On Fri, 2011-12-02 at 01:31 +0530, Sankar P wrote:

Hi board candidates,

All the very best to everyone competing in the board election. Personally, this election has a lot of candidates who are too close to me.

Aloha Sankar,

Thanks for taking the time to ask the questions.

I have a few very simple questions for the candidates. Please answer them with a soft-limit of 750 characters, per answer. Thanks.

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

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

My current opinion is that once the Foundation is up and running, the Board will effectively transfer to the Foundation. I've not been privy to all the discussions about the board, and as such my view may change once I have all the facts to hand. I see the Foundation as continuing the Board's mandate but also potentially gaining a larger remit. I would personally discourage any non openSUSE members being brought in to sit on the Foundation in an active role unless they had a specific area of expertise (e.g. financial/legal) that couldn't be filled otherwise, but I would not be against having an "outsider" on the Foundation in an advisory role.

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

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

I would strive to have as open a ledger as possible, publishing it at regular intervals (quarterly/bi-annual/annual). As for processes, I'm not entirely sure what you mean; a lot of the process will be governed by whatever country the Foundation is setup in, please feel free to elaborate on what you mean.

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

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

That's a fairly personal question ;-) I don't see anything abhorently wrong, but it all depends on what the freedoms sacrificed are. I for instance try and avoid using US based cloud services for anything overtly personal, thanks to the Patriot Act, but that is just my personal preference. Don't get me wrong, I use a whole heap of Google's services, I also use Dropbox and other US based cloud services because they just work and are at an acceptable price point. If I pay nothing, I have to accept the limitations imposed by this level of convenience. I do also however host my own cloud services for my personal use - ownCloud, e-mail, blog etc.

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

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

To be honest, I have thought at times in the past that we should have some hosted services, but as time has passed I realised it would be better if we partnered with someone who does this as a core business. We need to focus as a project and having all these extras takes focus away from what we are doing, which is making a kick arse great distribution and other open tools (yes, good old OBS etc).

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

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

This would depend on the actual amount offered. If it was $5,000 per annum, I don't think that would be worth it. Also I would also strongly against changing our homepage even if they offered us $20,000. I would need to see what the financial outgoings are to be able to make a decent guess on what amount would be financially viable. I would also make sure that the community was involved in the decision, and explain our reasoning for wishing to partner with them. At the end of the day, Microsoft is a much better OSS company now than many existing companies in the field.

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

points if you answer both)

Vim all the way for me! Mainly due to the fact that it is what I was introduced to when I started out, and have never really used Emacs. At the end of the day, it's horses for courses. If it works for you then great, stick with it - don't fix it if it isn't broken.

Listmates, Please avoid arguing over any of the responses. These are just personal opinions and we should respect all of them. We can disagree with them when they are proposed as a board item. Now it is just a campaign response.

Thanks a lot and All the best :-)

Thank you for taking the time to engage with us, and I hope that I can serve you well on the next Board.

-- Sankar P http://psankar.blogspot.com

Regards,

Andy

On 2011-12-02 01:31:01 (+0530), Sankar P sankar.curiosity@gmail.com wrote: [...]

I have a few very simple questions for the candidates. Please answer them with a soft-limit of 750 characters, per answer. Thanks.

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

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

That is quite a list of questions, and neither of them are simple :) So pardon me for taking each question separately (and probably break the character limit more than once :D).

A little disclaimer rightaway though: Actually, I don't believe we're there yet, nor that we're ready for it. Also, things are looking to be working quite smoothly with SUSE/Attachmate on the aspects the Foundation is meant to fullfil (financial aspects, and only that, at least as a first step, even though everyone probably has different expectations and ideas about what the Foundation ought to be). We're not blind, we'll keep a good look at how things evolve, but I think that the way it is going to work soon will be the best balance between pros and cons (a Foundation has a lot of cons too). I believe we should rather see how it turns out, and re-evaluate having a Foundation in a year or two.

But more on that later. And yes, I was the one who pushed for a Foundation (following up on an idea that was first voiced by Martin Lasarsch at a Hackweek in Nürnberg quite some time ago), but only fools never change their mind :) (And the context has changed a lot as compared to when the initiative was taken to have a Foundation.) (And thanks again for Cornelius and Coolo to raise that very good question at the openSUSE conference, as well as for the follow-up discussion, which made me change my mind on the matter.)

That being said (and it needs a lot more explanation and details than the above)...

* Will board members be controlling the foundation too ?

Well, the original idea was to avoid having both the board and the foundation board, to avoid conflicts and to have a better clarity. *But*, in the mean time, and having given it more thought (time helps having a better perspective), and also after some discussions with AJ and Alan during the conference, it turns out that it might actually be better to have both: an openSUSE board (as of now) and a Foundation board.

The reason is quite simple: of course, trust is involved in both cases, but I (and not just me) believe that we are looking at two different types of people.

On the openSUSE board, you want "people people", who are good at handling conflicts, who have a good network in the project, who have experience with the project and its people, people who are respected for their contributions and whom you can trust to take the right decisions when decisions have to be taken. (At least, that's what I'm looking for in the openSUSE board ^^)

On the Foundation board, you'll rather be looking with people who have experience running something like that. People who have some skills at "accounting" (or at least dealing with money, like spending it on the things that make most sense), as well as actively engaging and looking for sponsors.

