[opensuse-project] scanning the openSUSE members
Hello, We discussed this already before summer, but the moment (holidays) was not nice for this work, and I hoped to have some script help, but it do not seems possible (or I couldn't manage it). So I will begin the work now, by hand. If any body want to help, it would be a good thing as there are around 500 members to test. To help, you need to be already a member officially. the work flow is the following: do *not* try to contact the members right now, the goal is to make the work with the less disturbance possible. * open the connect member page (https://connect.opensuse.org//pg/groups/memberlist/111) (ask here to ask for a page number to work on) * open on our computer or on any *private* page a text document where you will write your search results (we will later share your documents) * clic on the name of the member you want to track. * write down for each member the name, the openSUSE email and any relevant information. Be warned that most infos of these page are out of date * try searching google to find the later date this member gives sign of activity. For example, Pavol Rusnak is listed as the first member, but his listed web site is non existent. His wiki page list him as member of the openSUSE board, which was true, but obsolete. He is listed as developer for 13.2... but I couldn't find more recent openSUSE activity (but many pages do not have any date), so I will write on his line theses clues to be made better later. you see why it's long :-) any help of any kind welcome :-) sincerely jdd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On Thursday, October 01, 2015 05:16:40 PM jdd wrote:
* try searching google to find the later date this member gives sign of activity.
Not a very efficient idea. You can script queries to OBS using the API: https://api.opensuse.org/apidocs/ Also you can check the openSUSE repos in github to find contributors there: https://github.com/openSUSE/ -- SUSE Linux GmbH, GF: Felix Imendörffer, Jane Smithard, Graham Norton, HRB 21284 (AG Nürnberg) Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Le 01/10/2015 17:23, Alberto Planas a écrit :
On Thursday, October 01, 2015 05:16:40 PM jdd wrote:
* try searching google to find the later date this member gives sign of activity.
Not a very efficient idea.
I know... You can script queries to OBS using the API:
I'm absolutely unable to make anything like this. Not sure of what I could have by this way, though google gives links to the obs. What I would need would be a script to build first a page with the members list and the opensuse email of each, then the last time this mail was used (for example). The connect page is not sorted, I think it's only listed by membership date. membership activity is so various... thanks jdd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On 10/01/2015 11:16 AM, jdd wrote:
Hello,
We discussed this already before summer, but the moment (holidays) was not nice for this work, and I hoped to have some script help, but it do not seems possible (or I couldn't manage it).
So I will begin the work now, by hand. If any body want to help, it would be a good thing as there are around 500 members to test. To help, you need to be already a member officially.
the work flow is the following:
do *not* try to contact the members right now, the goal is to make the work with the less disturbance possible.
* open the connect member page (https://connect.opensuse.org//pg/groups/memberlist/111)
(ask here to ask for a page number to work on)
* open on our computer or on any *private* page a text document where you will write your search results (we will later share your documents)
* clic on the name of the member you want to track.
* write down for each member the name, the openSUSE email and any relevant information. Be warned that most infos of these page are out of date
* try searching google to find the later date this member gives sign of activity. For example, Pavol Rusnak is listed as the first member, but his listed web site is non existent. His wiki page list him as member of the openSUSE board, which was true, but obsolete. He is listed as developer for 13.2... but I couldn't find more recent openSUSE activity (but many pages do not have any date), so I will write on his line theses clues to be made better later.
you see why it's long :-)
any help of any kind welcome :-)
Michal Hrusecky has a mostly working script to check for activity. Later, Robert -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo
Le 01/10/2015 21:28, Robert Schweikert a écrit :
On 10/01/2015 11:16 AM, jdd wrote:
any help of any kind welcome :-)
Michal Hrusecky has a mostly working script to check for activity.
ok, good thanks jdd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On Thursday, October 01, 2015 05:16:40 PM jdd wrote:
So I will begin the work now, by hand. If any body want to help, it would be a good thing as there are around 500 members to test. To help, you need to be already a member officially.
I will be very open here: To me it feels very creepy to scan all members. I think this has more potential to destroy community than to build community. One of the nice parts of a volunteer community is that there is no clear line between being in and being out, that you can be inactive and still be attached to the community, and come back when you decide. We need to maintain this and keep being open. It would be great, if we could focus on the activities of the active people, on what is needed and what is happening to build Leap and Tumbleweed, on getting more users and more contributors. Let inactive people be inactive, and work with the active ones on what makes openSUSE great and greater. -- Cornelius Schumacher <cschum@suse.de> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Hi Cornelius, On Fri, Oct 02, 2015 at 01:41:15PM +0200, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Thursday, October 01, 2015 05:16:40 PM jdd wrote:
So I will begin the work now, by hand. If any body want to help, it would be a good thing as there are around 500 members to test. To help, you need to be already a member officially.
I will be very open here: To me it feels very creepy to scan all members. I think this has more potential to destroy community than to build community.
One of the nice parts of a volunteer community is that there is no clear line between being in and being out, that you can be inactive and still be attached to the community, and come back when you decide. We need to maintain this and keep being open.
It would be great, if we could focus on the activities of the active people, on what is needed and what is happening to build Leap and Tumbleweed, on getting more users and more contributors. Let inactive people be inactive, and work with the active ones on what makes openSUSE great and greater.
Well expressed! I support this approach. Cheers, Lars -- Lars Müller [ˈlaː(r)z ˈmʏlɐ] Samba Team + SUSE Labs SUSE Linux, Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany
On Fri, Oct 2, 2015 at 2:06 PM, Lars Müller <lmuelle@suse.com> wrote:
Hi Cornelius,
On Fri, Oct 02, 2015 at 01:41:15PM +0200, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Thursday, October 01, 2015 05:16:40 PM jdd wrote:
So I will begin the work now, by hand. If any body want to help, it would be a good thing as there are around 500 members to test. To help, you need to be already a member officially.
I will be very open here: To me it feels very creepy to scan all members. I think this has more potential to destroy community than to build community.
One of the nice parts of a volunteer community is that there is no clear line between being in and being out, that you can be inactive and still be attached to the community, and come back when you decide. We need to maintain this and keep being open.
It would be great, if we could focus on the activities of the active people, on what is needed and what is happening to build Leap and Tumbleweed, on getting more users and more contributors. Let inactive people be inactive, and work with the active ones on what makes openSUSE great and greater.
Well expressed! I support this approach.
Cheers,
Lars -- Lars Müller [ˈlaː(r)z ˈmʏlɐ] Samba Team + SUSE Labs SUSE Linux, Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany
I agree too. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 2015-10-02 14:13, george kanakis wrote:
On Fri, Oct 2, 2015 at 2:06 PM, Lars Müller <> wrote:
Hi Cornelius,
It would be great, if we could focus on the activities of the active people, on what is needed and what is happening to build Leap and Tumbleweed, on getting more users and more contributors. Let inactive people be inactive, and work with the active ones on what makes openSUSE great and greater.
Well expressed! I support this approach.
I agree too.
Yes. Maybe what could be done is just checking that their opensuse.org addresses still work. That is, that their contact info is still valid. Not who is active. - -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAlYOdasACgkQtTMYHG2NR9XrGwCfVzdsLVHT1B6zNj5HUTXAc9br 3D4AoIrAjoWtrv+LfLfa4MaLOTSiuIo2 =EE+C -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Le 02/10/2015 14:06, Lars Müller a écrit :
Hi Cornelius,
getting more users and more contributors. Let inactive people be inactive, and work with the active ones on what makes openSUSE great and greater.
