[opensuse-project] Proposal: Reforming openSUSE Membership To Better Reflect Our Ethos
Hi Project, The Board has been considering the state of the current openSUSE Membership system and it's role in the Project's governance. For those who are unaware, openSUSE Members are the individuals who have voting rights in openSUSE Board elections, so directly elect 5 out of the 6 people in the projects senior conflict resolution & leadership body. Currently, to become a member, an openSUSE contributor must first contribute to the Project. After contributing in a "sustained and substantial" manner, they can Apply to become a member. This application requires the applicant to fill in the 'Contributions' section in their connect.opensuse.org profile and applying to the openSUSE Members group. A Membership committee then reviews those applications, confirms whether or not the claimed contributions are valid and meet the criteria of "sustained and substantial". This requires that the balance of votes of the committee reaches at least 3 positive votes. (eg. 4 positive votes and 1 negative vote results in the Applicant being approved. 5 positive votes and 3 negative votes results in the Applicant not approved). Approved members then receive @opensuse.org email addresses and IRC cloaks, and are eligible to run in openSUSE Board elections. Besides that, an openSUSE Member really isn't any different from any other contributor - we're not a project where you need to be a Member in order to be able to contribute to the Project in any meaningful way. In addition to the above, openSUSE Members have the capability of recalling the Board, causing a re-election of the Board if 20% of the membership believe they are not correctly being served by their current Board. Members remain members until they no longer wish to be members. Membership lapsing used to be entirely on a voluntary basis. Recently we have experimented with using bots to identify activity of Members. If a member is no longer visibly active in the Project in any way, we have recently begun repeatedly asking (using the contact details available) whether they wish to remain a member. Any answer, guarantees that membership remains. Failure to answer removes that contributor's status as an openSUSE Member. It can be re-instated at any time upon request. So, that is the status quo, why has the Board been thinking about this? Well, your Board collectively feels that this system currently has a number of practical and philosophical flaws, which we would like to see addressed by the Project. The primary issue of concern is the one which led to the 'activity check' and 'ask if users want to remain a Member, if no activity detected' approach introduced over the last year. The Board feels it's really important that it is accountable to the Project. In it's primary role as arbitrators of disputes in the Project, or as decision-makers of last resort, it's capability to act effectively in that role is compromised if it is perceived to not represent the Project at large. That is why we have that rule that 20% of the Members can recall the Board. It's designed to be so low, so the Board can be seen to be so directly accountable to the Membership (and by proxy, the Project at large). Before we have the 'activity check', our Membership list included a great deal of former contributors who had no longer any interest in the Project. This made reaching this 20% threshold harder and harder, undermining the whole point of that low threshold. The removal of Members who are no longer part of the Project has made it easier for the Membership to recall the Board. But the Board feels this is not enough. Over the years, especially recent ones, openSUSE has appealed to a new generation of contributors. Our distributions are significantly larger than ever before, moving at a pace of hundreds of changes a week. openSUSE is home to a growing family of sub-projects, beyond just Linux distributions. openSUSE has strong contribution bases in more and more countries, as demonstrated by examples like our openSUSE Asia summits. And yet, the number of openSUSE Members remains at best relatively static, or shrinking as a result of the 'activity check'. In short, there is a strong case to be made that the Membership scheme, in it's current form, can not possibly reflect the Project at large. The Board have identified a number of practical reasons for this stagnation in the membership scheme. 1) Connect is a pain to use - It's unmaintained, and our openSUSE Heroes infra team very much want to stop running the server. 2) Connect is a REAL pain to use - a significant percentage of membership requests do not include any claimed contributions, so the committee cannot verify those contributions and have no choice but to reject them. 3) Connect is an ABSOLUTE pain to use - the membership committee never get notified when there is new application, meaning that applications can often linger for weeks or months before enough vote positively or negatively to accept an application. 