* What roles do you see board members performing in the foundation ?

As explained above, I'm more enclined to have different people on both boards.

* Will there be dedicated personnel [from/outside] the board for specific roles in the foundation ?

At the very least, the accounting and legal matters will have to be outsourced to experts on the matter.

* Will you be interested in nominating yourself for any specific position, say Treasurer, Lawyer, Firefighter ?

I was willing to run for a Foundation board position in order to serve the community, because, frankly, there probably won't be many people who will volunteer to do so (it is very tedious, not really fun, and makes you legally responsible for what you do there.)

But as explained at length above, in hindsight, we should rather make ourselves a better picture of how we want the Foundation to be run, and by whom, and not do it unless we have the right people.

So, now, no, I don't think I would be a candidate for a Foundation board position, because I want to concentrate on other aspects (the people, communication inside the project, facilitating the teams, mentoring).

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

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

First of all, there is a very strong legal framework, and it already requires complete transparence on financial operations as the Foundation would obviously be a non-for-profit organization.

But even so, yes, the Foundation must be extremely transparent, there are really no good reasons for not doing so. It is even more required as money is involved -- not just money that companies would donate/invest, but also money that regular people like you and me would donate. And the very least to do is to be transparent and honest.

Reporting could be permanent and continous. And sure, we have been looking and will continue to look at what other comparable foundations have been doing. Some aspects fit our needs and what we would like to have, and some don't. Not learning from their experience, good or bad, would be foolish :)

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

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

That's really up to every single person.

Me, personally, even though I don't see how it is of any importance :), I believe that it's perfectly okay for as long as you understand what it means, what the potential consequences are, and as long as it is stated very clearly.

As an example, I believe that Google does a pretty good job at that: it's pretty easy to find out what they will do and what they won't do with your data. To me, it's a give and take: I give up a little privacy on certain things, but I get a pretty great service in return for free (in terms of financial aspects).

If some believe that it's not worth giving up some privacy for that, that's perfectly alright. The options are there, use them or not. What is not okay, in my opinion, is that people are either fooled in thinking no one will use their data, or when people simply don't bother (which is the case for 99.9% of the population, sadly). Facebook is a prime example of the latter.

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

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

It's an idea, but it's an extremely expensive one. You need to invest a lot in order to keep those promises (a safe data center that is not on one of the current cloud providers).

Personally, I believe that we have a lot more pressing and interesting challenges. It might be an added value to lure users, but I primarily care about contributors. "Market share" is of secondary importance to me, at best. I rather focus on a comfy and friendly atmosphere where everyone can contribute, interact, and learn. 改善(kaizen, continous improvement :))

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

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

Possibly. Depends on which strings are attached to it, and the quality of the service.

I would probably be fine with it: if we take money, why not take it from them.

To the doomsdayers out there: if you still believe that companies are like living beings and that a large corporation such as Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, HP, Apple, etc... has one goal and one objective, and that each of their actions are in line with that objective (e.g. "destroy linux"), then consider thinking again. That is really not how things work in the real world. I work for a company that is very large, and I can tell you that's really not how things work.

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

points if you answer both)

I have used emacs for a very long time, actually, but have moved to vim. I'm not religious about either of them (nor much else I guess). Just use whatever you prefer, and it's not an election parole, it's what I really believe :)

I actually typically use vim or eclipse, depends on the job :)

[...]

Thanks a lot and All the best :-)

Thanks for the questions :)

cheers

On Friday 02 Dec 2011 01:31:01 Sankar P wrote:

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

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

I think that the openSUSE board at the time of the establishment of the foundation will function as a 'bootstrap board' for the foundation until an election is held. The timing of this depends on the legal form of the board. I see our current non-board officials as taking on specific roles within the foundation, for example the Election Committee. Other non-board roles within the foundation will arise over time depending on the workload of the foundation board, for example a community omsbudsman to help resolve conflicts.

I think it's too early to consider nominating myself for any specific role in the foundation 'bootstrap board'. I like to think that the board members should be generalists able to help with any issue, except where the legal form of the foundation demands an individual to occupy a role, eg Treasurer.

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

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

Drawing on my experiences in KDE eV, and assuming a similar structure, I hope that foundation finances should be open to the membership, externally audited annually and should be summarized in a quarterly published report. I do not expect that we will need private budgets.

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

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

I think it's going too far to bundle some proprietary cloud storage with the default openSUSE distribution. I'm fine if one of our downstreams wants to do this.

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

hosting things and providing online services for users (like ubuntuone, gmail, dropbox etc.) ?

We already do this with the distribution development. I'm not sure it's one of our core competencies to do this for end users.

We can charge users a small fee and promise to not spy/sell their data.

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

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

Perhaps in return for making openSUSE a freely downloadable install in XBox Live Arcade! No, seriously, search engines are a funnel which people pour their personal data down for the proprietor to sell, and I don't think it's up to us to push our users' data to one for a few bucks. I'd prefer it if our browsers made this explicit the first time the user did a toolbar search and allowed a choice. Although I've grown past the 'Microsoft is teh evil' stage, and lived through the fallout of the Novell-Microsoft deal, you have to consider the implications of your choices.

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

points if you answer both)

originally memacs on Amiga, then emacs 19 or so on Linux, then vim for the last few years, because I have a very big .vimrc.

Will