DISCLAIMER: As Chairman of the Board, there are times I speak on behalf of SUSE or the openSUSE Board. This is not one of those times. This is a topic which cuts right through my formal responsibilities as openSUSEs Chairman and my longer standing personal commitments to the Project. Therefore I ask that everyone considers what I sahare in this thread as my own personal view, and should absolutely not be considered to be an official view of SUSE or the Board. That said, I know what I say is obviously informed by my unique position, so risk being interpreted with extra weight. I want to make sure the parties I work most closely with have an opportunity to correct, elaborate, or respond to anything I say. As I expect the Board are all here I don't have to worry about them, but I'm CCing Thomas Di Giacomo (President of Engineering, Product and Innovation @SUSE) so he knows what's being said here and can either step in to speak on behalf of SUSE or prompt me if I need to speak in a more formal capacity.
SUSE has also given a commitment that they will continue to provide openSUSE with all the core infrastructure they need for shipping releases and have reaffirmed this position to the board in recent weeks. Ok. Is there a public statement from SUSE about that? It's cool that somebody from SUSE told the board something, but how valuable is that in the moment where SUSE is changing owner again? That is why I think the board should try to get SUSE to make public statements about these things.
When EQT purchased SUSE, the Board didn't need to do anything to get SUSE to reaffirm that commitment; SUSE's CEO contacted me directly (waking me up early in the morning on a vacation day no less) so I could provide such a statement on SUSE's behalf personally to the community. https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-project/2018-07/msg00000.html This commitment has been repeated and reaffirmed at every opportunity, in both formal and informal settings, pretty much whenever anyone from SUSE's executive ever mention the words 'openSUSE'. If I relayed them all to the mailinglists, I expect people would get bored. There are many factors at play here (which I fear I delve into in excessive detail below), but I personally do not have a shred of doubt regarding SUSE's senior management commitment to openSUSE.
There would be topics enough to discuss I think, and to try to get real commitments from SUSE. A few examples:
a) Commitment to keep openSUSE as base distro for SUSE's enterprise products. How would openSUSE look like if SUSE suddenly jumps on a deb based distro to ship interesting enterprise applications? What would currently hinder SUSE to do that? Legacy heaps of legacy, SUSE's enterprise customers do not want to be forced to make more changes then they need, swapping the underlying distro would probably cause most customers to consider other alternative distro's, I really don't see this ever happening.
Ok. I am not saying it is what will happen, more as an interesting thought. In this sense, let me play the devils advocate: The "underlying distro" is becoming more and more commodity, nothing SUSE can differentiate from others big times any more. Customers loose interest in the base since years. So why not joining the big community of people doing deb based base systems with less people and concentrate with a bigger number of developers on the enterprise apps that do differentiate?
I feel there is nothing wrong with your 'devils advocate' approach. While it stand by my strong belief in SUSE's stated commitment to openSUSE, I am also of the growing opinion that the execution of that commitment is missing the desired mark on some fronts.
From a 'code/product' perspective, the story around SLE/Leap/Tumbleweed is one which both SUSE and openSUSE can be proud of and is a exemplar of a Company working with an empowered community which I honestly believe more Companies and Projects should aspire towards. SUSE has even codified this way of working in it's formal Open Source Policy, which is a key plank of the companies OpenChain certification: https://opensource.suse.com/suse-open-source-policy.html Yast, OBS, SUSE Manager/Uyuni, there are lots of good examples of SUSE doing things right across the company.
But I do not share such positive views regarding all of SUSE's products. Across significant parts of SUSE's portfolio there is a noticeable absence of any effort to foster the same kind of productive Community+Company collaboration that we are used to in openSUSE. It is my strong personal view that SUSE needs execute better in this regard, for its own benefits as much as for assisting the vibrancy and general good health of the openSUSE Project. And then there is the example of openSUSE Kubic & SUSE CaaSP, a situation I am very closely involved in, and yet have very few positive words to share. One good thing I can say is that it all started with the best of intentions to establish the sort of relationship missing with other SUSE products and do things the right way. Sadly, there have been times working on Kubic I have been requested by SUSE to say publicly things & act in a way which I feel would have compromised not only SUSE & openSUSE's best interests, but also my personal responsibility to always act in a truthful manner when interacting with fellow openSUSE contributors and our upstreams. I will not air dirty laundry in detail here, but needless to say, my faith in SUSEs ability to always do the right thing has been shaken. While I do still believe SUSE's commitments from management, I do not believe that it is possible for an organisation as large as SUSE to always execute on those commitments in the way that it wants to. This statement should not be controversial - if there wasn't truth to it, the role of the Board to communicate communities needs to SUSE would not already exist. So even if I do have faith that SUSE will address the internal issues there, I've become acutely aware of the potential damage openSUSE can be exposed to when things don't work according to plan. It has only been through actions of a few good people in and out of SUSE who have largely mitigated the damage, and continued Kubic going forward in an exceptionally healthy direction. I don't want openSUSE to only be dependant on a few good people to always bail it out when things go wrong - the Project should be structured in a way to minimise the need for such exceptional intervention. I believe introducing an element of formal independence (or 'less dependence') is a good step forward for both openSUSE and SUSE.
b) Lots of infrastructure topics c) Investments of workforce into the build service for example.
