Open Letter to the openSUSE Board, Project and Community (Final)
Dear all, Let me first define a couple of things that the community is being faced with: - Our current governance is not working. With the things we're facing and the current model / Board rules, there is no good way the Board could drive the resulting changes coming up. Bi-weekly meetings will definitely not be enough. Furthermore, the Board has not shown any real proactive leadership in some situations where it should have. In the end, the reason I stepped down from it. - Whether we like it or not, we have to rebrand the Project. We can start working on it now and be proactive, or later be forced by f.e. some new owner of SUSE ( mind, SUSE has expressed their concern about such a thing happening and clearly stated that they do not want to get rid of the Project. ). To drive this we need something else than the Board as it is now. But keeping things as they are simply is an unrealistic option. - We need more contributors. It is a simple fact that we have been losing those, So, we have to question ourselves not only on how we're getting more people in, but also on how we keep them in. From what I've seen too many of them start enthusiasticly and get burnt out because lack of onboarding / mentoring. That said, I've also seen exceptions to that. What can we do? Proposal is a project-team that drives the changes. That project-team should exist of users/contributors/members with ampel experience in the Project/Community, people who know how things currently work. Basically they would come up with a plan, evaluate that with Board and Community and when ready execute the plan. A thing that should be taken into consideration is how f.e. our governance should relate/communicate to/with the Foundation. - The choice of a new name for the Project would best be a limited choice of ~3 names, that that team would have researched/checked, this to avoid having an endless list of non- workable options. - The rebranding of the distros as f.e. "openSUSE Tumbleweed" to "Tumbleweed" is already an ongoing thing. I don't see any reason to have a discussion about that again. - A vote on the Project logo has already been done, and was won by our LCP, no need to do that again. The people maintaining the distros have accepted LCP's logos as their distro logo, so using the same design for the Project makes sense since it gives a nice consistency. Hoping this finds you well, Best regards, -- Gertjan Lettink a.k.a. Knurpht openSUSE Forums Team openSUSE Mods Team
+1 agree On Fri, 12 Jul 2024, 21:51 Knurpht-openSUSE, <knurpht@opensuse.org> wrote:
Dear all,
Let me first define a couple of things that the community is being faced with:
- Our current governance is not working. With the things we're facing and the
current model / Board rules, there is no good way the Board could drive the
resulting changes coming up. Bi-weekly meetings will definitely not be enough. Furthermore, the Board has not shown any real proactive leadership in some situations where it should have. In the end, the reason I stepped down from it.
- Whether we like it or not, we have to rebrand the Project. We can start
working on it now and be proactive, or later be forced by f.e. some new owner
of SUSE ( mind, SUSE has expressed their concern about such a thing happening
and clearly stated that they do not want to get rid of the Project. ). To
drive this we need something else than the Board as it is now. But keeping
things as they are simply is an unrealistic option.
- We need more contributors. It is a simple fact that we have been losing those, So, we have to question ourselves not only on how we're getting more people in, but also on how we keep them in. From what I've seen too many of them start enthusiasticly and get burnt out because lack of onboarding / mentoring. That said, I've also seen exceptions to that.
What can we do?
Proposal is a project-team that drives the changes. That project-team should exist of users/contributors/members with ampel experience in the Project/Community, people who know how things currently work. Basically they would come up with a plan, evaluate that with Board and Community and when ready execute the plan. A thing that should be taken into consideration is how f.e. our governance should relate/communicate to/with the Foundation.
- The choice of a new name for the Project would best be a limited choice of ~3 names, that that team would have researched/checked, this to avoid having an endless list of non-workable options.
- The rebranding of the distros as f.e. "openSUSE Tumbleweed" to "Tumbleweed" is already an ongoing thing. I don't see any reason to have a discussion about that again.
- A vote on the Project logo has already been done, and was won by our LCP, no need to do that again. The people maintaining the distros have accepted LCP's logos as their distro logo, so using the same design for the Project makes sense since it gives a nice consistency.
Hoping this finds you well,
Best regards,
--
Gertjan Lettink a.k.a. Knurpht
openSUSE Forums Team
openSUSE Mods Team
Knurpht-openSUSE composed on 2024-07-12 21:50 (UTC+0200):
- We need more contributors. It is a simple fact that we have been losing those, So, we have to question ourselves not only on how we're getting more people in, but also on how we keep them in. From what I've seen too many of them start enthusiasticly and get burnt out because lack of onboarding / mentoring.
For those not in the know, Mageia (my second choice distro), rpm-based and significant consumer of Fedora resources, has also been hemorrhaging contributors. Maybe a pooling of resources is worth investigating, possibly with functional merger achieved without any need for a novel project name. -- Evolution as taught in public schools is, like religion, based on faith, not based on science. Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata
On Friday, July 12, 2024 12:50:55 PM PDT Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:
Dear all,
Let me first define a couple of things that the community is being faced with:
- Our current governance is not working. With the things we're facing and the current model / Board rules, there is no good way the Board could drive the resulting changes coming up. Bi-weekly meetings will definitely not be enough. Furthermore, the Board has not shown any real proactive leadership in some situations where it should have. In the end, the reason I stepped down from it.
Speaking as a Board Member, no, we can't. And shouldn't. We *are* the primary contact between SUSE and the Project, but this isn't something that the Board *can* or should be deciding, this is an issue for the project, and it's membership/contributors to figure out, and ultimately, for the Board to facilitate where it needs to. That's my whole reason for opening the dialog with the community.
- Whether we like it or not, we have to rebrand the Project. We can start working on it now and be proactive, or later be forced by f.e. some new owner of SUSE ( mind, SUSE has expressed their concern about such a thing happening and clearly stated that they do not want to get rid of the Project. ). To drive this we need something else than the Board as it is now. But keeping things as they are simply is an unrealistic option.
Agreed.
- We need more contributors. It is a simple fact that we have been losing those, So, we have to question ourselves not only on how we're getting more people in, but also on how we keep them in. From what I've seen too many of them start enthusiasticly and get burnt out because lack of onboarding / mentoring. That said, I've also seen exceptions to that.
Also agreed. We've got a lot of very good people working on things, and many of them are feeling burnt out, or losing interest, or even leaving, and we've not kept pace with replacing, much less growing the size of the community.
What can we do?
Proposal is a project-team that drives the changes. That project-team should exist of users/contributors/members with ampel experience in the Project/Community, people who know how things currently work. Basically they would come up with a plan, evaluate that with Board and Community and when ready execute the plan. A thing that should be taken into consideration is how f.e. our governance should relate/communicate to/with the Foundation.
I certainly have no opposition, as a Board Member, to something like this. I'm currently putting together a bit of a High Level Survey of how some of our Peer projects handle their Governance, both Social and Technical, and trying to put together some Pro/Con points about all of them, to help *us* decide how we might want to move forward.
- The choice of a new name for the Project would best be a limited choice of ~3 names, that that team would have researched/checked, this to avoid having an endless list of non- workable options.
Absolutely. That makes good sense.
- The rebranding of the distros as f.e. "openSUSE Tumbleweed" to "Tumbleweed" is already an ongoing thing. I don't see any reason to have a discussion about that again.
Also agreed.
- A vote on the Project logo has already been done, and was won by our LCP, no need to do that again. The people maintaining the distros have accepted LCP's logos as their distro logo, so using the same design for the Project makes sense since it gives a nice consistency.
I mean, I still don't have a logo for Kalpa, but that's not LCP's fault =P
Hoping this finds you well,
Best regards,
On 7/13/24 5:20 AM, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:
Dear all,
Let me first define a couple of things that the community is being faced with:
- Our current governance is not working. With the things we're facing and the
current model / Board rules, there is no good way the Board could drive the
resulting changes coming up. Bi-weekly meetings will definitely not be enough. Furthermore, the Board has not shown any real proactive leadership in some situations where it should have. In the end, the reason I stepped down from it.
- Whether we like it or not, we have to rebrand the Project. We can start
working on it now and be proactive, or later be forced by f.e. some new owner
of SUSE ( mind, SUSE has expressed their concern about such a thing happening
and clearly stated that they do not want to get rid of the Project. ). To
drive this we need something else than the Board as it is now. But keeping
things as they are simply is an unrealistic option.
- We need more contributors. It is a simple fact that we have been losing those, So, we have to question ourselves not only on how we're getting more people in, but also on how we keep them in. From what I've seen too many of them start enthusiasticly and get burnt out because lack of onboarding / mentoring. That said, I've also seen exceptions to that.
What can we do?
Proposal is a project-team that drives the changes. That project-team should exist of users/contributors/members with ampel experience in the Project/Community, people who know how things currently work. Basically they would come up with a plan, evaluate that with Board and Community and when ready execute the plan. A thing that should be taken into consideration is how f.e. our governance should relate/communicate to/with the Foundation.
[Speaking as myself] I agree that there is more work here that needs to be done then can just be done by the board in our general meetings, I also believe that there are people outside the board very willing to help drive this (I spoke to some at OSC), and that we as a board would be silly not to use them. At the last meeting the discussion had only just started on the list so I and I believe others were willing to give it some time to run here. But next board meeting I was planning on proposing that we put together a working group including community members to help drive this forward. Especially if we want to look at new project structures the more people we have helping draft these the better they will be.
- The choice of a new name for the Project would best be a limited choice of ~3 names, that that team would have researched/checked, this to avoid having an endless list of non-workable options.
I'm less fussed about whether its 3 or 5 etc, but given trademarks are involved any proposed name will almost certainly need to be cleared by SUSE Legal prior to any form of vote on them.
- The rebranding of the distros as f.e. "openSUSE Tumbleweed" to "Tumbleweed" is already an ongoing thing. I don't see any reason to have a discussion about that again.
This I am not personally convinced of, having had multiple discussions with people in the community there have certainly been more mixed feelings about this then anything else. There have also been genuine concerns around things like search engine results etc. At the same time there are differing levels of this, Like if a wallpaper was to mention "Leap" or "Tumbleweed" it probably doesn't need to mention the project name, on the other hand /etc/os-release currently references openSUSE and having something continue in there would certainly be useful for me from a practical sense given there are many similarities between my Leap and Tumbleweed machines that are different on say a Debian or even Fedora machine. Alongside that it probably also doesn't make sense to completely remove all references everywhere unless we have websites like leap.org or tumbleweed.org. There are also other things like currently we sponsor conferences as "openSUSE" and maybe have a booth where we talk about everything under our banner, (Often with a focus on Tumbleweed, Leap, MicroOS and Aeon) should we now sponsor conferences as Tumbleweed and Leap separately with separate booths?