4) Connect is an UNGODLY pain to use - anyone reapplying for membership immediately shows up the committees queue with their previous voting score - which has on way too many occasions led to instant-deapproval when the committee didn't realise the person was applying for a second time. (I'm pretty sure this even happened to me, back in the day). We COULD just fix connect to address the problems above, but they've been known for a long while and no contributor has stepped up to fix them. Even if they were resolved, would remain logistical issues 1) The Membership committee, by design has to a small group of trusted individuals. With the Project as diverse as it is now, it's practically impossible for that small group to have an oversight of contributions across the whole Project. This makes it very hard for them to judge whether the contributions are "sustained and substantial" under the current system. 2) Even with notifications addressing the fact the committee do not know when applications are waiting, the "+3 on balance" requirement often means that an application can be deadlocked by just a few individuals voting down a potential member. "Sustained and Substantial" is a subjective measurement, which is always going to lead to differences of opinions. It's not all about practicalities, like I said, the Board have identified a number of philosophical problems with the Membership scheme in it's current form also As a project, we generally operate with a mindset of 'those that do, decide'. Committees, permission, and other such obstacles, are things we actively avoid when establishing processes in the Project. We have a strong ethos of empowering anyone to contribute and not having barriers to entry. The Board currently feels the Membership scheme in it's current form runs counter to this mindset and ultimately undermines it. No matter how well meaning the individuals in the committee are, ultimately some committee currently decides if your contributions are 'good enough' to be a Member. We'll let a random person off the street contribute patches to core parts of our software, but they're not good enough to have an opinion on how the project is led? We're not great at putting down our collective philosophy, but I think it's not too bold to say that it's not a very "openSUSE" way of thinking. (For more of my thoughts on how our ethos and "those that do, decide" makes us special, you can watch my FOSDEM talk from last weekend [1]) The Board would therefore like to propose a much streamlined Membership scheme for the future. The structure we propose would be something like: * openSUSE Members will retain all of the rights, benefits, and responsibilities they do today (Voting, Emails/Cloaks Recalling the Board, etc) * Any openSUSE contributor can apply to be a Member * The threshold for Membership will be reduced from "sustained and substantial contribution" to "a contribution and a desire to be a Member" (ie. not every contributor should feel compelled to engage with the Project in this way). * If the contribution can be automatically verified, they will automatically become a Member. (New tooling here will be required, but for example, a quick parse of the public mailinglists would be able to verify a good number of contributions, be they through bug reporting, package contributions, or support on the mailinglists) * If they cannot be automatically verified, they need to be manually verified, but only require a single +1 vote from the Membership committee. * Once becoming a Member, they can remain a member as long as they have an interest in the Project. - If ongoing contributions cease or the contributions cannot be automatically detected, Members will be asked by a bot if they wish to remain a Member. Obviously this new system has some risks which the old system does not. In theory "bad actors" could sign up to become openSUSE members, and collectively sway Board elections and such to install inappropriate people into the Board. The Board understands this was a fear which was a major consideration leading to the original structure and requirement for "sustained and substantial" contributions. However, the Board feels this is an unlikely risk in this day and age. Even if that risk is realised, it should be sufficiently mitigated by boards rule preventing 40% of Board members being employed by the same company. Worse case, our healthier Membership scheme could trigger a re-election if 20% of the Membership collectively feel things are going in the wrong direction. So on balance we feel this is the best way forward to ensure openSUSE Membership is easy, engaging, and enables the Membership to more accurately reflect the Project as a whole. Given the nature of this change, the Board would like the feedback and consensus of the Project as a whole. If the overwhelming responses to this post is approval of this approach, then we'd like to see the Project start implementing it post-haste, possibly even before the upcoming next election. However, of course, if there is a significant debate to be had, the right way of resolving this might be a vote by the current Membership - this is one of the reasons why this proposal is announced today; After the election problems we had with connect.opensuse.org last year the Board wanted to be sure we had an alternative voting platform available if we need it. Our awesome openSUSE Heroes have just completed confidence tests of one such system, so if we need it, it's available. Thanks and have a lot of fun, Richard Brown on behalf of the openSUSE Board {Christian Boltz, Richard Brown, Tomas Chvatal, Sarah Julia Kriesch, Gertjan Lettink, Bryan Lunduke} [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5YKBS-KUe8 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Richard Brown composed on 2018-02-10 18:06 (UTC+0100): [<https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-project/2018-02/msg00015.html>] ...
