Hi Christian, It's sad to hear that you decided to step down. Always appreciated your help. I don't think that this decision would affect your contributions to Heroes and/or the maintenance of elections.o.o. Regards, Ish Sookun On 27/02/2020 23:20, Christian Boltz wrote:

Dear openSUSE community,

in the last weeks, some things happened in the board that are completely against my principles and beliefs. I don't want to go into details, and will get straight to the heart:

I'm resigning from the board.

I know this is a drastic step, and I can assure you that I didn't take this decision easily.

In the best interest of the openSUSE project and everybody involved, please don't speculate about the details or ask for them.

Of course, I won't let the community suffer from what happened, and will continue everything else I do in and for openSUSE (for example my heroes tasks and my work on AppArmor).

Even more important: I have many friends in the community, and this is something that will never change! I'm looking forward to meet you again.

There is one thing I'll open up for discussion: One of my heroes tasks is to maintain the elections.opensuse.org server. I don't have any evil plans ;-) but I could fully understand if someone thinks that I better should keep my fingers off it and hand it over to another hero. If someone thinks so, please speak up (doesn't need to be public, you can even ask a board member to relay it to me anonymously). I guarantee that I won't be mad at whoever asks for this. However, the hero who has to take over maintenance of elections.o.o might be ;-)

Regards,

Christian Boltz

PS: All the best, Vinz! Supporting your appointment was my last official act on the board.

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On Thu, Feb 27, 2020 at 20:20, Christian Boltz wrote:

Dear openSUSE community,

in the last weeks, some things happened in the board that are completely against my principles and beliefs. I don't want to go into details, and will get straight to the heart:

I'm resigning from the board.

I know this is a drastic step, and I can assure you that I didn't take this decision easily.

In the best interest of the openSUSE project and everybody involved, please don't speculate about the details or ask for them.

Thankfully, we don't need to speculate on how much incredible work you did for the project over the years, because it's mostly public. It's shocking how much difference a single person can make.

Of course, I won't let the community suffer from what happened, and will continue everything else I do in and for openSUSE (for example my heroes tasks and my work on AppArmor).

Even more important: I have many friends in the community, and this is something that will never change! I'm looking forward to meet you again.

Thanks for all of that, and I hope we get to continue working with you for many years to come :D LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Lars Vogdt wrote:

Dear board: I'm looking for more than the current standard "bye bye" Emails here.

I second that. I think we are owed an explanation. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (7.8°C) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Fri 2020-02-28, Per Jessen wrote:

...

Dear board: I'm looking for more than the current standard "bye bye" Emails here. I second that. I think we are owed an explanation.

Before we are into thirding and fourthing, let me quote Christian: "In the best interest of the openSUSE project and everybody involved, please don't speculate about the details or ask for them." Most of us, people managers maybe more than others, have experienced cases where keeping things confidential was in the best interest of some of the people involved, but also third parties. This is one of those cases. I'd like to ask everyone to trust Christian's judgement and honor his request; I fully second both. Gerald -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

* jdd@dodin.org [02-28-20 07:54]:

Le 28/02/2020 à 13:32, Gerald Pfeifer a écrit :

...

Before we are into thirding and fourthing, let me quote Christian:

I also read this. But this is not only Christian, but some concerns about not that quiet just made election and two board members resigning on 5 total member.

I do not ask for details, but rough comment on what happen, yes

a simple confirmation that the occasion of each for leaving was unrelated would suffice and perhaps restore "lost confidence". -- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet freenode -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

...

...

Most of us, people managers maybe more than others, have experienced cases where keeping things confidential was in the best interest of some of

-----Original Message----- From: Gerald Pfeifer Sent: 28 February 2020 13:32 To: opensuse-project@opensuse.org Subject: Re: [opensuse-project] Goodbye Board the people involved, but also third parties. This is one of those cases. I'd like to ask everyone to trust Christian's judgement and honor his request; I fully second both. By the look at things, we are also grownups, so we have our own political views, religious beliefs, food preferences, friends choice etc. We may by all means agree or disagree with others on personal and/or professional matters. So, I would respect their personal decisions and carry on. AFAIK, they left the board but are still openSUSE members, right? Best wishes, JP -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Op vrijdag 28 februari 2020 14:36:17 CET schreef Mathias Homann:

Am Freitag, 28. Februar 2020, 14:13:59 CET schrieb Michal Kubecek:

...

On Friday, 28 February 2020 13:32 Gerald Pfeifer wrote:

...

On Fri 2020-02-28, Per Jessen wrote:

...

...

Dear board: I'm looking for more than the current standard "bye bye" Emails here.

I second that. I think we are owed an explanation.

Before we are into thirding and fourthing, let me quote Christian: "In the best interest of the openSUSE project and everybody

involved, please don't speculate about the details or ask for them."

Most of us, people managers maybe more than others, have experienced cases where keeping things confidential was in the best interest of some of the people involved, but also third parties. This is one of those cases. I'd like to ask everyone to trust Christian's judgement and honor his request; I fully second both.

I'm sorry but saying what Christian said IMHO hardly counts as "keeping things confidential". If he wanted to "keep things confidential", he should not have said anything about the reasons. Indicating something about principles and beliefs and refusing to say more was guaranteed to provoke speculations and asking us not to could hardly change that.

Michal Kubeček

exactly.

So - where is this heading? And - will there be board elections soon? Because the way I see it, if there are just "replacements" "installed" wthout a vote... I just do not like the smell of it at all.

Related: https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board needs updating. Also, it clearly says the board members are *elected*. Not appointed by the chair.

Please don't even insinuate that such has happened. The Board rules are clear on matters like this: en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Boad_election_rules states: "Appointment: The sitting board is allowed to appoint new members to fill a board vacancy caused by one of the following conditions: 1) resignation of a Board member or 2) the removal of a Board member, or 3) a Board member being unable to perform his duties, or 4) as part of elections if not enough people are elected." -- Gertjan Lettink a.k.a. Knurpht openSUSE Forums Team -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 2/28/20 12:54 PM, Per Jessen wrote:

I second that. I think we are owed an explanation.

