[opensuse-project] statements from the debate that are relevant to me:
Hi, these statements reflect issues that I would like to work on: 1.- 15:50:13 <lupinstein> without it, the money would go to SUSE like the money from Google Summer of Code, but I could be wrong. 2.- 15:50:58 <manugupt1> lupinstein: Last time heard, Jos telling in a mailing list that we do get money.. so thats great.. :) but we need some transparency there.. I believe.. which should be a role for the next board 3.- 15:52:37 <lupinstein> it would be hard for me to give to SUSE, because I am not sure if it would all go to openSUSE. 4.- 15:53:22 <lupinstein> anyway foundation would be a plus for transparency in my opinion. It seems that two topics, transparency and increasing income are linked to the creation of the Foundation. This is a wrong approach to me. They are separate and not neccesarily linked topics. The Foundation is, in any case, the consequence of a wider and more complex process. Having a company like SUSE should allow openSUSE to, in the case a foundation is created, to start it in a very mature and susteinable state. We are far from there at this point. We can and should increase transparency in the economic area and we have to find ways for the project to become economically susteinable, so creating a Foundation could be a topic to discuss because it has a clear mid term future. 5.- 16:09:54 <tittiatcoke> The KDE area didn't loose any members to open-slx, but the loss was more due to the reorganization of the boosters team open-slx is an example of the opportunities openSUSE has to become "business friendly" Open Source Press is another example. Transforming openSUSE into a business friendly ecosystem will be a major topic in the coming new action plan. What do you think? Saludos -- Agustin Benito Bethencourt openSUSE Team Lead at SUSE abebe@suse.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Hi, thanks for the debate. It was very useful. The below topics and many other ones are things we can work on. The Board will play a relevant part on this. We will take steps forward toward having more transparency and delegating responsibilities step by step. Please take the below comments just as things to debate, not as statements. We are opening these and other topics up to discussions. We can really make changes and I am glad to see that the candidates bring ideas to the table. During the following weeks/months we won't agree on everything, but we will find many common points. We all want the same, make this project stronger. We will try our best. Thanks again to those that made the debate possible and to the participants. I want to finish with some questions: What do we have to do at SUSE to get more people involve in the Release process? Do we need to define targets for our distribution or that is a role for deployers and third parties? What aspects of SUSE work in openSUSE can we improve in 2013? In general.....in which aspects should SUSE focus its activity for 2013 (in openSUSE)? On Friday, December 07, 2012 10:01:40 AM Agustin Benito Bethencourt wrote:
Hi,
these statements reflect issues that I would like to work on:
1.- 15:50:13 <lupinstein> without it, the money would go to SUSE like the money from Google Summer of Code, but I could be wrong.
2.- 15:50:58 <manugupt1> lupinstein: Last time heard, Jos telling in a mailing list that we do get money.. so thats great.. :) but we need some transparency there.. I believe.. which should be a role for the next board
3.- 15:52:37 <lupinstein> it would be hard for me to give to SUSE, because I am not sure if it would all go to openSUSE.
4.- 15:53:22 <lupinstein> anyway foundation would be a plus for transparency in my opinion.
It seems that two topics, transparency and increasing income are linked to the creation of the Foundation. This is a wrong approach to me. They are separate and not neccesarily linked topics.
The Foundation is, in any case, the consequence of a wider and more complex process. Having a company like SUSE should allow openSUSE to, in the case a foundation is created, to start it in a very mature and susteinable state. We are far from there at this point.
We can and should increase transparency in the economic area and we have to find ways for the project to become economically susteinable, so creating a Foundation could be a topic to discuss because it has a clear mid term future.
5.- 16:09:54 <tittiatcoke> The KDE area didn't loose any members to open-slx, but the loss was more due to the reorganization of the boosters team
open-slx is an example of the opportunities openSUSE has to become "business friendly" Open Source Press is another example. Transforming openSUSE into a business friendly ecosystem will be a major topic in the coming new action plan.