the Board would like the feedback and
+1 -- "Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Whatever else you get, get wisdom." Proverbs 4:7 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Free promotion >:D First of all I will be biased as non member and wannabe, to make this change, sorry. I am totally for it. Second of all Connect sucks, we all know it, and all will admit it. It's written in PHP, and every bit of PHP I dealt with I just have rewritten to something that at least works. I propose something more useful and streamlined for connect, let's say connect++ (going with old cool++ marketing). Instead of making some fake social media wannabe, let's make useful centralized hub for openSUSE infrastructure. And in ruby, because that seems way more popular and common around here. It would be useful to connect: OBS, bugzilla, mailing lists, news, paste, whatever people will need, want or care about (by adding plugins). Let's make it also custom for every person, so they can just have widgets they need. Actually that is not my idea, that is idea dating back to old openSUSE days with myopensuse, which was never fully realized. https://features.opensuse.org/306615 https://gitorious.org/opensuse/myopensuse.git/?p=opensuse:myopensuse.git I made mock-up of this in 5 minutes: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/407993213425680384/4119392170533191... In a way, it makes more sense than adding friends and making groups on which nobody ever interacts. That kind of things should be left to Matrix/IRC or whatever. Although one more useful thing could be integrated into this, profiles, as much of a gimmick it was to make yourself an openSUSE business card and public profile, it was one of the best functionalities of Connect ;) LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
I made mock-up of this in 5 minutes: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/407993213425680384/4119392170533191...
Edit: Provided wrong link, here is correct one https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/407993213425680384/411958046114185227...
LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Helau! [changing the subject to focus on connect.o.o] Am Samstag, 10. Februar 2018, 20:19:44 CET schrieb Stasiek:
First of all I will be biased as non member and wannabe, to make this change, sorry. I am totally for it.
I wouldn't call you biased for wanting to become a member ;-)
Second of all Connect sucks, we all know it, and all will admit it. It's written in PHP, and every bit of PHP I dealt with I just have rewritten to something that at least works.
We all know that connect sucks, but that's not really PHP's fault ;-) Connect is "just" an old system and didn't get enough maintenance, and I'm afraid that a lack of maintenance causes problems in all programming languages. Oh, and I'll scare you a bit more - our wikis run with MediaWiki, which is written in PHP - and works ;-)
I propose something more useful and streamlined for connect, let's say connect++ (going with old cool++ marketing). Instead of making some fake social media wannabe, let's make useful centralized hub for openSUSE infrastructure. And in ruby, because that seems way more popular and common around here.
It would be useful to connect: OBS, bugzilla, mailing lists, news, paste, whatever people will need, want or care about (by adding plugins). Let's make it also custom for every person, so they can just have widgets they need.
Actually that is not my idea, that is idea dating back to old openSUSE days with myopensuse, which was never fully realized. https://features.opensuse.org/306615 https://gitorious.org/opensuse/myopensuse.git/?p=opensuse:myopensuse.g it
I made mock-up of this in 5 minutes: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/407993213425680384/4119392170 53319178/Screenshot_from_2018-02-10_16-58-06.png
I noticed the fixed link in the follow-up mail, but I like that one nevertheless ;-) Let me start with a warning: This mail will be a mix of "reality sometimes hurts" and my usual strict review style (which can scare people, even if they rarely admit it ;-) so please read it until the end before you get mad at me ;-) There's nothing wrong with the ideas in your mockup. Doing the mockup was easy, but I should probably warn you that collecting all this data on one platform might be harder than you think. Bugzilla, OBS, mailinglists, paste.o.o, ... don't have a common interface you could use, so you'll need separate implementations for each system. Actually we had a system to centralize notifications - hermes.opensuse.org. The idea behind it was good, but in practise it's much easier if each service includes notification management and sends out its notification mails or offers RSS feeds itsself. Therefore hermes was shut down to avoid that level of indirection. Also, not all services used hermes for their notifications (for example, bugzilla never did), so it only centralized notifications from a few services. All this doesn't mean I'll stop you or anybody else from implementing your proposal (quite the opposite), I just want to make clear that it will be more interesting[tm] than it might look, and will need constant maintenance if one of the services changes the way you use to collect the data. Personally, I already have most of your proposal implemented by using mail notifications everywhere. I fetch my mails anyway, and reading some more mails (which get filtered into lots of folders) is easier than going to a website. Even if that website has everything in one place, I still have to go there, and "recent $foo" means things will scroll out if someone doesn't check them for a while. A "more from $foo" link will help a bit, but I'm quite sure I don't want to read the mailinglists via a connect replacement ;-) Maybe people who are more used to Facebook etc. have a different opinion on this and think that mail is an ancient way to stay up to date ;-) so as I already said - if you want to implement this, I won't stop you, and I'm sure there are people who will like that page.
In a way, it makes more sense than adding friends and making groups on which nobody ever interacts. That kind of things should be left to Matrix/IRC or whatever.
