On 03/07/18 01:02, hellcp@opensuse.org wrote:

Hi,

Wouldn't it be wise to consider both the best and the worst scenario that might come out of this aquisition?

Best case scenario, nothing changes.

Worst case scenario, SUSE turns back on openSUSE financially and in terms of contributions, because *financial incentive of some sort*

...

This morning we all learned the news that the openSUSE projects main sponsor, SUSE, currently owned by MicroFocus, intends to be acquired by EQT Partners in Sweden.

Currently you Richard are speaking of openSUSE as legaly and financially independent entity, which it isn't. We wouldn't need this reassurance if this was the case.

...

This will be the third acquisition of SUSE since the creation of openSUSE, the second under the leadership of Nils and his team. Just as happened in that case, SUSE will be making no changes in its relationship between the company and the openSUSE Project.

Considering how dependent openSUSE is on SUSE, every single changing hands will worry both users and developers. That happened with every single aquisition before. Maybe by this point people start to care less about the whole thing, but here I am worried.

...

SUSE remains committed to supporting the openSUSE community, who play a key role in helping SUSEs success, which is expected to continue under their new partnership with EQT.

So what are the options to ensure stable development if SUSE turns its back to us?

Well, idea in 2010/2011 was to create openSUSE Foundation (which at that point was seemingly just a move to calm down people that wanted to fork openSUSE away from Novell's openSUSE).

https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Foundation

I doubt currently SUSE would oppose such a move, considering good relations, but it's always good to have ensurance in case something doesn't go right in the future.

...

If anyone has any questions, concerns, or feedback, please feel free to discuss them on this list or email me directly.

So maybe it's time again to open up discussion about Foundation, but this time have it result in something more substancial than before.

So because you asked about this I can say that the board has been discussed the idea of having a separate bank account / foundation since the last face to face (Note this is very different from financial independence for reasons I will outline below) The reasoning for this is completely different and stems from well before any of us knew about SUSE's change of ownership (we all found that out yesterday as well). Last year we had an issue where Google was unable to sponsor openSUSE to send some of its people to a google summer of code event, this was because SUSE's budget was frozen so they could not accept the money then spend it. We also have similar issues at times accepting monetary sponsorship for conferences etc. So yes it makes sense for openSUSE to have its own bank account and openSUSE already has the power to do this without needing to ask SUSE. Whether we create a separate foundation or join with a larger project like Software In the Public Interest as Arch and Debian currently do is still something we are discussing. But at this stage the board is just considering being able to have some financial independence via a non SUSE bank account rather then wanting to move all our trademarks / Intellectual Property away from SUSE, currently they are doing a good job looking after that. This wont change our relationship with SUSE, they will likely continue to contribute to openSUSE in the ways they always have as there budget is set up that way, we haven't even really spoken to them about it recently it will just mean that others can sponsor openSUSE as well, although we might end up with an issue of if people giving us money then having to figure out what we should actually spend it on, generally if openSUSE needs something badly it will ask SUSE for it and SUSE will sort it out. Having said all that with out SUSE, openSUSE could not function in the way it does to day, it would be near impossible to find another sponsor to cover the cost of things like the build service and to cover paying for a release management team that can keep up with our pace of development without even thinking about all the contributions coming from SUSE employees. At the same time if SUSE was to part with openSUSE it would still need to maintain the equivalent of tumbleweed for future SLE releases and the reality is maintaining this internally without the help of openSUSE would almost certainly cost SUSE more and would result in a lower quality end product, SUSE's management is well aware of this on multiple levels, they have talked about it many times so personally I really wouldn't be worried about openSUSE's future with SUSE. Cheers -- 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

I will remain sceptical, but I wish you (and us I guess) the best resolution. Maybe it helps to look at the history of EQT. I hadn't heard of them before yesterday, but they sure look like long-term, sustainable and endurable investment company. Might well be that SUSE fits better here than in the realm of Legacy. Although I am usually as sceptical as you sound when things like that happen,

Am Dienstag, 3. Juli 2018, 07:34:18 CEST schrieb hellcp@opensuse.org: this time my gut feeling says this sounds so much better than the five (?) other acquisitions/mergers that SUSE has been through. #justmy2cents -- Markus Feilner Team Lead Documentation P.S.: I moved - new home address: Wöhrdstraße 10, 93059 Regensburg - - - _This incident will be documented._ - - - +49 173 5876 838 (also via Signal), privat: +49 170 302 7092 mfeilner@suse.[com|de] http://www.suse.com G+: https://plus.google.com/+MarkusFeilner Xing: http://www.xing.com/profile/Markus_Feilner LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markusfeilner #mfeilner: Jabber, Skype, Twitter openSUSE: http://www.opensuse.org - - - SUSE Linux GmbH GF: Felix Imendörffer, Jane Smithard, Graham Norton, HRB 21284 (AG Nürnberg)

Simon Lees wrote:

lower quality end product, SUSE's management is well aware of this on multiple levels, they have talked about it many times so personally I really wouldn't be worried about openSUSE's future with SUSE.