- A vote on the Project logo has already been done, and was won by our LCP, no need to do that again. The people maintaining the distros have accepted LCP's logos as their distro logo, so using the same design for the Project makes sense since it gives a nice consistency.
This I also agree with, although it would be a good chance to ditch "Ugly Green" and re do our color branding guidelines with things like a Green that works better for Screen and print and then a Yellow for Leap that complements it but that is very much just my personal opinion as someone who's had to deal with it from the perspective of desktop theming etc. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
On Sun, Jul 14, 2024 at 2:44 AM Simon Lees <sflees@suse.de> wrote:
On 7/13/24 5:20 AM, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:
Dear all,
Let me first define a couple of things that the community is being faced with:
- Our current governance is not working. With the things we're facing and the
current model / Board rules, there is no good way the Board could drive the
resulting changes coming up. Bi-weekly meetings will definitely not be enough. Furthermore, the Board has not shown any real proactive leadership in some situations where it should have. In the end, the reason I stepped down from it.
- Whether we like it or not, we have to rebrand the Project. We can start
working on it now and be proactive, or later be forced by f.e. some new owner
of SUSE ( mind, SUSE has expressed their concern about such a thing happening
and clearly stated that they do not want to get rid of the Project. ). To
drive this we need something else than the Board as it is now. But keeping
things as they are simply is an unrealistic option.
- We need more contributors. It is a simple fact that we have been losing those, So, we have to question ourselves not only on how we're getting more people in, but also on how we keep them in. From what I've seen too many of them start enthusiasticly and get burnt out because lack of onboarding / mentoring. That said, I've also seen exceptions to that.
What can we do?
Proposal is a project-team that drives the changes. That project-team should exist of users/contributors/members with ampel experience in the Project/Community, people who know how things currently work. Basically they would come up with a plan, evaluate that with Board and Community and when ready execute the plan. A thing that should be taken into consideration is how f.e. our governance should relate/communicate to/with the Foundation.
[Speaking as myself]
I agree that there is more work here that needs to be done then can just be done by the board in our general meetings, I also believe that there are people outside the board very willing to help drive this (I spoke to some at OSC), and that we as a board would be silly not to use them.
At the last meeting the discussion had only just started on the list so I and I believe others were willing to give it some time to run here. But next board meeting I was planning on proposing that we put together a working group including community members to help drive this forward. Especially if we want to look at new project structures the more people we have helping draft these the better they will be.
- The choice of a new name for the Project would best be a limited choice of ~3 names, that that team would have researched/checked, this to avoid having an endless list of non-workable options.
I'm less fussed about whether its 3 or 5 etc, but given trademarks are involved any proposed name will almost certainly need to be cleared by SUSE Legal prior to any form of vote on them.
Absolutely.
- The rebranding of the distros as f.e. "openSUSE Tumbleweed" to "Tumbleweed" is already an ongoing thing. I don't see any reason to have a discussion about that again.
This I am not personally convinced of, having had multiple discussions with people in the community there have certainly been more mixed feelings about this then anything else. There have also been genuine concerns around things like search engine results etc.
At the same time there are differing levels of this, Like if a wallpaper was to mention "Leap" or "Tumbleweed" it probably doesn't need to mention the project name, on the other hand /etc/os-release currently references openSUSE and having something continue in there would certainly be useful for me from a practical sense given there are many similarities between my Leap and Tumbleweed machines that are different on say a Debian or even Fedora machine.
Alongside that it probably also doesn't make sense to completely remove all references everywhere unless we have websites like leap.org or tumbleweed.org. There are also other things like currently we sponsor conferences as "openSUSE" and maybe have a booth where we talk about everything under our banner, (Often with a focus on Tumbleweed, Leap, MicroOS and Aeon) should we now sponsor conferences as Tumbleweed and Leap separately with separate booths?
In a very practical sense, these are all openSUSE Linux, just different variants or snapshots of it. I've personally felt for a long time that we've done ourselves a disservice by calling them "distributions" as if they're completely separate things. Sure, maybe openSUSE Tumbleweed and Leap could be considered as such. But Krypton, MicroOS, Aeon, and Kalpa? They are all variants of openSUSE Tumbleweed, not wholly separate things in their own right. And Leap itself has Argon and Leap Micro as variants. Having an overarching banner that is clearly communicated in our deliverables and in our community benefits us when communicating and advocating.
- A vote on the Project logo has already been done, and was won by our LCP, no need to do that again. The people maintaining the distros have accepted LCP's logos as their distro logo, so using the same design for the Project makes sense since it gives a nice consistency.
This I also agree with, although it would be a good chance to ditch "Ugly Green" and re do our color branding guidelines with things like a Green that works better for Screen and print and then a Yellow for Leap that complements it but that is very much just my personal opinion as someone who's had to deal with it from the perspective of desktop theming etc.
It would definitely be nice to have a color palette that's more flexible and looks good on the screen and print. Right now, we don't really have that. :( -- 真実はいつも一つ！/ Always, there's only one truth!
Hello together, yesterday I said that we should do the step forward (as a role model for SUSE) and do also an analysis for our own. I have to give the hint, that our communication channels (mailinglists, Forums, ...) are representing us to the outside. Therefore, that should be the first choice for looking for the resons of our problems.
Gesendet: Sonntag, 14. Juli 2024 um 08:43 Uhr Von: "Simon Lees" <sflees@suse.de> An: project@lists.opensuse.org Betreff: Re: Open Letter to the openSUSE Board, Project and Community (Final)
On 7/13/24 5:20 AM, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:
Dear all,
Let me first define a couple of things that the community is being faced with:
- Our current governance is not working. With the things we're facing and the
current model / Board rules, there is no good way the Board could drive the
resulting changes coming up. Bi-weekly meetings will definitely not be enough. Furthermore, the Board has not shown any real proactive leadership in some situations where it should have. In the end, the reason I stepped down from it.
The "past" governance did not work correctly. We have got a new openSUSE Board and we should support them to improve the behaviour. We do not need a new governance model. We need some "improvement". That will follow.
- Whether we like it or not, we have to rebrand the Project. We can start
working on it now and be proactive, or later be forced by f.e. some new owner
of SUSE ( mind, SUSE has expressed their concern about such a thing happening
and clearly stated that they do not want to get rid of the Project. ). To
drive this we need something else than the Board as it is now. But keeping
things as they are simply is an unrealistic option.
A Rebranding is damaging and does not help us with the "openSUSE is not SUSE" problem. We should recognize every good hint, like the hint with websites, where SUSE is based on openSUSE or something equal. Then we can solve this issue. If we want to keep up the collaboration, we need discussions with SUSE, how to use the words different.
- We need more contributors. It is a simple fact that we have been losing those, So, we have to question ourselves not only on how we're getting more people in, but also on how we keep them in. From what I've seen too many of them start enthusiasticly and get burnt out because lack of onboarding / mentoring. That said, I've also seen exceptions to that.
Here we can start with the analysis with our mailinglists: Why are we less Contributors now and why can we not keep them? Watching our mailinglists in the last 3 months should give us the reason. Here is a good example: https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/project@lists.opensuse.org/thread/V...
Then let's do a (social/technical) root cause analysis, who is/are representing this aggressivity and is/are breaking our Code of Conduct? You can do the same with the question "Why have we got less candidates for Board elections?". Go through our mailinglists of Board election periods. Do you want to become a Board candidate, if you should accept attacks on the mailinglist? Our Code of Conduct should be valid for all of us in the openSUSE Community. Our mailinglists are representing us. I had it often enough, that I was asked at open source events, why this special person is allowed to do that without any action from the openSUSE Board. That will solve also problems for receiving new Contributors, because people have got the choice between so many Linux distributions. They look around first. If you experience attacks, mobbing and aggressivity on mailinglists, you will look for another Linux distribution. Our "new" openSUSE Board can show us now, how they want to resolve this problem.
What can we do?
Proposal is a project-team that drives the changes. That project-team should exist of users/contributors/members with ampel experience in the Project/Community, people who know how things currently work. Basically they would come up with a plan, evaluate that with Board and Community and when ready execute the plan. A thing that should be taken into consideration is how f.e. our governance should relate/communicate to/with the Foundation.
[Speaking as myself]
I agree that there is more work here that needs to be done then can just be done by the board in our general meetings, I also believe that there are people outside the board very willing to help drive this (I spoke to some at OSC), and that we as a board would be silly not to use them.
At the last meeting the discussion had only just started on the list so I and I believe others were willing to give it some time to run here. But next board meeting I was planning on proposing that we put together a working group including community members to help drive this forward. Especially if we want to look at new project structures the more people we have helping draft these the better they will be.
As I wrote yesterday, I am open to support here more. If there are really Trademark problems, I suggest to invite also the German Lawyer Dr. Michael Stehmann. He is Apache Member and is open to support us regarding the Geeko Foundation and other stuff. He is supporting open source projects for free.
- The choice of a new name for the Project would best be a limited choice of ~3 names, that that team would have researched/checked, this to avoid having an endless list of non-workable options.
I'm less fussed about whether its 3 or 5 etc, but given trademarks are involved any proposed name will almost certainly need to be cleared by SUSE Legal prior to any form of vote on them.
We should collect good ideas. But that will not help us. These names should be backup solutions, if we will be forced to change the name.
- The rebranding of the distros as f.e. "openSUSE Tumbleweed" to "Tumbleweed" is already an ongoing thing. I don't see any reason to have a discussion about that again.
This I am not personally convinced of, having had multiple discussions with people in the community there have certainly been more mixed feelings about this then anything else. There have also been genuine concerns around things like search engine results etc.
At the same time there are differing levels of this, Like if a wallpaper was to mention "Leap" or "Tumbleweed" it probably doesn't need to mention the project name, on the other hand /etc/os-release currently references openSUSE and having something continue in there would certainly be useful for me from a practical sense given there are many similarities between my Leap and Tumbleweed machines that are different on say a Debian or even Fedora machine.