What do you think?
Saludos -- Agustin Benito Bethencourt openSUSE Team Lead at SUSE abebe@suse.com
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Hi Agustin, On Friday 07 December 2012 10:23:59 Agustin Benito Bethencourt wrote:
What do we have to do at SUSE to get more people involve in the Release process?
What is in your opinion the Release process ? Is this package maintenance or to have more people dealing with Factory Maintenance ?
Do we need to define targets for our distribution or that is a role for deployers and third parties?
As was already mentioned in the debate and you see it coming back in almost all the programs of the candidates, one of the major items is the communication area. Here there are a lot of improvements possible. Defining targets for the distribution should be a joint process between SUSE and the community driven by technology changes and demands from the end-user. This process might be physically in place however we fail with regards to the communication around it. Looking at the following wiki-page : http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Goals_12.3 I see a couple of targets defined and one of them is even just a proposal. The reality however is quite different from what is listed there.
5.- 16:09:54 <tittiatcoke> The KDE area didn't loose any members to open-slx, but the loss was more due to the reorganization of the boosters team
open-slx is an example of the opportunities openSUSE has to become "business friendly" Open Source Press is another example. Transforming openSUSE into a business friendly ecosystem will be a major topic in the coming new action plan.
I believe that the conclusion at the end of this debate topic was that we didn't see open-slx as a threat, but that we saw it as a positive development since that it is based on our work. So I believe that we are already on the right direction to become more "business friendly". What I tried to indicate is that last year the openSUSE Boosters team received a task reorganization and with this they were no longer able to perform their previous duties regarding maintaining the packages in their areas. Especially the KDE area lost most of their maintainers (approx. 70 - 80 %, including some of the community members). For a certain period it was difficult to get a team organized, but now a small core team is established which can handle the work. Regards Raymond -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Hey, On 07.12.2012 10:23, Agustin Benito Bethencourt wrote:
What do we have to do at SUSE to get more people involve in the Release process?
Teach and continuously coach people on how to * be part of and work for the release team * administer the involved services/servers * write articles/announcements on news.o.o * produce artwork like banners, counters, CD sleeves * approach and talk to the press
Do we need to define targets for our distribution or that is a role for deployers and third parties?
https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Strategy#Distribution
What aspects of SUSE work in openSUSE can we improve in 2013?
Get back to getting things done. There are tons of low hanging fruits in the distributions, the infrastructure and marketing! Don't bother with strategic decisions (like making openSUSE business friendly, wtf?) big reports (who cares about the past?) or political discussions (in the end what you _do_ matters, not what you say). SUSE has always been the heart of the get-shit-done fraction of this project. Don't give this up, I guess you've noticed by now that nobody can "handle" the whole project anyway, so concentrate on the things that matter for FOSS: produce code, services and noise. Just my 2¢ Henne -- Henne Vogelsang http://www.opensuse.org Everybody has a plan, until they get hit. - Mike Tyson -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On 07.12.2012 10:23, Agustin Benito Bethencourt wrote: Hi, > What do we have to do at SUSE to get more people involve in the Release > process? Make it actually possible to let people participate. That is: Convince the people who do it to be open and let others learn while they do, provide a loose time frame needed for volunteering work, try everything to make the release work fun and excitement :-) > Do we need to define targets for our distribution or that is a role for > deployers and third parties? Who are we if not developers or third parties? Haven't we discussed enough about targets, strategies, processes and such? That never worked out in a big frame. Yet, things like "E17 on openSUSE" seem to work. And that is because some people with interest on E17 sit down, meet each other, coordinate and get shit (oh, naughty word!!) work done. Do you think the definition of a goal would have incubated that? > > What aspects of SUSE work in openSUSE can we improve in 2013? If XMas-Man asked me, I'd say: I do not want to hear the "we at SUSE working on openSUSE..."