On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 2:53 PM, Vincent Untz <vuntz@opensuse.org> wrote:

Hi,

I read the platforms of all candidates, and I have a few questions :-) I'd appreciate if you could take some time to answer them; it'll help me vote in an informed way.

1) You described various issues you'd like to get fixed and goals you   want to achieve. Will you still work on (or help with) those tasks   if you're not on the board, or do you think you really need to be on   the board for some of those tasks?

I will work on them, even if I am not on the board. But I may not be able to spend much time contigously, in case I am not elected.

2) How much time per week can you secure (approximately) for the board?   (I know it will be 0% of your time for some weeks, and much more   for some other weeks; I'm interested in the average)

To be honest, I have not done an estimate of it. But all my evenings are open mainly for openSUSE work. So I should be able to spend *atleast 7 hours* atleast per week on an average (not counting dayjob) for openSUSE's Board activities, for the foreseeable future.

3) Did you attend IRC board meetings already?

I have not attended all the board meetings in the past mostly due to different timezones. However, I try to keep irc logged in and read the logs. I have attended some meetings but not actively driven a lot of issues and just participated. However, I have attended the project meetings regularly and participated in discussions of some activities as well (like creation of youtube channel for openSUSE, 11.3 release marketing planning etc.)

4) It's interesting that I see nearly no note about budget/money in   platforms. When (not if ;-)) we'll have the Foundation, the board   will have to work on a budget. So a few questions about this...

  4a) Have you experience with creating/dealing with a budget?   4b) Where will we find money for the Foundation?   4c) What should we use the money for?

I don't have much idea/experience about handling money in a project administrative scale. But I intend to learn it on the job with the help of people who are more experienced in this regard. I try to bring in different set of skills to the board, in return.

5) I do think it'd be useful to have some board-related meeting at   FOSDEM. That should help the newly-elected board members to know   faster what's happening, and how things work. Will you come to   FOSDEM? (I know some people, and that's most probably true for the   non-European, will likely not be able to attend; that's not an issue)

FOSDEM is in the first week of February. Board results will be announced by the last week of January. So, that does not give me much time to get my VISA approved by the European union. If I am elected and VISA is also ready, I can attend this. (VISA processing cannot begin without corporate backup for business visas from India. So anticipatory-visa-fetch is not an option)

7) Do you care more about Free Software or Open Source? Just to be   clear: there's no wrong answer. But it helps understand why you   contribute to projects like openSUSE.

As a developer, I feel putting your source out in the open, is the right way to develop good software. Only if your source code is open, your code will mature and your coding skills will improve. I have learnt more from my pet projects in open-source than my day job (proprietary projects). I care about Freedom of software. Not just from the users perspective but from the developer's perspective also. I believe things like copyright reassignment take away some kind of freedom from the developer and I try to evangelize for freedom whenever I could. But I don't confuse supporting software freedom, with, *blindly supporting FSF*. For instance, I won't advocate for calling our OS as a GNU/Linux distro, or participating in hate-campaigns against Microsoft. It may be a bitter truth, but most users don't care about giving up a little bit of freedom because they are mostly focussed on Getting Things Done. We couldn't move people to give up symbian phones in favor of openmoko by talking about freedom, however, once Android came in, it made symbian almost non-existent. People (most of them) buy their phone to make calls, not to study how it works. Personally, I love GMail and use it even if I lose some kind of freedom by using it. Giving up a little bit of user freedom is fine for most of the people in the world. It may not work well for revolutionaries such as Julian Assange, but majority of our users use our distro, not to change the world, but to just live their lives. So for me, *open-source is vital, developer freedom is vital, user freedom is important* and any restrictions to user freedom should not be coming as surprises and should be pre-known [to the user]. World will be dull without flickr, youtube, wordpress (it aint fully free imho), skype and twitter. Mr. Stallman may be happy with sending an email to retrieve a webpage and not use a browser, but it is an extremity which I won't recommend for a common home user. The primary reason why I contribute to openSUSE is neither for open-source evangelism nor for software freedom, but because of *People*. It is based on a selfish need but without evil motives ;-) openSUSE participation gives me a lot of new perspectives by working with people of different cultures. It helps to talk to people in irc whom I consider as inspirations. Due to this cross culture interactions, my opinions on a lot of things such as religion, women rights, vegetarianism, management styles, music etc. have changed in a lot of ways from what it was 5 years ago, when I had seen just one culture. Participating in openSUSE is like taking a virtual world trip for me. Also, it has helped me improve technically also tremendously. Sorry for the long answer to this question, but it's a sensitive question and I wanted to make my points clear. (while we are at it please read Linus' post on this: http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2008/11/black-and-white.html )

 Sankar: some of your long-term tasks are partly technical (make         openSUSE an attractive development platform, make the distro         accessibility-friendly). How do you think the board can help         with that?

