Hi Jeff, Many thanks for stepping up! Aside from your personal contribution, I see a big benefit in having somebody with control over resources within BCL (Business Critical Linux at SUSE) on board. I believe you would contribute to what I believe the board needs which is more executive rights in decision-making, given numerous long-lasting topics. If I'm not mistaken Shawn is the only member who remains on the board who is not from SUSE. I believe this will also be one of the factors for this election. Please see the 40% *Company affiliation rule. The voting committee would have to look into how to handle the situation in case we do not have additional candidates from outside of SUSE. Anyway, part of the remaining board members from SUSE would be down your chain. And in case there is another candidate from SUSE (even in future elections), it will be very likely somebody down the BCL chain. My question combines both of these aspects: What is your opinion on board independence with existing members and candidates as well as the ensuring same weight of opinions with subordinate x supervisor "clash of opinions" in the openSUSE Board? Thank you very much in advance Lubos [0] https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election_rules#Company_affiliation:_2 Lubos On Mon, Dec 2, 2024 at 5:50 PM Jeff Mahoney <jeffm@suse.com> wrote:
Hi folks -
I saw the message today about there being no nominations for the open Board seats and am announcing my candidacy for one of the seats.
I've been a member of the openSUSE project since the beginning and a SUSE/openSUSE user since the late 90s. I've been a SUSE employee for the past 24 years, starting as a kernel file system developer, and after a few title changes, now serve as VP of Engineering for Linux Systems.
At the openSUSE Conference in Nuernberg this summer, we had some lively discussions across a number of topics, including renaming, process, and governance. I have some interest in improving the governance process without re-inventing the wheel as a lever to drive community/user base growth.
Thanks for your consideration. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.
-Jeff
-- Jeff Mahoney VP Engineering, Linux Systems
-- Best regards Luboš Kocman openSUSE Leap Release Manager