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Being involved in project governance, though, is (perhaps) a different story, because that's something that people might elect to do. Indeed, volunteering to be involved in project governance in and of itself *might* be seen as a contribution in its own merit.
Being involved in project governance is definitely a contribution, at least in my book, and requires more patience that toiling away on technical items. However, our community is based around a technical "product" and I feel strongly that those involved in governance of the project should contribute to the technical content of the project or the promotion of our project. Just being involved in the governance is, in my opinion insufficient.
I don't totally agree with you... many people come from different backgrounds and have different of expertise, the wisest to me is to that the project on a natural way makes those people feel good on the areas they like. Writing a good tutorial is as important as having a strong systemd implementation. Having well conceived artwork is as important as having good PR. Forum/IRC support is as important as governance... This to say... contributions in several forms and supports have their value. It's up to the community to recognize that value and reward people. For example, a forum helper that hangs around, helps people, follows the guiding principles is as worth of membership as a packager, designer or board member (at least this silly little world of mine). I'm not really convinced that everyone is placing the "community" in first place.
Perhaps what we should be looking at is the various roles in the project and how they relate to the project as a whole. If we do that, then the discussion of project governance becomes just about another role in the project; how one gets involved in project governance then becomes a discussion more along the lines of how one would have patches accepted into the codebase rather than a "contribution merit" discussion (which seems to derail the discussion).
What do you do with those that are members but no longer contribute?
Honestly? Something like: - A place in Hall of Fame - His username in infra-structure (ex: email address, this would prevent the name to be assigned in the future and that the wrong people are contacted or can somehow be identified as previous owners); - His user page on the wiki (so that he can keep a list of updated contacts if he wishes, helpful to get in touch if someone needs info regarding past contributions, ex: packaging, patching) - A very warm thank you and our recognition. Of course you can disable emails (I don't see a problem with an alias), but at least prevent the user to be taken in the future... and everything else you can think of that is cool and encourages people to contribute :) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org