Making attractive to developers: One thing that we could do for it is to make people use our OBS (via open-id) from sites like github and get binaries for their projects. Even though this could be achieved by any openSUSE member, I believe having to communicate with third parties via a formal board representation will gain more representation. Yes, some of the goals are technical but I believe setting them as project goals (a11y, usability etc.) via board, will help in increasing the focus on these items by the subteams.

I wish you all the best for the election :-)

Thanks :-) -- Sankar P http://psankar.blogspot.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 4:23 AM, Vincent Untz <vuntz@opensuse.org> wrote:

Hi,

I read the platforms of all candidates, and I have a few questions :-) I'd appreciate if you could take some time to answer them; it'll help me vote in an informed way.

1) You described various issues you'd like to get fixed and goals you   want to achieve. Will you still work on (or help with) those tasks   if you're not on the board, or do you think you really need to be on   the board for some of those tasks?

Yes, even if I don't make to the board. I plan to cont' to work as Ambassador and work with both marketing and the project team. No, I didn't run so that can make the things I see we need to do. I am running because for over ten years I been using openSUSE, I have a great love and passion for the project and just want to step up. Most on the board are programmer. I like to be the first end-user/system administrator to bring fresh views from those that use our distro.

2) How much time per week can you secure (approximately) for the board?   (I know it will be 0% of your time for some weeks, and much more   for some other weeks; I'm interested in the average)

This is hard to say. I am married and I work as system administrator day to day. I do plan to give all my extra time to the project as I do now. I can't give a percentage. But I can say, that even if I don't get elected I still plan to give all my free time to the project.

3) Did you attend IRC board meetings already?

Once in a while. That was because the company that I had worked for blocked irc, but I would ask questions about what was going on and read the mailing list to stay up-to-date.

4) It's interesting that I see nearly no note about budget/money in   platforms. When (not if ;-)) we'll have the Foundation, the board   will have to work on a budget. So a few questions about this...

  4a) Have you experience with creating/dealing with a budget?

Yes, part of my daily job is to budget for equipment. So I have worked on yearly budgets for my projects. Looked at ways to save money and not cut services and not impact services. I have also worked as Accounts Receivable positions for a company for year and in college, I was the Treasure for our International Club.

  4b) Where will we find money for the Foundation?

I have already started asking people if they know of programs that we can apply too. Plus, I am thinking we can do fund raisers. Asking for donations and coming up with items we can sell in the shop to help fund the project.

  4c) What should we use the money for?

This is tough for me. But I like to see some money set up to help the Ambassadors, because they need money for travel and media and swag to help promote the project. I it would be best to set up the funds like we are a company, so that we management it wisely, thus help all that work on the project.

5) I do think it'd be useful to have some board-related meeting at   FOSDEM. That should help the newly-elected board members to know   faster what's happening, and how things work. Will you come to   FOSDEM? (I know some people, and that's most probably true for the   non-European, will likely not be able to attend; that's not an issue)

I think that a great idea. I have no problem traveling to Europe or for that fact any part of the world. My wife is from Europe. And even if I couldn't I would try to attend via Skype so that I can see everyone face to face. You get more done face-to-face. But should I get on the board. I will do everything I can to attend.

7) Do you care more about Free Software or Open Source? Just to be   clear: there's no wrong answer. But it helps understand why you   contribute to projects like openSUSE.

This is a tough question. I love Free Software and really believe in it. I have since I started with computing in the 80's when I belong to my local Atari Users Group and would help by typing in computer programs and share them with our group. In fact, it was that user group that started my love for Free Software. We did a version of shareware. You share your programs with a blank disk. In return you got a disc back with other software that others had share. One of the main reason I love Free Software and Open Source I see that same spirit we had. I think you can have free software even if you are a close source, but I think Open Source is better because you can improve on the source. Which is why Linux has been so successful. With me handing out DVD and talking about openSUSE at Linux Fest. I am very happy to pass out Free Software that is open to all.

Questions to specific candidates, related to their platform:

 Chuck: where do you think we could lead, instead of copying?