Alongside that it probably also doesn't make sense to completely remove all references everywhere unless we have websites like leap.org or tumbleweed.org. There are also other things like currently we sponsor conferences as "openSUSE" and maybe have a booth where we talk about everything under our banner, (Often with a focus on Tumbleweed, Leap, MicroOS and Aeon) should we now sponsor conferences as Tumbleweed and Leap separately with separate booths?
I asked myself in the last years also, why do we need so many MicroOS based Linux distributions? Is that really necessary? If we will receive a split, we have to reduce our portfolio because of missing people. Here you can use the question words "Where" and "What" for the analysis.
- A vote on the Project logo has already been done, and was won by our LCP, no need to do that again. The people maintaining the distros have accepted LCP's logos as their distro logo, so using the same design for the Project makes sense since it gives a nice consistency.
This I also agree with, although it would be a good chance to ditch "Ugly Green" and re do our color branding guidelines with things like a Green that works better for Screen and print and then a Yellow for Leap that complements it but that is very much just my personal opinion as someone who's had to deal with it from the perspective of desktop theming etc.
There are many openSUSE Members, who want to keep the old logo. Yes. You can use the new voting for the Geeko Foundation, but as Simon already said, we have to cover all the projects under an equal project as openSUSE (especially, if the Geeko Foundation wants to be open for more open source projects in the future). We are a community and should support each other. Therefore, we should support also our existing openSUSE Board to interact better and stronger. I hope, that I was able to help you with the first step of the analysis. Best regards, Sarah
-- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net
Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
Hello, Am Freitag, 12. Juli 2024, 21:50:55 MESZ schrieb Knurpht-openSUSE:
- Whether we like it or not, we have to rebrand the Project.
Who says that? So far, the rebranding has been called a "proposal", and questions what exactly that means are either unanwered, or got answers as clear as mud. The only thing that was made slightly more clear (clear as muddy water?) was that SUSE won't force us. So please stop claiming that we _have to_. IMHO the rebranding is a terribly bad idea which will cause lots of problems and damage. Therefore we should decline that proposal and keep openSUSE as our name.
We can start working on it now and be proactive, or later be forced by f.e. some new owner of SUSE ( mind, SUSE has expressed their concern about such a thing happening and clearly stated that they do not want to get rid of the Project. ).
This can be solved, for example with a contract between SUSE and the Geeko Foundation that would transfer the openSUSE trademark if SUSE (or a future new owner) ever does "stupid things"[tm] [1]. So if current SUSE management is indeed in favor of openSUSE, it should be an easy decision for them to sign such a contract to prevent possible future damage. In comparison to the effort and pain a rebranding would cause, such a contract would be a much easier (and even much cheaper) solution.
- We need more contributors. It is a simple fact that we have been losing those, So, we have to question ourselves not only on how we're getting more people in, but also on how we keep them in. From what I've seen too many of them start enthusiasticly and get burnt out because lack of onboarding / mentoring. That said, I've also seen exceptions to that.
Agreed, getting more new contributors and ensuring that they feel welcome and stay for longer is a good idea. Mentoring is part of the problem, but not the only issue. However, this is completely unrelated to the rebranding discussion.
- The rebranding of the distros as f.e. "openSUSE Tumbleweed" to "Tumbleweed" is already an ongoing thing. I don't see any reason to have a discussion about that again.
See Simon's answer - this isn't as easy as it might look.
- A vote on the Project logo has already been done, and was won by our LCP, no need to do that again. The people maintaining the distros have accepted LCP's logos as their distro logo, so using the same design for the Project makes sense since it gives a nice consistency.
Wrong. Yes, we had a logo vote, but that vote was so broken and problematic that it caused lots of discussions on the mailinglist. Just to mention the most important points: Our current logo was not offered as an option - which was the cause for most of the mailinglist discussion. The idea not to include it was already a bad idea, but at least the rules said it would have been included if someone submits it. Well, our current logo actually _was_ submitted by LCP - who later also complained on the mailinglist that it wasn't included. This also means that the only useful result of the logo vote was: _If_ we change the logo, it will be the one that won the vote. Back then, we got a promise that there will be a membership vote to decide if we want the new logo, or if we prefer to keep our current logo. That was a nice way to stop the discussions - but needless to say that this membership vote never happened. And now you claim that "A vote on the Project logo has already been done, and was won by our LCP, no need to do that again." Seriously? Regards, Christian Boltz [1] see my mail some days ago in the "Rebranding" discussion for details -- Last I checked, developers were still human [Bryen M Yunashko in opensuse-project]
Thanks for replying Christains, I firmly disagree, but I appreciate your reply and will answer in-line. Op zondag 14 juli 2024 21:38:38 CEST schreef Christian Boltz:
Hello,
Am Freitag, 12. Juli 2024, 21:50:55 MESZ schrieb Knurpht-openSUSE:
- Whether we like it or not, we have to rebrand the Project.
Who says that?
Sources I will and cannot reveal. What was told to me confidebntially stays with me until I;m told I can share it. Don't blame the messenger for the message.
So far, the rebranding has been called a "proposal", and questions what exactly that means are either unanwered, or got answers as clear as mud. The only thing that was made slightly more clear (clear as muddy water?) was that SUSE won't force us.
So please stop claiming that we _have to_.
IMHO the rebranding is a terribly bad idea which will cause lots of problems and damage. Therefore we should decline that proposal and keep openSUSE as our name.
Rather wait until we have to? If we want to be "independent" as some of the others said in the other threads, we'd have to anyway.
We can start working on it now and be proactive, or later be forced by f.e. some new owner of SUSE ( mind, SUSE has expressed their concern about such a thing happening and clearly stated that they do not want to get rid of the Project. ).
This can be solved, for example with a contract between SUSE and the Geeko Foundation that would transfer the openSUSE trademark if SUSE (or a future new owner) ever does "stupid things"[tm] [1].
So if current SUSE management is indeed in favor of openSUSE, it should be an easy decision for them to sign such a contract to prevent possible future damage.
In comparison to the effort and pain a rebranding would cause, such a contract would be a much easier (and even much cheaper) solution.
Again, investigating our options now is better than wait-and-see, wouldn't you agree?
- We need more contributors. It is a simple fact that we have been losing those, So, we have to question ourselves not only on how we're getting more people in, but also on how we keep them in. From what I've seen too many of them start enthusiasticly and get burnt out because lack of onboarding / mentoring. That said, I've also seen exceptions to that.
Agreed, getting more new contributors and ensuring that they feel welcome and stay for longer is a good idea. Mentoring is part of the problem, but not the only issue.
However, this is completely unrelated to the rebranding discussion.
OK, let's skip that, I just wanted to bring that up as an issue we're facing
- The rebranding of the distros as f.e. "openSUSE Tumbleweed" to "Tumbleweed" is already an ongoing thing. I don't see any reason to have a discussion about that again.
See Simon's answer - this isn't as easy as it might look.
I'm aware it is, yet also know it can be done.
- A vote on the Project logo has already been done, and was won by our LCP, no need to do that again. The people maintaining the distros have accepted LCP's logos as their distro logo, so using the same design for the Project makes sense since it gives a nice consistency.
Wrong.
Yes, we had a logo vote, but that vote was so broken and problematic that it caused lots of discussions on the mailinglist.
Just to mention the most important points:
Our current logo was not offered as an option - which was the cause for most of the mailinglist discussion. The idea not to include it was already a bad idea, but at least the rules said it would have been included if someone submits it.
Well, our current logo actually _was_ submitted by LCP - who later also complained on the mailinglist that it wasn't included.
This also means that the only useful result of the logo vote was: _If_ we change the logo, it will be the one that won the vote.
Back then, we got a promise that there will be a membership vote to decide if we want the new logo, or if we prefer to keep our current logo. That was a nice way to stop the discussions - but needless to say that this membership vote never happened.
And now you claim that "A vote on the Project logo has already been done, and was won by our LCP, no need to do that again."
Seriously?''
Where did I say that vote should not happen ? It is an open letter to all of you, nothing else. LCP's logos did win by far, and all I was saying is that we don't need a **new** logo vote. If the community wants to vote yes/no to replacing it, fine. But a new logo contest? No.
Regards,
Christian Boltz
[1] see my mail some days ago in the "Rebranding" discussion for details
-- Gertjan Lettink a.k.a. Knurpht openSUSE Forums Team openSUSE Mods Team
On 7/15/24 10:43 AM, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:
Thanks for replying Christains, I firmly disagree, but I appreciate your reply and will answer in-line.
Op zondag 14 juli 2024 21:38:38 CEST schreef Christian Boltz:
Hello,
Am Freitag, 12. Juli 2024, 21:50:55 MESZ schrieb Knurpht-openSUSE:
- Whether we like it or not, we have to rebrand the Project.
Who says that?
Sources I will and cannot reveal. What was told to me confidebntially stays with me until I;m told I can share it. Don't blame the messenger for the message.
I'm also not sure who your source is, but the information they have given you does not reflect the information that was last given to the board from SUSE. Who to make it clear are not forcing us to rebrand the project. My personal opinion is that while SUSE is willing to work with us on rebranding and the majority of the community seems onboard with it given there are good reasons and we have help to mitigate the negatives now is probably the right time because the opinion of SUSE may very well change sometime in the future. But to answer Christian I personally believe its far more likely that SUSE would choose to resolve any trademark issue by tell us that we need to change our name then be willing to move the trademarks to a community foundation. (Yes this opinion has changed in the last 5 years) -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
On 2024-07-15 04:25, Simon Lees wrote:
On 7/15/24 10:43 AM, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:
Sources I will and cannot reveal. What was told to me confidebntially stays with me until I;m told I can share it. Don't blame the messenger for the message.
I'm also not sure who your source is, but the information they have given you does not reflect the information that was last given to the board from SUSE. Who to make it clear are not forcing us to rebrand the project.