Yep, the opposite in fact - having SUSE being run as a completely independent organisation will be good for SUSE, hence good for openSUSE. IMHO. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (18.8°C) http://www.hostsuisse.com/ - dedicated server rental in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 03/07/18 19:55, Henne Vogelsang wrote:

Hey,

On 03.07.2018 06:33, Simon Lees wrote:

...

So yes it makes sense for openSUSE to have its own bank account and openSUSE already has the power to do this without needing to ask SUSE.

Interesting, how so?

Well we can create an account but we can't make SUSE put money in it, but that's not our plan. As I outlined in my previous email the openSUSE project needs a way to accept sponsorship and pay for things out of said sponsorship when SUSE's budget is frozen. This was an issue for google summer of code last year and has a potential for issues with conference sponsorship for something like the openSUSE asia Summit. So this is an issue that needs to be solved.

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rather then wanting to move all our trademarks / Intellectual Property away from SUSE, currently they are doing a good job looking after that.

We don't have trademarks. SUSE has trademarks. Because there is no "we".

The board has been through this before, maybe it would make sense to invite some of the old board members to your discussions so we don't have to go through this again and again? :-)

We have a Richard who has been on the board for quite some time and has given us a list of options that the board has looked into in the past and decided were unfeasible / not possible so we are not looking at those and are instead looking at some other possible alternatives. -- 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

Hi all, Le mardi 03 juillet 2018 à 08:51:34, Simon Lees a écrit :

On 03/07/18 19:55, Henne Vogelsang wrote:

...

Hey,

On 03.07.2018 06:33, Simon Lees wrote:

...

So yes it makes sense for openSUSE to have its own bank account and openSUSE already has the power to do this without needing to ask SUSE.

Interesting, how so?

Well we can create an account but we can't make SUSE put money in it, but that's not our plan. As I outlined in my previous email the openSUSE project needs a way to accept sponsorship and pay for things out of said sponsorship when SUSE's budget is frozen. This was an issue for google summer of code last year and has a potential for issues with conference sponsorship for something like the openSUSE asia Summit. So this is an issue that needs to be solved.

...

...

rather then wanting to move all our trademarks / Intellectual Property away from SUSE, currently they are doing a good job looking after that.

We don't have trademarks. SUSE has trademarks. Because there is no "we".

The board has been through this before, maybe it would make sense to invite some of the old board members to your discussions so we don't have to go through this again and again? :-)

We have a Richard who has been on the board for quite some time and has given us a list of options that the board has looked into in the past and decided were unfeasible / not possible so we are not looking at those and are instead looking at some other possible alternatives.

What would be the benefit of creating an openSUSE Foundation vs. joining, as it has been suggested, joining SPI ? Do we know why the idea has been abandonned in the past ? Cheers, -- Sébastien 'sogal' POHER -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Hey, On 03.07.2018 13:30, hellcp@opensuse.org wrote:

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The board has been through this before, maybe it would make sense to invite some of the old board members to your discussions so we don't have to go through this again and again? :-)

And it will be repeated forever unless everybody and their mother has back reference with a clear explanation as to why.

The discussion simply stopped because people had serious doubts about the usefulness of this exercise.

Don't keep this behind closed doors

All of this was discussed publicly on opensuse-project in 2011.

Be open about it unless you want this discussion popping up every once in a while, Foundation wiki portal is a great place to put that information

Fair enough. So why haven't you put it there if you already researched it and wrote an article about it? :-) Henne -- Henne Vogelsang http://www.opensuse.org Everybody has a plan, until they get hit. - Mike Tyson -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

2018-07-03 13:21 GMT+02:00 Simon Lees :

...

On 03/07/18 19:55, Henne Vogelsang wrote:

...

The board has been through this before, maybe it would make sense to invite some of the old board members to your discussions so we don't have to go through this again and again? :-)

We have a Richard who has been on the board for quite some time and has given us a list of options that the board has looked into in the past and decided were unfeasible / not possible so we are not looking at those and are instead looking at some other possible alternatives.

Simon I have to disagree with you on that. It is true that we are really lucky of having Richard in the board, who can give us many details about what happens in the last 5 years. But if there is someone who can help as to have the whole picture and who is willing to meet with us, I think we should really listen to him. If at the end the information we find out doesn't help us, it is not a problem, but that we missed some important information, then we have a big problem. I have already wrote two hours ago an email to the board mailing list to see what the other think and to discuss how is the best way that this can happen, so Simon let discuss it there instead of in the project mailing list ;)

2018-07-03 14:34 GMT+02:00 Henne Vogelsang :

...

...