openSUSE is one of the oldest distro, but we tend to copy such other distros like Ubuntu. We need to sit down and focus on what makes us good. Why are are one of oldest distro. Promote on that. Right now, we don't need to copy Unity into our distro. We need to let the world know that we are still using Gnome and the Gnome Shell. We need to let the world know you don't need to download a K/E/X/Lubuntu disc or a spin disc (Fedora). Our DVD includes all. One of the greatest tools we have and we don't do much to promote it is YaST. SaX was another great tool and a big lost to our project. I would have love to see some money donated to keep that project live. Maybe the foundation could look at that. Here are the items I love to see us lead on 1) We have one of the oldest/stable distro with a very large community. 2) I like to see us push the education disc openSUSE Li-F-E. That is a diamond. You would be amazed the number of people that don't know about it, and are amaze that we have it and what it does. We are missing the boat if we don't help get the word out on this more. 3) I love us to improve on the Ambassador Program. I think we need to train our Ambassador to be teachers so that they can help educate new users. I like to see people reaching out to us, asking our Ambassador to go the fest to offer workshops on Linux. Since our Ambassadors are our front line to the world. We need to help them and train them to be like Sale/Field Engineers, where not only can they answer questions on openSUSE, but answer questions on all. One thing I think to do that would us lead and Linux Distro is to start an online University. Invite other distro to join us. People that are new to Linux don't want to come to irc/forum to ask questions only have someone say RTFM. They want clear how to's, videos, documents that are clear and simple. I think that we can do openSUSE Build Service and SUSE Studio. That we can set up an online University that helps promote Linux and open source. 4) I like us lead in the publications. I am very sadden to see that when I pick up a Linux Magazine, that it is very rare to see openSUSE in it. Yes, you will see the DVD, but 95% of the articles are focus on mainly one distro. I want us to break this. We are usaully number 4 on distro watch. With that we should see more articles in publication. If we can do that, we can break the number 4 position and move up. 5) I like to see a stronger North America present. Here Novell shadows openSUSE. Many people here in North America don't know that openSUSE is free, they here SUSE and think you have to pay for it from Novell. In all the places in the world, we need to bring openSUSE out of the Novell shadow let the world know that we are a very active open source community. Over the past year most of my time is trying kill the lies that openSUSE is bound by the Novell/Microsoft deal. A lot of people left openSUSE here in North America because of that. It is time to bring them back our community, by showing them that we still lead in open source community.

 Sebas: what needs to be more transparent in openSUSE?

 Kostas: do you have examples of "motives" we can give to people so they         participate in the project?

 Peter: leaving you some more time for your platform :-)

 Henne: not really a question related to your platform, but to your        experience on the board. What could be improved in the way the        board works as of today? (btw, it's not a way for me to try to        get the current board blamed in any way: we all know things can        always get improved, and time usually helps with that)        Also, can I get a dodo?

 Sankar: some of your long-term tasks are partly technical (make         openSUSE an attractive development platform, make the distro         accessibility-friendly). How do you think the board can help         with that?

 Nelson: can you develop a bit more on the 'anti burnout' campaign? What         would it consist of?

I wish you all the best for the election :-)

Thanks,

Vincent

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2011/1/12 Vincent Untz <vuntz@opensuse.org>:

Hi,

I read the platforms of all candidates, and I have a few questions :-) I'd appreciate if you could take some time to answer them; it'll help me vote in an informed way.

1) You described various issues you'd like to get fixed and goals you   want to achieve. Will you still work on (or help with) those tasks   if you're not on the board, or do you think you really need to be on   the board for some of those tasks?

Of course and I will work on the goals I want to achieve even if I won't be elected on the board. Doing otherwise would be stupid. Being on the board I believe it will maybe help achieving those goals at first because it is another thing to try something and another thing to really achieve something.

2) How much time per week can you secure (approximately) for the board?   (I know it will be 0% of your time for some weeks, and much more   for some other weeks; I'm interested in the average)

This is really my strong point. Due to the nature of my work (seasonal firefighter) with the exception of a great dissaster I can work at least 2-3 hours per day, up to 8 hours (or more if I have a day off) if needed.

3) Did you attend IRC board meetings already?

Yes I did attended on some, but I did not participated in all of them, sometimes when I have nothing to say I keep silent and watch.

4) It's interesting that I see nearly no note about budget/money in   platforms. When (not if ;-)) we'll have the Foundation, the board   will have to work on a budget. So a few questions about this...

  4a) Have you experience with creating/dealing with a budget?   4b) Where will we find money for the Foundation?   4c) What should we use the money for?

4a) Yes I have a small experience from the time I used to organize gig's and from when I organized the 3rd summer camp of the motorcycle forum I was in. So yes when it comes to events I have some experience. 4b) Well we will have to be creative on this, but no matter what we do, we must not make a discount at our values for raising money. 4c) For more face to face communication among important projects participants.

5) I do think it'd be useful to have some board-related meeting at   FOSDEM. That should help the newly-elected board members to know   faster what's happening, and how things work. Will you come to   FOSDEM? (I know some people, and that's most probably true for the   non-European, will likely not be able to attend; that's not an issue)

No, I won't because I am not a developer and I would not be useful for anyone there but I will be at the Marketing Hackfest a few weeks later where I believe I will make myself far more useful to the community.