I think anyone focusing on whether or not SUSE is, will, or could "force" openSUSE to do anything is missing the whole point SUSE is an organisation that enables openSUSE to do far more than SUSE needs openSUSE to do. SUSE actively provides resources to openSUSE above and beyond what SUSE clearly needs to improve their business. This status quo is built upon good will. Good will isn't fostered by either party throwing around threats or making firm demands. The fact is, SUSE have formally, calmly, and quite nicely, asked openSUSE to stop using the SUSE brand. If we as a community fail to work productively with that request, then we will be choosing to decrease the good will between SUSE and openSUSE. I would expect that choice would not lead to SUSE escalating matters to get their own way, I don't see that as the "SUSE way" of doing things. What I would imagine is an outcome that's would actually far worse - Apathy and a tendency to put priorities elsewhere. A huge amount of what openSUSE excels at is facilitated by SUSE either giving openSUSE more than SUSE would otherwise need, or SUSE turning a blind eye and supporting it's employees when they give extra contributions to openSUSE during work time than the business would otherwise need. Any decrease in good will between SUSE and openSUSE puts those sort of contributions at risk. And sure, there are policies like "Factory first" that do directly foster direct engineering links between openSUSE and SUSE. But I do not think openSUSE should take them for granteded. It's not like openSUSE is the only Project/Community that SUSE fosters around it's products. SUSE Manager has Uyuni, Rancher has Rancher. If openSUSE demonstrates it's not aligned with SUSE's interests, then I expect SUSE to focus its efforts on open source projects that are aligned. SUSE will adapt to protect it's business, and this Project will need to adjust to a reality of less good will from all levels of the SUSE hierarchy. The same goes for the discussions regarding Governance. At oSC you had SUSE senior managers, budget holders, speak up, in public, saying that they felt this Project's governance has issues that need to be addressed. One of them has even come to this list and elaborated on that view. SUSE doesn't want history to record that it was the big mean corporation that forced its community to do something. But just because things are being said nicely doesn't mean they should be ignored. Infact..aren't we meant to be a community? Aren't we meant to respond positively when people ask us to do stuff nicely? Ultimately, I believe that if openSUSE continues to travel in a direction that hinders the SUSE brand, or ignores the need to address it's governance issues, we need to be prepared for history recording that openSUSE drove itself to obsolescence by failing to listen to the needs of one of its largest stakeholders. I'd rather we avoid such a fate and refocus this discussion. Like Andy's presentation implied when it says "We're all grown up..", let's act like adults, we've got stuff to do.
On 7/15/24 4:52 PM, Richard Brown wrote:
On 2024-07-15 04:25, Simon Lees wrote:
On 7/15/24 10:43 AM, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:
Sources I will and cannot reveal. What was told to me confidebntially stays with me until I;m told I can share it. Don't blame the messenger for the message.
I'm also not sure who your source is, but the information they have given you does not reflect the information that was last given to the board from SUSE. Who to make it clear are not forcing us to rebrand the project.
I think anyone focusing on whether or not SUSE is, will, or could "force" openSUSE to do anything is missing the whole point
SUSE is an organisation that enables openSUSE to do far more than SUSE needs openSUSE to do. SUSE actively provides resources to openSUSE above and beyond what SUSE clearly needs to improve their business.
This status quo is built upon good will. Good will isn't fostered by either party throwing around threats or making firm demands.
The fact is, SUSE have formally, calmly, and quite nicely, asked openSUSE to stop using the SUSE brand.
If we as a community fail to work productively with that request, then we will be choosing to decrease the good will between SUSE and openSUSE.
I would expect that choice would not lead to SUSE escalating matters to get their own way, I don't see that as the "SUSE way" of doing things. What I would imagine is an outcome that's would actually far worse - Apathy and a tendency to put priorities elsewhere.
A huge amount of what openSUSE excels at is facilitated by SUSE either giving openSUSE more than SUSE would otherwise need, or SUSE turning a blind eye and supporting it's employees when they give extra contributions to openSUSE during work time than the business would otherwise need.
Any decrease in good will between SUSE and openSUSE puts those sort of contributions at risk.
And sure, there are policies like "Factory first" that do directly foster direct engineering links between openSUSE and SUSE. But I do not think openSUSE should take them for granteded.
It's not like openSUSE is the only Project/Community that SUSE fosters around it's products. SUSE Manager has Uyuni, Rancher has Rancher. If openSUSE demonstrates it's not aligned with SUSE's interests, then I expect SUSE to focus its efforts on open source projects that are aligned. SUSE will adapt to protect it's business, and this Project will need to adjust to a reality of less good will from all levels of the SUSE hierarchy.
The same goes for the discussions regarding Governance. At oSC you had SUSE senior managers, budget holders, speak up, in public, saying that they felt this Project's governance has issues that need to be addressed. One of them has even come to this list and elaborated on that view.
SUSE doesn't want history to record that it was the big mean corporation that forced its community to do something. But just because things are being said nicely doesn't mean they should be ignored.
Infact..aren't we meant to be a community? Aren't we meant to respond positively when people ask us to do stuff nicely?
Ultimately, I believe that if openSUSE continues to travel in a direction that hinders the SUSE brand, or ignores the need to address it's governance issues, we need to be prepared for history recording that openSUSE drove itself to obsolescence by failing to listen to the needs of one of its largest stakeholders.
I'd rather we avoid such a fate and refocus this discussion. Like Andy's presentation implied when it says "We're all grown up..", let's act like adults, we've got stuff to do.
I'll just say that personally I 100% agree with this, which is why in 2019 I didn't think the name change was a great idea but now I'm pushing for it. Also why i've been actively pushing the discussion around changes to the governance. At the same time to be 100% clear that doesn't change the fact that SUSE has NOT communicated to the board that the project MUST change its name. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
On 2024-07-15 09:41, Simon Lees wrote:
On 7/15/24 4:52 PM, Richard Brown wrote:
On 2024-07-15 04:25, Simon Lees wrote:
On 7/15/24 10:43 AM, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:
Ultimately, I believe that if openSUSE continues to travel in a direction that hinders the SUSE brand, or ignores the need to address it's governance issues, we need to be prepared for history recording that openSUSE drove itself to obsolescence by failing to listen to the needs of one of its largest stakeholders.
I'd rather we avoid such a fate and refocus this discussion. Like Andy's presentation implied when it says "We're all grown up..", let's act like adults, we've got stuff to do.
I'll just say that personally I 100% agree with this, which is why in 2019 I didn't think the name change was a great idea but now I'm pushing for it. Also why i've been actively pushing the discussion around changes to the governance.
At the same time to be 100% clear that doesn't change the fact that SUSE has NOT communicated to the board that the project MUST change its name.
Sure, it doesn't change the fact, but I would hope my context could change the implication that fact carries. "SUSE has not communicated to the Board that the project MUST change its name" can mean multiple things. Some examples that spring to mind: 1. SUSE doesn't really care if openSUSE changes its name 2. SUSE wants openSUSE to change it's name, but doesn't think pushing that through the Board is a nice way to do that 3. SUSE wants openSUSE to change it's name, but doesn't think the Board is an effective governing body 4. SUSE wants openSUSE to change it's name, but prefers to engage directly with the community-at-large. I think #1 is highly unlikely, if not impossible - far too much work went into putting the request together. I think either, #2, #3, or #4 (or more likely a combination of all three) are more likely to be factors. So I do not share any comfort you may get from your fact.
On 7/15/24 5:20 PM, Richard Brown wrote:
On 2024-07-15 09:41, Simon Lees wrote:
On 7/15/24 4:52 PM, Richard Brown wrote:
On 2024-07-15 04:25, Simon Lees wrote:
On 7/15/24 10:43 AM, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:
Ultimately, I believe that if openSUSE continues to travel in a direction that hinders the SUSE brand, or ignores the need to address it's governance issues, we need to be prepared for history recording that openSUSE drove itself to obsolescence by failing to listen to the needs of one of its largest stakeholders.
I'd rather we avoid such a fate and refocus this discussion. Like Andy's presentation implied when it says "We're all grown up..", let's act like adults, we've got stuff to do.
I'll just say that personally I 100% agree with this, which is why in 2019 I didn't think the name change was a great idea but now I'm pushing for it. Also why i've been actively pushing the discussion around changes to the governance.
At the same time to be 100% clear that doesn't change the fact that SUSE has NOT communicated to the board that the project MUST change its name.
Sure, it doesn't change the fact, but I would hope my context could change the implication that fact carries.
"SUSE has not communicated to the Board that the project MUST change its name" can mean multiple things. Some examples that spring to mind:
1. SUSE doesn't really care if openSUSE changes its name 2. SUSE wants openSUSE to change it's name, but doesn't think pushing that through the Board is a nice way to do that 3. SUSE wants openSUSE to change it's name, but doesn't think the Board is an effective governing body 4. SUSE wants openSUSE to change it's name, but prefers to engage directly with the community-at-large.
I think #1 is highly unlikely, if not impossible - far too much work went into putting the request together.
I think either, #2, #3, or #4 (or more likely a combination of all three) are more likely to be factors.
Given that SUSE has chosen to approach and communicate with the board before the community I'm going to disagree with some of your assessment here aside from point #1. But given i'd prefer us see some changes to the governance structure as well i'm not going to waste any more time arguing about it.
So I do not share any comfort you may get from your fact.
Well the fact that my opinion has changed from not renaming to renaming based on SUSE's communication shows that I also don't have enough comfort to believe that keeping the openSUSE name is the right long term decision for the community. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
On 2024-07-15 10:16, Simon Lees wrote:
On 7/15/24 5:20 PM, Richard Brown wrote:
On 2024-07-15 09:41, Simon Lees wrote:
On 7/15/24 4:52 PM, Richard Brown wrote:
On 2024-07-15 04:25, Simon Lees wrote:
On 7/15/24 10:43 AM, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:
Ultimately, I believe that if openSUSE continues to travel in a direction that hinders the SUSE brand, or ignores the need to address it's governance issues, we need to be prepared for history recording that openSUSE drove itself to obsolescence by failing to listen to the needs of one of its largest stakeholders.
I'd rather we avoid such a fate and refocus this discussion. Like Andy's presentation implied when it says "We're all grown up..", let's act like adults, we've got stuff to do.
I'll just say that personally I 100% agree with this, which is why in 2019 I didn't think the name change was a great idea but now I'm pushing for it. Also why i've been actively pushing the discussion around changes to the governance.
At the same time to be 100% clear that doesn't change the fact that SUSE has NOT communicated to the board that the project MUST change its name.
Sure, it doesn't change the fact, but I would hope my context could change the implication that fact carries.
"SUSE has not communicated to the Board that the project MUST change its name" can mean multiple things. Some examples that spring to mind:
1. SUSE doesn't really care if openSUSE changes its name 2. SUSE wants openSUSE to change it's name, but doesn't think pushing that through the Board is a nice way to do that 3. SUSE wants openSUSE to change it's name, but doesn't think the Board is an effective governing body 4. SUSE wants openSUSE to change it's name, but prefers to engage directly with the community-at-large.