Well expressed! I support this approach.
the goal is to know better who we are, and on how many people we can count just in case. I didn't plan to make the nominative result public (reason why I keep it on my system), but statistics are great IMHO. for example, my poll "are you an active openSUSE member" got 69 votes. and I don't want, at least in the first place to ask members directly, but try to find evidences of activity. This is very difficult, I know of people representing openSUSE often in booth and with no web activity... jdd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Am Freitag 02 Oktober 2015, 13:41:15 schrieb Cornelius Schumacher:
On Thursday, October 01, 2015 05:16:40 PM jdd wrote:
So I will begin the work now, by hand. If any body want to help, it would be a good thing as there are around 500 members to test. To help, you need to be already a member officially.
I will be very open here: To me it feels very creepy to scan all members. I think this has more potential to destroy community than to build community.
+1 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
We've discussed this repeatedly on this list now the 'scanning' is just the starting point, to reduce the number of people we have to contact directly to find if they are still interested in being an openSUSE Member Anyone who wishes to remain a member, but inactive, will have the opportunity to do so No one will be removed from openSUSE membership automatically, and even in the cases of non-response, anyone who wishes to have their Membership reinstated will be able to Membership is a key part of this projects governance, and the current situation where membership votes have a terrible turn out is not acceptable We need to ensure that those with voting rights in our projects Governance structure have an interest in the project Scanning for activity as the first step, then reaching out to the rest to check if they're still interested, is the way we've chosen to do it Please stop flogging the dead horse and insinuating an impending apocalypse. We've taken great care here to make sure the only people who will loose their voting privileges in the official openSUSE Governance process are only people who don't want to retain that privilege. On 2 October 2015 at 14:18, Mathias Homann <Mathias.Homann@opensuse.org> wrote:
Am Freitag 02 Oktober 2015, 13:41:15 schrieb Cornelius Schumacher:
On Thursday, October 01, 2015 05:16:40 PM jdd wrote:
So I will begin the work now, by hand. If any body want to help, it would be a good thing as there are around 500 members to test. To help, you need to be already a member officially.
I will be very open here: To me it feels very creepy to scan all members. I think this has more potential to destroy community than to build community.
+1
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
And as a follow up thought I am sure this topic has led to some thoughts and some ideas about changing how the openSUSE Project is governed, the role and purpose of Members, and such Any such changes will require a vote by openSUSE Membership, that's our established process for such things and so, it is in the interest of anyone who wants to see such changes to actually encourage this clean up of the Membership list as a precursor, so any such votes can have a clear mandate of the currently active voting members this community We don't want a situation, as we've had before, where the results are cast doubt upon due to low turnout. On 2 October 2015 at 14:23, Richard Brown <RBrownCCB@opensuse.org> wrote:
We've discussed this repeatedly on this list now
the 'scanning' is just the starting point, to reduce the number of people we have to contact directly to find if they are still interested in being an openSUSE Member
Anyone who wishes to remain a member, but inactive, will have the opportunity to do so
No one will be removed from openSUSE membership automatically, and even in the cases of non-response, anyone who wishes to have their Membership reinstated will be able to
Membership is a key part of this projects governance, and the current situation where membership votes have a terrible turn out is not acceptable
We need to ensure that those with voting rights in our projects Governance structure have an interest in the project
Scanning for activity as the first step, then reaching out to the rest to check if they're still interested, is the way we've chosen to do it
Please stop flogging the dead horse and insinuating an impending apocalypse. We've taken great care here to make sure the only people who will loose their voting privileges in the official openSUSE Governance process are only people who don't want to retain that privilege.
On 2 October 2015 at 14:18, Mathias Homann <Mathias.Homann@opensuse.org> wrote:
Am Freitag 02 Oktober 2015, 13:41:15 schrieb Cornelius Schumacher:
On Thursday, October 01, 2015 05:16:40 PM jdd wrote:
So I will begin the work now, by hand. If any body want to help, it would be a good thing as there are around 500 members to test. To help, you need to be already a member officially.
I will be very open here: To me it feels very creepy to scan all members. I think this has more potential to destroy community than to build community.
+1
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On Friday 02 October 2015 14:23:55 Richard Brown wrote:
We've discussed this repeatedly on this list now
Yes, but it seems there is no consensus on the topic, so maybe we do need to discuss this further. To me this is important because it is about the core values of the project, about our openness, and about the question who we want to be part of the project and whom not.
Membership is a key part of this projects governance, and the current situation where membership votes have a terrible turn out is not acceptable
Why is that not acceptable? The active people vote, the inactive don't. It makes sense to care about the number of active people. But what does the number of inactive members change? Nothing, because these are the inactive ones. Note that this is a very different kind of governance than elections for a government or similar votes. A government decides for everybody, also for the people who didn't vote. There a strong legitimation by good participation does make a difference. But for openSUSE, which is a volunteer project, and those who don't vote because they are not interested anymore are also not affected by the results of the votes, because they chose to not participate anymore. In such a situation the number of non-voters says nothing else than how much of a history the project had. -- Cornelius Schumacher <cschum@suse.de> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Le 02/10/2015 19:05, Cornelius Schumacher a écrit :
Why is that not acceptable? The active people vote, the inactive don't.
that's not always true. inactive people are sometime only active when there is a vote. Not sure this is relevant for the openSUSE project... What drives me is curiosity. How many people leave openSUSE after having done the pretty difficult step of becoming a member? Why? is it simply life change or can we do something to keep them? jdd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On Friday 02 October 2015 19:27:16 jdd wrote:
What drives me is curiosity. How many people leave openSUSE after having done the pretty difficult step of becoming a member? Why? is it simply life change or can we do something to keep them?
I think there is a lot we can do to keep them: * Provide a relevant purpose. With Leap we have the best chance since years to do that, to do a distribution which reaches many and new users, a distribution which matters, and not only to the existing core of active contributors. * Offer tasks which are self-contained enough to be done even when you are short of time. Maintaining a package of your favorite software is a good way to do that. We just have to make sure that this is as easy as possible. * Take part in the exciting upstream projects, which attract the people who are drawn to technically interesting projects. We have a good example with docker, where we provide excellent packaging and more (e.g. Portus). If we do this for more, we can keep the people who look for new things. * Have a clear direction. If everybody knows where we go and moves along with all others we create momentum which drags in people who might otherwise stay inactive. We had the discussion about writing down the vision of Leap. That would be one step. * Recognize active people. Do things like the "people of openSUSE" interviews, a commit digest highlighting interesting contributions and who did them, revive the openSUSE weekly news, etc. * Offer a place where people can feel as part of the project, even if they have no time to contribute anymore, and keep the barrier for reentering the active community at zero height. If people have the feeling that they never left and the right task walks by they might pick it up. * Some people simply outgrow the community. They might be kept by addressing them on a different level. One of the typical examples are programmers which become managers, start their own companies, or do a similar career step. They might not be contribute with technical work, but maybe they can help with creating partnerships, organizing events, finding money, or similar things. * Create opportunities to maintain friendships with people in the active community. This could be release parties, hackathons, inviting former contributors as speakers to events, social events at conferences, etc. * And more (insert your ideas here :-) These are just a couple of ideas off the top of my head. I'm sure you have more, and with a bit of refinement they could be turned into activities to address active people, those who want to become active, and those who didn't realize yet, that they want to be active in openSUSE, but still do ;-) -- Cornelius Schumacher <cschum@suse.de> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Le 03/10/2015 02:32, Cornelius Schumacher a écrit :
I think there is a lot we can do to keep them:
let's see how we can translate ideas to actions... from the start page (http://www.opensuse.org) https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:How_to_participate
* Provide a relevant purpose. With Leap we have the best chance since years to do that, to do a distribution which reaches many and new users, a distribution which matters, and not only to the existing core of active contributors.
curiously enough, Leap seems to attract less than tumbleweed, but is nay of ther eaders want to help for leap, please join the marketting team that desperately needs help... (and to begin, subscribe the marketting list (mailto:opensuse-marketing+subscribe@opensuse.org)
* Offer tasks which are self-contained enough to be done even when you are short of time. Maintaining a package of your favorite software is a good way to do that. We just have to make sure that this is as easy as possible.