IMHO the usecase is more "phonebook" and not "interaction" (where IRC and mail are indeed better), see below for details.
Although one more useful thing could be integrated into this, profiles, as much of a gimmick it was to make yourself an openSUSE business card and public profile, it was one of the best functionalities of Connect ;)
The current usage of connect.o.o is (quick summary, I hope I didn't miss anything): - membership management (can be simplified if everybody likes the reforming proposal, but is still needed) - profile pages aka "phonebook" - this can mostly be replaced with user pages in the wiki. However, I wouldn't put my phone / mobile number on a public wiki page. That's where connect's option to share some things only with a specific group of people is helpful. (I'm not sure if we really need this feature and if it's worth the effort, I'm just pointing out that I'd miss it.) - groups - can be useful to find people with similar interests etc. (replaceable for example by using groups on the wiki user pages) and also to share personal information (again, phone numbers etc.) only with specific people - polls - but as we learned in last year's elections, this feature is more or less broken on connect.o.o. - travel support - AFAIK that's already a separate app, so splitting it out to a different server shouldn't be too hard (note the "AFAIK" - I don't know all the technical details) To sum it up: The two must-have features we currently have in connect are - membership management - travel support Everything else - both the existing features on connect.o.o and your proposal - would "only" be nice to have ;-) Sorry if this mail sounds discouraging or negative - this is not my intention, and in a way, I hate myself for writing a mail where I need to mention that. However, I'd also consider it unfair not to explain that some things are harder than they might look. So, sorry- reality sometimes isn't too encouraging ;-) Regards, Christian Boltz --
"Herbsten" ist in der Pfalz synonym zu "Trauben lesen" zu verstehen, was nichts anderes als "Trauben ernten" bedeutet ;-) Jo, und alles, was in Überstunden gepflückt wird, nennt man Spätlese. Bin ja nicht blöd. :-) [> Christian Boltz und Ratti]
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Christian Boltz wrote:
We all know that connect sucks, but that's not really PHP's fault ;-) Connect is "just" an old system and didn't get enough maintenance, and I'm afraid that a lack of maintenance causes problems in all programming languages.
Oh, and I'll scare you a bit more - our wikis run with MediaWiki, which is written in PHP - and works ;-)
Yup, there is nothing wrong with PHP, inexperienced developers will shoot themselves in the foot with whatever they get their hands on. (speaking from personal experience).
Personally, I already have most of your proposal implemented by using mail notifications everywhere. I fetch my mails anyway, and reading some more mails (which get filtered into lots of folders) is easier than going to a website.
Push instead of pull. Absolutely. I do the same.
Even if that website has everything in one place, I still have to go there,
Plus another umpteen websites.
The current usage of connect.o.o is (quick summary, I hope I didn't miss anything): - membership management (can be simplified if everybody likes the reforming proposal, but is still needed) - profile pages aka "phonebook" - this can mostly be replaced with user pages in the wiki.
How many "profile" does one individual need? I have an entire collection. Linkedin, Xing, google+, connect.o.o, I probably one on my blog, in wikipedia, IEEE, RIPE, our local Gewerbeverein, all kinds of places, many of which I have forgotten. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (1.6°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
Second of all Connect sucks, we all know it, and all will admit it. It's written in PHP, and every bit of PHP I dealt with I just have rewritten to something that at least works.
We all know that connect sucks, but that's not really PHP's fault ;-) Connect is "just" an old system and didn't get enough maintenance, and I'm afraid that a lack of maintenance causes problems in all programming languages.