I think #1 is highly unlikely, if not impossible - far too much work went into putting the request together.
I think either, #2, #3, or #4 (or more likely a combination of all three) are more likely to be factors.
Given that SUSE has chosen to approach and communicate with the board before the community I'm going to disagree with some of your assessment here aside from point #1. But given i'd prefer us see some changes to the governance structure as well i'm not going to waste any more time arguing about it.
If you mean to suggest that my presence at the Board meeting before oSC was "SUSE" choosing to approach and communicate with the Board I have to clear something up SUSE at no point had any intention of approaching or communicating the content of the presentation at oSC with the openSUSE Board. While at SUSEcon, I happened to discuss the plans in passing with Douglas, who requested I present it to the Board at the Board meeting. So it would be more accurate to suggest that the Board requested that SUSE present the topic to them in private before the community. It was not SUSE's plan to do so. I made the mistake of agreeing to Doug's suggestion and giving you all a preview of the presentation. This has apparently given you a wholly misguided impression that my presence at the Board meeting was at SUSE's request. I apologise for that mistaken impression. Given everything else that transpired with the Boards intervention on this topic, I do not intend to make that mistake ever again.
On 7/15/24 5:53 PM, Richard Brown wrote:
On 2024-07-15 10:16, Simon Lees wrote:
On 7/15/24 5:20 PM, Richard Brown wrote:
On 2024-07-15 09:41, Simon Lees wrote:
On 7/15/24 4:52 PM, Richard Brown wrote:
On 2024-07-15 04:25, Simon Lees wrote:
On 7/15/24 10:43 AM, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:
Ultimately, I believe that if openSUSE continues to travel in a direction that hinders the SUSE brand, or ignores the need to address it's governance issues, we need to be prepared for history recording that openSUSE drove itself to obsolescence by failing to listen to the needs of one of its largest stakeholders.
I'd rather we avoid such a fate and refocus this discussion. Like Andy's presentation implied when it says "We're all grown up..", let's act like adults, we've got stuff to do.
I'll just say that personally I 100% agree with this, which is why in 2019 I didn't think the name change was a great idea but now I'm pushing for it. Also why i've been actively pushing the discussion around changes to the governance.
At the same time to be 100% clear that doesn't change the fact that SUSE has NOT communicated to the board that the project MUST change its name.
Sure, it doesn't change the fact, but I would hope my context could change the implication that fact carries.
"SUSE has not communicated to the Board that the project MUST change its name" can mean multiple things. Some examples that spring to mind:
1. SUSE doesn't really care if openSUSE changes its name 2. SUSE wants openSUSE to change it's name, but doesn't think pushing that through the Board is a nice way to do that 3. SUSE wants openSUSE to change it's name, but doesn't think the Board is an effective governing body 4. SUSE wants openSUSE to change it's name, but prefers to engage directly with the community-at-large.
I think #1 is highly unlikely, if not impossible - far too much work went into putting the request together.
I think either, #2, #3, or #4 (or more likely a combination of all three) are more likely to be factors.
Given that SUSE has chosen to approach and communicate with the board before the community I'm going to disagree with some of your assessment here aside from point #1. But given i'd prefer us see some changes to the governance structure as well i'm not going to waste any more time arguing about it.
If you mean to suggest that my presence at the Board meeting before oSC was "SUSE" choosing to approach and communicate with the Board I have to clear something up
No, SUSE has been communicating with the board since long before your presentation to us during our face to face and continued to communicate with us in the period after your presentation and before the conference. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
Am 15.07.24 um 09:50 schrieb Richard Brown:
I think #1 is highly unlikely, if not impossible - far too much work went into putting the request together.
Which request? Please provide a link to a mailinglist archive, Blog post, whatever. I cannot remember this being requested, but I might not read everything on the internet. -- Stefan Seyfried "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard Feynman
On 7/15/24 5:49 PM, Stefan Seyfried wrote:
Am 15.07.24 um 09:50 schrieb Richard Brown:
I think #1 is highly unlikely, if not impossible - far too much work went into putting the request together.
Which request? Please provide a link to a mailinglist archive, Blog post, whatever. I cannot remember this being requested, but I might not read everything on the internet.
It was at the openSUSE Conference, The recording was linked in the first "Rebranding the Project email" but I'll link it again here for you now. https://media.ccc.de/v/4411-we-re-all-grown-up-opensuse-is-not-suse -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
Am 15.07.24 um 10:37 schrieb Simon Lees:
On 7/15/24 5:49 PM, Stefan Seyfried wrote:
Am 15.07.24 um 09:50 schrieb Richard Brown:
I think #1 is highly unlikely, if not impossible - far too much work went into putting the request together.
Which request? Please provide a link to a mailinglist archive, Blog post, whatever. I cannot remember this being requested, but I might not read everything on the internet.
It was at the openSUSE Conference, The recording was linked in the first "Rebranding the Project email" but I'll link it again here for you now.
https://media.ccc.de/v/4411-we-re-all-grown-up-opensuse-is-not-suse
OK. At least the description says otherwise: "Assumptions will be challenged, expectations will be broken, and the session will kick off a grass roots effort from a number of community members to propose openSUSE finds a new, less ambiguous name for itself." I did not attend this presentation on purpose due to various reasons, I might have if the description would have mentioned that this is not a grass roots effort but a gentle request of SUSE (but I doubt it, because the various reasons would still have applied ;-). Having this written down somewhere would have been helpful and much more effective than a 47minute video (which I am unlikely to be watching any time soon). -- Stefan Seyfried "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard Feynman
+1 Well said. /p -- -----Original message----- From: Richard Brown <rbrown@suse.de> Sent: Monday 15th July 2024 9:22 To: project@lists.opensuse.org Subject: Re: Open Letter to the openSUSE Board, Project and Community (Final) On 2024-07-15 04:25, Simon Lees wrote:
On 7/15/24 10:43 AM, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:
Sources I will and cannot reveal. What was told to me confidebntially stays with me until I;m told I can share it. Don't blame the messenger for the message.
I'm also not sure who your source is, but the information they have given you does not reflect the information that was last given to the board from SUSE. Who to make it clear are not forcing us to rebrand the project.
I think anyone focusing on whether or not SUSE is, will, or could "force" openSUSE to do anything is missing the whole point SUSE is an organisation that enables openSUSE to do far more than SUSE needs openSUSE to do. SUSE actively provides resources to openSUSE above and beyond what SUSE clearly needs to improve their business. This status quo is built upon good will. Good will isn't fostered by either party throwing around threats or making firm demands. The fact is, SUSE have formally, calmly, and quite nicely, asked openSUSE to stop using the SUSE brand. If we as a community fail to work productively with that request, then we will be choosing to decrease the good will between SUSE and openSUSE. I would expect that choice would not lead to SUSE escalating matters to get their own way, I don't see that as the "SUSE way" of doing things. What I would imagine is an outcome that's would actually far worse - Apathy and a tendency to put priorities elsewhere. A huge amount of what openSUSE excels at is facilitated by SUSE either giving openSUSE more than SUSE would otherwise need, or SUSE turning a blind eye and supporting it's employees when they give extra contributions to openSUSE during work time than the business would otherwise need. Any decrease in good will between SUSE and openSUSE puts those sort of contributions at risk. And sure, there are policies like "Factory first" that do directly foster direct engineering links between openSUSE and SUSE. But I do not think openSUSE should take them for granteded. It's not like openSUSE is the only Project/Community that SUSE fosters around it's products. SUSE Manager has Uyuni, Rancher has Rancher. If openSUSE demonstrates it's not aligned with SUSE's interests, then I expect SUSE to focus its efforts on open source projects that are aligned. SUSE will adapt to protect it's business, and this Project will need to adjust to a reality of less good will from all levels of the SUSE hierarchy. The same goes for the discussions regarding Governance. At oSC you had SUSE senior managers, budget holders, speak up, in public, saying that they felt this Project's governance has issues that need to be addressed. One of them has even come to this list and elaborated on that view. SUSE doesn't want history to record that it was the big mean corporation that forced its community to do something. But just because things are being said nicely doesn't mean they should be ignored. Infact..aren't we meant to be a community? Aren't we meant to respond positively when people ask us to do stuff nicely? Ultimately, I believe that if openSUSE continues to travel in a direction that hinders the SUSE brand, or ignores the need to address it's governance issues, we need to be prepared for history recording that openSUSE drove itself to obsolescence by failing to listen to the needs of one of its largest stakeholders. I'd rather we avoid such a fate and refocus this discussion. Like Andy's presentation implied when it says "We're all grown up..", let's act like adults, we've got stuff to do.
On Monday, July 15th, 2024 at 2:22 PM, Richard Brown <rbrown@suse.de> wrote:
On 2024-07-15 04:25, Simon Lees wrote:
On 7/15/24 10:43 AM, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:
Sources I will and cannot reveal. What was told to me confidebntially stays with me until I;m told I can share it. Don't blame the messenger for the message.
I'm also not sure who your source is, but the information they have given you does not reflect the information that was last given to the board from SUSE. Who to make it clear are not forcing us to rebrand the project.
I think anyone focusing on whether or not SUSE is, will, or could "force" openSUSE to do anything is missing the whole point
SUSE is an organisation that enables openSUSE to do far more than SUSE needs openSUSE to do. SUSE actively provides resources to openSUSE above and beyond what SUSE clearly needs to improve their business.
This status quo is built upon good will. Good will isn't fostered by either party throwing around threats or making firm demands.
The fact is, SUSE have formally, calmly, and quite nicely, asked openSUSE to stop using the SUSE brand.
If we as a community fail to work productively with that request, then we will be choosing to decrease the good will between SUSE and openSUSE.
I would expect that choice would not lead to SUSE escalating matters to get their own way, I don't see that as the "SUSE way" of doing things. What I would imagine is an outcome that's would actually far worse - Apathy and a tendency to put priorities elsewhere.
A huge amount of what openSUSE excels at is facilitated by SUSE either giving openSUSE more than SUSE would otherwise need, or SUSE turning a blind eye and supporting it's employees when they give extra contributions to openSUSE during work time than the business would otherwise need.
Any decrease in good will between SUSE and openSUSE puts those sort of contributions at risk.