I remember a kerfuffle some time ago where members requested that board meeting notes be made public. The response (I'm paraphrasing) was that sometimes the board deals with personal matters regarding members of the community and it would not be share those details publicly. We are all rational adults for the most part and we understand that. However that doesn't mean that transparency should be thrown out of the window. If something happened that could potentially affect the community, then it would be best to be open about it. If something happened that caused board members to leave then there should be a statement about it even if it means omitting personal information about anyone involved. In a few months there will be another election of board members. One question that should be posed for anyone running again should be "what is your opinion about an open and transparent board and would you work towards this goal?" Jason -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Gesendet: Freitag, 28. Februar 2020 um 16:02 Uhr Von: "Patrick Shanahan" An: opensuse-project@opensuse.org Betreff: Re: [opensuse-project] Goodbye Board

* Gerald Pfeifer [02-28-20 09:55]:

...

On Fri 2020-02-28, jimmypierre.rouen.france@gmail.com wrote:

...

So, I would respect their personal decisions and carry on. AFAIK, they left the board but are still openSUSE members, right?

Yes, you're absolutely right.

would you at least confirm that they did not resign for the same or very nearly the same reason?

That was (nearly) the same reason.

-- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet freenode -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Fri, 2020-02-28 at 08:09 -0500, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* jdd@dodin.org [02-28-20 07:54]:

...

Le 28/02/2020 à 13:32, Gerald Pfeifer a écrit :

...

Before we are into thirding and fourthing, let me quote Christian:

I also read this. But this is not only Christian, but some concerns about not that quiet just made election and two board members resigning on 5 total member.

I do not ask for details, but rough comment on what happen, yes

a simple confirmation that the occasion of each for leaving was unrelated would suffice and perhaps restore "lost confidence".

I'm not sure it's that straightforward. If both departures are related, the natural question that arises to me would be "Why did Christian resign now, and not at the same time as Sarah?". Such circumstances create an environment where it is just as easy to imply shenangians behind the actions of the departing members as it is the remaining ones. Without having any visibility on the goings on within the Board these days, but drawing on past experience, I see a high risk of bloodsplatter for the individuals involved as well as the project as a whole were we to collectively pull at this string and demand transparency in what is clearly involves highly sensitive & personal situations. Therefore I totally understand Christians very clear statement that he doesn't want people speculating or asking such questions. I believe it is obviously best we respect Christians wish and move forward in the manner Christian requested in his resignation. We have sufficient rules regarding replacement of Board members in the light of resignations that I see any talk of "lost of confidence" in the Board to the premature at this time. -- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Op vrijdag 28 februari 2020 17:16:56 CET schreef Richard Brown:

Without having any visibility on the goings on within the Board these days, but drawing on past experience, I see a high risk of bloodsplatter for the individuals involved as well as the project as a whole were we to collectively pull at this string and demand transparency in what is clearly involves highly sensitive & personal situations.

Therefore I totally understand Christians very clear statement that he doesn't want people speculating or asking such questions.

I believe it is obviously best we respect Christians wish and move forward in the manner Christian requested in his resignation.

We have sufficient rules regarding replacement of Board members in the light of resignations that I see any talk of "lost of confidence" in the Board to the premature at this time.

+1 from me. -- Gertjan Lettink a.k.a. Knurpht openSUSE Forums Team -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Fri, 28 Feb 2020 14:45:23 +0100, Knurpht-openSUSE wrote:

Please don't even insinuate that such has happened. The Board rules are clear on matters like this: en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Boad_election_rules states: "Appointment: The sitting board is allowed to appoint new members to fill a board vacancy caused by one of the following conditions: 1) resignation of a Board member or 2) the removal of a Board member, or 3) a Board member being unable to perform his duties, or 4) as part of elections if not enough people are elected."

The concern, as I see it, is this: * 2 board members resigned for similar or related reasons * The board can fill those vacancies through an appointment Now, we don't know (and I'm not asking for details) what the reasons are for the resignations. But it seems that, based on comments made by those who resigned, they didn't feel they could remain because things happened that (as Christian put it) went against [their] principles and beliefs. That seems to indicate that there was some sort of intractable disagreement that took place. So...now the board gets to pick a new board member whom will "get in line" with the thing that the two who resigned disagreed strongly enough with that they felt they had no choice but to resign? Note that I'm not saying Vincent was the wrong choice to replace Sarah - I completely agree with and support that outcome, based on the election results. He was a logical choice. But there's a possible appearance of impropriety here, and an appointment now without general information as to the nature of the conflict is going to appear to be tainted, whether it is or isn't. What's clear to me is this: Something is seriously wrong in the board - serious and intractable enough that two board members felt *resignation* was their best course of action. I find the opaqueness to be a bit troubling, and saying "please don't speculate" causes people to do the exact opposite. That's human nature. As someone who manages people myself, I completely understand that there are legitimate reasons to not be completely transparent. But if 40% of my team quit over the course of a couple of weeks for reasons that apparently had to do with being put in the position of going against their principles/beliefs *and* they made that clear on their way out the door, other teams that I interacted with would expect some sort of explanation as to why I was having to change my priorities around in order to accommodate our shared goals. (Of course, in such a situation, I might also find myself leaving the organization as well for a failure of leadership - which doesn't apply here, and I'm *certainly* NOT suggesting that Gerald leave because of this.) -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Hello, Am Freitag, 28. Februar 2020, 14:36:17 CET schrieb Mathias Homann:

Am Freitag, 28. Februar 2020, 14:13:59 CET schrieb Michal Kubecek:

...

I'm sorry but saying what Christian said IMHO hardly counts as "keeping things confidential". If he wanted to "keep things confidential", he should not have said anything about the reasons. Indicating something about principles and beliefs and refusing to say more was guaranteed to provoke speculations and asking us not to could hardly change that.

As I said somewhere else recently - "damn principles!" ;-) Those who know me better should know that it's very hard to stop me from saying something, even if it sometimes hurts - and that's also why I wrote my resignation mail exactly the way I wrote it. At the same time, I'm very sure that it's in the best interest of everybody to keep all the details confidential, and I'd like to ask everybody to accept this and not to ask more questions. (And yes, I can imagine how hard this is.) An early draft of my resignation mail was a bit more verbose and contained the following: In the best interest of the openSUSE project and everybody involved, please don't speculate about the details or ask for them. I hope that time will heal the wounds, but this will be much harder if you "force" someone to publish more details. I dropped the second sentence before sending out the mail, but maybe I should have kept it to make the reasons behind my request more understandable.

