Hi All, Having taken a few year break from the board, i've had a chat to a couple of people and assessed the spare time I have and following that i've decided to nominate myself for the board again this year. I chose not to nominate initially and for last year because i'm happy to give other people a shot but I also think its good to give the community a choice in who they vote for so as such i'm happy to nominate again this year. Thanks Simon Lees On 12/1/23 02:34, Ariez Vachha - openSUSE wrote:

Dear openSUSE members,

We have received two nominations for the two available seats, one of the nominations is still awaiting approval of his openSUSE membership.

Therefore the election committee have decided in accordance with our election rules the nomination period will be extended by two weeks, as the number of nominations is less than or equal to the number of available seats.

The election committee will keep you posted here on the project mailing list.

Ariez Vachha, On behalf of the Election committee.

On 15/11/2023 06:41, Ariez Vachha - openSUSE wrote:

...

Dear openSUSE members,

openSUSE Board Election 2023 [1]

It's time to elect new Board members to fill empty seats on the openSUSE Board for 2024. This time we are looking to fill two seats in accordance with our Election Rules [2]:

1. Maurizio Galli, and 2. Patrick Fitzgerald, who are both still eligible for re-election.

## Phase 0 15 November 2023 * Announcement of the Board Election 2023 * Call for Nominations and Applications for Board candidacy * Membership drive

30 November 2023 * Nominations and Applications for Board candidacy close

## Phase 1

1 December 2023 * Announcement of the final list of candidates * Campaign begins * Membership drive continues, opportunity to apply for openSUSE Membership, but new members will only be eligible to vote and not run as candidate

## Phase 2 15 December 2023 * Ballots open: Please cast your vote during this time * Campaign continues

30 December 2023 * Ballots close

31 December 2023 * Announcement of results

To stand for a position in the openSUSE Board please send an email to:

  * project@lists.opensuse.org and   * election-officials@lists.opensuse.org

If a member would like to nominate another member, please inform the Election Committee and the officials will contact the nominee to ask whether they would like to run as a Board candidate.

Only openSUSE members are eligible to run for openSUSE Board openings in accordance with the Eligibility and Validity section of our Election Rules [2].

The Election Committee [3] are hereby calling for Nominations & Applications for the openSUSE Board.

[1] https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election [2] https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election_rules [3] Members: Ish Sookun, Edwin Zakaria and Ariez Vachha.

-- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B

Dear openSUSE Members, Happy New Year to you all! You must have received your voter credential through an email from the Election Platform today. If you have not received it, please let us know by sending your membership username for cross-checking. Email us on election-officials@opensuse.org mailto:election-officials@opensuse.org. Voting will end on 15 January 2024. I encourage you to ask the candidates questions about the project, their vision and ideas for the future. Happy voting! :) Cheers, Ish Sookun // On behalf of the Election Committee

On 15 Dec 2023, at 20:10, Ariez Vachha - openSUSE wrote:

Dear openSUSE Members,

We extended Phase 0 of openSUSE board election 2023 on Nov 30 for another 2 weeks which ended on 15 December 2023 in accordance with our election rules due to insufficient nominations at that time.

We are pleased that we now have four candidates for the two available seats. The candidates for the openSUSE board election 2023 are listed below:

Joed Lopez https://en.opensuse.org/User:Profetik777-opensuse

Patrick Fitzgerald https://en.opensuse.org/User:Pfitzgerald

Simon Lees https://en.opensuse.org/User:Simotek

Shawn W Dunn https://en.opensuse.org/User:Sfalken

We therefore start the Phase 1 of our 2023 Board election today for two weeks until 31 December 2023 [1].

We wish all the candidates good luck and happy campaigning ahead.

The Board Election Committee [2]

[1] https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election [2] Members: Ariez Vachha, Ish Sookun, M. Edwin Zakaria

On 1/13/24 04:04, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:

On Mon 2024-01-01, ish@sysadmin-journal.com wrote:

...

Voting will end on 15 January 2024.

I encourage you to ask the candidates questions about the project, their vision and ideas for the future.

This must be the most silent election we ever had? Four strong candidates for two seats.

With nobody else asking any questions (and sadly quite some delay) allow me to ask some questions:

1. If you have been on the board before, what do you see of your key contributions related to that board role (not openSUSE as such)? What, if anything, would you change if awarded a time machine?

I think one key area of contribution that many outside the board wouldn't see is in the area of conflict resolution, unfortunately when I was last on the board that was something we had to deal with more then I would have liked. I think one thing i'd probably change is I don't think we got moderation right across all our platforms quickly enough so if I had a time machine i'd go back and put a higher priority on that. I probably also wouldn't spend as much time focusing on foundation proposals if I knew SUSE management was going to completely change within weeks / months of us putting forward a proposal.