And sure, there are policies like "Factory first" that do directly foster direct engineering links between openSUSE and SUSE. But I do not think openSUSE should take them for granteded.
It's not like openSUSE is the only Project/Community that SUSE fosters around it's products. SUSE Manager has Uyuni, Rancher has Rancher. If openSUSE demonstrates it's not aligned with SUSE's interests, then I expect SUSE to focus its efforts on open source projects that are aligned. SUSE will adapt to protect it's business, and this Project will need to adjust to a reality of less good will from all levels of the SUSE hierarchy.
The same goes for the discussions regarding Governance. At oSC you had SUSE senior managers, budget holders, speak up, in public, saying that they felt this Project's governance has issues that need to be addressed. One of them has even come to this list and elaborated on that view.
SUSE doesn't want history to record that it was the big mean corporation that forced its community to do something. But just because things are being said nicely doesn't mean they should be ignored.
Infact..aren't we meant to be a community? Aren't we meant to respond positively when people ask us to do stuff nicely?
Ultimately, I believe that if openSUSE continues to travel in a direction that hinders the SUSE brand, or ignores the need to address it's governance issues, we need to be prepared for history recording that openSUSE drove itself to obsolescence by failing to listen to the needs of one of its largest stakeholders.
I'd rather we avoid such a fate and refocus this discussion. Like Andy's presentation implied when it says "We're all grown up..", let's act like adults, we've got stuff to do.
This was pretty much my takeaway from the oSC presentation, 100% agree! -- Br, A.
Hello bear in mind that the party that presented the idea (originally Andy F, in the end, backed up by Robert Sirchia, I'm excluding Richard as he originally wanted a separate talk) is not necessarily a contributor to openSUSE. From such a perspective, the second largest openSUSE event sounded like a great opportunity (after the Asia summit, based on presented attendance numbers), plus asking in person, responding, etc. The fact that we have this conversation on this platform tells me that some steps were taken to initiate further discussion with contributors. I don't dare to judge if the steps were good or bad, as we don't go through such a transition every day. What I know is that each individual can be either supportive, and constructive, and do the best on their part (helping to drive the effort, de/re-branding, foundation, sponsorship, positive marketing, docs, each to his own preferences). Or we can put obstacles in the way, so people can't do their best. I consider myself to be rather supportive, even when I'm not exactly happy to see a well-established brand go away. I see governance, and finding more contributors as an opportunity in the current situation. Leap 16 would not exist without the latter. I'm happy to see new faces in the Marketing channel and see that things are organically evolving forward. On Mon, Jul 15, 2024 at 2:07 PM Attila Pinter <adathor@protonmail.com> wrote:
On Monday, July 15th, 2024 at 2:22 PM, Richard Brown <rbrown@suse.de> wrote:
On 2024-07-15 04:25, Simon Lees wrote:
On 7/15/24 10:43 AM, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:
Sources I will and cannot reveal. What was told to me confidebntially stays with me until I;m told I can share it. Don't blame the messenger for the message.
I'm also not sure who your source is, but the information they have given you does not reflect the information that was last given to the board from SUSE. Who to make it clear are not forcing us to rebrand the project.
I think anyone focusing on whether or not SUSE is, will, or could "force" openSUSE to do anything is missing the whole point
SUSE is an organisation that enables openSUSE to do far more than SUSE needs openSUSE to do. SUSE actively provides resources to openSUSE above and beyond what SUSE clearly needs to improve their business.
This status quo is built upon good will. Good will isn't fostered by either party throwing around threats or making firm demands.
The fact is, SUSE have formally, calmly, and quite nicely, asked openSUSE to stop using the SUSE brand.
If we as a community fail to work productively with that request, then we will be choosing to decrease the good will between SUSE and openSUSE.
I would expect that choice would not lead to SUSE escalating matters to get their own way, I don't see that as the "SUSE way" of doing things. What I would imagine is an outcome that's would actually far worse - Apathy and a tendency to put priorities elsewhere.
A huge amount of what openSUSE excels at is facilitated by SUSE either giving openSUSE more than SUSE would otherwise need, or SUSE turning a blind eye and supporting it's employees when they give extra contributions to openSUSE during work time than the business would otherwise need.
Any decrease in good will between SUSE and openSUSE puts those sort of contributions at risk.
And sure, there are policies like "Factory first" that do directly foster direct engineering links between openSUSE and SUSE. But I do not think openSUSE should take them for granteded.
It's not like openSUSE is the only Project/Community that SUSE fosters around it's products. SUSE Manager has Uyuni, Rancher has Rancher. If openSUSE demonstrates it's not aligned with SUSE's interests, then I expect SUSE to focus its efforts on open source projects that are aligned. SUSE will adapt to protect it's business, and this Project will need to adjust to a reality of less good will from all levels of the SUSE hierarchy.
The same goes for the discussions regarding Governance. At oSC you had SUSE senior managers, budget holders, speak up, in public, saying that they felt this Project's governance has issues that need to be addressed. One of them has even come to this list and elaborated on that view.
SUSE doesn't want history to record that it was the big mean corporation that forced its community to do something. But just because things are being said nicely doesn't mean they should be ignored.
Infact..aren't we meant to be a community? Aren't we meant to respond positively when people ask us to do stuff nicely?
Ultimately, I believe that if openSUSE continues to travel in a direction that hinders the SUSE brand, or ignores the need to address it's governance issues, we need to be prepared for history recording that openSUSE drove itself to obsolescence by failing to listen to the needs of one of its largest stakeholders.
I'd rather we avoid such a fate and refocus this discussion. Like Andy's presentation implied when it says "We're all grown up..", let's act like adults, we've got stuff to do.
This was pretty much my takeaway from the oSC presentation, 100% agree!
-- Br, A.
-- Best regards Luboš Kocman openSUSE Leap Release Manager
On 2024-07-15 14:41, Lubos Kocman wrote:
Hello
bear in mind that the party that presented the idea (originally Andy F, in the end, backed up by Robert Sirchia, I'm excluding Richard as he originally wanted a separate talk) is not necessarily a contributor to openSUSE. From such a perspective, the second largest openSUSE event sounded like a great opportunity (after the Asia summit, based on presented attendance numbers), plus asking in person, responding, etc.
Hi Lubos, I really do not like the characterisation you paint here that Andy nor Robert are "not necessarily a contributor to openSUSE" Both Andy and Robert were directly representing SUSE, _the_ largest collection of contributors to openSUSE, _the_ largest financial contributor to openSUSE, the administrator of our build service, the facilitator of all our infrastructure, our employer, and more. I know you're supportive of their request and are doing what you can to help things along, but I really felt the need to call out how uncomfortable your choice of language made me here. Everyone involved in this situation is an openSUSE contributor. There is no us (openSUSE) vs them (SUSE). There's just 'us', and correcting the consequences of mistakes made 20 years ago when deciding what moniker to use for that collective 'us' in this Project.
It was really meant that this is not their regular channel to communicate. And that doing that in person is not such a bad decision from their POV. Lubos On Mon, Jul 15, 2024 at 3:15 PM Richard Brown <rbrown@suse.de> wrote:
On 2024-07-15 14:41, Lubos Kocman wrote:
Hello
bear in mind that the party that presented the idea (originally Andy F, in the end, backed up by Robert Sirchia, I'm excluding Richard as he originally wanted a separate talk) is not necessarily a contributor to openSUSE. From such a perspective, the second largest openSUSE event sounded like a great opportunity (after the Asia summit, based on presented attendance numbers), plus asking in person, responding, etc.
Hi Lubos,
I really do not like the characterisation you paint here that Andy nor Robert are "not necessarily a contributor to openSUSE"
Both Andy and Robert were directly representing SUSE, _the_ largest collection of contributors to openSUSE, _the_ largest financial contributor to openSUSE, the administrator of our build service, the facilitator of all our infrastructure, our employer, and more.
I know you're supportive of their request and are doing what you can to help things along, but I really felt the need to call out how uncomfortable your choice of language made me here.
Everyone involved in this situation is an openSUSE contributor. There is no us (openSUSE) vs them (SUSE).
There's just 'us', and correcting the consequences of mistakes made 20 years ago when deciding what moniker to use for that collective 'us' in this Project.
-- Best regards Luboš Kocman openSUSE Leap Release Manager
Hey, On 15.07.24 09:22, Richard Brown wrote:
Infact..aren't we meant to be a community? Aren't we meant to respond positively when people ask us to do stuff nicely?
Sorry, but you are constructing one of your straw man arguments again. The choice is not limited to those two options. We can respond positively to people asking us to do stuff by saying: We have considered your idea/request but we decided against it because... No matter who is asking. Henne -- Henne Vogelsang http://www.opensuse.org Everybody has a plan, until they get hit. - Mike Tyson
Am 15.07.24 um 03:13 schrieb Knurpht-openSUSE:
Sources I will and cannot reveal. What was told to me confidebntially stays with me until I;m told I can share it. Don't blame the messenger for the message.
Sources I will and cannot reveal told me we don't have to. -- Stefan Seyfried "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard Feynman
Hello, Am Montag, 15. Juli 2024, 03:13:33 MESZ schrieb Knurpht-openSUSE:
Op zondag 14 juli 2024 21:38:38 CEST schreef Christian Boltz:
Am Freitag, 12. Juli 2024, 21:50:55 MESZ schrieb Knurpht-openSUSE:
- Whether we like it or not, we have to rebrand the Project.
Who says that?
Sources I will and cannot reveal. What was told to me confidebntially stays with me until I;m told I can share it. Don't blame the messenger for the message.
I won't force you to reveal anything, but it's hard to tell the difference between some undisclosed sources and things made out of thin air. I tend to believe such "sources" on the same level as I believe rumors, which usually means "not at all". Also, Simon's answer has made it very clear how "good" your source must be. That said - Seife's undisclosed sources sound very valid ;-)
So far, the rebranding has been called a "proposal", and questions what exactly that means are either unanwered, or got answers as clear as mud. The only thing that was made slightly more clear (clear as muddy water?) was that SUSE won't force us.
So please stop claiming that we _have to_.
IMHO the rebranding is a terribly bad idea which will cause lots of problems and damage. Therefore we should decline that proposal and keep openSUSE as our name.
Rather wait until we have to? If we want to be "independent" as some of the others said in the other threads, we'd have to anyway.