Related: https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board needs updating. Also, it clearly says the board members are *elected*. Not appointed by the chair.

Vinz was appointed by the full board (including me, as I already indicated in my mail yesterday). Gerald was "just" the messenger ;-) I know the timing might look strange, therefore let me make clear that I fully supported, and still support, Vinz' appointment. Regards, Christian Boltz -- <sbeattie> [...] this is phpsysinfo, so I assume the most complicated approach possible will be chosen [from #apparmor] -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Sorry for top posting, but I could not formulate it better. Thanks, Jim! Am February 28, 2020 6:06:38 PM UTC schrieb Jim Henderson :

The concern, as I see it, is this:

* 2 board members resigned for similar or related reasons * The board can fill those vacancies through an appointment

Now, we don't know (and I'm not asking for details) what the reasons are for the resignations. But it seems that, based on comments made by those who resigned, they didn't feel they could remain because things happened that (as Christian put it) went against [their] principles and beliefs.

That seems to indicate that there was some sort of intractable disagreement that took place.

So...now the board gets to pick a new board member whom will "get in line" with the thing that the two who resigned disagreed strongly enough with that they felt they had no choice but to resign?

Note that I'm not saying Vincent was the wrong choice to replace Sarah - I completely agree with and support that outcome, based on the election

results. He was a logical choice.

But there's a possible appearance of impropriety here, and an appointment now without general information as to the nature of the conflict is going to appear to be tainted, whether it is or isn't.

What's clear to me is this: Something is seriously wrong in the board - serious and intractable enough that two board members felt *resignation* was their best course of action.

I find the opaqueness to be a bit troubling, and saying "please don't speculate" causes people to do the exact opposite. That's human nature.

As someone who manages people myself, I completely understand that there are legitimate reasons to not be completely transparent. But if 40% of

my team quit over the course of a couple of weeks for reasons that apparently had to do with being put in the position of going against their principles/beliefs *and* they made that clear on their way out the door, other teams that I interacted with would expect some sort of explanation as to why I was having to change my priorities around in order to accommodate our shared goals. (Of course, in such a situation, I might also find myself leaving the organization as well for a failure

of leadership - which doesn't apply here, and I'm *certainly* NOT suggesting that Gerald leave because of this.)

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Might I suggest an election to fill the vacancy, rather than an appointment this time? Maybe this could help restore confidence in the board. I'm not suggesting Vinz's appointment was inappropriate, only that an appointment *this time* might appear improper. -- *David Mulder* Labs Software Engineer, Samba SUSE 1800 Novell Place Provo, UT 84606 (P)+1 801.861.6571 dmulder@suse.com http://www.suse.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Hi, Am 28.02.20 um 20:39 schrieb David Mulder:

Might I suggest an election to fill the vacancy, rather than an appointment this time? Maybe this could help restore confidence in the board.

Come on, Vinz stood up for election. He was the third with not much less votes than Sarah had. It's not like "some random person selected by the board" was appointed. -- Stefan Seyfried "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard Feynman -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Fri, 28 Feb 2020 20:44:36 +0100, Stasiek Michalski wrote:

On Fri, Feb 28, 2020 at 19:36, Jim Henderson wrote:

...

On Fri, 28 Feb 2020 14:10:38 -0500, Robert Schweikert wrote:

...

I don't think we know if the reasons were similar or related. Sahra [1] states personal reasons, Christian implied a conflict based on principles with other board members.

Sarah noted in this thread that the reasons were related.

Logical fallacy, she said "it was (nearly) the same reason", which can mean the reason was the same, while circumstances completely unrelated

You're right, she said "it was (nearly) the same reason". May or may not be related, but it's close enough to (IMHO) warrant some additional scrutiny. -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 28/02/2020 21.03, David Mulder wrote:

On 2/28/20 12:46 PM, Stefan Seyfried wrote:

...

Come on, Vinz stood up for election. He was the third with not much less votes than Sarah had.

It's not like "some random person selected by the board" was appointed.

Which is why I specifically pointed out that Vinz's appointment was legitimate. I'm only suggesting an election this time could avoid any appearance of impropriety. The appearance of impropriety could come from what Jim pointed out in this thread, that people are concerned with 2 board members resigning for related reasons, and the remaining board members having the choice to fill those vacancies as they see fit. I don't know that the board would appoint someone for or against them (regarding whatever this issue may be), I can only assume the best of them. I only know that if I were on the board, I would want to avoid any appearance of impropriety in this matter, and allow the community to choose instead.

The community not knowing what happened, we have no grounds to choose someone, either. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from oS Leap 15.0 x86_64 (Minas Tirith))

On Fri, 28 Feb 2020 15:21:15 -0500, Robert Schweikert wrote:

But there was little scrutiny and lots of speculation.

Speculation happens in a vacuum of information, and that's what we have.

Principles could simply be that some might think the guy with the orange face living in a white house in Washington DC is a good idea and others do not.

The point being we do not know what happened, we have a request from one of the people involved to not speculate and not ask, and in a follow confirmed that matters are best kept private.

We should respect the desires of those involved and drop it.

It's difficult to drop it when 40% of the board has resigned for what appear to be similar reasons. If there's a problem in the board, something needs to be done to correct that problem, and the membership can't do that when there's no information. -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Hi all, Le vendredi 28 février 2020 à 08:05:57, Christian Boltz a écrit :

Hello,

Am Freitag, 28. Februar 2020, 14:36:17 CET schrieb Mathias Homann:

...

Am Freitag, 28. Februar 2020, 14:13:59 CET schrieb Michal Kubecek:

...

I'm sorry but saying what Christian said IMHO hardly counts as "keeping things confidential". If he wanted to "keep things confidential", he should not have said anything about the reasons. Indicating something about principles and beliefs and refusing to say more was guaranteed to provoke speculations and asking us not to could hardly change that.

[...]

