Board Meeting Minutes 2021-07-19, 1300 CEST
*** Board Meeting Minutes 2021-07-19 1300 CEST *** Attendees: Gertjan, Gerald, Neal, Simon, Axel Excused: Vinz, Syds Minutes: Axel Guests: Doug, Bittin, Attila, Maurizio ** Meeting reminder ** - Automatic invitiation still not working - Axel opened a new pull request that hopefully fixes it ** Asia Summit Logo contest ** - Following the trademark guidelines on deviating logo layout, the logo winning the logo contest needs board approval. - Simon to reply with board approval ** openSUSE Asia Keynote (#21) ** - Neal willing to hold keynote, but due to timeszone he will probably not stay for the whole event. ** Different policies in different devel projects (#20) ** - AI on Simon to ask community about policy proposals ** Succession planning for board members ** - Some changes made to the onboarding page - no further feedback received on changes - Gerald offers 1:1 talk to board candidates ** Regular Rebuild (Respin) of Leap installation media (#23) ** - have a 4GB image downloaded, and then another 2GB of updates is not smart - SLE started respins every 3 month - There is a market for respins, esp. from Asia where internet connection is not the best - Board to send mail to RelEng Team to propose respin (Axel) - Axel to join release engineering meeting ** public part closed 13:45 CEST **
On Thu, 2021-07-22 at 09:57 +0200, Axel Braun wrote:
** Regular Rebuild (Respin) of Leap installation media (#23) **
- have a 4GB image downloaded, and then another 2GB of updates is not smart - SLE started respins every 3 month - There is a market for respins, esp. from Asia where internet connection is not the best - Board to send mail to RelEng Team to propose respin (Axel) - Axel to join release engineering meeting
I think it is rather innaproriate for the Board to be providing dictats on technical matters to openSUSE contributors. I would much rather see such proposals discussed in the approriate public forums (eg Factory list) rather then the Board misusing it's meetings to make decisions of this type and then further abusing its position of trust to insert one of it's members into existing meetings and processes. The openSUSE RelEng Team meetings already have Board representation under it's scope as a facilitator of discussions with the community, so it is plainly obvious to me that Axel's addition is stretching beyond that. This should not be acceptable. Please can I be provided with a list of which members voted for or against this decision? Kind Regards, Richard
On 7/22/21 9:43 PM, Richard Brown wrote:
On Thu, 2021-07-22 at 09:57 +0200, Axel Braun wrote:
** Regular Rebuild (Respin) of Leap installation media (#23) **
- have a 4GB image downloaded, and then another 2GB of updates is not smart - SLE started respins every 3 month - There is a market for respins, esp. from Asia where internet connection is not the best - Board to send mail to RelEng Team to propose respin (Axel) - Axel to join release engineering meeting
I think it is rather innaproriate for the Board to be providing dictats on technical matters to openSUSE contributors.
I would much rather see such proposals discussed in the approriate public forums (eg Factory list) rather then the Board misusing it's meetings to make decisions of this type and then further abusing its position of trust to insert one of it's members into existing meetings and processes.
The openSUSE RelEng Team meetings already have Board representation under it's scope as a facilitator of discussions with the community, so it is plainly obvious to me that Axel's addition is stretching beyond that.
Axel went to the meeting on behalf of the board as Gerald was unable to represent the Board this week, there have been other times in the past where another member of the board has stepped into this meeting on behalf of the chairperson if the board has topics to discuss and the chairperson is not available.
Please can I be provided with a list of which members voted for or against this decision?
As you know from your many years on the board we don't disclose who did or didn't vote for what we act as a board, that was how it worked when you were chairperson and nothing has changed since. What you can rest assured of is that no members of the board voted to issue any form of "Dictats" to the release engineering team. We got significant feedback that respinning images would be beneficial to the community. You have mentioned many times that openSUSE is a community where "those who do decide", clearly in the case of respining media it is the release engineering team that does the work therefore the board elected to simply passed on the feedback to the release engineering team and ask those that do to look into this concept and see if they believe it is feasible. In the end what they do or don't decide to is up to them all we did is asked if it was possible to look into it. -- 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 22.07.21 14:13, Richard Brown wrote:
On Thu, 2021-07-22 at 09:57 +0200, Axel Braun wrote:
** Regular Rebuild (Respin) of Leap installation media (#23) **
- have a 4GB image downloaded, and then another 2GB of updates is not smart - SLE started respins every 3 month - There is a market for respins, esp. from Asia where internet connection is not the best - Board to send mail to RelEng Team to propose respin (Axel) - Axel to join release engineering meeting I think it is rather innaproriate for the Board to be providing dictats on technical matters to openSUSE contributors.