I doubt that being independent (BTW, it's interesting that you use quotes around that word) has anything to do with replacing the letters S, U and E in our name.
We can start working on it now and be proactive, or later be forced by f.e. some new owner of SUSE ( mind, SUSE has expressed their concern about such a thing happening and clearly stated that they do not want to get rid of the Project. ).
This can be solved, for example with a contract between SUSE and the Geeko Foundation that would transfer the openSUSE trademark if SUSE (or a future new owner) ever does "stupid things"[tm] [1].
So if current SUSE management is indeed in favor of openSUSE, it should be an easy decision for them to sign such a contract to prevent possible future damage.
In comparison to the effort and pain a rebranding would cause, such a contract would be a much easier (and even much cheaper) solution.
Again, investigating our options now is better than wait-and-see, wouldn't you agree?
No, because the option we "should" investigate means lots of work and lots of foreseeable problems, with the best-possible (but unlikely) result of "not much damage done", and some worst-case results I don't even want to imagine ("Who on earth is that $newname distro? Never heard of them!") To make things worse, all that is based on statements that are as clear as mud, and feel like FUD spread by a small number of people. OTOH, wait and see - and accepting the risk that we _might_ have to act in 5, 10 or 100 years - avoids all the foreseeable and very real issues a rebrand will cause. And who knows, maybe a future owner of SUSE is a big fan of openSUSE and fulfils all our dreams. I know nobody mentioned this option before, but it's as likely or unlikely as the worst-case option. If you look around in the news, companies very rarely change their name, because they know that it's extremely hard and can cause lots of damage. The few rebrands I've seen so far were because these companies had completely f***ed up before, and hoped that people wouldn't recognize them under their new name, and wouldn't remember all the evil things they did before. I don't think that openSUSE belongs to that category. To summarize it in a completely different way: No, I will not move to a tent and call a demolition company to pull down my house, just because every day some houses in germany burn down. Instead, I will wait and see, accept the (small) risk and stay in the house. And no, I don't even consider a camping trailer to be a sane alternative. (Did I mention that a storm just blew away a tent?)
- A vote on the Project logo has already been done, and was won by our LCP, no need to do that again. The people maintaining the distros have accepted LCP's logos as their distro logo, so using the same design for the Project makes sense since it gives a nice consistency. Wrong.
Yes, we had a logo vote, but that vote was so broken and problematic that it caused lots of discussions on the mailinglist.
Just to mention the most important points:
Our current logo was not offered as an option - which was the cause for most of the mailinglist discussion. The idea not to include it was already a bad idea, but at least the rules said it would have been included if someone submits it.
Well, our current logo actually _was_ submitted by LCP - who later also complained on the mailinglist that it wasn't included.
This also means that the only useful result of the logo vote was: _If_ we change the logo, it will be the one that won the vote.
Back then, we got a promise that there will be a membership vote to decide if we want the new logo, or if we prefer to keep our current logo. That was a nice way to stop the discussions - but needless to say that this membership vote never happened.
And now you claim that "A vote on the Project logo has already been done, and was won by our LCP, no need to do that again."
Seriously?''
Where did I say that vote should not happen ? It is an open letter to all of you, nothing else. LCP's logos did win by far, and all I was saying is that we don't need a **new** logo vote. If the community wants to vote yes/no to replacing it, fine. But a new logo contest? No.
That's an interesting[tm] way of interpreting what you wrote in your previous mail, but it's not what you had written. You wrote that "A vote on the Project logo has already been done, [...] no need to do this again" - and there was not the smallest indication that you'd consider a(nother) logo vote. Of course you could argue that you didn't explicitely write that you are against a "current vs new logo" vote, but "no need to do this again" is more than clear and doesn't leave lots of room for speculation or interpretation. Just to be clear: The question if the community wants a vote about current vs. new logo was answered in that discussion with a very clear "yes". The mail flood only stopped when we got the promise that such a vote will happen. Feel free to re-read the (IIRC) 100+ mails on this topic if you don't believe me. Regards, Christian Boltz -- ah, sie haben einen doktortitel. in welchem fach haben sie denn plagiiert? [barfman auf http://ahoipolloi.blogger.de/stories/1844699/]
On Tuesday, July 16th, 2024 at 5:41 AM, Christian Boltz <opensuse@cboltz.de> wrote:
OTOH, wait and see - and accepting the risk that we might have to act in 5, 10 or 100 years - avoids all the foreseeable and very real issues a rebrand will cause.
Something tells me that we're not going to have that much time. Call it an educated guess.
And who knows, maybe a future owner of SUSE is a big fan of openSUSE and fulfils all our dreams. I know nobody mentioned this option before, but it's as likely or unlikely as the worst-case option.
Layoffs everywhere, RHEL combating the clones by closing the sources behind the paywall etc. Wouldn't have too high hopes... This may sound crazy so bear with me, but what if we just respect the request of those who essentially keeps this project alive? From the infrastructure to most contributions, you name it. This is not to take away from non-SUSE contributors, but I think that it is obvious where most of the contributions are coming from. Not to mention that openSUSE is technically a SUSE product. Anyhow, what if we show them respect during the rebranding process? We can reasonably expect their continued support in the future — especially if we weren’t a gigantic pain in their backside when they asked us to rebrand. It is also probably a good idea to do this with the current SUSE management/ownership that shows initiative and possibly some good will in terms of continued support for the project instead of gambling with what the future might bring. Just me 2C. -- Br, A.
Hello, Am Dienstag, 16. Juli 2024, 09:37:48 MESZ schrieb Attila Pinter:
On Tuesday, July 16th, 2024 at 5:41 AM, Christian Boltz wrote:
OTOH, wait and see - and accepting the risk that we might have to act in 5, 10 or 100 years - avoids all the foreseeable and very real issues a rebrand will cause.
Something tells me that we're not going to have that much time. Call it an educated guess.
I'm more optimistic, but time will tell who (and if) one of us was right ;-)
And who knows, maybe a future owner of SUSE is a big fan of openSUSE and fulfils all our dreams. I know nobody mentioned this option before, but it's as likely or unlikely as the worst-case option.
Layoffs everywhere, RHEL combating the clones by closing the sources behind the paywall etc. Wouldn't have too high hopes...
This may sound crazy so bear with me, but what if we just respect the request of those who essentially keeps this project alive? [...]
I'm aware of all the SUSE contributions, and I did SUSE and/or individual SUSE people more than one favor (often, but not always, as part of an openSUSE contribution). I'm also sure that I'm not the only one who can say that - actually many openSUSE contributors can probably tell similar stories. Nevertheless, if someone from SUSE would ask me to shoot myself in the foot, and tells me that this is just a request, but I don't have to do it - well, you can probably guess that I prefer not to shoot ;-) The rebranding idea asks the whole openSUSE community to shoot in its foot, using a very big gun. It shouldn't be a surprise that I can only decline that request with "bad idea, no thanks". Regards, Christian Boltz -- The only way to stay away from such snafus is to stop using famous people for the code names, and go with animals or plants or city names or chemical elements - basically anything that does *not* have the capacity to come up with weird ideas and communicate them :-) [Olaf Kirch in opensuse-project]
Le 16/07/2024 à 22:37, Christian Boltz a écrit :
Hello,
The rebranding idea asks the whole openSUSE community to shoot in its foot, using a very big gun. It shouldn't be a surprise that I can only decline that request with "bad idea, no thanks".
however, emphasis more on "Tumbleweed and Leap" than on openSUSE is easy and harmless... and two years in the future openSUSE will be forgotten jdd -- https://artdagio.fr
On Wednesday, July 17th, 2024 at 3:37 AM, Christian Boltz <opensuse@cboltz.de> wrote:
The rebranding idea asks the whole openSUSE community to shoot in its foot, using a very big gun. It shouldn't be a surprise that I can only decline that request with "bad idea, no thanks".
Based on the communication on the matter we can say with reasonable confidence that: A.) this is not something that will happen overnight, B.) will most definitely happen. I think the discussion reached a state where everyone knows about SUSE's request, and it should be more about "who wants to help with this transition" instead of sticking with the "what do you think" part. -- Br, A.
+1 on all you wrote Atilla On Wed, Jul 17, 2024 at 9:01 AM Attila Pinter <adathor@protonmail.com> wrote:
On Wednesday, July 17th, 2024 at 3:37 AM, Christian Boltz <opensuse@cboltz.de> wrote:
The rebranding idea asks the whole openSUSE community to shoot in its foot, using a very big gun. It shouldn't be a surprise that I can only decline that request with "bad idea, no thanks".
Based on the communication on the matter we can say with reasonable confidence that: A.) this is not something that will happen overnight, B.) will most definitely happen.
I think the discussion reached a state where everyone knows about SUSE's request, and it should be more about "who wants to help with this transition" instead of sticking with the "what do you think" part.
-- Br, A.
-- Best regards Luboš Kocman openSUSE Leap Release Manager
Am 16. Juli 2024 22:37:03 MESZ schrieb Christian Boltz <opensuse@cboltz.de>:
The rebranding idea asks the whole openSUSE community to shoot in its foot, using a very big gun. It shouldn't be a surprise that I can only decline that request with "bad idea, no thanks".
Regards,
Christian Boltz
Honestly, I do think that it is important to acknowledge in honesty that as it stands openSUSE has much more to lose from a rebranding than it has to gain and for anyone who argues differently, I would love to hear the reasonings for that. The reason why there is much to lose should be pretty obvious. Loss of name recognition for a distro, that while it isn't ultra popular, is still fairly well known and considered one of the older longstanding distros (even if it isn't actually one distro). Lots of past references, videos etc on the internet that uninformed people might stumble across referencing "openSUSE" might suddenly become hard to parse and people might be more likely to find something SUSE related than our project when googling the term, which probably isn't in SUSE's interest just as the current brand confusion isn't. This comes at a time when there are as we speak discussions about less and less maintainers and a dysfunctional leadership/project structure. So if we ditched the brand recognition on top of that, it might get even more difficult to recruit fresh new blood. So with that in mind, if we assume that there is no directly pressing need to rebrand, it seems we would have much more to gain from trying to enact some internal changes first. If we could make some credible changes to create a more welcoming, functional and pleasant community, we could also use that as a springboard to launch a rebrand with a purpose. Instead of doing a rebrand because we had to I guess, we could use it to advertise an openSUSE/whatever-it-will-be that is trying to do things differently and wants to reach out and be welcoming to more people. I think that would have a much better chance of a positive outcome. The logic of "better do it now before a new owner forces us to" also doesn't track entirely for me, because even a narrative of "our new corporate sponsor doesn't like us as much anymore, so we're now forced to be more independent" might be more positive PR for a relaunch than "well they kinda asked us to do it but they're actually still totally cool with us. Trust us." I don't think any of that should mean we should just totally ignore what SUSE apparently is politely asking for. It is still a very understandable ask from their perspective. But I think the only reasonable answer here can be a compromise. "We acknowledge that a rebrand might be what's asked for, but it's not exactly hitting us at a good spot and we need time to build out something that has actual purpose". Maybe take baby steps. Try to make internal changes and do smaller external changes whenever we feel we have achieved something positive. Maybe, if possible, just change the name OR the logo first, so there is a way to at least somewhat bridge over some of the brand recognition and differentiate ourselves without going over the deep end immediately and entirely. Establish the new distro logos first for a bit and deephasize the openSUSE *a bit* instead of doing it as about the same time of the project rebrand. Return some of the good will SUSE is showing us by doing smaller changes and hope that will also be met with some good will and understanding that a hard fracture would be very damaging for us.