At the same time, I'm very sure that it's in the best interest of everybody to keep all the details confidential, and I'd like to ask everybody to accept this and not to ask more questions. (And yes, I can imagine how hard this is.)

An early draft of my resignation mail was a bit more verbose and contained the following:

In the best interest of the openSUSE project and everybody involved, please don't speculate about the details or ask for them. I hope that time will heal the wounds, but this will be much harder if you "force" someone to publish more details.

I dropped the second sentence before sending out the mail, but maybe I should have kept it to make the reasons behind my request more understandable.

Thank you for taking the time to be a bit more "verbose" :) I understand and respect your call to "accept this" but you, and the rest of the Board, have to understand that this situation is mysterious, strange and leave the community with a bitter taste in mouth. (reading your initial email made me feel the same as drinking an entire bottle of Worcestershire sauce... Yerk!) Politically speaking it is like 1/3 of the government resigned in two weeks and all the citizens should deal with it and not ask for explanation. I believe openSUSE to be a form of democraty and I love it for that. Keeping everything secret when such important event happen is not my conception of democraty. I understand that the reason behind those resignations are sensitive but I think that there is a middle lane between putting everything public (which can hurt people) and keeping the entire community in the dark (which can erode the trust in the Board and its ability to function properly and represent effectively the whole community). I have confidence in the ability of the board to follow this middle path and hope that it will hear this new call from the community for more transparency All the best. -- 'When there is no more room at school, the dumb will walk the Earth.' Sébastien 'sogal' Poher

On Fri, 28 Feb 2020 17:24:34 -0500, Robert Schweikert wrote:

On 2/28/20 4:16 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:

...

On Fri, 28 Feb 2020 15:21:15 -0500, Robert Schweikert wrote:

...

But there was little scrutiny and lots of speculation.

Speculation happens in a vacuum of information, and that's what we have.

Speculation happens when people _choose_ to speculate, it doesn't just pop up out of nowhere.

When something that appears to be a crisis happens, speculation happens when there's no information.

...

It's difficult to drop

No it is not, Christian asked us, twice, not to do exactly what is happening. All the rest of us have to do is quit running our fingers over the keyborad concerning this topic, exercise a little restrained, and respect the desire of one of our valued members of the community. How hard is it really to _not_ make up some conspiracy theory and just say:

Thank you Christian for your effort, sorry to loose you as a board member. Very happy that you will continue with all the other stuff you already do.

Be done and move on. Respect, I think is written in our guiding principles somewhere. That includes respecting community members wishes about not starting speculation.

I respect Christian's decision to leave the board. That's not an issue. What I have a hard time respecting is the board's complete and utter silence about what's going on that caused two members of the board to resign so shortly after the election was held. The board needs to also respect the concerns of the membership and address them, rather than appearing to hide behind a veil of secrecy. I can respect that we don't need the details. But a green wall of silence is something I have a hard time respecting. The board has effectively closed ranks and said "you, members, don't need to know what's going on in the board." Which means there's zero accountability to the membership. That is a huge problem.

...

it when 40% of the board has resigned for what appear to be similar reasons. If there's a problem in the board, something needs to be done to correct that problem, and the membership can't do that when there's no information.

The membership's opportunity to get involved is in the next election. AFAIK there is no such thing that the membership can decide during any part of the term of a sitting board that all or some board members need to be evicted.

And if whatever it is that caused 40% of the board to leave continues to create a toxic situation with the community, so be it? At what point do we, as a community, decide that enough is enough? When 3 resign? When 4 resign? The membership does not "report" to the board. The board is elected by the membership, and is accountable to the membership. I find this lack of transparency *very* disturbing, and this is not a recent trend. -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Fri, 28 Feb 2020 18:38:25 -0500, Robert Schweikert wrote:

...

When something that appears to be a crisis happens, speculation happens when there's no information.

So you are telling me that you have no control whatsoever about what goes on in your brain and what you allow to flow from there through your fingers into e-mails?

Common now.

Let's talk again about how showing respect is one of our guiding principles, Robert. We've known each other a while, and I know you understand what I'm saying, so please stop twisting what I'm saying to fit a different narrative.

...

...

Be done and move on. Respect, I think is written in our guiding principles somewhere. That includes respecting community members wishes about not starting speculation.

I respect Christian's decision to leave the board. That's not an issue.

Then maybe you should also respect his request not to speculate.

Again, difficult not to do with no information (and for the record, I've generally not been speculating, I've specifically been asking for some transparency in order to limit speculation). The only speculative thing I have said is that there *seems* to be a problem in the board, and having some information would help the membership assess the seriousness of the problem. Being told "there's no problem here, there's nothing to see here" is not helpful to making that assessment.

...

What I have a hard time respecting is the board's complete and utter silence about what's going on that caused two members of the board to resign so shortly after the election was held.

The board needs to also respect the concerns of the membership and address them, rather than appearing to hide behind a veil of secrecy.

That I agree with. However, how should we expect this to happen when all that's going on on the list is a bunch of speculation about who did what when and where to whom. Sorry, but that's all BS, like a bunch of five year olds, but he started it, blah blah blah....

Of all the mails in this thread there's been a bunch of speculation, meta comments and nothing else, or phrased in a different way bikeshedding. Why should anyone on the board feel compelled to get in the middle of this?

There's been talk of "crisis", oooh the sky is falling and tomorrow the world is going to end. All manufactured in people's head.

Because of a lack of information, as I explained above.

...

I can respect that we don't need the details. But a green wall of silence is something I have a hard time respecting. The board has effectively closed ranks and said "you, members, don't need to know what's going on in the board."

And the idea that there was possibly mutual agreement between Christian, and possibly Sahra, and those that remain on the board to not provide any details is not plausible?

So this is only a one way street and it is all the "fault" of those that remain on the board?

That's speculative. We don't know. That's why more information is needed.

Or if there was an agreement between those that left and those that remain not to share the details, do we expect the remaining board members to break that agreement?

That is also speculative.

Because why? They are somehow accountable to the membership, but not accountable to an agreement that might exist with Christian?

Never said that. But there are ways in which they can honor both requirements. If the board is *not* accountable to the membership that elected them - I would see that as a pretty huge miss in our governing principles.