7) Do you care more about Free Software or Open Source? Just to be   clear: there's no wrong answer. But it helps understand why you   contribute to projects like openSUSE.

I strongly believe in Free Software as I strongly believe in Freedom but I accept the need for Open Source and I believe in that also because so far it cover the true needs we have as users. I hope that one day Free software will reach that level that we will no longer need Open Source.

Questions to specific candidates, related to their platform:

 Kostas: do you have examples of "motives" we can give to people so they         participate in the project?

From my experience in various types of communities I've learned that people in order to participate in a project they need motives. Motives for each individual can be a different thing but the 3 most common things people examine before they decide to participate in a community are, under my opinion and my experience: the way things work in a community, the effectiveness of their participation and the quality of the work done. In our community all those three are happening but I believe that we don't promote them so well. I can tell you for sure that motivating people with those three helped me and Stathis Iosifidis to built the Greek openSUSE community from scratch in 4 months and everybody can see the results of that.

I wish you all the best for the election :-)

Thanks,

Vincent

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Hey Vincent, Thanks for putting thought into your questions. I think they provide great base to get to know the candidates better. :) On Wednesday, January 12, 2011 10:23:36 Vincent Untz wrote:

I read the platforms of all candidates, and I have a few questions :-) I'd appreciate if you could take some time to answer them; it'll help me vote in an informed way.

1) You described various issues you'd like to get fixed and goals you want to achieve. Will you still work on (or help with) those tasks if you're not on the board, or do you think you really need to be on the board for some of those tasks?

I'm still (and have been) happy to contribute expertise insight (and sometimes opinion). It's all about direct involvement with administrative issues, though, and in that sense it'll be unlikely that those end up on my plate, rather than someone else's. In my experience, a board seat does have this tendency to keep you on your toes, even if vastly more interesting things come around.

2) How much time per week can you secure (approximately) for the board? (I know it will be 0% of your time for some weeks, and much more for some other weeks; I'm interested in the average)

I estimate about 8 - 12 hours a week, but as you say, it's subject to strong fluctuations. I am prepared to putting some opensuse-board time away on a regular base, though, and my employer (open-slx) has agreed to allow me to work on opensuse-board stuff during working hours as well.

3) Did you attend IRC board meetings already?

Nope. I did get some information about how these things are run and organised from my colleague, Rupert.

4) It's interesting that I see nearly no note about budget/money in platforms. When (not if ;-)) we'll have the Foundation, the board will have to work on a budget. So a few questions about this...

4a) Have you experience with creating/dealing with a budget?

I've been on the board of directors of the KDE e.V., where we've been continously growing the budget, and using it to support a comparable Free software organisation. KDE e.V.'s budget is very solid. Now I'm not saying that I'm responsible for that (far from it), I just happen to not have an "unbalancable destructive effect" on money. So yes, even with growing and staying within its bounds. ;-)

4b) Where will we find money for the Foundation?

Most sense seems a two-fold donation scheme, personal and corporate. There are many individuals who care about openSUSE, and would probably be willing (and able) to contribute a bit financially. Likewise, there are companies who, in some way, depend on openSUSE, who would be in for donations as well.

4c) What should we use the money for?

Support of the community (meetings, for example), running infrastructure, promotion, legal things, possibly administrative tasks that would otherwise get left behind in a volunteer community.

5) I do think it'd be useful to have some board-related meeting at FOSDEM. That should help the newly-elected board members to know faster what's happening, and how things work. Will you come to FOSDEM? (I know some people, and that's most probably true for the non-European, will likely not be able to attend; that's not an issue)

I didn't plan to go to FOSDEM (really unfortunate timing being right around release prime-time, and our presence is usually quite good there anyway, so little extra bang for the buck. Brussels is only about 3 hours from where I live (Nijmegen, the Netherlands), so I can probably make it to a board meeting there on short notice, still. However, IF I come, I'll to FOSDEM, I'll be happy to buy you an ice-cream. (I'm sure that's the *real* reason you added this particular question. :P)

7) Do you care more about Free Software or Open Source? Just to be clear: there's no wrong answer. But it helps understand why you contribute to projects like openSUSE.

Deeply, it's pretty much what drives me and motivates me to move my bum out of bed every day. That, and good espresso =)

Questions to specific candidates, related to their platform: Sebas: what needs to be more transparent in openSUSE?

I'm not sure if there's anything in particular that I'd like to see more transparant *right_now*, I think that people are actually doing a great job keeping information flowing within the community. Transparency is not a given though (as is pretty much nothing at the moment). We will all see how openSUSE's position in the light of the Attachmate acquisition will develop. There, transparency, honesty and a bit of a critical look once in a while is essential. That's what I'll stand for. Cheers, -- sebas http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org | GPG Key ID: 9119 0EF9 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org