Richard, I read "propose" and you say "dicate". I think it's perfectly fine for anybody to make a proposal. Please read carefully and don't overreact, Andreas
[...] -- Andreas Jaeger aj@suse.com Twitter: jaegerandi SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, D 90409 Nürnberg (HRB 36809, AG Nürnberg) GF: Felix Imendörffer GPG fingerprint = EF18 1673 38C4 A372 86B1 E699 5294 24A3 FF91 2ACB
On 23. Jul 2021, at 08:24, Andreas Jaeger <aj@suse.com> wrote:
On 22.07.21 14:13, Richard Brown wrote:
On Thu, 2021-07-22 at 09:57 +0200, Axel Braun wrote: ** Regular Rebuild (Respin) of Leap installation media (#23) **
- have a 4GB image downloaded, and then another 2GB of updates is not smart - SLE started respins every 3 month - There is a market for respins, esp. from Asia where internet connection is not the best - Board to send mail to RelEng Team to propose respin (Axel) - Axel to join release engineering meeting I think it is rather innaproriate for the Board to be providing dictats on technical matters to openSUSE contributors.
Richard, I read "propose" and you say "dicate".
I think it's perfectly fine for anybody to make a proposal.
Please read carefully and don't overreact,
Andreas
Respectfully AJ, I do not overreact. The RelEng minutes clearly document that this was interpreted as a TODO from Board. The pagure ticket from the Board clearly show there was some discussion about handling this via the usual community mechanisms (as is documented and as should have been done in this case), but some on the Board felt that “Yes, but the From: is different if the Board requests it....” https://code.opensuse.org/board/tickets/issue/23 The Boards rules exist so that the Board should never be used to apply undue pressure on the development carried out by the openSUSE project. It’s clear the Board was aware of how things should be done and they went ahead and did things in a way differently from what their own rules require. That’s not right, and while I wholly agree with the proposal, it should have come to the community via the usual methods (lists, bug or feature reports), not by the Board inserting themselves in development team meetings and _knowingly_ throwing their weight around. It’s just not right and threatens to create an adversarial relationship between our development teams and the Board which is meant to empower (not direct) them.
[...] -- Andreas Jaeger aj@suse.com Twitter: jaegerandi SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, D 90409 Nürnberg (HRB 36809, AG Nürnberg) GF: Felix Imendörffer GPG fingerprint = EF18 1673 38C4 A372 86B1 E699 5294 24A3 FF91 2ACB
On 23.07.21 08:40, Richard Brown wrote:
On 23. Jul 2021, at 08:24, Andreas Jaeger <aj@suse.com> wrote:
On 22.07.21 14:13, Richard Brown wrote:
On Thu, 2021-07-22 at 09:57 +0200, Axel Braun wrote:
** Regular Rebuild (Respin) of Leap installation media (#23) **
- have a 4GB image downloaded, and then another 2GB of updates is not smart - SLE started respins every 3 month - There is a market for respins, esp. from Asia where internet connection is not the best - Board to send mail to RelEng Team to propose respin (Axel) - Axel to join release engineering meeting I think it is rather innaproriate for the Board to be providing dictats on technical matters to openSUSE contributors.
Richard, I read "propose" and you say "dicate".
I think it's perfectly fine for anybody to make a proposal.
Please read carefully and don't overreact,
Andreas
Respectfully AJ, I do not overreact.
That was not clear from the way you presented the case earlier. Thanks for the additional information, Andreas [...] -- Andreas Jaeger aj@suse.com Twitter: jaegerandi SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, D 90409 Nürnberg (HRB 36809, AG Nürnberg) GF: Felix Imendörffer GPG fingerprint = EF18 1673 38C4 A372 86B1 E699 5294 24A3 FF91 2ACB
Hello Richard, Am Freitag, 23. Juli 2021, 08:40:05 CEST schrieb Richard Brown:
The RelEng minutes clearly document that this was interpreted as a TODO from Board.
It was clearly a proposal, even if the wording in the minutes were unlucky. You may want to blame me that I did not correct this, but I felt it was not imporant.
The pagure ticket from the Board clearly show there was some discussion about handling this via the usual community mechanisms (as is documented and as should have been done in this case), but some on the Board felt that “Yes, but the From: is different if the Board requests it....”
Yes, as Simon pointed out already, we have collected various feedback from the community and bundled it. It was discussed in the public board meeting and carried forward nto the RelEng meeting.