And this is a similar situation, where commitment has not been met by execution. openSUSE is in continual need of investment in terms of both hardware and manpower to "keep the lights on" with it's current infrastructure. openSUSE's guiding principles state SUSE will provide such infrastructure: https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Guiding_principles#Governance I think it is safe to say that SUSE has been unsuccessful in providing openSUSE with sufficient quantities of both. openSUSE suffers from an increasing age and fragility of its infrastructure, and an increased reliance again on the exceptional actions of a few good people, diving in when things go wrong to save the day. Again, I don't want openSUSE to be dependant on such exceptionalism - we need the Project to be able to stand on it's own two feet. In this area openSUSE is even more hamstrung than when looking at the 'code' perspective. With code our contributors have the power to commit what they like and steer openSUSE regardless of SUSE's contributions (or lack thereof). With infra, as openSUSE currently has no legal entity, we are wholly and utterly dependant on SUSE to take legal ownership of any hardware donated to openSUSE. This can complicate any donation of hardware or services to openSUSE, not just in a practical sense (more people to talk to), but in a financial one also. I believe many companies would be far more comfortable donating to an independent charitable body than having to sign over their hardware or services to a commercial entity such as SUSE. In other words, whereas with code openSUSE already enjoys a significant amount of the autonomy it needs in a practical sense, from an infrastructure perspective openSUSE is entirely dependant on SUSE and SUSEs execution is not meeting its stated commitments here. So here, I also feel an element of independence/less dependence on SUSE is best for openSUSE. There is an argument to be made that this will make things 'easier' for SUSE also, a situation I am personally uncomfortable about, because I do not think SUSE's failure to fulfil its commitments in this area should be rewarded by openSUSE making steps to reduce SUSEs needs to fulfil it's commitments. I do have hope that SUSE will be stepping up to address these issues regardless of what openSUSE decides to do regarding independence. I think that is something SUSE should take care of. All of the people involved in the discussions so far are showing a pragmatism which I trust will cut through any emotion which would otherwise risk the best outcomes for all involved. I think that's essential - this shouldn't be an effort driven by emotion, but by pragmatism, seeking to find the best way forward for openSUSE & SUSE. In an ideal world these circumstances should not have arisen, but the Board, the Project, and SUSE, need to act on the realities we live in, not the ideals we hope to reach. Even with that hope, there still "what's best for openSUSE?" echoing in my mind. As openSUSE's patron, SUSE has been owned by many companies before reaching it's current state of independence. While each of those transitions in recent years have been beneficial to openSUSE, and there are no SUSE 'stage changes' on the horizon, the future is unwritten and always brings with it risk that 'next time' might not be so fortuitous. With openSUSE in an imperfect, but healthy and productive relationship with SUSE, now is a better time to structure openSUSE in a way to potentially mitigate any risks the future may hold, rather than waiting for things to be in a state where there is no good way forward.
The vision what openSUSE will do, what it will head for, how it will stay relevant if it loosens the relationship with SUSE
My personal vision is simple. I want both openSUSE and SUSE to be able to have their own cakes and to eat each others. Put bluntly, I want openSUSE to have the legal structures and entities it needs to be able to do it's own things, have it's own infrastructure, run it's own services, raising it's own money. At the same time, I want SUSE to be contributing to openSUSE more heavily than it already does, with more of it's products more engaged with openSUSE's codebases and tooling, with SUSE funding openSUSE at least as much as it does now. Sure, I realise this is a lot to ask, but I not only believe this is possible, but it's best for all involved. A more independent openSUSE with it own money, infrastructure (including some donated by SUSE), should find itself more easily doing what we already do. This will benefit SUSE as long as openSUSE does it right and SUSE continues to work closely and collaborate with openSUSE. In other words - if openSUSE is able to do more on its own, how is that anything but a benefit to SUSE as long as SUSE is still able to take what openSUSE is doing and turn it into something commercially viable? There is nothing that says SUSE needs to formally own openSUSE to productively work with openSUSE. SUSE is "the open open source company" - it should be able to handle it's partner community having a more open relationship than our peers in the Red Hat/Ubuntu worlds.
When you say "we" here, you mean the board, right? Feels strange to me that this kind of important topic is worked through by the board and later be presented to the community. But maybe that is only me.
There is absolutely no way this topic will see any conclusion of any form without significant involvement from the community and (if it comes to it), binding votes from the membership regarding any constitutional change to the Project. At these early stages, I think it's best the Board acts under its "Communicate community interests to SUSE" charter while scoping out the scale, plausibility, and practicality of the options, before presenting them to the community in a more cohesive way for serious consideration. I have trust, faith, and confidence in my board colleagues desires to accurately reflect the needs and desires of the community at large, as they understand them. Meanwhile the Board has been minuting these efforts in it's meetings, and sharing those publicly with the expectation that it _would_ cause discussions like this. Every post in this thread is welcome and helpful, both to inform the discussions, but to help everyone understand where this is coming from so, I hope, we can all find the best solutions going forward. IOW - If you agree or disagree with anything I say in this mail, good, please add your feelings to this debate. That's the best way you can contribute to this part of the Project right now. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org