Be open about it unless you want this discussion popping up every once in a while, Foundation wiki portal is a great place to put that information

Fair enough. So why haven't you put it there if you already researched it and wrote an article about it? :-)

Please give us a little bit more of time to make a proper research of all the options and come up with a proposal. As Simon already explained, we haven't decided anything yet, we have just some ideas and we are trying to find out what could work better and there will be chances for everybody to give his opinion. The only reason why this was said now, it is because of the concerns about SUSE being acquired by EQT. But to be honest this is something we were considering beforeii and I personally don't think that the relation between openSUSE and SUSE is going to change now. Even if it does, I don't know if having an openSUSE Foundation would solve the problem (but this is a problem that we at the moment don't have).

Regards,

Ana I'm with Ana here. And I like the idea of consulting previous board members. I've been around since S.u.S.E. and from 2005 on, this discussion has come up over and over again, with peaks around the various sales of SUSE. Becoming an independent foundation is not that easy, specially not now after

Op dinsdag 3 juli 2018 14:55:01 CEST schreef Ana Martínez: the coming to effect of GDPR. With former board members joining us in the discussion, we might get some info/points we haven't thought about yet. No idea how this could relate to something like SPI though. -- Gertjan Lettink a.k.a. Knurpht openSUSE Board Member openSUSE Forums Team -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 03.07.2018 15:13, Lars Marowsky-Bree wrote:

On 2018-07-03T13:40:24, sogal wrote:

...

What would be the benefit of creating an openSUSE Foundation vs. joining, as it has been suggested, joining SPI ?

Most foundations (this is also what Ceph is looking towards) are set up as directed funds, or foundations under the umbrella of, something like SFCC, Linux Foundation, SPI etc.

Full ACK, see http://www.spi-inc.org/projects/services/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 3 July 2018 at 15:02, Knurpht@openSUSE wrote:

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2018-07-03 13:21 GMT+02:00 Simon Lees :

...

On 03/07/18 19:55, Henne Vogelsang wrote:

...

The board has been through this before, maybe it would make sense to invite some of the old board members to your discussions so we don't have to go through this again and again? :-)

We have a Richard who has been on the board for quite some time and has given us a list of options that the board has looked into in the past and decided were unfeasible / not possible so we are not looking at those and are instead looking at some other possible alternatives.

Simon I have to disagree with you on that. It is true that we are really lucky of having Richard in the board, who can give us many details about what happens in the last 5 years. But if there is someone who can help as to have the whole picture and who is willing to meet with us, I think we should really listen to him. If at the end the information we find out doesn't help us, it is not a problem, but that we missed some important information, then we have a big problem. I have already wrote two hours ago an email to the board mailing list to see what the other think and to discuss how is the best way that this can happen, so Simon let discuss it there instead of in the project mailing list ;)

2018-07-03 14:34 GMT+02:00 Henne Vogelsang :

...

...

Be open about it unless you want this discussion popping up every once in a while, Foundation wiki portal is a great place to put that information

Fair enough. So why haven't you put it there if you already researched it and wrote an article about it? :-)

Please give us a little bit more of time to make a proper research of all the options and come up with a proposal. As Simon already explained, we haven't decided anything yet, we have just some ideas and we are trying to find out what could work better and there will be chances for everybody to give his opinion. The only reason why this was said now, it is because of the concerns about SUSE being acquired by EQT. But to be honest this is something we were considering beforeii and I personally don't think that the relation between openSUSE and SUSE is going to change now. Even if it does, I don't know if having an openSUSE Foundation would solve the problem (but this is a problem that we at the moment don't have).

Regards,

Ana I'm with Ana here. And I like the idea of consulting previous board members. I've been around since S.u.S.E. and from 2005 on, this discussion has come up over and over again, with peaks around the various sales of SUSE. Becoming an independent foundation is not that easy, specially not now after

Op dinsdag 3 juli 2018 14:55:01 CEST schreef Ana Martínez: the coming to effect of GDPR. With former board members joining us in the discussion, we might get some info/points we haven't thought about yet. No idea how this could relate to something like SPI though.

I have no problem with wizened old elders of the project contributing to this discussion in our board meetings. a lot of things may have changed in the 7 years since this was last discussed in deep seriousness, but it is important enough that the current board should have as much accurate context from that time as possible. and i echo that philosophy also in a broader sense - if anyone in the project has ideas, experience, or other thoughts on this topic, please make yourself heard - there is no way anything can change, or stay, the way the project wants if lots of people stay quiet on the topic my personal view on the topic is that I trust SUSE and see many advantages with the status quo - i feel we currently have a situation of an effective mexican standoff. SUSE provides the project with a great deal, openSUSE provides a lot in return. if either side would ever go rogue and significantly damage the relationship, it would be devastating to both organisations. that said, ideas like openSUSE joining SPI could give opensuse additional capabilities to handle money in ways that it currently cannot. So I am curious about any investigations in this area, especially as I see how SPI membership could help mitigate many of the concerns people have regarding the possibilities of trust breaking down.