How happy would you be if you were in some way affected and then the party you agreed with to keep things private would go out and splatter things across the world?

I have *repeatedly* said that I don't personally need the details. But broad brush strokes are usually possible. Even if it's just "we had a disagreement about the foundation that we couldn't reconcile" - that would likely provide enough information without providing details that violated the agreements. We see this sort of thing all the time in dealing with HR issues that result in a departure. Staff will speculate, and to cut down on speculation, management will provide some (often boilerplate) information that doesn't get into specifics. For example, "went on a spending spree during a conference in Vegas using their corporate credit card" wouldn't be shared. "Violated our travel policy" might be, depending on what the governing laws are in the location. There is more than a binary choice here.

There are two sides to every coin and maybe we shouldn't be so quick to point the finger.

I'm not pointing a finger. I'm calling for some transparency.

...

Which means there's zero accountability to the membership.

No it does not mean that at all. If there was an agreement between those departing and those remaining to stay silent than that's accountability to each other to honor that agreement.

The board should not, IMHO, prioritize protecting itself over informing the membership of the project.

I choose to honor Christian's desire, and I quote

""" In the best interest of the openSUSE project and everybody involved, please don't speculate about the details or ask for them. """

""" In the best interest of the openSUSE project and everybody involved, please don't speculate about the details or ask for them. I hope that time will heal the wounds, but this will be much harder if you "force" someone to publish more details. """

Yes, I read his desire. I understand it. I'm not asking for *details* (how many times do I need to repeat myself here?). I'm asking for some transparency around the broad issue that led to his and Sarah's departure from the board. Again, 40% of the board have resigned. We're supposed to not be concerned about this?

The person directly involved has asked twice to let it go. Who are we? Are we the paparazzi membership falling over each other to get a peak at some dirty laundry? Maybe we should ask the NSA/BND/GCHQ/... for the backup of the board meeting phone calls.

No. Speaking for myself, I am concerned about the governance of the openSUSE project, and I have serious concerns about the lack of transparency that we're getting from the board.

I think we should be better than that.

I think we should be better than saying "nothing to see here. There is no problem" when 40% of the board have resigned shortly after the board election.

Obviously I am getting agitated at the bikshedding and finger pointing. Thus I am going to be done with this thread after this response.

Not bikeshedding here. Not pointing fingers. Wanting more transparency and accountability around what *appears* to me to be a serious problem. I'm not sure why anyone has a problem with that.

...

And if whatever it is that caused 40% of the board to leave continues to create a toxic situation with the community, so be it?

How is a possibly personal conflict between two or more board members a "toxic situation with the community"?

I wouldn't want to speculate without more information. Yet clearly there are those of us in the community who think this is a problem, and we're being shouted down by those who think nothing's wrong.

...

At what point do we, as a community, decide that enough is enough? When 3 resign? When 4 resign?

What does that even mean? Are you going to drag the involved parties in front of court and make them swear an oath and make them talk?

Of course not. Don't be ridiculous. But if there is indeed a problem inside the board that caused Sarah and Christian to resign, who's to say we won't see more resignations? We don't have any information. At what point should we be concerned, if not when two members of the board resign? Should we remain unconcerned if the entire board resigns? Really, I'd like to know - at what point do we consider this to be a problem?

...

The membership does not "report" to the board. The board is elected by the membership, and is accountable to the membership.

Correct, and the next elections are at the end of the year. We get to choose whether we want the same board members to come back or not. And given that 2 resigned and appointed members need to run for election at the next possible opportunity that implies that we basically get to elect a whole new board come the end of the year. As seats of those that are currently elected are due for re-election.

And in the interim, the problem potentially continues to be a problem. That doesn't strike me as a particularly good situation. You're not the only one here who's getting agitated about this. The more I think about it, the less I like it. The more I am being told "don't worry about it, everything's FINE", the more I want to know what is actually going on. But fine. If y'all want me to STFU and go away, I'm happy to do just that. -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Dne sobota 29. února 2020 15:09:06 CET, Stefan Seyfried napsal(a):

This whole thread just serves to reinforce my decision to never ever again run for the openSUSE board...

I can understand this point of view, but... the project must be managed somehow, and voting board from community members IMHO isn't bad idea... So... how to manage the project? Any better formalisable idea than what we already have? "Political culture" is hard to formalize (and enforce), but can we improve our own rules to as much as possible avoid any future (such) issues? -- Vojtěch Zeisek https://trapa.cz/ Komunita openSUSE GNU/Linuxu Community of the openSUSE GNU/Linux https://www.opensuse.org/

Am 29.02.20 um 19:17 schrieb Vojtěch Zeisek:

Dne sobota 29. února 2020 15:09:06 CET, Stefan Seyfried napsal(a):

...

This whole thread just serves to reinforce my decision to never ever again run for the openSUSE board...

I can understand this point of view, but... the project must be managed somehow, and voting board from community members IMHO isn't bad idea... So...

Oh, I totally agree on that. But if you cannot even step down after being elected without falling victim to a spanish-inquisition like process, then we should not be surprised if the volunteers for these tasks will not be available in large numbers in the future. That was what I wanted to express. -- Stefan Seyfried "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard Feynman -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 29. Feb 2020, at 19:28, Stefan Seyfried wrote:

Am 29.02.20 um 19:17 schrieb Vojtěch Zeisek:

...

Dne sobota 29. února 2020 15:09:06 CET, Stefan Seyfried napsal(a):

...

This whole thread just serves to reinforce my decision to never ever again run for the openSUSE board...

I can understand this point of view, but... the project must be managed somehow, and voting board from community members IMHO isn't bad idea... So...

Oh, I totally agree on that.

But if you cannot even step down after being elected without falling victim to a spanish-inquisition like process, then we should not be surprised if the volunteers for these tasks will not be available in large numbers in the future.

That was what I wanted to express.