The Boards rules exist so that the Board should never be used to apply undue pressure on the development carried out by the openSUSE project.
Your statement is offensive. There was never an 'undue pressure', and I trust the participants of the RelEng meeting will confirm this.
It’s clear the Board was aware of how things should be done and they went ahead and did things in a way differently from what their own rules require.
The board moves on and drives various things. 'Build a legal entity' is not written in the board rules as well, nevertheless the board puts energy into this.
That’s not right, and while I wholly agree with the proposal, it should have come to the community via the usual methods (lists, bug or feature reports), not by the Board inserting themselves in development team meetings and _knowingly_ throwing their weight around.
It’s just not right and threatens to create an adversarial relationship between our development teams and the Board which is meant to empower (not direct) them.
What case do you want to construct here, and what is the benefit of this for the community? Best, Axel -- Dr. Axel Braun <docb@opensuse.org> Member of the openSUSE Board
On 23. Jul 2021, at 10:14, Axel Braun <axel.braun@gmx.de> wrote:
What case do you want to construct here, and what is the benefit of this for the community?
The case I wish to construct here is that the Board currently acts to aggrandise its position instead of its intended role of boosting the community it serves. If the Board was truly in a unique position of receiving feedback regarding this feature request, the Board should have encouraged those raising the issue to discuss it with the RelEng team. The Board did not need to take it on itself, disenfranchising the impacted from an opportunity to get directly involved with fixing the issue that bothers them. The benefit to the community I intend is obvious - the community should feel empowered to address issues itself and the Board should be able to spend its energies on topics that other people can’t deal with. Such an approach would be consistent with the established role of the Board, unlike this example where the Board clearly inserted itself to add extra weight to the issue (your comments on Pagure make this obvious) My proposed approach Win-Win for both the a sustainable wider community and the Board which constantly complains it doesn’t have time to do the things it wants, but now seems to have time to directly intervene in the development of the Projects distributions…
Am Freitag, 23. Juli 2021, 10:38:24 CEST schrieb Richard Brown:
On 23. Jul 2021, at 10:14, Axel Braun <axel.braun@gmx.de> wrote:
What case do you want to construct here, and what is the benefit of this for the community?
The case I wish to construct here is that the Board currently acts to aggrandise its position instead of its intended role of boosting the community it serves.
I disagree with that statement. We have collected input, and not stopped anyone from stepping up.
If the Board was truly in a unique position of receiving feedback regarding this feature request, the Board should have encouraged those raising the issue to discuss it with the RelEng team.
While the idea of this feature is not really new, for whatever reason, nobody felt obliged to step up. So, picking this up and pushing it to the right channels helps improving our distribution. I see nothing wrong in this.
The Board did not need to take it on itself, disenfranchising the impacted from an opportunity to get directly involved with fixing the issue that bothers them.
It is addressed now, lets see what happens
The benefit to the community I intend is obvious - the community should feel empowered to address issues itself and the Board should be able to spend its energies on topics that other people can’t deal with.
I think I spend more time reading and replying to this thread than on the feature request. This kind of discussions is discouraging everybody who spends his free and unpaid time to help improving openSUSE. I'm happy to have any volunteer who picks things up and moves them forward. And this project has some who pitch in in their spare time and keep the place running. I think it's highly counterproductive to get hung up on one or more words. After all, the intention is to make our distribution even better. Any input is welcome, be it from product tests in podcasts or feedback resulting from an informal chat. In the end, we have to drive the change somehow. That should be the focus, and not nitpicking about 'TODO' or similar.... <eod for me> Axel
On Fri, 23 Jul 2021 08:40:05 +0200 Richard Brown wrote:
The RelEng minutes clearly document that this was interpreted as a TODO from Board.
The pagure ticket from the Board clearly show there was some discussion about handling this via the usual community mechanisms (as is documented and as should have been done in this case), but some on the Board felt that “Yes, but the From: is different if the Board requests it....”
https://code.opensuse.org/board/tickets/issue/23
The Boards rules exist so that the Board should never be used to apply undue pressure on the development carried out by the openSUSE project.
Funny to hear these words from a former board member, who actively pushed the openSUSE heroes in the past multiple times (connect.o.o is still up and running, because of board requests). Could it be that you apply double standards here? Regards, Lars
On 23. Jul 2021, at 12:30, Lars Vogdt <lars.vogdt@suse.de> wrote:
On Fri, 23 Jul 2021 08:40:05 +0200 Richard Brown wrote:
The RelEng minutes clearly document that this was interpreted as a TODO from Board.