The logic of "better do it now before a new owner forces us to" also doesn't track entirely for me, because even a narrative of "our new corporate sponsor doesn't like us as much anymore, so we're now forced to be more independent" might be more positive PR for a relaunch than "well they kinda asked us to do it but they're actually still totally cool with us. Trust us."
My thoughts on this as I see this more and more is, well it sounds like someone(s) know something we don't and they aren't allowed to say yet. That's just how I'm reading into this from the outside looking in. (fingers crossed I'm replying the correct way this time :)) -- Dale, Low Tech Linux Some of ya'll need more science
এক সন্ধ্যায়, আমি আমার বন্ধুদের সাথে আড্ডা দিচ্ছিলাম এবং তারা আমাকে অনলাইন বেটিং চেষ্টা করতে বলল। আমি সিদ্ধান্ত নিলাম এবং https://melbetbd.top/ খুঁজে পেলাম। সাইটটি খুব ভালভাবে ডিজাইন করা এবং ব্যবহার করা সহজ। এখানে অনেক ধরনের গেম এবং ক্রীড়া বাজির বিকল্প রয়েছে। যা আমাকে সত্যিই আকর্ষণ করেছে তা হল তাদের বিভিন্ন বোনাস। নতুন খেলোয়াড়দের জন্য তাদের স্বাগতম বোনাস এবং নিয়মিত প্রচার রয়েছে। এই বোনাসগুলি আমাকে বেশি সময় ধরে খেলতে এবং কম খরচে আরো গেম চেষ্টা করতে সাহায্য করেছে। এই সাইটটি আমাকে আমার সন্ধ্যাগুলোকে মজাদার করতে সাহায্য করেছে। আমি সবাইকে এটি সুপারিশ করি যারা নতুন এবং উত্তেজনাপূর্ণ কিছু চেষ্টা করতে চায়।
Le 18/07/2024 à 18:03, az3869az@gmail.com a écrit :
এক সন্ধ্যায়, আমি আমার বন্ধুদের সাথে আড্ডা দিচ্ছিলাম এবং তারা আমাকে অনলাইন বেটিং চেষ্টা করতে বলল। আমি সিদ্ধান্ত নিলাম এবং https://melbetbd.top/ খুঁজে পেলাম। সাইটটি খুব ভালভাবে ডিজাইন করা এবং
unreadable for me :-( jdd -- https://artdagio.fr
Le 18/07/2024 à 21:23, Jim Henderson a écrit :
On Thu, 18 Jul 2024 18:50:28 +0200, jdd@dodin.org wrote:
unreadable for me :-(
Because they're a spammer
ok, thanks jdd -- https://artdagio.fr
i welcome them. helps train my bayes ※\(^o^)/※ On July 18, 2024 7:54:59 PM UTC, "jdd@dodin.org" <jdd@dodin.org> wrote:
Le 18/07/2024 à 21:23, Jim Henderson a écrit :
On Thu, 18 Jul 2024 18:50:28 +0200, jdd@dodin.org wrote:
unreadable for me :-(
Because they're a spammer
ok, thanks jdd
Am 18.07.24 um 18:50 schrieb jdd@dodin.org:
Le 18/07/2024 à 18:03, az3869az@gmail.com a écrit : unreadable for me :-(
jdd
It's a spammer, no need to quote their URLs and give them even more exposure. -- Stefan Seyfried "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard Feynman
এক সন্ধ্যায়, আমি আমার বন্ধুদের সাথে আড্ডা দিচ্ছিলাম এবং তারা আমাকে অনলাইন বেটিং চেষ্টা করতে বলল। আমি সিদ্ধান্ত নিলাম এবং https://melbetbd.top/ খুঁজে পেলাম। সাইটটি খুব ভালভাবে ডিজাইন করা এবং ব্যবহার করা সহজ। এখানে অনেক ধরনের গেম এবং ক্রীড়া বাজির বিকল্প রয়েছে। যা আমাকে সত্যিই আকর্ষণ করেছে তা হল তাদের বিভিন্ন বোনাস। নতুন খেলোয়াড়দের জন্য তাদের স্বাগতম বোনাস এবং নিয়মিত প্রচার রয়েছে। এই বোনাসগুলি আমাকে বেশি সময় ধরে খেলতে এবং কম খরচে আরো গেম চেষ্টা করতে সাহায্য করেছে। এই সাইটটি আমাকে আমার সন্ধ্যাগুলোকে মজাদার করতে সাহায্য করেছে। আমি সবাইকে এটি সুপারিশ করি যারা নতুন এবং উত্তেজনাপূর্ণ কিছু চেষ্টা করতে চায়।
On Saturday, July 13th, 2024 at 2:50 AM, Knurpht-openSUSE <knurpht@opensuse.org> wrote:
Dear all,
Let me first define a couple of things that the community is being faced with:
- Our current governance is not working. With the things we're facing and the current model / Board rules, there is no good way the Board could drive the resulting changes coming up. Bi-weekly meetings will definitely not be enough. Furthermore, the Board has not shown any real proactive leadership in some situations where it should have. In the end, the reason I stepped down from it.
100% agree! What the community has seen from the currently serving Board is less than stellar. Unapologetic, arrogant, barely reactive are the first words that comes to mind that I can personally describe the Board right now. Brushing off obvious Governance violations with a "lets just move on" is absolutely unacceptable, and we as a community should really take this opportunity and better our governance.
- Whether we like it or not, we have to rebrand the Project. We can start working on it now and be proactive, or later be forced by f.e. some new owner of SUSE ( mind, SUSE has expressed their concern about such a thing happening and clearly stated that they do not want to get rid of the Project. ). To drive this we need something else than the Board as it is now. But keeping things as they are simply is an unrealistic option.
- We need more contributors. It is a simple fact that we have been losing those, So, we have to question ourselves not only on how we're getting more people in, but also on how we keep them in. From what I've seen too many of them start enthusiasticly and get burnt out because lack of onboarding / mentoring. That said, I've also seen exceptions to that.
What can we do?
Proposal is a project-team that drives the changes. That project-team should exist of users/contributors/members with ampel experience in the Project/Community, people who know how things currently work. Basically they would come up with a plan, evaluate that with Board and Community and when ready execute the plan. A thing that should be taken into consideration is how f.e. our governance should relate/communicate to/with the Foundation.
Agreed. Just to follow up on your example: The fact that there is barely any communication happening on the foundation is a bit strange. The other thread [1] on this was fairly eye-opening and I think that we got some pretty good answers, but proactivity/transparency would be better. I understand that the Board is not recognizing the Geekos foundation as our official foundation - which was already detailed in the related thread -, but having this clearly communicated towards the community wouldn't hurt.
- The choice of a new name for the Project would best be a limited choice of ~3 names, that that team would have researched/checked, this to avoid having an endless list of non-workable options.
- The rebranding of the distros as f.e. "openSUSE Tumbleweed" to "Tumbleweed" is already an ongoing thing. I don't see any reason to have a discussion about that again.
- A vote on the Project logo has already been done, and was won by our LCP, no need to do that again. The people maintaining the distros have accepted LCP's logos as their distro logo, so using the same design for the Project makes sense since it gives a nice consistency.
Fully agreed, and happy to support this initiative in any way I can! -- Br, A. [1]: https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/project@lists.opensuse.org/thread/Z...
Summer is the time of discontent. While Red Hat showed that you can do damage and do damage and do damage again to your brand. I don't think SUSE should be making a request to "hold my beer" on this one. What's the motto apparently lost? Have a lot of fun? Come onboard! (pun intended) Obviously I can't change the hearts of those involved. Praying for sanity.
Chris Cox wrote:
Summer is the time of discontent. While Red Hat showed that you can do damage and do damage and do damage again to your brand. I don't think SUSE should be making a request to "hold my beer" on this one.
What's the motto apparently lost? Have a lot of fun? Come onboard! (pun intended)
Obviously I can't change the hearts of those involved. Praying for sanity.
That message is on-point, RedHat under IBM's leadership has fully demolished the faith of its users and it's safe to say to say that SUSE's request for a rebrand of openSUSE will damage their own consumer base and possibly kill all future prospects that would have been obtained by the trust we put on the brand 'openSUSE to SUSE'. If a long-time openSUSE user had the necessity and means to pay for an OS (example: some government contract), they (me included) would most certainly vouch for SUSE. Take the name off and when that time comes they will never choose SUSE. This just seems like an awful and short-sighted business practice by SUSE and it will be such a waste of time for all the contributors to just rebrand openSUSE to death. I am hoping for a very kind and detailed rejection which takes in account all the replies to this thread.
participants (22)
-
Attila Pinter -
az3869az＠gmail.com -
chandan -
Chris Cox -
Christian Boltz -
dale -
Fatlum Latif -
Felix Miata -
Henne Vogelsang -
jdd＠dodin.org -
Jim Henderson -
Knurpht-openSUSE -
Lil Frogg -
Lubos Kocman -
Natasha Ament -
Neal Gompa -
Patrick Fitzgerald -
Richard Brown -
Sarah Julia Kriesch -
sfalken＠cloverleaf-linux.org -
Simon Lees -
Stefan Seyfried