Indeed, I absolutely agree with your point, and find it cuts both ways. Not only for the one stepping down, but those who have not. This public outcry at the Board taking a disciplinary decision regarding a community member, an absolutely core role of the Board, almost certainly does as much to discourage anyone from running in the future as even the most negative interpretation of the impacts of the boards decision on the departing Board members. And that train of thought leads to a dark hole - if we were to recall the Board and run fresh elections, who would be our candidates? We barely had enough for an election for 2 seats last time, never mind all 5. Resigned or removed members are not eligible to run again, according to our rules: https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election_rules Whether that would include the 4 elected Board members we currently have in the event of a recall election would be a decision for the election committee, but let’s assume for the sake of argument they decide that a “recall” of the Board effectively means the existing members are removed. I’d be shocked at that point whether we’d have even 5 candidates, never mind the 10+ we’d need for an actual meaningful election where the community could get actual choices. So at that point I suspect we become a project without a Board. That would have severe consequences, such as almost utterly eliminating any chance of any Foundation for the foreseeable future. the viability of an organisations governance model is a key requirement for any foundation to be legally formed in any country. We’d have no grounds for proving we are a viable organisation to have any kind of legal responsibility at all. Without a Board, there would be no escalation point for community members to raise concerns when feeling oppressed, victimised, or otherwise mistreated.. I guess we could instead expect more flame wars on here but I don’t think dealing with such matters in a public forum is productive for anyone - not the victims nor the accused. Good community members will find themselves oppressed, mistreated, and otherwise abused with no sensible recourse. This project would not be a nice place to be any more. Without a Board, all autonomy openSUSE currently has for applying its trademark policy would vanish, and become the sole remit of SUSE. In fact, i would suspect that SUSE would have no choice but to take absolute, complete and direct control of the Project. Whether the project would be allowed to continue in any form is a question I’d suspect SUSE would ask itself at that point. Even if openSUSE was allowed to exist still, I suspect the Project would continue in a drastically different way with far less empowerment of the community. And SUSE would be right to, because at that point we would have done a good job of demonstrating that we can’t responsibly run ourselves or be trusted as a community to deal with sensitive matters like personal disputes, finances, or legal matters... Instead of playing games and critiquing the decisions of those elected to deal with issues that can’t be handled in Public, why don’t we instead start acting like adults? We should all realise that the Board made an impossible decision in what must obviously have been terrible circumstances, and made a decision to the best of their ability. We elected them to make such impossible decisions because these aren’t the sort of matters that can or should be dealt with in a public forum. We’re not a mob, we’re not an anarchy, we’re a mature project of mature individuals. Let’s start acting like it and trust our Board who clearly are doing their best to honour their obligations under the Projects constitution. Regards Richard

Dne sobota 29. února 2020 19:26:14 CET, Stasiek Michalski napsal(a):

On Sat, Feb 29, 2020 at 19:17, Vojtěch Zeisek wrote:

...

Dne sobota 29. února 2020 15:09:06 CET, Stefan Seyfried napsal(a):

...

This whole thread just serves to reinforce my decision to never ever again run for the openSUSE board...

I can understand this point of view, but... the project must be managed somehow, and voting board from community members IMHO isn't bad idea... So... how to manage the project? Any better formalisable idea than what we already have? "Political culture" is hard to formalize (and enforce), but can we improve our own rules to as much as possible avoid any future (such) issues?

We might have dug ourselves into a hole here by actually making board solely about politics. openSUSE is not just politics as shocking as that might seem, and I don't know if making project guidance purely political makes that much sense then.

I'm not sure if we speak same language here... The Board *is* political bureau in the sense it's democratically voted organ supposed to lead the openSUSE project according to public interest expressed by voters selecting their desired candidates. I.e. there is no objectively defined (technical) aim where the project goes to. The future is unclear, the direction towards it is aimed by smart involved people, so that there is significant political component.

We should probably ask ourselves why was the board originally created the way it was, and does the board's current structure make sense in the current openSUSE Project, 15 years later.

Yes. It might be altered. But it must be done with calm heads and with good reasoning. We surely do need some kind of Board. -- Vojtěch Zeisek https://trapa.cz/ Komunita openSUSE GNU/Linuxu Community of the openSUSE GNU/Linux https://www.opensuse.org/

Hi On 3/1/20 5:33 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:

On Sat, 29 Feb 2020 19:17:55 +0100, Vojtěch Zeisek wrote:

...

how to manage the project? Any better formalisable idea than what we already have? "Political culture" is hard to formalize (and enforce), but can we improve our own rules to as much as possible avoid any future (such) issues?

I think the implementation of some bylaws (which we seem to be missing) would be a step in the right direction.

Right now our governance model includes a board and an appointed treasurer. We're supposed to have bylaws, but I have not been able to find them documented anywhere.

As I understand it (and I'm no expert on how non-profits are run), it's standard practice to have a published budget and a set of bylaws that outline the various roles, responsibilities, and processes used in governance.

I think that's the root of the problem here; we apparently don't have any bylaws, and the board operates under the principles of "just trust that we're doing the right thing" - which makes it impossible for there to be any accountability, and results in requests for accountability and transparency being taken as personal attacks - in the line of "why don't you trust us?"

Firstly as a simple one we don't publish any form of budget, openSUSE has no legal entity therefore we can't have any assets or money so it makes no sense to publish any form of budget currently. openSUSE has no money, currently it just has an agreement that SUSE will provide all the core things it needs. But this is something we'd like to change with a foundation. openSUSE does have a bunch of rules that you could consider bylaws that we follow. All the ones we follow related to the board including elections, removals the community replacing the board etc can be found at [1]. Rules around membership and the membership officials can be found at [2]. If you have feedback on how you think these could be improved that would be much appreciated as these combined with any items we need to add to comply with legal requirements will likely form the basis of the openSUSE Foundations constitution. 1. https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election_rules 2. https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Members -- 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 3/1/20 8:22 PM, jdd@dodin.org wrote:

Le 29/02/2020 à 19:27, Stefan Seyfried a écrit :

...

But if you cannot even step down after being elected without falling victim to a spanish-inquisition like process,

anybody can do so invoking personal unexpected problem. Do you know what was the spanish inquisition?

My main problem was the fact that somebody *just elected* was driven to dismiss without explanation. I feel it a a slash in the face. I know of no election system allowing such thing (and this have nothing to do with the people I voted for - or not voted for)

doesn't "breaching opensuse guiding principle" imply a *public* breach?