The pagure ticket from the Board clearly show there was some discussion about handling this via the usual community mechanisms (as is documented and as should have been done in this case), but some on the Board felt that “Yes, but the From: is different if the Board requests it....”
https://code.opensuse.org/board/tickets/issue/23
The Boards rules exist so that the Board should never be used to apply undue pressure on the development carried out by the openSUSE project.
Funny to hear these words from a former board member, who actively pushed the openSUSE heroes in the past multiple times (connect.o.o is still up and running, because of board requests).
Could it be that you apply double standards here?
More likely as Chair I had to represent the wishes of the Board at the time - even over my personal feelings. As a community member you see me now applying my personal standard openly. Hope that clears that up.
Am July 23, 2021 10:38:50 AM UTC schrieb Richard Brown <rbrown@suse.de>:
More likely as Chair I had to represent the wishes of the Board at the time - even over my personal feelings.
As a community member you see me now applying my personal standard openly.
Hope that clears that up.
Good to hear, thanks! That means: the heroes will finally shut down connect.o.o at the end of this month: July 2021. There is currently no alternative "social network", but keeping the machine up and running is a security nightmare. We will provide help to the membership committee to organize the community membership. We are open for a replacement/alternative solution, but please keep in mind to follow our standard policies, if you think about suggesting something. Especially: * open source * up-to date / maintained * has an Admin assigned, who is responsible and proactive Regards, Lars PS: I will prepare an announcement on news.o.o about the shutdown as well.
On 23. Jul 2021, at 14:39, Lars Vogdt <lars@linux-schulserver.de> wrote:
Am July 23, 2021 10:38:50 AM UTC schrieb Richard Brown <rbrown@suse.de>:
More likely as Chair I had to represent the wishes of the Board at the time - even over my personal feelings.
As a community member you see me now applying my personal standard openly.
Hope that clears that up.
Good to hear, thanks!
That means: the heroes will finally shut down connect.o.o at the end of this month: July 2021.
There is currently no alternative "social network", but keeping the machine up and running is a security nightmare.
We will provide help to the membership committee to organize the community membership.
We are open for a replacement/alternative solution, but please keep in mind to follow our standard policies, if you think about suggesting something.
Especially: * open source * up-to date / maintained * has an Admin assigned, who is responsible and proactive
Regards, Lars
PS: I will prepare an announcement on news.o.o about the shutdown as well.
nicht mein Zirkus, nicht meine Affen Have a lot of fun!
On 7/23/21 10:08 PM, Lars Vogdt wrote:
Am July 23, 2021 10:38:50 AM UTC schrieb Richard Brown <rbrown@suse.de>:
More likely as Chair I had to represent the wishes of the Board at the time - even over my personal feelings.
As a community member you see me now applying my personal standard openly.
Hope that clears that up.
Good to hear, thanks!
That means: the heroes will finally shut down connect.o.o at the end of this month: July 2021.
There is currently no alternative "social network", but keeping the machine up and running is a security nightmare.
We will provide help to the membership committee to organize the community membership.
Thanks, its been long overdue and the reason it was not done previously is there was no offer of "We will provide help to the membership committee to organize the community membership" which would have left an inability to run the community properly. For whatever solution you come up with for this can you please keep the list of Emeritus Members as well as the list of Members. Thanks for your ongoing hard work. -- 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 23.07.21 08:24, Andreas Jaeger wrote:
On 22.07.21 14:13, Richard Brown wrote:
On Thu, 2021-07-22 at 09:57 +0200, Axel Braun wrote:
** Regular Rebuild (Respin) of Leap installation media (#23) **
- have a 4GB image downloaded, and then another 2GB of updates is not smart - SLE started respins every 3 month - There is a market for respins, esp. from Asia where internet connection is not the best - Board to send mail to RelEng Team to propose respin (Axel) - Axel to join release engineering meeting I think it is rather innaproriate for the Board to be providing dictats on technical matters to openSUSE contributors.
Richard, I read "propose" and you say "dicate".
Andreas, not everyone is a native english speaker, so misunderstandings are to be expected.
Please read carefully and don't overreact, Now you really expect the impossible! :-P -- Stefan Seyfried
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard Feynman
On 22.07.21 14:13, Richard Brown wrote:
On Thu, 2021-07-22 at 09:57 +0200, Axel Braun wrote:
** Regular Rebuild (Respin) of Leap installation media (#23) **
- have a 4GB image downloaded, and then another 2GB of updates is not smart - SLE started respins every 3 month - There is a market for respins, esp. from Asia where internet connection is not the best - Board to send mail to RelEng Team to propose respin (Axel)
=========================================^^^^^^^^^
- Axel to join release engineering meeting
I think it is rather innaproriate for the Board to be providing dictats
=================================================================^^^^^^^^^
on technical matters to openSUSE contributors.