-- Gertjan Lettink a.k.a. Knurpht openSUSE Board Member openSUSE Forums Team

-- 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

Hi Carlos, hi all Le mardi 03 juillet 2018 à 08:35:17, Carlos E. R. a écrit :

On 2018-07-03 17:02, Richard Brown wrote:

...

that said, ideas like openSUSE joining SPI could give opensuse additional capabilities to handle money in ways that it currently cannot. So I am curious about any investigations in this area, especially as I see how SPI membership could help mitigate many of the concerns people have regarding the possibilities of trust breaking down.

What is SPI? This?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_in_the_Public_Interest

Yes it is. cheers, -- Sébastien 'sogal' Poher

On 03/07/18 21:54, Henne Vogelsang wrote:

Hey,

On 03.07.2018 13:21, Simon Lees wrote:

...

On 03/07/18 19:55, Henne Vogelsang wrote:

...

On 03.07.2018 06:33, Simon Lees wrote:

...

So yes it makes sense for openSUSE to have its own bank account and openSUSE already has the power to do this without needing to ask SUSE.

Interesting, how so?

Well we can create an account but we can't make SUSE put money in it,

Who is this "we" you talk about? You and?

The openSUSE board acting as the people responsible for the projects finances.

...

...

...

rather then wanting to move all our trademarks / Intellectual Property away from SUSE, currently they are doing a good job looking after that.

We don't have trademarks. SUSE has trademarks. Because there is no "we".

The board has been through this before, maybe it would make sense to invite some of the old board members to your discussions so we don't have to go through this again and again? :-)

We have a Richard who has been on the board for quite some time

I'm sure Richard has done his best to convey second hand what has happened, but as usual that is a lossy process.

Yes I was by no means saying that we may not have all the details, I was more saying that we know that the board looked at various ideas previously and obviously decided against doing anything at that time. The board has decided that if you or any previous board member would like to share your experiences with us on this topic you are more then welcome to join the first part of our next meeting, alternatively you can contact me directly via email, irc, some conferencing format as I am the person researching the various options and will be presenting them to the board.

...

and has given us a list of options that the board has looked into in the past and decided were unfeasible / not possible

Proving my point above, after very careful consideration we have had chosen a form back then. What about that one?

...

so we are not looking at those and are instead looking at some other possible alternatives.

Like? :-)

As Richard stated in his email, likely partnering with an existing foundation that provides services such as accepting / helping to manage money for open source projects. The board is pretty interested in a solution that doesn't require openSUSE to start its own foundation as that is a large amount of extra work, but it is generally wise to atleast investigate all alternatives which is why it was mentioned. Cheers -- 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

Hey, On 04.07.2018 09:04, Simon Lees wrote:

On 03/07/18 21:54, Henne Vogelsang wrote:

...

On 03.07.2018 13:21, Simon Lees wrote:

...

On 03/07/18 19:55, Henne Vogelsang wrote:

...

On 03.07.2018 06:33, Simon Lees wrote:

...

So yes it makes sense for openSUSE to have its own bank account and openSUSE already has the power to do this without needing to ask SUSE.

Interesting, how so?

Well we can create an account but we can't make SUSE put money in it,

Who is this "we" you talk about? You and?

The openSUSE board acting as the people responsible for the projects finances.

Are you seriously suggesting that you want to propose to handle openSUSE donation on a private bank account of yours? I hope not :-)

...

...

...

...

rather then wanting to move all our trademarks / Intellectual Property away from SUSE, currently they are doing a good job looking after that.

We don't have trademarks. SUSE has trademarks. Because there is no "we".

The board has been through this before, maybe it would make sense to invite some of the old board members to your discussions so we don't have to go through this again and again? :-)

We have a Richard who has been on the board for quite some time

I'm sure Richard has done his best to convey second hand what has happened, but as usual that is a lossy process.

The board has decided that if you or any previous board member would like to share your experiences with us on this topic you are more then welcome to join the first part of our next meeting

Gracious! ;-) When would that be?

...

...

so we are not looking at those and are instead looking at some other possible alternatives.

Like? :-)

As Richard stated in his email, likely partnering with an existing foundation that provides services such as accepting / helping to manage money for open source projects.

Proving my point even from above even further, we have looked into SPI and some other umbrella orgs back then and talked to various people who where involved with them (back then) :-) There where some serious concerns about ownership of (physical) assets if I remember correctly. Maybe this changed. Have you reached out to friends of projects that are currently with SPI? Henne -- Henne Vogelsang http://www.opensuse.org Everybody has a plan, until they get hit. - Mike Tyson -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 2018 M07 5, Thu 08:26:33 CEST Simon Lees wrote:

On 05/07/18 01:48, Henne Vogelsang wrote:

...

On 04.07.2018 09:04, Simon Lees wrote:

...