To make it clear before I use this as an example this is not what happened in this case (fortunately since i've been on the board I haven't dealt with a case like this), but as an extreme example I would consider sending abusive private emails (or PM's) to another member of the community or other members of the community a breach of our code of conduct, so it doesn't need to necessarily be public.

may be there should be a non public, member reserved mailing list to avoid such discussion becoming public?

We are now at the point of having 500+ members, and while I generally greatly trust most of our community from my perspective once 500 people know its pretty much the same as something being public anyway. -- 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 Jean-Daniel, all, On Sun, 1 Mar 2020 at 10:52, jdd@dodin.org wrote:

may be there should be a non public, member reserved mailing list to avoid such discussion becoming public?

I really like your proposal. Other projects like for example LibreOffice are adopting this solution. At The Document Foundation there are two different lists, one is completely public (with moderation for non already subscribed addresses for avoiding spam), is called "board-discuss" and it's like our openSUSE-project and a second one is a members-only. The board-discuss list is used for sharing the meetings minutes, the invitation to the board meetings and the agendas, the official announcements, the foundation annual report with the financial overview, all the official decisions taken by the board and by the Membership Committee, the elections candidacy, results and representation statements for the board and the membership committee. This members-only is used by all the Community for discussing openly and increase the transparency between the Board, the Membership Committee and the Board of Trustees (the members group). In that list the Community can discuss all the important decisions and proposals that can impact and improve the foundation itself, talking openly (and sometimes also arguing a bit more hard) without the side effects to discuss completely in public. Apart from a better interactions, the side effect is to make the project contributors aware of the importance to apply for the membership and keep an active part in the foundation daily life. I would really add your proposal in the list of ideas to discuss for our openSUSE Foundation. Yours, Marina -- Marina Latini openSUSE Board: deneb_alpha www.documentfoundation.org www.libreitalia.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Sun, Mar 1, 2020 at 18:17, Ish Sookun wrote:

Folks,

On 28/02/2020 23:05, Christian Boltz wrote:

...

I dropped the second sentence before sending out the mail, but maybe I should have kept it to make the reasons behind my request more understandable.

Is it so difficult to respect somebody's wish? Christian made it clear that he does not want "you" to speculate over the reasons - which he totally has right not to share.

I read a lot of criticism against the board. Why don't we hear from you when we call for board candidacy? It's very easy to criticize from outside but few would step up and accept the responsibility of helping the board.

This is representative democracy, we vote for who we believe will represent our interest the best, without having to deal with that ourselves. While maybe not the best system, it does remove quite a bit of the overhead. LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Friday, 28 February 2020 19:06 Jim Henderson wrote:

As someone who manages people myself, I completely understand that there are legitimate reasons to not be completely transparent. But if 40% of my team quit over the course of a couple of weeks

For the record, it's not only 40% of the board. It's also 50% (i.e. exactly one half) of its elected members which makes the situation even more disturbing. (And would be even without the later thread which revealed that things are way worse than I imagined.) Michal Kubecek -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Monday, 2 March 2020 7:34 Richard Brown wrote:

...

On 2. Mar 2020, at 07:15, Michal Kubecek wrote:

On Friday, 28 February 2020 19:06 Jim Henderson wrote:

...

As someone who manages people myself, I completely understand that there are legitimate reasons to not be completely transparent. But if 40% of my team quit over the course of a couple of weeks

For the record, it's not only 40% of the board. It's also 50% (i.e. exactly one half) of its elected members which makes the situation even more disturbing. (And would be even without the later thread which revealed that things are way worse than I imagined.)

Michal Kubecek

There are 5 elected Board Members and 6 Members in total

Ah, right, so it is actually 40%, sorry for the mistake. Still quite a lot and even more so given the circumstances. Michal Kubecek -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On Saturday, 29 February 2020 19:27 Stefan Seyfried wrote:

But if you cannot even step down after being elected without falling victim to a spanish-inquisition like process, then we should not be surprised if the volunteers for these tasks will not be available in large numbers in the future.

That would be the least of my concerns. It would rather be the things like the serious public scolding one board member received recently for saying that he voted against certain (very questionable, IMO) board decision. Or the fresh event when Sarah's honest mistake provoked an unproportional reaction as if she insulted the whole nation. But that was all before Marina's clarification e-mail. After that, I'm once again very glad I decided not to apply for membership. Michal Kubecek -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 3/3/20 5:16 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:

On Sun, 01 Mar 2020 17:46:02 +1030, Simon Lees wrote:

...

Firstly as a simple one we don't publish any form of budget, openSUSE has no legal entity therefore we can't have any assets or money so it makes no sense to publish any form of budget currently. openSUSE has no money, currently it just has an agreement that SUSE will provide all the core things it needs. But this is something we'd like to change with a foundation.

That makes sense to me; the thing that makes this a little confusing for me (at least) is that while we don't have any assets/budget, we do have a treasurer who administers the travel program. That's what made me think of it.

Yes, SUSE allows openSUSE to spend some of its money towards travel support and sponsoring events, so that the board doesn't need to approve every one of these things we created the role of treasurer to approve all the simple ones that clearly meet our rules, they still refer some things to the board if they are unsure.

...

openSUSE does have a bunch of rules that you could consider bylaws that we follow. All the ones we follow related to the board including elections, removals the community replacing the board etc can be found at [1]. Rules around membership and the membership officials can be found at [2].

If you have feedback on how you think these could be improved that would be much appreciated as these combined with any items we need to add to comply with legal requirements will likely form the basis of the openSUSE Foundations constitution.

1. https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board_election_rules 2. https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Members

The challenge for me here is the "could consider bylaws" statement - if one goes looking for the bylaws on the wiki, nothing turns up. It's a bit of a case of "this code is self documenting", which particularly when the foundation setup is complete, will be problematic.

Yes agreed, many of these things exist but they are not currently in one nice uniform "constitution" or set of bylaws. This will certainly change and will be prepared before the membership vote to accept the foundation but we will likely wait until we have a better idea of the format needed wherever registering the foundation before we proceed here.