I once tried, but was stopped by the writing of the spec file I do not understand. May be writing a very basic explanation of how to build a spec file when one can compile the software on his own computer. May be one of the first such task should be to make more clear the process. Right now https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:How_to_participate on the "Help us to release the next version of openSUSE" paragraph, have an unusable link "For every release there is a set of tasks available" to https://progress.opensuse.org/projects/leap_421 that do not mean anything (as tasks to do for everybody) more later jdd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Le 03/10/2015 02:32, Cornelius Schumacher a écrit :
* Take part in the exciting upstream projects, which attract the people who are drawn to technically interesting projects. We have a good example with docker, where we provide excellent packaging and more (e.g. Portus). If we do this for more, we can keep the people who look for new things.
yes, I guess many openSUSE active member do so, but then how can we know about? if they package, we can see an obs account, but if they simply help with doc or any other mean?
* Have a clear direction. If everybody knows where we go and moves along with all others we create momentum which drags in people who might otherwise stay inactive. We had the discussion about writing down the vision of Leap. That would be one step.
if you (or every other people) have a clear view of where personal computer will be in say three years, congratulation. I know about leap only from the beginning of the present year (and probably the board knows only some weeks before). It's like life: be prepared :-)
* Recognize active people. Do things like the "people of openSUSE" interviews, a commit digest highlighting interesting contributions and who did them, revive the openSUSE weekly news, etc.
yes, this is (and was) very interesting. Anybody ready to do it? we nee a volunteer...
* Offer a place where people can feel as part of the project, even if they have no time to contribute anymore, and keep the barrier for reentering the active community at zero height. If people have the feeling that they never left and the right task walks by they might pick it up.
be more precise. How can we do that? we give "members" an opensuse mail and IRC cloak, but I have to say I never used them myself (too complicated)
* Some people simply outgrow the community. They might be kept by addressing them on a different level. One of the typical examples are programmers which become managers, start their own companies, or do a similar career step. They might not be contribute with technical work, but maybe they can help with creating partnerships, organizing events, finding money, or similar things.
to be clear, we *never* prevent people to do anything for openSUSE. We can ask only if we know...
* Create opportunities to maintain friendships with people in the active community. This could be release parties, hackathons, inviting former contributors as speakers to events, social events at conferences, etc.
yes. This is the goal of, for example, OSC (OpenSuse Conference) and TSP (Travel Support Programm). Any idea on this level is welcome (as in any other level)
address active people, those who want to become active, and those who didn't realize yet, that they want to be active in openSUSE, but still do ;-)
the goal of any post on any openSUSE mailing list is to trigger ideas :-) thanks jdd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On Saturday 03 October 2015 10:19:54 jdd wrote:
Le 03/10/2015 02:32, Cornelius Schumacher a écrit :
* Recognize active people. Do things like the "people of openSUSE" interviews, a commit digest highlighting interesting contributions and who did them, revive the openSUSE weekly news, etc.
yes, this is (and was) very interesting. Anybody ready to do it? we nee a volunteer...
The "people of openSUSE" actually sounds like a fun side project. I'll see what I can do to get it going again. -- Cornelius Schumacher <cschum@suse.de> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On October 5, 2015 at 8:46:50 AM, Cornelius Schumacher (cschum@suse.de(mailto:cschum@suse.de)) wrote:
On Saturday 03 October 2015 10:19:54 jdd wrote:
Le 03/10/2015 02:32, Cornelius Schumacher a écrit :
* Recognize active people. Do things like the "people of openSUSE" interviews, a commit digest highlighting interesting contributions and who did them, revive the openSUSE weekly news, etc.
yes, this is (and was) very interesting. Anybody ready to do it? we nee a volunteer...
The "people of openSUSE" actually sounds like a fun side project. I'll see what I can do to get it going again.
-- Cornelius Schumacher -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Did anyone see what I wrote the other day about this subject? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On Monday 05 October 2015 08:59:01 Andres Betts wrote:
On October 5, 2015 at 8:46:50 AM, Cornelius Schumacher (cschum@suse.de(mailto:cschum@suse.de)) wrote:
The "people of openSUSE" actually sounds like a fun side project. I'll see what I can do to get it going again.
Did anyone see what I wrote the other day about this subject?
No, sorry, I'm afraid I missed that. What exactly do you mean? -- Cornelius Schumacher <cschum@suse.de> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On October 5, 2015 at 9:12:23 AM, Cornelius Schumacher (cschum@suse.de(mailto:cschum@suse.de)) wrote:
On Monday 05 October 2015 08:59:01 Andres Betts wrote:
On October 5, 2015 at 8:46:50 AM, Cornelius Schumacher (cschum@suse.de(mailto:cschum@suse.de)) wrote:
The "people of openSUSE" actually sounds like a fun side project. I'll see what I can do to get it going again.
Did anyone see what I wrote the other day about this subject?
No, sorry, I'm afraid I missed that. What exactly do you mean?
-- Cornelius Schumacher -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
This is what I wrote. Could maybe a solution to this “inactive member vote” idea be to have a smaller set of decisions made by a smaller group? We all understand that the Board is here “to” help the community but “not to” direct the community. Many of us also think that by voting, we are indeed influencing how the project is managed, when in reality the Board feels that they are not really there to steer the project but to be an aid. That indicates having a passive nature to their involvement. We all know that all the members of the Board are active members of the community. Then, why not let the Board vote for its own new addition? My reasoning here would solve some issues: 1, Thinking that by voting you are electing people who are going to champion your ideas about the project 2, Avoid inactive members of the community voting overcoming the vote of the active members 3, Follow an open source idea where the ones that do, decide 4, Help the community in the same way that they do, without getting the perspective that their group leads the project PS: I would say also that we could follow current rules for selecting a candidate and how many periods that person could stay in the Board. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On Monday 05 October 2015 09:26:34 Andres Betts wrote:
On October 5, 2015 at 9:12:23 AM, Cornelius Schumacher (cschum@suse.de(mailto:cschum@suse.de)) wrote:
On Monday 05 October 2015 08:59:01 Andres Betts wrote:
On October 5, 2015 at 8:46:50 AM, Cornelius Schumacher
(cschum@suse.de(mailto:cschum@suse.de)) wrote:
The "people of openSUSE" actually sounds like a fun side project. I'll see what I can do to get it going again.
Did anyone see what I wrote the other day about this subject?
No, sorry, I'm afraid I missed that. What exactly do you mean?
This is what I wrote.
Oh, I saw that. It's a different topic than the interview series with the "people of openSUSE".
Could maybe a solution to this “inactive member vote” idea be to have a smaller set of decisions made by a smaller group? We all understand that the Board is here “to” help the community but “not to” direct the community. Many of us also think that by voting, we are indeed influencing how the project is managed, when in reality the Board feels that they are not really there to steer the project but to be an aid. That indicates having a passive nature to their involvement.
I don't have a strong opinion on the concrete suggestion, but in general I think it's very reasonable to let trusted people take decisions without the requirement to involve the community at large. This goes well with the "those who do the work decide" mantra. -- Cornelius Schumacher <cschum@suse.de> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On 10/05/2015 10:46 AM, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Saturday 03 October 2015 10:19:54 jdd wrote:
Le 03/10/2015 02:32, Cornelius Schumacher a écrit :
* Recognize active people. Do things like the "people of openSUSE" interviews, a commit digest highlighting interesting contributions and who did them, revive the openSUSE weekly news, etc.
yes, this is (and was) very interesting. Anybody ready to do it? we nee a volunteer...
The "people of openSUSE" actually sounds like a fun side project. I'll see what I can do to get it going again.