-phrase permanentely. Is it important now where an active community member works? Well, maybe sometimes, we all know that, but I think its mentioned to often recently while it should not be important. You are community, as we are, or not? Furthermore I'd wish that more people from other SUSE groups than the openSUSE team again join openSUSE and actively contribute. That is something the SUSE openSUSE team could work on. > In general.....in which aspects should SUSE focus its activity for 2013 (in > openSUSE)? - try to make the distribution really good again. It is very good, but the spice, that makes it exceptional is missing here and there. - try to be an attractive project, especially for high profile people. These do not like discussions, but like to get on the technical point and do stuff. They're also not seeking out for too much rules, predefined leadership and these kind of things. More fun. - Play the trump: It's the OBS that has a big share of openSUSE's excellence. For that, it imo plays a too little role. Think more of openSUSE as the OBS powered system that makes OBS more beneficial for the users. Needs a bit phantasy I admit... Could go on, but probably its already way too far... >> open-slx is an example of the opportunities openSUSE has to become "business >> friendly" Open Source Press is another example. Transforming openSUSE into >> a business friendly ecosystem will be a major topic in the coming new >> action plan. I really had to read the sentence with openslx a couple of times. This can't be serious. Have you ever talked to someone involved? Apart from that, I do not understand the 'business-friendly' idea. Which business could be interested? IF businesses support linux distros, they will aim for all distros and not limit themselves to player two or so. And last but not least I fail to understand how the "new action plan" can "transform" openSUSE, which is our project, to something like a "business...ecosytem"? Who does such an action plan and who executes it? Klaas -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 3:18 AM, Klaas Freitag
On 07.12.2012 10:23, Agustin Benito Bethencourt wrote: Hi,
What do we have to do at SUSE to get more people involve in the Release process?
Make it actually possible to let people participate. That is: Convince the people who do it to be open and let others learn while they do, provide a loose time frame needed for volunteering work, try everything to make the release work fun and excitement :-)
Agreed
Do we need to define targets for our distribution or that is a role for deployers and third parties?
Who are we if not developers or third parties? Haven't we discussed enough about targets, strategies, processes and such? That never worked out in a big frame. Yet, things like "E17 on openSUSE" seem to work. And that is because some people with interest on E17 sit down, meet each other, coordinate and get shit (oh, naughty word!!) work done. Do you think the definition of a goal would have incubated that?
Completegely agreed
What aspects of SUSE work in openSUSE can we improve in 2013?
If XMas-Man asked me, I'd say: I do not want to hear the "we at SUSE working on openSUSE..."-phrase permanentely. Is it important now where an active community member works? Well, maybe sometimes, we all know that, but I think its mentioned to often recently while it should not be important. You are community, as we are, or not?
I agree, lets throw out that element of surprise "We at SUSE are doing this" sounds very misaligned Rather let us sound something like this "Hey, We want to do this, are you ok with it or we need your participation in it?" One of the examples (not related to SUSE in itself, but community in general) that I can give is of opensuse-marketing, back in 11.2 and 11.3, we just had pointers for release notes and the marketing team used to step up voluntarily and do it, then later on we decided that the meetings were too boring and had lots of trash and then we cut them off too, then we formed the news mailing list, which initially worked very well, but later on we got no more new members in it because it was a closed mailing list stopping participation and then later on we stopped discussing altogether on -marketing mailing lists, because everything was done by few guys. openSUSE Conference had its own team and no need to publicize etc etc and the role instead of expanding got limited to SoCNet and news If we look look closely at this process, we can actually learn a lot of things : Even though it is easier doing it ourselves, we should always ask and give the community ample time to stand up. Sometimes we do not get any reply to it and I know it is very very frustrating but that is a part atleast for a few of the people from the community, who should be head strong and keep on pushing the community for things that are better for the community and ensure that there is some means of influx of new community members. We should agree on this, not burning out old members is very important and that can be done with getting new comers in the field. I really believe that SUSE has its own goals and it is very good to have them, but I also think, SUSE should have some pretty long term goals that will instigate the community when there is no SUSE leadership. There are very good examples to it in our own community like the GNOME, KDE and ARM related projects.