Oh, and I'll scare you a bit more - our wikis run with MediaWiki, which is written in PHP - and works ;-)
I know that well, but PHP is the best excuse for making something new and different ;)
I propose something more useful and streamlined for connect, let's say connect++ (going with old cool++ marketing). Instead of making some fake social media wannabe, let's make useful centralized hub for openSUSE infrastructure. And in ruby, because that seems way more popular and common around here. It would be useful to connect: OBS, bugzilla, mailing lists, news, paste, whatever people will need, want or care about (by adding plugins). Let's make it also custom for every person, so they can just have widgets they need. Actually that is not my idea, that is idea dating back to old openSUSE days with myopensuse, which was never fully realized. https://features.opensuse.org/306615 https://gitorious.org/opensuse/myopensuse.git/?p=opensuse:myopensuse.g it I made mock-up of this in 5 minutes: https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/407993213425680384/4119392170 53319178/Screenshot_from_2018-02-10_16-58-06.png
I noticed the fixed link in the follow-up mail, but I like that one nevertheless ;-)
It was made by Karol Krenaki, he made GRUB and Postfix logo among others. This is a part of scene from picture, which is supposed to show how good PLD Linux Distribution is (it's in Polish so idk why I'm even including it) http://www.inf.sgsp.edu.pl/pub/MALUNKI_DUZE/PLD_DUZE/zaloga.png
Let me start with a warning: This mail will be a mix of "reality sometimes hurts" and my usual strict review style (which can scare people, even if they rarely admit it ;-) so please read it until the end before you get mad at me ;-)
Oh no, you are wrong on this one. Second opinion after mine is the best, especially coming from a person that has been using this for quite some time, and knows exactly what is needed.
There's nothing wrong with the ideas in your mockup. Doing the mockup was easy, but I should probably warn you that collecting all this data on one platform might be harder than you think. Bugzilla, OBS, mailinglists, paste.o.o, ... don't have a common interface you could use, so you'll need separate implementations for each system.
I know that much, it's the worst part :P
Actually we had a system to centralize notifications - hermes.opensuse.org. The idea behind it was good, but in practise it's much easier if each service includes notification management and sends out its notification mails or offers RSS feeds itsself. Therefore hermes was shut down to avoid that level of indirection. Also, not all services used hermes for their notifications (for example, bugzilla never did), so it only centralized notifications from a few services.
All this doesn't mean I'll stop you or anybody else from implementing your proposal (quite the opposite), I just want to make clear that it will be more interesting[tm] than it might look, and will need constant maintenance if one of the services changes the way you use to collect the data.
Which is why I dropped majority of my ideas yesterday, more on that later.
Personally, I already have most of your proposal implemented by using mail notifications everywhere. I fetch my mails anyway, and reading some more mails (which get filtered into lots of folders) is easier than going to a website. Even if that website has everything in one place, I still have to go there, and "recent $foo" means things will scroll out if someone doesn't check them for a while. A "more from $foo" link will help a bit, but I'm quite sure I don't want to read the mailinglists via a connect replacement ;-)
(That sounds like somebody needs some UX refinement of archive on lists-o-o)
Maybe people who are more used to Facebook etc. have a different opinion on this and think that mail is an ancient way to stay up to date ;-) so as I already said - if you want to implement this, I won't stop you, and I'm sure there are people who will like that page.
In a way, it makes more sense than adding friends and making groups on which nobody ever interacts. That kind of things should be left to Matrix/IRC or whatever.
IMHO the usecase is more "phonebook" and not "interaction" (where IRC and mail are indeed better), see below for details.
Although one more useful thing could be integrated into this, profiles, as much of a gimmick it was to make yourself an openSUSE business card and public profile, it was one of the best functionalities of Connect ;)
The current usage of connect.o.o is (quick summary, I hope I didn't miss anything): - membership management (can be simplified if everybody likes the reforming proposal, but is still needed)
- profile pages aka "phonebook" - this can mostly be replaced with user pages in the wiki. However, I wouldn't put my phone / mobile number on a public wiki page. That's where connect's option to share some things only with a specific group of people is helpful. (I'm not sure if we really need this feature and if it's worth the effort, I'm just pointing out that I'd miss it.)
- groups - can be useful to find people with similar interests etc. (replaceable for example by using groups on the wiki user pages) and also to share personal information (again, phone numbers etc.) only with specific people
- polls - but as we learned in last year's elections, this feature is more or less broken on connect.o.o.
- travel support - AFAIK that's already a separate app, so splitting it out to a different server shouldn't be too hard (note the "AFAIK" - I don't know all the technical details)
To sum it up: The two must-have features we currently have in connect are
- membership management
- travel support
Everything else - both the existing features on connect.o.o and your proposal - would "only" be nice to have ;-)
Sorry if this mail sounds discouraging or negative - this is not my intention, and in a way, I hate myself for writing a mail where I need to mention that. However, I'd also consider it unfair not to explain that some things are harder than they might look. So, sorry- reality sometimes isn't too encouraging ;-)
It doesn't sound discouraging or negative, it's something I thought about extensively. What really is connect, and this email certainly helps with that. Let me say one thing right off the bat, I hate idea of Wiki pages on that. It just doesn't make much sense. I looked at my idea again, and started searching through connect to better understand the subject. I stumbled across mention of users-o-o (thanks Richard for not updating your profile since 2011). I like that idea more (although I would call that people-o-o, because users is too disconnected from idea of humans being behind it). I looked at other projects as well, and found Fedora's badges (https://badges.fedoraproject.org/explore), but that is just needless competition (it's not something we should aim for with the project). Parts of it I like however, it will be something I will most certainly incorporate in design of the page, because badges look cool, and current member text, not so much.