On 03/07/18 21:54, Henne Vogelsang wrote:

...

On 03.07.2018 13:21, Simon Lees wrote:

...

On 03/07/18 19:55, Henne Vogelsang wrote:

...

On 03.07.2018 06:33, Simon Lees wrote: > So yes it makes sense for openSUSE to have its own bank account and > openSUSE already has the power to do this without needing to ask > SUSE.

Interesting, how so?

Well we can create an account but we can't make SUSE put money in it,

Who is this "we" you talk about? You and?

The openSUSE board acting as the people responsible for the projects finances.

Are you seriously suggesting that you want to propose to handle openSUSE donation on a private bank account of yours? I hope not :-)

Nope most certainly not :-)

Do you realize that you are talking in riddles here? Could you please simply tell us how you would create a bank account for openSUSE? I don't see how that could happen without a new entity which currently does not exist. Unless you simply would continue to use SUSE's back account. Which, I think, is the most pragmatic solution anyway.

My personal initial gut feel on SPI is that if we partnered with them we would almost certainly continue operating the way we have been especially in regards to infrastructure like hardware where we ask for donations of physical hardware or purchase it with through SUSE rather then the SPI and the SPI would just be a fallback / plan B to use in cases where we need to work around cases where SUSE's budget is frozen. Whether other umbrella orgs would give us more freedom i'm still researching. And of course other then the board deciding that this is an issue that we need to look into and solve I haven't discussed any of this with the rest of the board yet they are also reading my opinion for the first time here. But in the next meeting I will hopefully have info on a larger range of orgs then just SPI.

SPI or other umbrella organizations are great for projects which don't have any other organization to handle financial and legal things. They come with some burden, though. They might not be as flexible as desired and they of course take a fee. Wouldn't it make much more sense to go with the organization supporting openSUSE for its entire existence, i.e. SUSE? SUSE has proven to be a good steward, has reliably put in resources and manpower, and is still giving the community quite a bit of leeway. There might be a few constraints here and there, but if you look at it compared to the total support in terms of infrastructure, resources, manpower, is it really worth talking about it? Wouldn't our time be much better invested into maintaining the great relationship between SUSE and openSUSE instead of moving away? -- Cornelius Schumacher -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 05/07/18 08:49, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:

On 2018 M07 5, Thu 08:26:33 CEST Simon Lees wrote:

...

On 05/07/18 01:48, Henne Vogelsang wrote:

...

On 04.07.2018 09:04, Simon Lees wrote:

...

On 03/07/18 21:54, Henne Vogelsang wrote:

...

On 03.07.2018 13:21, Simon Lees wrote:

...

On 03/07/18 19:55, Henne Vogelsang wrote: > On 03.07.2018 06:33, Simon Lees wrote: >> So yes it makes sense for openSUSE to have its own bank account and >> openSUSE already has the power to do this without needing to ask >> SUSE. > > Interesting, how so?

Well we can create an account but we can't make SUSE put money in it,

Who is this "we" you talk about? You and?

The openSUSE board acting as the people responsible for the projects finances.

Are you seriously suggesting that you want to propose to handle openSUSE donation on a private bank account of yours? I hope not :-)

Nope most certainly not :-)

Do you realize that you are talking in riddles here? Could you please simply tell us how you would create a bank account for openSUSE?

I don't see how that could happen without a new entity which currently does not exist. Unless you simply would continue to use SUSE's back account. Which, I think, is the most pragmatic solution anyway.

Exactly if we were to create a bank account for openSUSE we would need to create a new entity, but the most likely case is we will not create our own bank account but use an umbrella organisation. But I simply cannot tell you what or how we will do something yet because we are still in the process of looking into various options and we as the board have no idea which options we are likely to take and which options we are ruling out for various reasons. Ideally we would have started the discussion on this list in several weeks when we have already looked at most of the options and actually have some idea of what we would like to do. However as the question was raised as part of the SUSE ownership changes so I thought it was worth saying we are in the initial stages of doing something.

...

My personal initial gut feel on SPI is that if we partnered with them we would almost certainly continue operating the way we have been especially in regards to infrastructure like hardware where we ask for donations of physical hardware or purchase it with through SUSE rather then the SPI and the SPI would just be a fallback / plan B to use in cases where we need to work around cases where SUSE's budget is frozen. Whether other umbrella orgs would give us more freedom i'm still researching. And of course other then the board deciding that this is an issue that we need to look into and solve I haven't discussed any of this with the rest of the board yet they are also reading my opinion for the first time here. But in the next meeting I will hopefully have info on a larger range of orgs then just SPI.

SPI or other umbrella organizations are great for projects which don't have any other organization to handle financial and legal things. They come with some burden, though. They might not be as flexible as desired and they of course take a fee.