I would much rather see such proposals discussed in the approriate public forums (eg Factory list) rather then the Board misusing it's
I would much rather see such proposals discussed by the appropriate people who are actually involved, affected and knowledgeable about the issue (=> RelEng Team) rather than spamming eg the Factory list and causing a huge buzz, only to have the RelEng Team chime in later and say "hey, nice discussion, but it's not feasible at all for Reason XXX"
meetings to make decisions of this type and then further abusing its position of trust to insert one of it's members into existing meetings and processes.
I trust the RelEng Team to not let its decisions and processes be badly influenced by a member of the board, but only by technical necesseties and available resources.
The openSUSE RelEng Team meetings already have Board representation under it's scope as a facilitator of discussions with the community, so it is plainly obvious to me that Axel's addition is stretching beyond that.
This should not be acceptable.
(YAWN). What next? Twitter lynchmob? -- Stefan Seyfried "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard Feynman
[ board@ ⊂ project@, so removing the former ] On Thu 2021-07-22, Richard Brown wrote:
I think it is rather innaproriate for the Board to be providing dictats on technical matters to openSUSE contributors.
Was the wording in the ticket/minutes ideal? No. Would I have put things differently? Yes. But, as someone else already said: We are humans. Human communications is not perfect. It is prone to diverse understandings. Plus we all make mistakes. How we decide to receive, interpret, and act on things matters as much as how we articulate. Cultures, personalities, language(s), and skills play a role among other factors. That's why at openSUSE Conference last year I referred to the Principle of Charity. For me personally this goes beyond the original scope of philosphy and rhetoric. It's about assuming best intentions. It's about trust. It's about navigating my own shortcomings. And it's about trying to extend the charity that I hope to receive to others. And I wish, for myself and for this community, there was more of that here. That does not mean to accept everything. It does not mean to quell disagreement. It does not mean not to provide feedback. Just the "how" may matter as much as the "what". For example, does feedback like this need to happen on public lists and in such a way? Or wouldn't a note, maybe even an inquiry, to the affected parties be better? (The latter is my usual preference.) Sharing some of my perspective:
I would much rather see such proposals discussed in the approriate public forums (eg Factory list) rather then the Board misusing it's meetings to make decisions of this type and then further abusing its position of trust to insert one of it's members into existing meetings and processes.
"Misusing meetings" and "abusing trust" are fierce phrases which do not reflect my own perception. We had four guests in the board meeting on Monday (Attila, Bittin, Doug, and Maurizio) and I wonder what their take is. I also wonder how the folks on the release engineering meeting this week felt and would be happy to receive feedback directly, to board@ or here. Whatever it is, I'll make sure we take it to heart.
The openSUSE RelEng Team meetings already have Board representation under it's scope as a facilitator of discussions with the community, so it is plainly obvious to me that Axel's addition is stretching beyond that.
I try to attend our release engineering team meetings when I can (which probably has been more often than not in the last year), yet changed the minutes to refer to me as just "Gerald", without a reference to the board. By default I represent myself, then my role (as chair of the board or CTO at SUSE, depending on context) and only then - rarely and usually explicitly - the board as a body. Most meetings at openSUSE should be open to everyone, in particular openSUSE members, most of the time. We recently implemented this for board meetings even, and I am glad we did. There have been good conversations and sharing and more transparancy - definitely a win for the project. (On the board meetings everyone is welcome to raise issues and actively participate. Maybe we'll hit scalability issues at one point, but we'll tackle that when/if it happens.)
Please can I be provided with a list of which members voted for or against this decision?
There was no vote, just a redirection towards the responsible group (release engineering). Since I had a customer panel "in" South Africa that morning, I suggested someone else like Simon or Axel to relay. I would have strongly pushed back against a vote or a board mandate, and that seemed to be consensus of the group on Monday anyway. In the hope this provides some color and a thought or two rather than kick off more of a courtroom style argument, and let's not forget `cat /etc/motd` on and in and around openSUSE, Gerald -- Dr. Gerald Pfeifer <gp@suse.com>, CTO @SUSE + chair @openSUSE
participants (8)
-
Andreas Jaeger -
Axel Braun -
Gerald Pfeifer -
Lars Vogdt -
Lars Vogdt -
Richard Brown -
Simon Lees -
Stefan Seyfried