I'll make some time this week to do a little research for specifics, but some things that would appear to be needed include:

1. Policies and procedures for what the board does (ie, scope of responsibility)

This already exists at the following page https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Board The purpose of the openSUSE Board is to lead the overall project. The main tasks for members of the board are: Act as a central point of contact Help resolve conflicts Communicate community interests to SUSE Facilitate communication with all areas of the community Facilitate decision making processes where needed. Initiate discussions about new project wide initiatives

2. Role definitions and responsibilities (esp. for the foundation, I'd probably expect to see chair/vice-chair/treasurer/secretary/... type roles defined with specific responsibilities)

Under the foundation I expect this will change a bit, the amount of paperwork required to comply with local regulations will almost certainly be more then we can expect volunteers to manage so its likely that someone will be employed to manage these roles reporting to the board, but what that actually looks like is still something that is being negotiated with SUSE. More broadly our boards have tended to choose to share roles rather then having one person stick to them. For example we generally rotate who takes minutes for meetings rather then having a secretary taking theme every week. Also given the current unique role of our Chairperson having a vice chair makes little sense as they can't really carry out any of the specific roles that our chairman has as they mostly relate to SUSE vs openSUSE communications. We did struggle a little with this during the recent transition of chairman. Given the unique roll of our Chairperson one thing that has been discussed by some in the past is moving that role to one of "SUSE Liaison" and have no chairperson or at the start of each term the board could decide which elected member should be chair although we have tended to rotate meeting chairing around a bit as well in the past.

3. Some guidelines around project governance and accountability to the membership

This is certainly an area we can improve on, we expect that whichever area we register the foundation in will have further legal requirements in this area and that those will be come the base for improving how we work in this area. Generally each new board has decided where it would like to sit with the level of transparency it provides through minutes since i've been on the board we have tended toward some form of middle ground some previous boards I believe have tried the extremes of a make everything public or not even publish minutes but both of these options have drawbacks so we end up with some form of compromise. Sometimes we have to respect that a company we maybe working with on something isn't ready to make something public, if we were forced to publish details of everything in meetings then such conversations would never happen, similarly in the last 2 years when the board has been dealing with a conflict between two people we tend to just minute that we "helped resolve a conflict" or similar in the minutes so you the community know we are doing something but the privacy of those involved is respected. Beyond those cases we try to make as much public as possible although there has been times in the last 2 years where the discussion around what we do and don't minute takes longer then whatever we were discussing in the first place. There is a final fallback within the board election rules where if 20% of members don't feel the board is doing a good job they can trigger an election of all 5 positions

4. Conflict resolution processes, including both within the membership and within the board

The process for members of the community is / was documented somewhere (we should probably fix this) but essentially the board is the body responsible for dealing with conflict resolution within the project, generally the board will work together with the individuals involved to hopefully come up with a solution that works for everyone or to mediate to get the best possible outcome. Within the board we certainly don't always agree, the difference in ideas ultimately leads to a stronger position and better outcomes for the community, if two members do have a serious conflict then the other members will work to mediate, ultimately the board is a democracy and if we don't all agree on something we vote on it. Board members cannot be removed just because they have a conflict with other members etc so in the end they just have to move on and continue working on whatever comes up.

It also seems that it would be useful to codify who the liaison with SUSE is for various things. For example, if project members have legal questions, infrastructure questions, or other questions that are better answered by our primary sponsor, rather than it being necessary for the membership to track down "the right person" (and I recognize that often times "the right person" is someone involved in the project), having a point of contact who can facilitate getting those introductions made and conversations set up would be beneficial. (The foundation may well reduce the need for that kind of contact as well.)

Beyond resolving conflicts this is one of the other primary roles of the board which goes both ways (sometimes people within SUSE will ask the board for feedback on something they'd like to do in the community). Ot is a key reason for having the chairperson selected by SUSE because ultimately they need to work with SUSE's management on such things.

On a personal note, Simon, I very much appreciate the opportunity to have a respectful conversation about this. Thank you.

Very much agreed, Thank you. -- 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 05/03/2020 19.55, Ancor Gonzalez Sosa wrote:

On 2020-03-02 08:18, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

On 02/03/2020 06.59, Michal Kubecek wrote:

...

On Sunday, 1 March 2020 11:27 Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

El 2020-03-01 a las 10:52 +0100, jdd@dodin.org escribió:

...

Le 29/02/2020 à 19:27, Stefan Seyfried a écrit :

...

But if you cannot even step down after being elected without falling victim to a spanish-inquisition like process,

anybody can do so invoking personal unexpected problem. Do you know what was the spanish inquisition?

As Spanish, I don't like light references to it. Like saying some process was akin to it. The inquisition was a terrible thing that could result in death and torments. And anyway, the reference to Spain forgets that other religions and countries had similar processes.

Come on... It's not a reference to Spain. It's a reference to Monty Python. Try to google for "Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition" before you go on with rants like this. There is even a Wikipedia page about it...

Sorry, but for any Spanish it is a sensitive issue and we don't see the humour in it.

"For any Spanish" is a pretty bold claim. I'm also Spanish and I have lived in Spain my whole life (except one year) and I can see the humor on it.

Moreover, you are the first Spanish I have found in my whole life who is sensitive about that institution that was abolished in 1834 (enough time to get over it).

I'm not sensitive about the institution, but about blaming Spanish for it. La leyenda negra de la mierda. There were other countries and religions with the same or equivalent institutions. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.1 x86_64 at Telcontar)

El 2/3/20 a las 8:18, Carlos E. R. escribió:

Sorry, but for any Spanish it is a sensitive issue and we don't see the humour in it.

I'm Spanish and I see the humor in it!! Monthy Python's sketch it's a classic of those humor geniuses!! Greetings!! -- ------------------- GPG Key: 0xcc742e8dc9b7e22a Fingerprint = 6FE2 3B1F AAC8 E5B7 63EA 88A9 CC74 2E8D C9B7 E22A Aprende a proteger la privacidad de tu correo: https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/es/ Mi blog sobre openSUSE, GNU/Linux y software libre: https://victorhckinthefreeworld.com/ Herramientas para proteger tu privacidad https://victorhck.gitlab.io/privacytools-es/