If you would like, I can help you out with that. SOunds like it would be fun to start it up again :) -- Regards, Uzair Shamim -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On Monday 05 October 2015 23:20:33 Uzair Shamim wrote:
On 10/05/2015 10:46 AM, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Saturday 03 October 2015 10:19:54 jdd wrote:
Le 03/10/2015 02:32, Cornelius Schumacher a écrit :
* Recognize active people. Do things like the "people of openSUSE" interviews, a commit digest highlighting interesting contributions and who did them, revive the openSUSE weekly news, etc.
yes, this is (and was) very interesting. Anybody ready to do it? we nee a volunteer...
The "people of openSUSE" actually sounds like a fun side project. I'll see what I can do to get it going again.
If you would like, I can help you out with that. SOunds like it would be fun to start it up again :)
Wonderful. I'll contact you off-list to talk about the details. -- Cornelius Schumacher <cschum@suse.de> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On 10/02/2015 08:32 PM, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Friday 02 October 2015 19:27:16 jdd wrote:
What drives me is curiosity. How many people leave openSUSE after having done the pretty difficult step of becoming a member? Why? is it simply life change or can we do something to keep them?
I think there is a lot we can do to keep them:
* Provide a relevant purpose. With Leap we have the best chance since years to do that, to do a distribution which reaches many and new users, a distribution which matters, and not only to the existing core of active contributors.
I think the jury on Leap is still out and it may be for a few releases (years) to come. One can argue just as well that Leap, as a new initiative. is papering over the other problem areas we have in the project, insufficient participation in Marketing areas, event organization, documentation, wiki maintenance, you name it. But this is a completely separate discussion from the membership discussion. I also do not think that any discussion about Leap in that direction is helpful to the project as there are very good arguments on both sides. Thus, only time will tell if Leap becomes what many hope it will be. Later, Robert -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo
On 10/02/2015 01:05 PM, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Friday 02 October 2015 14:23:55 Richard Brown wrote:
We've discussed this repeatedly on this list now
Yes, but it seems there is no consensus on the topic, so maybe we do need to discuss this further. To me this is important because it is about the core values of the project, about our openness, and about the question who we want to be part of the project and whom not.
Membership is a key part of this projects governance, and the current situation where membership votes have a terrible turn out is not acceptable
Why is that not acceptable? The active people vote, the inactive don't.
I think this is a bit too simplistic. By casting a vote for the board elections the voter has a certain influence on the direction of the project, and we can argue about this as part of this discussion. Thus, with a large number of inactive "openSUSE Members", per the member definition, the problem arises is two fold. a.) If non of the inactive members vote then those that are active have the influence they arguably should have, but we do not know if this is the case and thus the vote (number of voters vs. number of members) looks non representative due to the low turn out. We can also not differentiate between the inactive non-voters and those that are active but choose not to vote. b.) If everyone votes then one can argue that those that are generally inactive have an undue influence over the direction of the project by casting their vote. These are just the two most obvious, from my perspective, problems that arise by the skew of "active openSUSE Members" vs. "inactive openSUSE Members". The problem does not necessarily need to be solved by culling the membership list. Other approaches may be feasible. - Run the "activity script" in November and the top 200 contributors get invited to vote. This may be one potential option. We can then argue about how we determine the "top 200", or we can pick another arbitrary number. - We can avoid the problem by changing the governance structure, dismember the board and have the role of the "Board Chairman" be renamed as "Community Liaison" to the primary sponsor of the project. - Another option is to move to a "pay for" model. Pay a yearly membership fee and the payer is in, whether or not the person paying contributes is immaterial. Those that pay get to vote. - Have an entirely appointed board. The board composition can still be determined by the current rules. The board terms can also remain in place. New board members could be appointed/nominated by the rest of the board, the sponsoring organization(s), or anyone in the community. Presumably the nominees would be from a pool of most active people. The current board members then pick from the pool of nominees. Anyway as Richard pointed out, a change in governance model needs a vote by "openSUSE Members" which brings us back to the original problem. Of course we can choose to change the governance model with the current voting structure.
It makes sense to care about the number of active people.
Agreed.
But what does the number of inactive members change?
It skews everything, see above.
Nothing, because these are the inactive ones.
From my perspective this is not correct. As I tried to explain above inactive "openSUSE Members" do have an effect on the project in one way or another. Thus, I think, it is fair to try to quantify that effect and possibly reduce or avoid the effect.
Note that this is a very different kind of governance than elections for a government or similar votes. A government decides for everybody, also for the people who didn't vote. There a strong legitimation by good participation does make a difference.
But for openSUSE, which is a volunteer project, and those who don't vote because they are not interested anymore are also not affected by the results of the votes,
I would argue they are. They may not care about the effects, but that is a different discussion. The way the project represents itself, internally and externally, the way the project conducts presence at events etc. is representative of all those that are associated with the project, active or not.
because they chose to not participate anymore. In such a situation the number of non-voters says nothing else than how much of a history the project had.
With the exception that you cannot differentiate between the people that are active and do not vote and those that are inactive and do not vote. Thus it is pretty much impossible to "care about the active" people and try to understand why the choose not to vote. That is also an important part about caring for the active people, at least from my perspective. Later, Robert -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 On 2015-10-03 14:56, Robert Schweikert wrote:
With the exception that you cannot differentiate between the people that are active and do not vote and those that are inactive and do not vote. Thus it is pretty much impossible to "care about the active" people and try to understand why the choose not to vote. That is also an important part about caring for the active people, at least from my perspective.
I think the worry is about inactive members that do vote ;-) - -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" (Minas Tirith)) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) iF4EAREIAAYFAlYP14QACgkQja8UbcUWM1yUbAD/c/r80mGpKaDEk2S8nTODhUHz +8m4ZHXF5RbRohsgPhwA/iE7iYxc31CmFdpT4QzqG1TlXpLWfGTE8vMjsw8eh/fF =wZiU -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Le 03/10/2015 15:26, Carlos E. R. a écrit :
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256
On 2015-10-03 14:56, Robert Schweikert wrote:
With the exception that you cannot differentiate between the people that are active and do not vote and those that are inactive and do not vote. Thus it is pretty much impossible to "care about the active" people and try to understand why the choose not to vote. That is also an important part about caring for the active people, at least from my perspective.
I think the worry is about inactive members that do vote ;-)
and useful and very easy way to make the problem of less importance would be to add an "abstention" vote. People wanting to vote, but not liking the content can express. but this do not change the essential question: is voting once in a while enough to be considered as a contributor? problem is the "contributor" criteria is very difficult to define (for example is somebody that only ask questions on a list a contributor? the answer is not as easy as you may think, because asking question is a good way to keep alive a list and good question can lead to good answer That said, I don't think we should take all this too serious. I don't see real present reason that could make a "coup" (coup d'état) could happen on openSUSE. jdd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On 10/04/2015 03:33 AM, jdd wrote:
Le 03/10/2015 15:26, Carlos E. R. a écrit :
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256
On 2015-10-03 14:56, Robert Schweikert wrote:
With the exception that you cannot differentiate between the people that are active and do not vote and those that are inactive and do not vote. Thus it is pretty much impossible to "care about the active" people and try to understand why the choose not to vote. That is also an important part about caring for the active people, at least from my perspective.