Furthermore I'd wish that more people from other SUSE groups than the openSUSE team again join openSUSE and actively contribute. That is something the SUSE openSUSE team could work on.
In general.....in which aspects should SUSE focus its activity for 2013 (in openSUSE)?
- try to make the distribution really good again. It is very good, but the spice, that makes it exceptional is missing here and there. - try to be an attractive project, especially for high profile people. These do not like discussions, but like to get on the technical point and do stuff. They're also not seeking out for too much rules, predefined leadership and these kind of things. More fun. - Play the trump: It's the OBS that has a big share of openSUSE's excellence. For that, it imo plays a too little role. Think more of openSUSE as the OBS powered system that makes OBS more beneficial for the users. Needs a bit phantasy I admit... Could go on, but probably its already way too far...
open-slx is an example of the opportunities openSUSE has to become "business friendly" Open Source Press is another example. Transforming openSUSE into a business friendly ecosystem will be a major topic in the coming new action plan.
I really had to read the sentence with openslx a couple of times. This can't be serious. Have you ever talked to someone involved?
Apart from that, I do not understand the 'business-friendly' idea. Which business could be interested? IF businesses support linux distros, they will aim for all distros and not limit themselves to player two or so. And last but not least I fail to understand how the "new action plan" can "transform" openSUSE, which is our project, to something like a "business...ecosytem"? Who does such an action plan and who executes it?
Klaas
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
-- Regards Manu Gupta -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Hey, On 07.12.2012 10:01, Agustin Benito Bethencourt wrote:
We can and should increase transparency in the economic area and we have to find ways for the project to become economically susteinable
As "the project" doesn't exist in _any_ way that can be tied to economics, making "the project" economically sustainable is putting the cart before the donkey. The right way around is to plan a foundation with goals and procedures and ways to make _this_exact_ foundation economically sustainable. Henne -- Henne Vogelsang http://www.opensuse.org Everybody has a plan, until they get hit. - Mike Tyson -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Hey, On 07.12.2012 10:01, Agustin Benito Bethencourt wrote:
open-slx is an example of the opportunities openSUSE has to become "business friendly" Open Source Press is another example.
Both are not very successful examples. One is free-riding and the other one brings money. Money is a nice thing to have but not what we are here for right?
Transforming openSUSE into a business friendly ecosystem will be a major topic in the coming new action plan.
What do you think?
Frankly? I think that this idea is not really thought out well. We are here to scratch our own itches, not the itches of some external entity. And the only itch that could warrant going after businesses I heard so far is installation numbers. I really don't think we have to be terribly concerned with those as long as we don't solve all the immediate problems we have with the number of contributors that do shit for this project... Henne -- Henne Vogelsang http://www.opensuse.org Everybody has a plan, until they get hit. - Mike Tyson -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On 12/07/2012 04:01 AM, Agustin Benito Bethencourt wrote:
Hi,
these statements reflect issues that I would like to work on:
1.- 15:50:13 <lupinstein> without it, the money would go to SUSE like the money from Google Summer of Code, but I could be wrong.
2.- 15:50:58 <manugupt1> lupinstein: Last time heard, Jos telling in a mailing list that we do get money.. so thats great.. :) but we need some transparency there.. I believe.. which should be a role for the next board
3.- 15:52:37 <lupinstein> it would be hard for me to give to SUSE, because I am not sure if it would all go to openSUSE.
4.- 15:53:22 <lupinstein> anyway foundation would be a plus for transparency in my opinion.
It seems that two topics, transparency and increasing income are linked to the creation of the Foundation. This is a wrong approach to me. They are separate and not neccesarily linked topics.
