On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 2:17 PM, Robert Schweikert wrote:

On 06/15/2015 04:44 PM, PatrickD Garvey wrote:

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On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 11:54 AM, Robert Schweikert wrote:

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The process is open and Stephan tried to start the name discussion [1]. However it quickly drifted away and focused on something else.

[1] http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-06/msg00203.html

The process may be open, but I find it very difficult to locate and follow discussions like the one you reference. lists.o.o displays 79 separate lists. Even if I narrow that to -announce, -features, -security-announce, -factory, -kernel, -packaging, and -project, that's a lot of reading to do to make the effort to know where the critical discussions are happening. Does no one else see this as lack of quality communication?

Yes and no. We have made an effort over the last couple of years to reduce the number of lists and we have had some successes. Just this Spring we closed and/or combined about 10 lists :) That's the "yes people do agree part of the answer ;)

Thank you for the effort and congratulations on the partial success. That's as good as it gets in a large community, per my experience.

The "no" part is that "one just has to know what's important to once interest. For example if you are a packager subscribe to -factory, - -packaging, -project and -announce.

Announce is a very low volume list. Everything that surrounds the distro will be discussed on -factory and/or -packaging. Everyone involved with the project should be subscribed to -project. Although as currently the case -project produces a lot of mail that can be difficult to deal with. At other times it is really quiet.

In short, yes there is an issue and we have made an effort to reduce the number of lists, but we will never get down to a sufficiently small list that one can subscribe to all of them in the hopes to keep track of all the outreaches of the project.

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Because I haven't been following -factory, https://youtu.be/BH99TSrfvq0 "OSC15 - Richard Brown - The Future is unwritten" appeared to be a totally arbitrary decision by a closed clique and I didn't fully understand what Richard was trying to announce. His presentation looked like I was supposed to know some history that I had not heard was being created.

How has the openSUSE community worked this problem before? Or has it ever tried?

Well, this is a new twist on an existing problem. The problem is really "how do we deal with big changes?" To that effect I, as part of my role on the openSUSE Board have drafted some change guidelines which we as the board had planned to post to the wiki for discussion after oSC. However, given that, unfortunately, the project is in turmoil and everything is being questioned, from membership to the way we build the distribution I decided to hold off on the change guidelines until things calm down a bit.

May I suggest the turmoil is the result of the isolated communication that occurred. I'm fairly certain the Board knew nothing of the merger with MicroFocus any more than a day before Richard Brown published https://news.opensuse.org/2014/09/17/statement-on-the-recent-merger-announce... But from that time forward, anyone discussing something as tumultuous as the release of the SLE sources to the Factory should have been cross-posting broadly. The habit of the sub-community to talk among themselves about everything without examining whether the larger community might be interested misses the opportunity to lead the discussion. Please don't be afraid to publish your rough drafts of a wiki article as an effort to lead. Many folks in FLOSS have advocated Radical Transparency. I think such is ofttimes the appropriate bias.

In any case from the project perspective the principles are always the same. Those that do the work get to decide, no matter what. Meaning no one in the community is in a position to tell another contributor what to do.

My perception here is that some of the doers are working in an isolated communication environment and leaving out some other doers that are equally qualified to discuss the effects of any decisions that need be made. Besides, the work the excluded doers are doing is directly enabled/disabled by the decisions to take a certain path. Awareness of the needs of the FULL community is hard to maintain, but must be fostered.

The openSUSE board is only there to guide and facilitate conversation and compromise if necessary.

I think you understand I think the facilitation part of that responsibility came up short this time. I don't envy the complexity the Board faces, I thank them for their effort to face it.

Only if all other attempts fail is the board in a position to make a decision. It has never, as far as I can remember, come to this. If there are people that do not like the decision they are free to continue what is being done rather than following the change.

This, what could be considered extreme, approach to the project is also difficult to deal with and I claim is overwhelming for many new people.

Anyway, I am glad you are interested to help, just stick with it, at some point things will fir together. If you have questions feel free to ask me directly or on the mailing list. For the most part questions do not spark very long discussions. Although this last question probably would have, especially at the moment.

Thanks for asking, Robert

Thank you for bringing growing enlightenment. I intend to make the effort worthwhile. PatrickD -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org