I think the worry is about inactive members that do vote ;-)
and useful and very easy way to make the problem of less importance would be to add an "abstention" vote. People wanting to vote, but not liking the content can express.
but this do not change the essential question: is voting once in a while enough to be considered as a contributor?
problem is the "contributor" criteria is very difficult to define (for example is somebody that only ask questions on a list a contributor? the answer is not as easy as you may think, because asking question is a good way to keep alive a list and good question can lead to good answer
That said, I don't think we should take all this too serious. I don't see real present reason that could make a "coup" (coup d'état) could happen on openSUSE.
jdd
As I understood the process, we are searching for inactive members so that we can ask them if they still wish to be members and if we get no response or they say they no longer wish to be members we are removing them. From that logic a inactive member can still say they wish to be a member and still vote. I didn't read Richard say anywhere that we were going to remove members who said they still wished to be members but aren’t currently contributing. My understanding could be wrong but if its right I don't see what the fuss is about, cleaning up the list to remove people that don't want to be members anymore or that the project can no longer contact. As has been said if they contact the project in the future saying they wish to be members again they will be re added. I agree with Richard cleaning up the list makes alot of sense. Cheers Simon -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Over the summer I started reading with amusement this thread and thought of it as the usual flame. Now the things start to take an Orwellian turn. Membership to the project, if I remember correctly, was conditioned, at the time I got mine, by contributions already made and not of future contributions. So discussions about purging members without active contributions sound to me futile. Anyhow despite still contributing as a protest towards all this I will stop contributing and please remove my membership too or post a link were people who had enough of this bickering can resign. Regards, Alin Without Questions there are no Answers! ______________________________________________________________________ Dr. Alin Marin ELENA http://alin.elena.space/ ______________________________________________________________________ On 4 October 2015 at 11:32, Simon Lees <simon@simotek.net> wrote:
On 10/04/2015 03:33 AM, jdd wrote:
Le 03/10/2015 15:26, Carlos E. R. a écrit :
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256
On 2015-10-03 14:56, Robert Schweikert wrote:
With the exception that you cannot differentiate between the people that are active and do not vote and those that are inactive and do not vote. Thus it is pretty much impossible to "care about the active" people and try to understand why the choose not to vote. That is also an important part about caring for the active people, at least from my perspective.
I think the worry is about inactive members that do vote ;-)
and useful and very easy way to make the problem of less importance would be to add an "abstention" vote. People wanting to vote, but not liking the content can express.
but this do not change the essential question: is voting once in a while enough to be considered as a contributor?
problem is the "contributor" criteria is very difficult to define (for example is somebody that only ask questions on a list a contributor? the answer is not as easy as you may think, because asking question is a good way to keep alive a list and good question can lead to good answer
That said, I don't think we should take all this too serious. I don't see real present reason that could make a "coup" (coup d'état) could happen on openSUSE.
jdd
As I understood the process, we are searching for inactive members so that we can ask them if they still wish to be members and if we get no response or they say they no longer wish to be members we are removing them. From that logic a inactive member can still say they wish to be a member and still vote. I didn't read Richard say anywhere that we were going to remove members who said they still wished to be members but aren’t currently contributing. My understanding could be wrong but if its right I don't see what the fuss is about, cleaning up the list to remove people that don't want to be members anymore or that the project can no longer contact. As has been said if they contact the project in the future saying they wish to be members again they will be re added.
I agree with Richard cleaning up the list makes alot of sense.
Cheers
Simon
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Le 04/10/2015 12:58, Alin Marin Elena a écrit :
Over the summer I started reading with amusement this thread and thought of it as the usual flame.
Now the things start to take an Orwellian turn. Membership to the project, if I remember correctly, was conditioned, at the time I got mine, by contributions already made and not of future contributions.
there is a proposal to makes this more clear https://en.opensuse.org/Members#Maintaining_your_membership
So discussions about purging members without active contributions sound to me futile.
I see some reasons, at least: validate the quotas already existing and getting significant statistics about the membership attractiveness, try to understand why people get unactive to see is we can do something to keep them
Anyhow despite still contributing as a protest towards all this I will stop contributing and please remove my membership too or post a link were people who had enough of this bickering can resign.
I don't understand this part, sorry jdd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Le 03/10/2015 14:56, Robert Schweikert a écrit :
- Another option is to move to a "pay for" model. Pay a yearly membership fee and the payer is in, whether or not the person paying contributes is immaterial. Those that pay get to vote.
It's the only factual solution (that is with no doubt), but is paying $10 a real contribution?
- Have an entirely appointed board. The board composition can still be determined by the current rules.
this could make the system worst. Now being on the board is a burden more than a reward :-), if the board was paid, people could find personal interest to trick the vote, please don't! if you have money, makes the board appoint people to give momentum to the project, eventually... jdd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On Saturday 03 October 2015 08:56:20 Robert Schweikert wrote:
I think this is a bit too simplistic. By casting a vote for the board elections the voter has a certain influence on the direction of the project, and we can argue about this as part of this discussion. Thus, with a large number of inactive "openSUSE Members", per the member definition, the problem arises is two fold.
Voting for the board does not influence the direction of the project as by our guiding principles the board does not direct the project: "The board should provide guidance and support existing governance structures, but shouldn't direct or control development, since community mechanisms exist to accomplish the goals of the project."
b.) If everyone votes then one can argue that those that are generally inactive have an undue influence over the direction of the project by casting their vote.
Do you seriously think that this is a problem? Is there any evidence that people who do nothing than voting change the outcome of votes in any way? To me this sounds like a very theoretical argument.
The problem does not necessarily need to be solved by culling the membership list. Other approaches may be feasible.
Exactly. The other approach is to just let it be. It doesn't create real problems and our energy is much better spent on taking care of the active people and get things done in what we want to deliver to our users.
Anyway as Richard pointed out, a change in governance model needs a vote by "openSUSE Members" which brings us back to the original problem. Of course we can choose to change the governance model with the current voting structure.
There is no change in our governance structure needed. There is no quorum defined for board elections, so the number of inactive voters doesn't change the results of the election in any way. Additionally there are no rules defined for any other votes by the members. Our community is an informal one governed by the open source process, where consensus and decisions by those who do the work govern the project, not formal votes. It's simply not true that changes to the governance model need a vote. That's not how the openSUSE community is built. Our community is governed by doing, by communication, and by the values outlined in the guiding principles. The board would be well advised to follow its mandate to support the community, its values, and the structures which are there. There is no need for erecting formalities which are neither supposed to be there nor helpful. Better spend your time and energy on wholeheartedly supporting what the community does. And I'm sorry if this discussion drifts into the meta regions of discussing governance of the project. These discussions are harder to do productively and they can't easily be concluded compared to when you just can write a piece of code solving the problem. But they are important, as they help to create clarity about how the community is understanding its values. This is what guides how we work. -- Cornelius Schumacher <cschum@suse.de> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On October 3, 2015 at 6:03:32 PM, Cornelius Schumacher (cschum@suse.de(mailto:cschum@suse.de)) wrote:
On Saturday 03 October 2015 08:56:20 Robert Schweikert wrote:
I think this is a bit too simplistic. By casting a vote for the board elections the voter has a certain influence on the direction of the project, and we can argue about this as part of this discussion. Thus, with a large number of inactive "openSUSE Members", per the member definition, the problem arises is two fold.
Voting for the board does not influence the direction of the project as by our guiding principles the board does not direct the project: "The board should provide guidance and support existing governance structures, but shouldn't direct or control development, since community mechanisms exist to accomplish the goals of the project."
b.) If everyone votes then one can argue that those that are generally inactive have an undue influence over the direction of the project by casting their vote.
Do you seriously think that this is a problem? Is there any evidence that people who do nothing than voting change the outcome of votes in any way?
To me this sounds like a very theoretical argument.
The problem does not necessarily need to be solved by culling the membership list. Other approaches may be feasible.
Exactly. The other approach is to just let it be. It doesn't create real problems and our energy is much better spent on taking care of the active people and get things done in what we want to deliver to our users.
Could maybe a solution to this “inactive member vote” idea be to have a smaller set of decisions made by a smaller group. We all understand that the Board is here “to” help the community but “not to” direct the community. Many of us also think that by voting, we are indeed influencing how the project is managed, when in reality the Board feels that they are not really there to steer the project but to be an aid. That indicates having a passive nature to their involvement. We all know that all the members of the Board are active members of the community. Then, why not let the Board vote for its own new addition? My reasoning here would solve some issues: 1, Thinking that by voting you are electing people who are going to champion your ideas about the project 2, Avoid inactive members of the community voting overcoming the vote of the active members 3, Follow an open source idea where the ones that do, decide 4, Help the community in the same way that they do, without getting the perspective that their group leads the project PS: I would say also that we could follow current rules for selecting a candidate and how many periods that person could stay in the Board.
