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Sankar P 12/01/11 8:01 PM >>>

Hi board candidates,

Hi!

0. Board and Foundation: Will board members be controlling the

foundation too ? What roles do you see board members performing in the foundation ? will there be dedicated personnel [from/outside] the board for specific roles in the foundation ? I know that these have been asked in the foundation-list earlier but I am interested in knowing what your idea on this. Will you be interested in nominating yourself for any specific position, say Treasurer, Lawyer, Firefighter ?

As I covered in my platform page, I'm not opposed to the idea of a foundation but I question the need for one. I feel our project needs to be seen to be independant, and I really think we need to strengthen that, forming a foundation is one way, but is it the best? Assuming a foundation is formed, I would think a logical option would be to have the board transferring from being 'the project board' to being 'the foundation board', serving a similar role under the new structure. Just as we already have volenteers who step up and take roles in the project, I expect that will be needed in the foundation. Given the importance of some of those roles (eg Treasurer) I think the board should be involved in the selection in some way, but I do not think it should be entirely controlled by the board nor necessarily a board member.

1. Financial Transparency: Assuming that the foundation will be setup

soon, what aspects do you think that the financial processes of the foundation should have ? What level of openness do you propose ? Should everything be in black and white or there can be costs which are not shared public ? How often should a reporting be made in terms of the financial status ? Should we follow some other open source projects here ? Say GNOME/KDE ?

As open and as transparent as humanly possible. I feel reporting should be at least quarterly if continunous 'live' reporting isn't a possibility. As a foundation we'd be a non-for-profit independant organisation so I struggle to see the benefit of keeping anything hidden. Looking into how other projects do it would go without saying, no point making the same mistakes as those who have done this before us.

2. Software Freedom in the era of cloud: Earlier people were locked

into proprietary data formats (like doc, ppt) (before OOXML) but now people voluntarily lock their data (mails, photos) into cloud storage. Some feel paranoid about this. Some feel that this fear is much similar to the fear that people had when Banks were introduced to store people's money. Do you think that it is okay to trade a little freedom for a little free online storage, for some home users at least ?

I believe people should be in control of their information. To me this means control of their devices, their operating system, as well as the data contained within. I think it is okay for people to use 'cloud' services, such as online storage, but I think people need to be made more aware of the risks and large amounts of trust they're putting into these companies. Personally I use cloud services as a backup and convinenece, never as a primary system or the only place for my data.

3. openSUSE Hosted Solutions: Do you think openSUSE should enter into

hosting things and providing online services for users (like ubuntuone, gmail, dropbox etc.) ? We can charge users a small fee and promise to not spy/sell their data.

I feel we already have some 'hosted' solutions - OBS for individuals package repositories, our own pastebin, stuff like that. I like the idea of openSUSE expanding the range of ancillary services we can offer our community, when they compliment our core project and products. I'm not sure I see the benefit of having an openSUSE specific cloud storage option, the Dropbox's and Spideroak's are already out there, what unique benefits would our own bring to our users?

4. Hypothetical Scenario: If Microsoft offers us a few thousand

dollars as part of Bing marketing for making Bing the default search engine and homepage on openSUSE, will you accept it ? If no, Why not ?

Philisophiscally speaking - I would accept it, assuming the money was worthwhile. If software companies with a primarily proprietary portfolio want to help an open source project like ours I think we should accept it and use it as an opportunity to bring them more into the fold and work with us in other more practical ways (like code!) Practically/technically speaking - Hell no, Bing is a terrible search engine and I think we need to give the best as our default to our users. so ultimately, on the practical grounds, I'd vote no, even though philisophiscally I'm not opposed to the hypothethical example.

5. vim or emacs ? (Just trolling here. You can avoid. You'll get +10

points if you answer both)

v im, but only because I can't look emacs in the eye after watching this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1sXuHnf_lo

Thanks a lot and All the best :-)

Thank you, great questions!

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