2009/2/23 Martin Schlander :

Always easy to point fingers at others, and surely reporters rarely have half the story right when they report something.

But you should always look inwards as well. If there was some proper official communication done, maybe reporters and community members wouldn't have to speculate like crazy about what the hell is going on, and go through a prolonged and extremely painful process of learning about people we care about and enjoy working with have been fired - slowly and painfully one name at a time for a period of weeks and weeks.

Martin, I whole heartedly agree, and this is something that we keep telling Novell - communicate more and communicate clearly. Unfortunately when dealing with a company the size of Novell and also taking into account their endless processes, this will not be an easy or quick solution - even though it should be. For the short term at least we will have to keep up the pressure on Novell to communicate clearly. I suppose the best thing we can do is lead by example, maybe we as a community should show Novell how to communicate with the wider community. We all know we can improve on that, and yes openSUSE has made vast improvements in communicating but there is always room for improvement. -- Andrew Wafaa, openSUSE Member: FunkyPenguin openSUSE: Get It, Discover It, Create It at http://www.opensuse.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

Always easy to point fingers at others, and surely reporters rarely have half the story right when they report something.

But you should always look inwards as well. If there was some proper official communication done, maybe reporters and community members wouldn't have to speculate like crazy about what the hell is going on, and go through a prolonged and extremely painful process of learning about people we care about and enjoy working with have been fired - slowly and painfully one name at a time for a period of weeks and weeks.

I agree with Martin, and I understand the goals of the open letter, which are noble. If all my support goes to the fired people, with whom we shared interests and goals, I am a lot less in favour of strong messages to protect Novell position with respect to openSUSE, which made another communication mistake, at least, and whose position on openSUSE and its community has been often contraddictory. Regards, A. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

Mandag 23 februar 2009 20:32:11 skrev Gerald Pfeifer:

I am sure you understand that with the exception of the CEO and similarily ranked officers no company will provide lists or other details of people leaving, be it voluntary or otherwise. Not the least since this would run afoul of data protection regulations.

I don't understand how anybody can claim to want to build a community, and then be completely silent, when major events affecting the community greatly like these firings occur. I don't remember seing any official communication about this whatsoever, except some executive level bullshit in the press - but nothing at all addressing the concerns of the openSUSE community. A list of names would probably also be against the interests of the directly affected peopIe, but I'm pretty sure it would have been possible for someone to release some information to the openSUSE community explaining what goes on, why, how it affects (different parts of) openSUSE short and long term etc., without Novell getting in too much legal trouble because of it. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org

On Monday 23 February 2009 23:29:37 Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier wrote:

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 8:15 AM, Martin Schlander

wrote:

...

But you should always look inwards as well. If there was some proper official communication done, maybe reporters and community members wouldn't have to speculate like crazy about what the hell is going on, and go through a prolonged and extremely painful process of learning about people we care about and enjoy working with have been fired - slowly and painfully one name at a time for a period of weeks and weeks.

While I agree we could have communicated more effectively, I do want to note a few things: Novell is a public company, and has some restrictions on what it can say (and when). In part, poor communication may be caused by an overabundance of caution -- rather than a desire to withhold information or a lack of desire to inform the community of what's going on.

Zonker, full agreement here. Martin, and others: Sorry for being silent on this publically. If you have specific questions, I'm willing to answer them as long as I don't violate privacy or legal policies. For now, let me just confirm that we're committed to the openSUSE project. Despite the layoffs, Novell will continue to invest in openSUSE and make together with the community a great project and distribution, Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, Director Platform / openSUSE, aj@suse.de SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126