I agree that following the path to a Foundation to force greater transparency w.r.t. finances is not necessarily the most direct approach. I believe, that it is perfectly reasonable for the members of the openSUSE project to have insight into the financial status of the project. I also believe that the sought after transparency is possible without having a Foundation. The topic of financial transparency has been raised in the past outside of the context of an election and thus is obviously important to openSUSE members. Therefore, this should be an action item for the board.
The Foundation is, in any case, the consequence of a wider and more complex process.
As I mentioned during the debate, the idea of the Foundation was born at a time where there was serious friction between the steward of the project (Novell at the time) and the openSUSE community. The same mismanagement that gave rise to these tensions ultimately led to the sale of Novell. Since SUSE has been established as an independent business unit the stewardship of the project has improved significantly, IMHO. Therefore, it would be warranted to take stock in the current situation and evaluate the many aspects that flow into this topic. The board should take this as an action item, prepare a report that contains pros and cons, addresses issues such as trademarks, infrastructure and other areas people may not necessarily think about when speaking about a Foundation. The report should be presented to the community for discussion. I can very well imagine that at the end of a given discussion period the members of the project would vote on the topic. From there the board then has a mandate to either move forward with the pursuit of a Foundation or not. The report needs to be factual based and as much as possible needs to be free of opinions of the people preparing the report. Beyond that I would encourage each board member to compose an opinion piece that provides insight into the thought process of the individual's. The goal of all of this is to put the discussion about the Foundation to rest in one way or another. Despite the hard work that many people have put forward on the topic we are more or less still in limbo. There is no real mandate from the project members to go one way or the other and the only way, IMHO, to create this mandate is by following a process as outlined above.
Having a company like SUSE should allow openSUSE to, in the case a foundation is created, to start it in a very mature and susteinable state. We are far from there at this point.
We can and should increase transparency in the economic area and we have to find ways for the project to become economically susteinable, so creating a Foundation could be a topic to discuss because it has a clear mid term future.
5.- 16:09:54 <tittiatcoke> The KDE area didn't loose any members to open-slx, but the loss was more due to the reorganization of the boosters team
open-slx is an example of the opportunities openSUSE has to become "business friendly" Open Source Press is another example. Transforming openSUSE into a business friendly ecosystem will be a major topic in the coming new action plan.
Well, "business friendliness" can be split into at least two areas. One, and this is the open-slx case, where business' base their products on our distribution, and two where business' use our distribution to run some or all of their IT infrastructure. In either case these provide opportunities for us to get contributions. Considering the first group, contributions may be more of the "giving back" nature, i.e. developers for that company package and maintain code in openSUSE, while contributions from the second group may be more of a monetary nature. I think we need to keep these two cases in mind when we speak about being "business friendly". Later, Robert -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU SUSE-IBM Software Integration Center LINUX Tech Lead rjschwei@suse.com rschweik@ca.ibm.com 781-464-8147 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On 2012-12-07 11:24:18 (-0500), Robert Schweikert
On 12/07/2012 04:01 AM, Agustin Benito Bethencourt wrote:
Hi,
these statements reflect issues that I would like to work on:
1.- 15:50:13 <lupinstein> without it, the money would go to SUSE like the money from Google Summer of Code, but I could be wrong.
2.- 15:50:58 <manugupt1> lupinstein: Last time heard, Jos telling in a mailing list that we do get money.. so thats great.. :) but we need some transparency there.. I believe.. which should be a role for the next board
3.- 15:52:37 <lupinstein> it would be hard for me to give to SUSE, because I am not sure if it would all go to openSUSE.
4.- 15:53:22 <lupinstein> anyway foundation would be a plus for transparency in my opinion.
It seems that two topics, transparency and increasing income are linked to the creation of the Foundation. This is a wrong approach to me. They are separate and not neccesarily linked topics.