2. What would you like to contribute specifically related to the board role? And what you see as opportunity cost, that is things you won't be able to cover (or cover less of) due to the board obligations?

I think now being able to partner with the geekos.org foundation provides us with a range of opportunities that we didn't have in the past and I look forward to starting to explore these as a part of the board over the next couple of years as we start to get a firmer idea around what donations and budgets are etc. Also having been on the board before I know I can contribute a lot in the area of conflict resolution as it comes up. Also as someone who has been a part of the project for a decent amount of time now I enjoy the opportunity the board provides to connect people with similar goals ideas and passions who may not know each other yet. In terms of opportunity cost, if you asked me 9 months ago I would have said work on a Leap replacement for ALP probably to the point where I wouldn't have considered running for the board. But a lot has changed since then and i'm much more comfortable about the way it will progress, so now i'll probably just loose some time working on whatever random side projects I think of and probably some of my other hobbies such as music.

3. What are you biggest concerns about openSUSE (or you serving on the board) or risks for openSUSE? How would you tackle those?

There are two slightly related issues that currently I see as my biggest concern, unfortunately neither will be that easy for the board to do something about currently. Firstly the disconnect between the fact we have a lot of Leap users but significantly less contributors. This can regularly lead to features being not implemented and Leap not reaching its potential. The second is related to the desktop and the fact a lot of openSUSE's Gnome and broader desktop stack has been maintained by SUSE and so far that seems like less of a focus for ALP at the moment. At the same time during my work on ALP prototypes for hackweek new community members came forward wanting to help with this which gives me hope that the community will pick this up over time if SUSE does drop it off. Here the board might be able to help connecting the dots a bit.

4. If you had a blank voucher from the SUSE CEO for one wish, what might that be?

Firstly i'm going to say that SUSE already does a lot by providing * Release Engineering for Tumbleweed, MicroOS and Leap * An open source codebase via SLE and ALP * A commitment that its engineers will contribute to Tumbleweed through Factory first. * A commitment to maintain the core infra openSUSE Needs * Marketing and Legal support. With all this already provided the openSUSE Community has everything it needs to grow and shape openSUSE into whatever it wants it to be. Having said that, if you gave me a blank cheque I think we could start to address some of the issues raised in 3. by returning somewhat to an old idea or atleast something similar. Before my time there existed an "openSUSE Boosters" team who's focus was simply improving openSUSE, some parts of this still probably exists through the release engineering team. But if I had an unlimited budget (or even a semi limited one) i'd start by creating a team of people that focus part time on improving the parts of openSUSE that they see as needing improvement but more importantly they'd spend the rest of there time working on things the community thinks are important via some form of mechanism that would allow the community to vote on features and bugs that they care about most for this team to work on. Currently openSUSE is somewhat limited in what it does and at times has gaps largely due to the fact that nothing gets done unless someone cares enough to do it, on the other handthe fact openSUSE manages to do so much says alot about how awesome our contributors are, thanks to all of you reading this. But still we have gaps and this model would allow us to continually address the bigger ones. Another hope of mine for geekos.org is that one day they receive enough funding to be able to contribute in a similar way via hiring contractors, but I don't think its there yet. As a slightly more realistic bonus answer having been able to travel to many of our conferences such as the openSUSE Conference and openSUSE Asia I have seen how well they do at bringing the community together as well as bringing new people to open source. So the wish would be to have strong conference and travel support budgets.

Thanks, Gerald

Thanks for the questions, apologies if any of this response is slightly disjointed I wrote it in a somewhat random order between taking care of a bunch of other weekend tasks Thanks -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B

On 1/12/24 12:30, Carlos E. R. wrote:

On 2024-01-01 16:00, ish@sysadmin-journal.com wrote:

...

Dear openSUSE Members,

Happy New Year to you all!

You must have received your voter credential through an email from the Election Platform today. If you have not received it, please let us know by sending your membership username for cross-checking. Email us on election-officials@opensuse.org mailto:election-officials@opensuse.org.

Voting will end on 15 January 2024.

I encourage you to ask the candidates questions about the project, their vision and ideas for the future.

You must be joking.

3 days election process, into which ask questions, form an opinion, and then vote?

No candidate has posted their plans on the project mail list?

Considering the notification that the election was starting on 01-January-2024 (As clearly shown in the e-mail you're responding to), You've had 11 Days to ask questions.   This is hardly a 3-day election process.   That people haven't been asking questions is hardly the election teams fault, and I don't think it's remotely appropriate to blame them for that.

On Fri, Jan 12, 2024 at 4:36 PM Carlos E. R. wrote:

On 2024-01-12 22:20, Shawn W Dunn wrote:

...