Anyway as Richard pointed out, a change in governance model needs a vote by "openSUSE Members" which brings us back to the original problem. Of course we can choose to change the governance model with the current voting structure.
There is no change in our governance structure needed.
There is no quorum defined for board elections, so the number of inactive voters doesn't change the results of the election in any way.
Additionally there are no rules defined for any other votes by the members. Our community is an informal one governed by the open source process, where consensus and decisions by those who do the work govern the project, not formal votes. It's simply not true that changes to the governance model need a vote. That's not how the openSUSE community is built.
Our community is governed by doing, by communication, and by the values outlined in the guiding principles.
The board would be well advised to follow its mandate to support the community, its values, and the structures which are there. There is no need for erecting formalities which are neither supposed to be there nor helpful. Better spend your time and energy on wholeheartedly supporting what the community does.
And I'm sorry if this discussion drifts into the meta regions of discussing governance of the project. These discussions are harder to do productively and they can't easily be concluded compared to when you just can write a piece of code solving the problem. But they are important, as they help to create clarity about how the community is understanding its values. This is what guides how we work.
-- Cornelius Schumacher -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Le 04/10/2015 02:03, Cornelius Schumacher a écrit :
Exactly. The other approach is to just let it be. It doesn't create real problems and our energy is much better spent on taking care of the active people and get things done in what we want to deliver to our users.
but may be the inactive members expected something from us we didn't give, and knowing why they stop being active can help us be better jdd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On Sunday 04 October 2015 08:17:53 jdd wrote:
Le 04/10/2015 02:03, Cornelius Schumacher a écrit :
Exactly. The other approach is to just let it be. It doesn't create real problems and our energy is much better spent on taking care of the active people and get things done in what we want to deliver to our users.
but may be the inactive members expected something from us we didn't give, and knowing why they stop being active can help us be better
This is a good point. Talking to people who left could give us more insight in what we need to keep people. Just as well as it would be great to understand reasons why people are not joining in the first place. Both would help to make the project attractive. -- Cornelius Schumacher <cschum@suse.de> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On 4 October 2015 at 02:03, Cornelius Schumacher <cschum@suse.de> wrote:
On Saturday 03 October 2015 08:56:20 Robert Schweikert wrote:
I think this is a bit too simplistic. By casting a vote for the board elections the voter has a certain influence on the direction of the project, and we can argue about this as part of this discussion. Thus, with a large number of inactive "openSUSE Members", per the member definition, the problem arises is two fold.
Voting for the board does not influence the direction of the project as by our guiding principles the board does not direct the project: "The board should provide guidance and support existing governance structures, but shouldn't direct or control development, since community mechanisms exist to accomplish the goals of the project."
b.) If everyone votes then one can argue that those that are generally inactive have an undue influence over the direction of the project by casting their vote.
Do you seriously think that this is a problem? Is there any evidence that people who do nothing than voting change the outcome of votes in any way?
To me this sounds like a very theoretical argument.
The problem does not necessarily need to be solved by culling the membership list. Other approaches may be feasible.
Exactly. The other approach is to just let it be. It doesn't create real problems and our energy is much better spent on taking care of the active people and get things done in what we want to deliver to our users.
Anyway as Richard pointed out, a change in governance model needs a vote by "openSUSE Members" which brings us back to the original problem. Of course we can choose to change the governance model with the current voting structure.
There is no change in our governance structure needed.
There is no quorum defined for board elections, so the number of inactive voters doesn't change the results of the election in any way.
Additionally there are no rules defined for any other votes by the members. Our community is an informal one governed by the open source process, where consensus and decisions by those who do the work govern the project, not formal votes. It's simply not true that changes to the governance model need a vote. That's not how the openSUSE community is built.
Our community is governed by doing, by communication, and by the values outlined in the guiding principles.
The board would be well advised to follow its mandate to support the community, its values, and the structures which are there. There is no need for erecting formalities which are neither supposed to be there nor helpful. Better spend your time and energy on wholeheartedly supporting what the community does.
And I'm sorry if this discussion drifts into the meta regions of discussing governance of the project. These discussions are harder to do productively and they can't easily be concluded compared to when you just can write a piece of code solving the problem. But they are important, as they help to create clarity about how the community is understanding its values. This is what guides how we work.
-- Cornelius Schumacher <cschum@suse.de>
Cornelius, While much of what you say is factually correct, I think your interpretation of the status quo is lacking some context Lets take for example the Boards started role - "The board should provide guidance and support existing governance structures, but shouldn't direct or control development, since community mechanisms exist to accomplish the goals of the project." This is something I think we all agree on. I am confident that every Board member strongly believes that the Board should never take a decision away from other contributors who wish to assert that decision. But to extend that as far as you have when you state "voting for the Board does not influence the direction of the Project" couldn't be much further from the truth Sure, in an idealistic utopia, we would have a Project where a) Every volunteer felt empowered, confident, and capable of making decisions and b) Every volunteer agreed with every other volunteer without incident. In reality, neither of those are true, and so we have the Board. Dealing with a), there are many contributors to the Project who seek for additional guidance on what they are doing, or seek a second opinion to challenge or reinforce their own decision. These lists, this community, is often where many of these discussions start, but, as this discussion proves, very often a conclusion or consensus can be unclear. This, if left undealt with, can lead to decision paralysis - no decisions get made because no one can decide what decision needs to be made. The Board, under its role to provide guidance and support, is often turned to in such circumstances. The decisions we make there, in how to guide and support those volunteers, have huge influence in the Project. In the last 3 Boards, I have seen a steady increase on the Board being turned to in this manner. We all saw it en mass with the recent decision regarding the naming and numbering of Leap, where there was clear direction from a majority of people involved in the discussion that they felt the Board should decide, not a Member vote, not a Community-wide vote. And with b) conflict resolution, the Board is our stated conflict resolution body. Conflicts arise all the time, and the decisions the Board makes there in how to resolve those conflicts, also have a huge influence on the direction of the Project. In the long ago past (ie. 3+ years ago), the Board used to avoid stepping in to help resolve conflicts that were of a 'technical' nature. This led to some significant problems, such as certain technical issues lingering around without resolution. After discussing it on these lists the Board decided to no longer excuse itself from such conflicts, and while of course the goal is to always be a mediator and seek a resolution to any issue that is led and agreed upon by the parties involved, as a last resort this places the Board in a situation where it could also make decisions which influence the technical direction of the Project. or to put this very succinctly - while remaining true to the Principles upon which it was founded, the Board today is involved in far more decisions and influence of the Project than the Boards when those Principles were laid out And is that a problem? I think not, but it leads to an interesting constitutional question Who keeps the Board in check? The Board represents the Project, and is meant to be answerable to the Members and the wider openSUSE community. The Members represent the wider/fuller openSUSE community, and have a direct lever of control over the Board, as our rules state "If 20 per cent or more of the openSUSE members require a new board, an election will be held for the complete elected Board seats. " With the current situation, where a significant number of the openSUSE membership is inactive and not participating in the project in *any* means, then it is significantly harder for those Members who ARE still active in the project to reach that 20% threshold For that reason, and that reason alone, I think the effort to conduct a census on our existing Membership, and remove those who no longer have any interest in the Project, is in the best interest of the Board, the Members, and the whole Community - it's important to have a healthy governance structure. All the other topics around here are food for thought, context, additional concerns, additional issues to consider in the future If you look at the openSUSE governance structure, we're not that dissimilar from many other projects KDE e.V and the GNOME Foundation for example have Boards. These boards are elected by a subset of their wider community, which in both cases call themselves 'Members'. These voting Members have eligibility requirements that require contributions to the Project which are confirmed via a process not dissimilar from ours at openSUSE. I do not think departing from this model, and going to a direction where everyone can vote on everything, would be a healthy option for the Project - we want to ensure that openSUSE has a strong influence in its own direction. A totally open 'everyone can vote on everything in openSUSE even if they have nothing to do with openSUSE' approach would be open to some pretty negative manipulation from parties who might have reason to misdirect the Project. In fact, I think the sensible approach is to actually learn from those other Projects who walk this path, and consider their solutions to our shared problems Both KDE eV and the GNOME Foundation have rules regarding quorums, that sounds like a good idea for us too. I really dislike the current situation where Member votes are often felt to be not representative of the community, because so many of those Members who are meant to represent the community are not voting at all. The perceived 'lack of interest and engagement' from the Membership also discourages use of Member voting in areas where it COULD be considered, such as in some of those decisions where the Board is currently turned to. It would be nice to have a clear, vibrant, voting Membership, which the community can turn to when making tricky decisions. Both KDE e.V and the GNOME Foundation have ongoing activity requirements to maintain your membership - We could do with establishing that, but right now however I think we should just focus on this simple 'one shot' attempt of ensuring the current membership represents those who are currently interested in the Project. Let's figure out the lay of the land, and get our membership rebalanced so we can see an accurate picture of how many active Members we have, how many of them are voting on Board elections, and then we can take things from there. Regards, Richard -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On Sunday 04 October 2015 11:50:51 Richard Brown wrote:
KDE e.V and the GNOME Foundation for example have Boards. These boards are elected by a subset of their wider community, which in both cases call themselves 'Members'.
