On Thu, 6 Mar 2008, Magnus Boman wrote:

...

Can a Novell employee vote against his employer? to be fired? Yes, a Novell employee can go against his employer and no, I don't think they will be fired for it. I can not guarantee that off course.

When there is a vote like this, Novell employees are supposed to vote according to the best of their knowledge. As are those not employed by Novell! I'm really not sure what "going against his employer" means in this context. It's not that there is this Mrs. Eve L. Novell sitting in a dungeon in Nürnberg/Provo/Waltham who controls all of us like string puppets. As with any large organization, there are many parties, often with different points of view or at least facets. The majority of those actually relevant communicate here in the open with the community or are directly connected with those of us who are. And as Coolo or Michl or anybody else in AJ's or my team can surely attest, making openSUSE successful is an explicit objective everyone has received for this year! So, the only way to go against his or her employer would be to actively hurt openSUSE. Not very likely, uhmm? :-)

So should all non-Novell employees have to disclose where they work, what interest their employer might have in openSUSE, SLE or anything else that the board might be able to influence?

For candidates I would expect this, but certainly not for voters. Very fair point, Magnus. "Hi, my name is Bill. I made a bit of money in software during the last two decades, but now I am unemployed. I have experience serving on the board of my previous company and understand your users have many windows which I have a long history with, so with Open Source on the uptake, how about if I serve on the openSUSE board as an independent candidate?" Gerald -- Dr. Gerald Pfeifer E gp@novell.com SUSE Linux Products GmbH Director Inbound Product Mgmt T +49(911)74053-0 HRB 16746 (AG Nuremberg) openSUSE/SUSE Linux Enterprise F +49(911)74053-483 GF: Markus Rex