contributors
The "contributors" part here sounds redundant with the "Mentor new contributors" from above.
Vincent, we should add you to our wordsmith department ;)
* Encourage technical discussions (via mailing lists and forums) * Give presentations about the Project
Hrm, we have this one in the first list already ;-)
* Publications, whitepapers, ... in journals
To be honest, I'm unsure about this one: it seems to me that the one below (reaching out to key people) is way more important. Are we already doing some of this today? If not, I'm not sure it's worth investing efforts in starting doing this.
* Reaching multiplicators (journalists, key comm members, ...) * Customer intelligence (Surveys, segmentation, update statistics, ...)
I don't like the term "customer" for a project like ours: we're not
Yep.
selling anything, and it gives some false impression. Maybe "audience"?
Note that we are very well aware that anything we do depends on the
Remove "Note that" :-) Maybe also remove "very well": it doesn't sound right in such a statement.
willingness of our community to drive it and make it successful. The openSUSE Community Board sees its leadership role in making coherent proposals and driving community decisions -- not in just taking decisions on behalf of the community.
I wouldn't say "The board sees its role" but "The role of the board is", especially since this statement is from the community as a whole, not just from the board. (And saying "the board sees" might imply a new elected board could have a different opinion here)
Note that openSUSE has evolved from it's initial launch with little
Remove "Note that" :-) s/it's/its/
participation to being now a real open source project. It has many sponsors
(I'd remove "now" -- it doesn't bring anything useful, and will sound weird in 3 years)
Ah, not sure I should open this can of worms, but... open source or free software?
FOSS/FLOSS ;)
including Novell as main sponsor. The sponsors are part of the Project and will support it in various ways but not control the project. openSUSE being an
The last part reads a bit weird. I'd add a "will": "but will not control"
open source project means that everybody in the community can contribute equally to it in all aspects of the project and should not depend on any of the sponsors doing everything.
We'd like to cite as well from the openSUSE Guiding Principles: I'd change this to: "Finally, this quote from the openSUSE Guiding Principles summarizes the values of our project:" (or something similar). This explains why we have that quote here, instead of just saying "we'd like to" without explaining why :-)
We value respect for other persons and their contributions, for other opinions and beliefs. We listen to arguments and address problems in a constructive and open way. We believe that a diverse community based on mutual respect is the base for a creative and productive environment enabling the project to be truly successful. We don't tolerate social discrimination and aim at creating an environment where people feel accepted and safe from offense.
Thanks, Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, Program Manager openSUSE, aj@{novell.com,opensuse.org} Twitter: jaegerandi | Identica: jaegerandi SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126