The comparison with KDE e.V. and the GNOME Foundation is misleading. The organizations and the governance are very different from what we have in openSUSE. For both KDE and GNOME, the non-profit organizations are the legal representative of the community. The organizations own the assets of the community and they are the only formal body providing governance. They have formal power and responsibility. That's why they have a formal structure with all the required rules and legal consequences. openSUSE is a single-vendor community. Its assets are owned by SUSE. From a purely legal point of view the governance is very simple: SUSE controls what is happening under the openSUSE name. The company has all the formal power, such as owning the trademarks, the domains, the servers, financing events, employing core contributors, etc. Now SUSE has made a strong commitment to running openSUSE as open project and letting the community take control about a lot of what is happening following the principles of open source. This takes building conventions, procedures, and communication structures to enable the community to work effectively in an open way. When we wrote the guiding principles our goal was to express this, to capture the values and the desired culture of the community as well as the commitment of SUSE. This is the base for the collaboration in the community. Later some more concrete procedures were added to define how the board elections are handled in detail, that's where the membership was introduced. But the nature of the procedures we have is very different from those of a formal organizations which has legal rights and responsibilities. In openSUSE it's about communication, about social contracts, about culture, and conventions how to organize work. The role of the board is not about executing the necessary work to run a formal organization but about communication, especially with SUSE as the company standing behind the community. I think this is the core of the discussion we are having here and had at other places before. We need to develop clarity about the kind of community we have, and not pretend we are something different. We have a huge asset with SUSE being behind openSUSE. There is alignment between SUSE's business interests and the interests of the community, so it helps SUSE to have this community and it helps the community to have SUSE. This provides a lot of momentum. It is a powerful setup. We should embrace it and focus on where we can make a tangible difference through openSUSE. P.S.: Thanks for the good discussion. Debate can help to create insight, and I think this is happening here. -- Cornelius Schumacher <cschum@suse.de> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On 4 October 2015 at 23:06, Cornelius Schumacher <cschum@suse.de> wrote:
On Sunday 04 October 2015 11:50:51 Richard Brown wrote:
KDE e.V and the GNOME Foundation for example have Boards. These boards are elected by a subset of their wider community, which in both cases call themselves 'Members'.
The comparison with KDE e.V. and the GNOME Foundation is misleading. The organizations and the governance are very different from what we have in openSUSE.
For both KDE and GNOME, the non-profit organizations are the legal representative of the community. The organizations own the assets of the community and they are the only formal body providing governance. They have formal power and responsibility. That's why they have a formal structure with all the required rules and legal consequences.
I don't think it is misleading at all, we model ourselves on those well established projects that many of our members also participate in. While openSUSE may not own assets, IIRC we do have legal guarantees that SUSE will not change in any way assets that the project requires (I would need to go through my archives to confirm, but I'm fairly certain of it).
openSUSE is a single-vendor community. Its assets are owned by SUSE. From a purely legal point of view the governance is very simple: SUSE controls what is happening under the openSUSE name. The company has all the formal power, such as owning the trademarks, the domains, the servers, financing events, employing core contributors, etc.
I strongly disagree with the assertion that openSUSE is a single vendor community. Yes, SUSE is our Foundational sponsor but this does not preclude any other vendor from participating in whatever shape or form they desire.Just look at the bottom of our homepage. SUSE may influence how things happen, but they by no means dictate what does/does not go on.
Now SUSE has made a strong commitment to running openSUSE as open project and letting the community take control about a lot of what is happening following the principles of open source. This takes building conventions, procedures, and communication structures to enable the community to work effectively in an open way.
Yes and it's not only a verbal commitment, and we the Board make sure that they are reminded of that commitment regularly.
When we wrote the guiding principles our goal was to express this, to capture the values and the desired culture of the community as well as the commitment of SUSE. This is the base for the collaboration in the community. Later some more concrete procedures were added to define how the board elections are handled in detail, that's where the membership was introduced.
But the nature of the procedures we have is very different from those of a formal organizations which has legal rights and responsibilities. In openSUSE it's about communication, about social contracts, about culture, and conventions how to organize work. The role of the board is not about executing the necessary work to run a formal organization but about communication, especially with SUSE as the company standing behind the community.
The role of the openSUSE Board, just as it is with the GNOME/KDE Boards, is to executing the plans, discussions, and desires of the respective communities to the best of the Board's ability. There is no difference there. We may not have the same funding/legal cover as our peers, but we have the same remit - represent our community to the best of our ability. The problem arises when we that are elected by the community, and those within the community, no longer know who our constituents are. We don't have any state/county boundaries to cross, we don't have buses traveling around extolling our virtues. Communities are organic, they grow and shrink; one time our community is a fat healthy caterpillar, next it is a sleek dainty butterfly - neither is better, but both are just as important and crucial. Without taking stock of who is involved how are we all supposed to improve our community and move things forward?
I think this is the core of the discussion we are having here and had at other places before. We need to develop clarity about the kind of community we have, and not pretend we are something different.
To me it sounds like you're trying to bring up the discussion of an official Foundation again, a topic that you were strongly opposed to.
We have a huge asset with SUSE being behind openSUSE. There is alignment between SUSE's business interests and the interests of the community, so it helps SUSE to have this community and it helps the community to have SUSE. This provides a lot of momentum. It is a powerful setup. We should embrace it and focus on where we can make a tangible difference through openSUSE.
Yes we do, and we don't forget it, nor do we try to think it doesn't exist. I like to think that SUSE also knows and doesn't forget our relationship.
P.S.: Thanks for the good discussion. Debate can help to create insight, and I think this is happening here.
Whilst discussion is indeed good, let's try and not loose sight of what it is we are discussing. Regards, Andy
-- Cornelius Schumacher <cschum@suse.de> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On Monday 05 October 2015 08:02:17 Andrew Wafaa wrote:
I strongly disagree with the assertion that openSUSE is a single vendor community. Yes, SUSE is our Foundational sponsor but this does not preclude any other vendor from participating in whatever shape or form they desire.Just look at the bottom of our homepage. SUSE may influence how things happen, but they by no means dictate what does/does not go on.
