I too have a couple of questions that I would like to see answered before I vote.

1. What do you think the board is really doing? We all know the boards duties and goals as stated in the guiding principles but what do the board members do to fulfill and reach those? Please name as many tasks as you can and what they involve specifically.

What is the board really doing? I think they're having meetings regularly in IRC and the occasional face to face. They seem to be fielding issues as they're brought to their attention, discussing them, then deciding a course of action which usually results in a board member following up the issue with the people involved or leading the initative to solve the issue. Board members are also often the ones to identify and raise those issues for the board to discuss and work on as above. I think they're doing more behind the scenes, listening directly to feedback from users and community members. This 'soft' feedback probably (and should) inform their own opinions which come out when they regularly interact with contributors. A quiet word or gentle suggestion can often be more effective and productive than a dictitorial edict, which of course would go against the duties and goals of the board.

2. What do you think is the most important thing that you personally as a Board member have to do? I'm not so much interested in goals you want to reach in the future but more in what you think is the most important part in your "job description".

If I'm elected, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be listening to problems, issues, and new ideas for the board to deal with and discuss. I'm going to have to share my opinions and ideas with the board, and I expect I'll often be stuck either finding other people in the community to help out with the issues, finding compromises, or 'just do it' and get my hands dirty trying to fix it myself. In a word, I expect to act as a 'troubleshooter', helping answer the questions no one else wants to answer, and helping to fix the problems no one else wants to fix.

3. Please describe your view of openSUSE as a project. Which people/groups/functions are there and how do they work together? I'm looking for a structured list, a short text or an org-chart :)

Speaking very generally (so there are many individuals who don't fit into any of the descriptions below, sorry) Starting with our contributors, we have folks contributing code, packages, and ideas They're loosely organised in teams working on specific areas (eg Artwork, GNOME, OBS). These teams largely organise themselves, working on improving their specific part of the project. They have their own wiki pages, mailinglists and IRC channels to help them along and to make it easier for others to get in touch with the teams (Mailing-list crossposting isn't always bad :)) This approach and our tools do seem to leave much information 'siloed' in the teams, but luckily individuals often involve themselves in more than one team and this can lead to very healthy cross-pollination and should be encoraged. In addition to contributors we have a community of 'supporters' who, while not contributors in the "code, packages, ideas" sense, help out in the forums and IRC to sort out users with day to day problems. In my opinion there is often less interaction between 'supporters' and contributors than there could be, which can lead to end user problems remaining hidden and unresolved for longer than ideal. I'd like to see these IRC and Forum supporters more able/willing to file bugs and engage with contributors, and visa versa. We have our Users. They use openSUSE. When they hit problems they normally turn to the forums and IRC and end up speakign to either supporters or contributors. When we're able to help, I think we help them very well, but I dont think we give these end users a very consistent experience which can make our project seem rather indimidating to a beginner. When users have ideas or want to give back to the project, I don't think many realise just how easy and open we are to them pitching in. We are an incredibly open distribution we just need to make more people realise that. And then there are the 'outsiders', other FOSS projects, other organisations, journalists and bloggers. Without an obvious point of contact with the project all this miscellaneous lot bump into the other groups outlined above and often base their opinion of our project on their feedback. It's means we often don't give a consistent image of ourselves to these 'outsiders', but arguably it is at least very honest. I think we could do some work making it easier for these outsiders to work with us, establish better links, make it easier for them to get in touch with us.

4. How would you describe openSUSE's relationship to its sponsors? What do we get from our sponsors and how? What do the sponsors get from us and how?

I only know of currently two sponsors who seem to have a relationship with us - SUSE and B1 SUSE's relationship as our primary sponsor is obviously the most important one. Many of our most important & active contributors are SUSE employees, and SUSE provide much of the infrastructure we need for the project. Previously, I believe there was a strong feeling of unease and distrust between a large part of 'the community' and SUSE/Novell. I don't think those feelings were warranted, but with the changes at the top as part of the Attachmate buyout SUSE seems very keen to emphesies the importance of openSUSE to them, while simultaniously stressing our independance and supporting the idea of the foundation. If this message continues to get out I think a lot of those old feelings will drift away. So from SUSE, we get the core resources we need to build openSUSE, the project and the distrubtion, which in return give SUSE the platform and ideas they need to build their commercial products and services from. I heard someone suggest to Nils Brauckmann that SUSE need to support openSUSE because the things we're 'playing with' today are the things SUSE will need as products when the market 'catches up'. Looking at our work with ARM, KDE, GNOME3, etc I can't think of a better way to put it. B1's interactions with us I know much less about, but from what I've seen, they seem to be a very close partner, speaking authorativly about advanced technical aspects of openSUSE/SUSE and contributing to the project. As a consultancy firm who probably make their money supporting SUSE/openSUSE in the field, I assume the biggest thing they in return is constant up to date knowledge about the products they work heavily with, and very close ties to potential customers who might need their services I think we're treated well by our sponsors, and in return give a good deal back - I'd just like to see more of them, which goes back to my earlier point of making better links with those outside the project.

Thanks in advance for answering those and helping me to decide between so many fine candidates :)

It was a pleasure, now please vote for me! :) This Christmas, why not provide a loved one with the perfect opportunity to learn a new skill, make new friends, earn a qualification that could lead to a change in career or impress their current employers? City College Gift Vouchers, redeemable against any of our exciting range of Part-time and Adult Community Learning courses, are available at the Finance Department, 2nd Floor, Central Campus, Pelham Street, Brighton. www.ccb.ac.uk -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org