Wouldn't it make much more sense to go with the organization supporting openSUSE for its entire existence, i.e. SUSE? SUSE has proven to be a good steward, has reliably put in resources and manpower, and is still giving the community quite a bit of leeway.

There might be a few constraints here and there, but if you look at it compared to the total support in terms of infrastructure, resources, manpower, is it really worth talking about it? Wouldn't our time be much better invested into maintaining the great relationship between SUSE and openSUSE instead of moving away?

Yes we have no intention of moving away from our great relationship with SUSE, at the same time there have been financial restrictions / limitations with our current arrangement that have made it impossible to work with organizations outside of SUSE with our current setup (example below), this and other less major issues have lead the board to believe that we need an alternative solution at times when dealing with sponsors outside of SUSE, If SUSE finds it beneficial to also use this alternative solution at times then they are more then welcome too but we are expecting that atleast most of the time they probably wont. As I mentioned in a previous email last year google offered to sponsor openSUSE in order to to send some people involved in GSoC to an event, at the time SUSE's budgets were frozen and they were unable to accept / use this money on openSUSE's behalf and as a result people missed out on traveling to an event that would have been fully paid for. The board is very keen to ensure that such a situation does not happen again and that we have an alternative way of accepting the sponsorship. Even if this alternative way is only ever used sparingly in cases when SUSE can't accept the money for whatever reason or in cases where I third party doesn't want to donate via SUSE because they have no way of confirming the money they donate will actually be spent on openSUSE. -- 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 2018 M07 5, Thu 09:54:02 CEST Simon Lees wrote:

As I mentioned in a previous email last year google offered to sponsor openSUSE in order to to send some people involved in GSoC to an event, at the time SUSE's budgets were frozen and they were unable to accept / use this money on openSUSE's behalf and as a result people missed out on traveling to an event that would have been fully paid for. The board is very keen to ensure that such a situation does not happen again and that we have an alternative way of accepting the sponsorship. Even if this alternative way is only ever used sparingly in cases when SUSE can't accept the money for whatever reason or in cases where I third party doesn't want to donate via SUSE because they have no way of confirming the money they donate will actually be spent on openSUSE.

Even with an umbrella organization there is admistrative overhead and things might be slow or complicated. I went through this a few times with projects in the context of KDE. Moving to umbrella organizations and back. What I can say is that this is the type of work you want to minimize. Your capacity as board is limited, especially as you are all volunteers. So I would recommend to choose wisely what you spend your time on. I'm also sure that there are still things to be optimized with SUSE. Maybe that's more effective. If external sponsorship would allow to increase the openSUSE budget by 50% or 100% or something like that, it would probably be worth to find an alternative setup but if it's a small number other activities might give you a better return. -- Cornelius Schumacher -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 5 July 2018 at 10:34, Christian Bruckmayer wrote:

On 07/05/2018 02:24 AM, Simon Lees wrote: [snip]

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SUSE, at the same time there have been financial restrictions / >

Yes we have no intention of moving away from our great relationship with limitations with our current arrangement that have made it impossible to > work with organizations outside of SUSE with our current setup (example > below), this and other less major issues have lead the board to believe > that we need an alternative solution at times when dealing with sponsors > outside of SUSE, If SUSE finds it beneficial to also use this > alternative solution at times then they are more then welcome too but we > are expecting that atleast most of the time they probably wont. > > As I mentioned in a previous email last year google offered to sponsor > openSUSE in order to to send some people involved in GSoC to an event, > at the time SUSE's budgets were frozen and they were unable to accept / > use this money on openSUSE's behalf and as a result people missed out on > traveling to an event that would have been fully paid for. The board is > very keen to ensure that such a situation does not happen again and that > we have an alternative way of accepting the sponsorship. Even if this > alternative way is only ever used sparingly in cases when SUSE can't > accept the money for whatever reason or in cases where I third party > doesn't want to donate via SUSE because they have no way of confirming > the money they donate will actually be spent on openSUSE. As I was the Google Summer of Code admin the last three years, I want to give some more insights.

openSUSE participates since many years in GSoC. To reward the organizations, Google offers every year a donation. This donation is usually 1100 USD travel stipend for two mentors + 500 USD for every student we mentored (+ 500 additional travel stipend). For openSUSE it was usually around 5-6k USD. The mentor travel stipend is intended to send two mentors to the annual GSoC mentor summit at the Google campus in Sunnyvale.

As openSUSE has no bank account, the only way to accept money (in an official way) is to use a SUSE account. However, we needed to use a MicroFocus account in the end. Therefore every year I have several long conversations with people from MF accounting and legal if we're allowed (this is not a very common scenario for SUSE as we usually SELL something before we receive money) and how we can accept the money (every year it starts again because people left, process changed etc etc). After we finally get all the information and approval to send the money to a MF account, the money "vanishes" and I need to tell the openSUSE board to state this money in the next "budget planning" (not sure what happens exactly behind the scenes here). If this process would be feasible if I wouldn't be a SUSE employee, I don't know!