SUSE doesn't dictate what is going on, because SUSE has committed to an open development model. That allows others to participate and benefit, individuals as well as companies. But SUSE still clearly is the dominant player there, isn't it? Can you quantify to what degree the sponsors listed at the bottom of our homepage contribute compared to SUSE?
Now SUSE has made a strong commitment to running openSUSE as open project and letting the community take control about a lot of what is happening following the principles of open source. This takes building conventions, procedures, and communication structures to enable the community to work effectively in an open way.
Yes and it's not only a verbal commitment, and we the Board make sure that they are reminded of that commitment regularly.
If there is more than what is published on the web site and in the Wiki, it would be great to add it. Transparency is an important factor for an open community such as openSUSE. Could you dig that up, what you are referring to?
To me it sounds like you're trying to bring up the discussion of an official Foundation again, a topic that you were strongly opposed to.
I'm still opposed to an official foundation, because I know first hand that it draws a lot of energy and can be quite a distraction. So unless there is no other way, I would always recommend to not do it. openSUSE has SUSE to take care of the things a foundation would usually cover. And that's the whole point I want to make in this thread. Let's focus on doing the great work the openSUSE community does, let's create our distributions and get them to users. Let's not get distracted by formalities and bureaucracy. We are in the luxurious position that we have SUSE as organization behind the project. That provides us safety and power. We do need to take care of our culture, but this is about communication and we can do that effectively without having to introduce a lot of formal rules. -- Cornelius Schumacher <cschum@suse.de> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Richard Brown: [...]
Who keeps the Board in check?
The Board represents the Project, and is meant to be answerable to the Members and the wider openSUSE community. The Members represent the wider/fuller openSUSE community, and have a direct lever of control over the Board, as our rules state "If 20 per cent or more of the openSUSE members require a new board, an election will be held for the complete elected Board seats. " With the current situation, where a significant number of the openSUSE membership is inactive and not participating in the project in *any* means, then it is significantly harder for those Members who ARE still active in the project to reach that 20% threshold
For that reason, and that reason alone, I think the effort to conduct a census on our existing Membership, and remove those who no longer have any interest in the Project, is in the best interest of the Board, the Members, and the whole Community - it's important to have a healthy governance structure.
If that is the or a problem, openSUSE members might change this rule (by vote) to something like: "If 20 per cent or more of the openSUSE members , or at least a number of openSUSE members that is greater than 50 per cent of the counted voters during the last Board election, require a new board, an election will be held for the complete elected Board seats."
[...] -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On 10/03/2015 08:03 PM, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Saturday 03 October 2015 08:56:20 Robert Schweikert wrote:
I think this is a bit too simplistic. By casting a vote for the board elections the voter has a certain influence on the direction of the project, and we can argue about this as part of this discussion. Thus, with a large number of inactive "openSUSE Members", per the member definition, the problem arises is two fold.
Voting for the board does not influence the direction of the project as by our guiding principles the board does not direct the project: "The board should provide guidance and support existing governance structures, but shouldn't direct or control development, since community mechanisms exist to accomplish the goals of the project."
Fair enough, thus from your point of view the only thing that determines the "direction of the project" is the technical aspect. That is certainly a valid opinion. Personally I would claim that view to be a bit too restrictive. From my perspective people that represent the project in a booth at an event have just as much influence on the direction of the project as those that decide to contribute a package to a given distribution stream. Those that stand in a booth are to a large degree "the face of the project" and help to stir interest in potential new contributors. The list of things that have influence on the direction of the project outside the technical area is probably quite large. The events that get sponsored and receive booth boxes are currently recommended to our primary sponsor by the board. Anyway, we can stay with the "the project is only technical" argument, which is probably the reason why we have such a hard time in convincing more people in non technical areas to contribute, but that is my opinion and not based on any data what so ever.
b.) If everyone votes then one can argue that those that are generally inactive have an undue influence over the direction of the project by casting their vote.
Do you seriously think that this is a problem? Is there any evidence that people who do nothing than voting change the outcome of votes in any way?
To me this sounds like a very theoretical argument.
The problem does not necessarily need to be solved by culling the membership list. Other approaches may be feasible.
Exactly. The other approach is to just let it be. It doesn't create real problems and our energy is much better spent on taking care of the active people and get things done in what we want to deliver to our users.
Well, how in the "let it be" model we are in a position to engage those active members that choose not to vote? How do we differentiate those from the inactive members? How do we have a constructive conversation about why the members that do contribute do not choose to vote? From my perspective this is part of "taking care of active members". From a purely technical view "let it be" works perfectly well. When someone chooses to no longer maintain a package then maybe someone else will stand up and do the work. Whether the person that decided to drop package maintenance is listed as an openSUSE Member is immaterial to the technical aspect of the project, I agree with you. However, there are other aspects to the project. As long as we refuse to acknowledge that these other areas exist, need attention, and have their own sets of problems that need to be solved we will be stuck in the same position that we are in. Additionally I proclaim that the longer we try to solve non technical problems with technical solutions we will continue to shrink, no matter how good the distributions are.
Anyway as Richard pointed out, a change in governance model needs a vote by "openSUSE Members" which brings us back to the original problem. Of course we can choose to change the governance model with the current voting structure.
There is no change in our governance structure needed.
There is no quorum defined for board elections, so the number of inactive voters doesn't change the results of the election in any way.
But the there is a quorum defined for the membership to mandate changes on the board. With a 25% vote of the membership early elections can be initiated. When 76% of the membership, and I don't think the number is that high yet, are inactive this option is taken away from those that do actively contribute to the project. Later, Robert -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo
Le 04/10/2015 12:06, Robert Schweikert a écrit :
that we are in. Additionally I proclaim that the longer we try to solve non technical problems with technical solutions we will continue to shrink, no matter how good the distributions are.
yes, that's why I had this initiative. I didn't expect such a discussion, but things may be more clear now. Technical means are a good help, but personal contact when possible is much better, and we badly need non developers members to promote openSUSE jdd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On 10/04/2015 06:06 AM, Robert Schweikert wrote:
There is no quorum defined for board elections, so the number of inactive voters doesn't change the results of the election in any way.
But the there is a quorum defined for the membership to mandate changes on the board. With a 25% vote of the membership early elections can be initiated. When 76% of the membership, and I don't think the number is that high yet, are inactive this option is taken away from those that do actively contribute to the project.
Well, I should have looked it up, the quorum for a " mid cycle" board election by membership is 20% not 25%. Anyway, the example is still valid only the numbers change a little bit. Later, Robert -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo
On Sunday 04 October 2015 06:06:03 Robert Schweikert wrote:
On 10/03/2015 08:03 PM, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
Voting for the board does not influence the direction of the project as by our guiding principles the board does not direct the project: "The board should provide guidance and support existing governance structures, but shouldn't direct or control development, since community mechanisms exist to accomplish the goals of the project."
Fair enough, thus from your point of view the only thing that determines the "direction of the project" is the technical aspect.
Not at all. From my point of view development includes much more than just programming or packaging or other purely technical aspects. It's about all what is needed to create a product and bring it to users. This includes stuff like marketing, translations, helping users, testing our distributions, giving feedback, organizing events, and much more. Supporting all of this, the technical and the non-technical things, and empowering the people who do it, that's where the magic happens. -- Cornelius Schumacher <cschum@suse.de> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
participants (16)
-
Alberto Planas -
Alin Marin Elena -
Andres Betts -
Andrew Wafaa -
Carlos E. R. -
Cornelius Schumacher -
george kanakis -
Home
-
jdd -
Lars Müller -
Mathias Homann -
Richard Brown -
Robert Schweikert -
secguardian＠yandex.com -
Simon Lees -
Uzair Shamim