I agree that following the path to a Foundation to force greater transparency w.r.t. finances is not necessarily the most direct approach. I believe, that it is perfectly reasonable for the members of the openSUSE project to have insight into the financial status of the project. I also believe that the sought after transparency is possible without having a Foundation. The topic of financial transparency has been raised in the past outside of the context of an election and thus is obviously important to openSUSE members. Therefore, this should be an action item for the board.
Well, rather an action item for SUSE, as SUSE currently has the monies for openSUSE (including GSoC and oSC). Sure, it can be tracked as an action item for the board, where board members would be in charge of asking the same questions over and over again to the same people at SUSE, getting an answer or not. Actually, the right person to ask should be Jos, from my understanding.
The Foundation is, in any case, the consequence of a wider and more complex process.
As I mentioned during the debate, the idea of the Foundation was born at a time where there was serious friction between the steward of the project (Novell at the time) and the openSUSE community. The same mismanagement that gave rise to these tensions ultimately led to the sale of Novell. Since SUSE has been established as an independent business unit the stewardship of the project has improved significantly, IMHO. Therefore, it would be warranted to take stock in the current situation and evaluate the many aspects that flow into this topic. The board should take this as an action item, prepare a report that contains pros and cons, addresses issues such as trademarks, infrastructure and other areas people may not necessarily think about when speaking about a Foundation. The report should be presented to the community for discussion. I can very well imagine that at the end of a given discussion period the members of the project would vote on the topic. From there the board then has a mandate to either move forward with the pursuit of a Foundation or not.
Note that that has been done already. It was under the Novell regime, but the difficulties of setting up a foundation are still the same. It's just even less compelling now, IMHO, due to what you explained above.
The report needs to be factual based and as much as possible needs to be free of opinions of the people preparing the report. Beyond that I would encourage each board member to compose an opinion piece that provides insight into the thought process of the individual's.
The goal of all of this is to put the discussion about the Foundation to rest in one way or another. Despite the hard work that many people have put forward on the topic we are more or less still in limbo. There is no real mandate from the project members to go one way or the other and the only way, IMHO, to create this mandate is by following a process as outlined above.
Well, yeah, I guess we need to rehash the same stuff all over again and, obviously, as most people bring up the same questions again, communicate better about the results. We indeed need to very clearly explain the pros and cons, because most people probably have a pretty naive and optimistic view of what going with a foundation would mean, and aren't aware of all the drawbacks and difficulties.
Having a company like SUSE should allow openSUSE to, in the case a foundation is created, to start it in a very mature and susteinable state. We are far from there at this point.
We can and should increase transparency in the economic area and we have to find ways for the project to become economically susteinable, so creating a Foundation could be a topic to discuss because it has a clear mid term future.
5.- 16:09:54 <tittiatcoke> The KDE area didn't loose any members to open-slx, but the loss was more due to the reorganization of the boosters team
open-slx is an example of the opportunities openSUSE has to become "business friendly" Open Source Press is another example. Transforming openSUSE into a business friendly ecosystem will be a major topic in the coming new action plan.
open-slx is an example of why "business friendly" is a waste of time and doesn't bring anything positive to the project. No one should believe that improving the "business friendliness" would automagically mean more contributors or more funding for the project. It doesn't. It only does in the rarest situations (B1 systems is a good example of something that works, open-slx is an example of the worst.) It shouldn't be portrayed as such either. Needs finding the right contributors. Is it worth investing time, manpower, efforts into that ? IMHO the return is extremely low as compared to concentrating on mentoring, making the project better known, improve marketing, improve funding on public infrastructure services such as OBS, etc... I believe doing *that* would provide a much better turnaround in terms of contributors. [...] cheers -- -o) Pascal Bleser /\\ http://opensuse.org -- we haz green _\_v http://fosdem.org -- we haz conf
participants (7)
-
Agustin Benito Bethencourt -
Henne Vogelsang -
Klaas Freitag -
Manu Gupta -
Pascal Bleser -
Raymond Wooninck -
Robert Schweikert