So the issue we had last year was that we received the travel stipend from Google but we were not allowed to spend it because of the frozen budget. This caused some frustration among our mentors.

If this is the only issue we have with receiving / spending money, than an openSUSE foundation might be overkill. If there are more issues like this...

Christian

While nothing Christian says above is untrue, it's worth pointing out that in almost every year we've been involved in GSoC, SUSE's has ensured openSUSE has been able to spend money supporting GSoC greater to or equal to the amount of money received from Google - (in the form of sponsoring travel of mentors to the mentorship summit and sponsoring via the TSP for GSoC students to visit oSC) Ever since SUSE started receiving money from Google for openSUSE's participation in GSoC, Ralf Flaxa (President of Engineering) has assured openSUSE would be able to count of reciprocal sponsorship from SUSE. This remains a principle without question. As far as I am aware, there has been one time when that principle was blocked by practical problems. Last year, where the timing of the GSoC mentorship summit co-coincided with a budget freeze within SUSE. This of course also impacted openSUSE's ability to sponsor anything, not just GSoC. For example all TSP requests had to be frozen at the same time, for the same reason, not just the GSoC mentorship sponsorship. This was a brief freeze while the details of MicroFocus's merger with HPE was sorted out, but due to the narrow timing available for the GSoC mentorship summit, some mentors were unable to secure funding to go. This was a very atypical situation. It's the only time I can think of where such an internal matter within SUSE impacted openSUSE in any meaningful way. Talking not only around GSoC but generally, it is common for almost every justified request for sponsorship from openSUSE to be approved by SUSE. "No, SUSE won't pay for that" is not a sentence I've had the displeasure of writing very often as Chairman. Still, it sucks when SUSE's situation gets in the way of what openSUSE wants to do. It happened once, it might happen again. It is good to discuss this issues, and it would be nice to have ways and means of avoiding/mitigating against such race occurrences. Having something like membership to SPI on the side of our relationship with SUSE might be a relatively low effort method of achieving that. But of course, that option too might be open to similar risks as our current arrangement with SUSE. Who is to say that as a collective organisation SPI or SFConservancy might not have periods of their own budget freezes that could similarly impact openSUSE? Any large organisation is going to have times where some of their services provided may or may not be as available as normal. That doesn't mean whole independence is the solution either - governance can be tricky, who'll controls such bank accounts? who will have access to it? will there always be access in time for situations like the narrow-window we often have for things like arranging GSoC mentorship summit? Even then, banks fail, currencies fluxuate, credit limits exist, currency transfers can be limited, taxes need to be paid... The way I see it, every option, from the status quo, to an umbrella, to full independence, doesn't guarantee openSUSE will never have a repeat of last years GSoC mentorship sponsorship problems. In short, shit happens. The question is, which shit are we as a community most happy to have? My vote at the moment would be the status quo, not only because it's the 'devil we know' - but it's the least work for openSUSE, and there is the cathartic benefit of being able to blame SUSE when SUSE make mistakes..and such hiccups have always led to SUSE making improvements for openSUSE long term. There's benefits to having a multi-billion dollar company so close and caring for a community. The amount of times SUSE dives in and goes above and beyond to shift money, staff, hardware, influence in other organisations/conferences, or other things to benefit openSUSE is far more than the one or two examples where SUSE's business/processes/etc gets in the projects way. The umbrealla/SPI option is not one I'm opposed to, but in many respects it brings many of the same risks, just under a different name. It might be worth while - diversifying and spreading the risk across two organisations might mean the openSUSE project always has a plan B. But I'm only most comfortable with the idea on the premise that we keep almost everything we have with SUSE right now the same; I think we should just be pursuing joining an umbrella like SPI -in-addition- to our current relationship with SUSE, not instead of. I'm least keen on the fully independent, all-on-our-own foundation model. It's the most work, with the most risk, and if/when anything gets screwed up it will be all our own fault, with the least options for rectifying it. SUSE won't be able to do as much as they can today to dive in and help when things go wrong, so we'll have less of a safety net. I don't see how any of the perceived or practical benefits of that model would justify taking that sort of risk with the Project. Regards, Richard Brown openSUSE Chairman -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 03/07/18 14:33, Simon Lees wrote:

On 03/07/18 01:02,hellcp@opensuse.org wrote: <pruned>

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So maybe it's time again to open up discussion about Foundation, but this time have it result in something more substancial than before. So because you asked about this I can say that the board has been discussed the idea of having a separate bank account / foundation since the last face to face (Note this is very different from financial independence for reasons I will outline below)

The reasoning for this is completely different and stems from well before any of us knew about SUSE's change of ownership (we all found that out yesterday as well). Last year we had an issue where Google was unable to sponsor openSUSE to send some of its people to a google summer of code event, this was because SUSE's budget was frozen so they could not accept the money then spend it.