On 1/12/24 12:30, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

On 2024-01-01 16:00, ish@sysadmin-journal.com wrote:

...

Dear openSUSE Members,

Happy New Year to you all!

You must have received your voter credential through an email from the Election Platform today. If you have not received it, please let us know by sending your membership username for cross-checking. Email us on election-officials@opensuse.org mailto:election-officials@opensuse.org.

Voting will end on 15 January 2024.

I encourage you to ask the candidates questions about the project, their vision and ideas for the future.

You must be joking.

3 days election process, into which ask questions, form an opinion, and then vote?

No candidate has posted their plans on the project mail list?

Considering the notification that the election was starting on 01-January-2024 (As clearly shown in the e-mail you're responding to), You've had 11 Days to ask questions. This is hardly a 3-day election process. That people haven't been asking questions is hardly the election teams fault, and I don't think it's remotely appropriate to blame them for that.

I got no notice saying that the election had started till today, I was waiting for the candidates to say something about themselves.

-- Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R. (from 15.4 x86_64 at Telcontar)

Guys, I logged in and I can't see any of the people and I thought we had to the 15th of Jan. -- Terror PUP a.k.a Chuck "PUP" Payne ----------------------------------------- Discover it! Enjoy it! Share it! openSUSE Linux. ----------------------------------------- openSUSE -- Terrorpup openSUSE Ambassador/openSUSE Member skype,twiiter,identica,friendfeed -- terrorpup freenode(irc) --terrorpup/lupinstein Register Linux Userid: 155363 openSUSE Community Member since 2008.

On 1/13/24 08:05, Carlos E. R. wrote:

On 2024-01-12 22:20, Shawn W Dunn wrote:

...

On 1/12/24 12:30, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

On 2024-01-01 16:00, ish@sysadmin-journal.com wrote:

...

Dear openSUSE Members,

Happy New Year to you all!

You must have received your voter credential through an email from the Election Platform today. If you have not received it, please let us know by sending your membership username for cross-checking. Email us on election-officials@opensuse.org mailto:election-officials@opensuse.org.

Voting will end on 15 January 2024.

I encourage you to ask the candidates questions about the project, their vision and ideas for the future.

You must be joking.

3 days election process, into which ask questions, form an opinion, and then vote?

No candidate has posted their plans on the project mail list?

Considering the notification that the election was starting on 01-January-2024 (As clearly shown in the e-mail you're responding to), You've had 11 Days to ask questions.   This is hardly a 3-day election process.   That people haven't been asking questions is hardly the election teams fault, and I don't think it's remotely appropriate to blame them for that.

I got no notice saying that the election had started till today, I was waiting for the candidates to say something about themselves.

I am pretty sure we all have said something via the wiki, that was linked in atleast one of the election announcements. I will also reply to Gerald's questions later today, but also feel free to ask me whatever you want. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B

On Fri 2024-01-12, Shawn W Dunn wrote:

...

You must be joking.

3 days election process, into which ask questions, form an opinion, and then vote? Considering the notification that the election was starting on 01-January-2024 : That people haven't been asking questions is hardly the election teams fault, and I don't think it's remotely appropriate to blame them for

On 1/12/24 12:30, Carlos E. R. wrote: that.

Agreed. It's up to members (or practically even non-members) to ask questions to the candidates and the candidates can, but don't have, share things on the Wiki or here. I do not see any fault on the side of the election officals nor the candidates (who I am, by the way, grateful to for stepping up). On Sat 2024-01-13, Simon Lees wrote:

I am pretty sure we all have said something via the wiki, that was linked in atleast one of the election announcements. I will also reply to Gerald's questions later today, but also feel free to ask me whatever you want.

Indeed I found information on *all* candidates linked from the mail by the election officals. And, yes, I was surprised there were not more mails on this list with questions and other discussions. That's different from other elections I recall and for my own benefit (to cast my votes better informed) and the potential benefit of others voters I did ask those questions here. I apologize for not doing so earlier and I wish I had done it at least a week earlier, both for the sake of the candidates to have more time to respond and other voters. If anyone wants to find fault in that, it's solely on me, not the election officials, candidates, or anyone else. On Sat 2024-01-13, Carlos E. R. wrote:

There was no post with a subject with the string "election start" or "start voting".

This is a constructive suggestion (even if phrased as an observation) that I am sure the election officials will consider. Starting a new thread (with different subject and no References: or similar mail headers) may be beneficial in such a case. Gerald

Le 12/01/2024 à 22:35, Carlos E. R. a écrit :

I got no notice saying that the election had started till today, I was waiting for the candidates to say something about themselves.

I did some time ago and could cast my vote :-) jdd -- https://artdagio.fr