Why was "SUSE's budget" "frozen"? In what way and by what means was it "frozen"?

We also have similar issues at times accepting monetary sponsorship for conferences etc. So yes it makes sense for openSUSE to have its own bank account and openSUSE already has the power to do this without needing to ask SUSE.

Are you sure that you have this right? <pruned> BC -- Diapers and politicians should be changed often; both for the same reason. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Good Morning, Am 06.07.2018 um 08:06 schrieb Basil Chupin:

Is there any reason why SUSE cannot establish a bank account called "openSUSE", with drawing rights by specific signatories (ie, 2 or 3 people to sign the cheques), deposit some shekels into that account to be used by openSUSE, with the monthly bank statements going to the SUSE accounting department and be audited by the internal auditor?

This is what people refer to as "use a SUSE bank account". Given the changes that are in front of us, this can improve, as the way to SUSE will not longer go via Microfocus. regards, Klaas -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

On 06/07/18 15:12, Basil Chupin wrote:

On 03/07/18 14:33, Simon Lees wrote:

...

On 03/07/18 01:02,hellcp@opensuse.org  wrote: <pruned>

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So maybe it's time again to open up discussion about Foundation, but this time have it result in something more substancial than before. So because you asked about this I can say that the board has been discussed the idea of having a separate bank account / foundation since the last face to face (Note this is very different from financial independence for reasons I will outline below)

The reasoning for this is completely different and stems from well before any of us knew about SUSE's change of ownership (we all found that out yesterday as well). Last year we had an issue where Google was unable to sponsor openSUSE to send some of its people to a google summer of code event, this was because SUSE's budget was frozen so they could not accept the money then spend it.

Why was "SUSE's budget" "frozen"? In what way and by what means was it "frozen"?

See Richard and Christians replies, but essentially it meant no additional spending could be made other then what had already been approved.

...

  We also have similar issues at times accepting monetary sponsorship for conferences etc. So yes it makes sense for openSUSE to have its own bank account and openSUSE already has the power to do this without needing to ask SUSE.

Are you sure that you have this right?

In terms of what we are talking about here, having an account that 3rd party donors can put funds in and the openSUSE project can then spend those funds yes. In terms of having a separate account that SUSE then puts all its openSUSE sponsorship money into absolutely not but thats not what we are looking at here. -- 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 6 July 2018 at 09:58, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:

On Freitag, 6. Juli 2018 09:03:42 CEST Simon Lees wrote:

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On 06/07/18 15:12, Basil Chupin wrote:

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On 03/07/18 14:33, Simon Lees wrote:

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...

We also have similar issues at times accepting monetary sponsorship for conferences etc. So yes it makes sense for openSUSE to have its own bank account and openSUSE already has the power to do this without needing to ask SUSE.

Are you sure that you have this right?

In terms of what we are talking about here, having an account that 3rd party donors can put funds in and the openSUSE project can then spend those funds yes.

You still haven't told us who would own this account. With SUSE being the only legal entity right now which can own anything regarding openSUSE, I don't see how the answer to this question can be yes.

Where is it defined that SUSE is the only "legal entity right now which can own anything regarding openSUSE"? openSUSE is a registered trademark administered under the openSUSE Trademark Guidelines [1] Those guidelines permit many uses, such as for Advocacy Groups. There are restrictions that the group should not identify itself as "sponsored by, or affiliated with the openSUSE Project (or its related projects) unless it actually has been so approved, sponsored, or affiliated;" So take for example a situation like SPI, which could be described as an advocacy group. The openSUSE Project could choose to become a member of SPI, Inc. This would be an approved affiliation under the Trademark Guidelines. SPI operates as "Software in the Public Interest, Inc" - that would become a 'legal entity' affiliated with openSUSE. Donations could be made to "Software in the Public Interest, Inc", with memo/payment references to "openSUSE" [2] SPI, not openSUSE would be taking the donations and dealing with all those nasty legal details, with the money/hardware/etc marked for use by openSUSE. openSUSE could then make use of those donations earmarked directly for it, in addition to anything extra which SPI might make available to it if openSUSE was deemed to have such a need. A solution like the above would be consistent with the Trademark Guidelines and it's current status with SUSE, while still enabling openSUSE to leverage SPI's donation, asset holding, and legal services. Most of which are services we don't need given our relationship with SUSE, but they might be nice options to have for a rainy day. As an aside, as this is mostly brainstorming in the open - It's fair to consider my interpretation of SPI as an Advocacy Group may not be wholly correct, but in such a case the "All Other Uses" clause in the openSUSE Trademark Guidelines would apply. The initial point of contact for discussing granting explicit permission for any Trademark use not defined in the Trademark Guidelines is the openSUSE Board. So that route remains a viable one for investigation. [1] https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Trademark_guidelines [2] https://www.spi-inc.org/donations/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org