From my understanding profiles are just a way to show off, and show some info about the user, get a business card.
https://i.imgur.com/79nuykF.png That took an hour too long :/ My idea of profiles is about contributions (all kinds of contributions). From Github and OBS feeds can be easily downloaded to include those. If however contributions are not code and can't be verified this way, make it happen with users typing in (I know, ew, typing, not automated) their own contributions as they seem fit. I would actually make main site of people-o-o be something like https://opensuse.github.io/search-o-o but with people ;) Add team (art team, marketing team, obs, yast, whatever) badges to the profiles, forget about groups, let people add description with markdown, make it an interactive experience so they will come back and tweak them. Member would also be a badge, because some of them could be added only by higher ups ;) Sharing with specific group of people, well, that also could be done with badges, and even expanded, sharing info with only people sharing specific badge ;) Polls are gonna go away, there is no point, and as we learned there is already other system for members to choose board. So what about connect? Well, that should be a site where people can learn how they can connect with other people, something like list of IRC channels and Matrix rooms, Reddit, Twitter, whatever (we got wiki page for that even, I would expand on this because it's hard to find useful stuff there without ctrl+f). I don't understand travel however, could you expand on what you mean? LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Richard Brown wrote:
Given the nature of this change, the Board would like the feedback and consensus of the Project as a whole.
Sounds good to me. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (1.9°C) http://www.dns24.ch/ - your free DNS host, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Saturday, 2018-02-10 at 18:06 +0100, Richard Brown wrote: Seems good to me. I have doubts about one part, though:
* openSUSE Members will retain all of the rights, benefits, and responsibilities they do today (Voting, Emails/Cloaks Recalling the Board, etc) * Any openSUSE contributor can apply to be a Member * The threshold for Membership will be reduced from "sustained and substantial contribution" to "a contribution and a desire to be a Member" (ie. not every contributor should feel compelled to engage with the Project in this way). * If the contribution can be automatically verified, they will automatically become a Member. (New tooling here will be required, but for example, a quick parse of the public mailinglists would be able to verify a good number of contributions, be they through bug reporting, package contributions, or support on the mailinglists) * If they cannot be automatically verified, they need to be manually verified, but only require a single +1 vote from the Membership committee.
This is the part I have doubts: single vote? And no veto possibility? I think veto should be a possibility, but should be justified. And then perhaps a third person would have to decide between the pro and against, if the two can not agree. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. (from openSUSE 42.3 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iEUEARECAAYFAlqACUIACgkQtTMYHG2NR9Ux9QCdHDF5FBNjk/t+3VliZtImHVA0 OR8AmJy4iL9wEDnOBKkH7p1qCdyfDAU= =mJVc -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On 11 February 2018 at 10:13, Carlos E. R. <robin.listas@telefonica.net> wrote:
On Saturday, 2018-02-10 at 18:06 +0100, Richard Brown wrote:
Seems good to me.
I have doubts about one part, though:
* openSUSE Members will retain all of the rights, benefits, and responsibilities they do today (Voting, Emails/Cloaks Recalling the Board, etc) * Any openSUSE contributor can apply to be a Member * The threshold for Membership will be reduced from "sustained and substantial contribution" to "a contribution and a desire to be a Member" (ie. not every contributor should feel compelled to engage with the Project in this way). * If the contribution can be automatically verified, they will automatically become a Member. (New tooling here will be required, but for example, a quick parse of the public mailinglists would be able to verify a good number of contributions, be they through bug reporting, package contributions, or support on the mailinglists) * If they cannot be automatically verified, they need to be manually verified, but only require a single +1 vote from the Membership committee.
This is the part I have doubts: single vote? And no veto possibility?
I think veto should be a possibility, but should be justified. And then perhaps a third person would have to decide between the pro and against, if the two can not agree.
on what grounds would it be justified to veto a potential member? If we go down such a road, I believe such disqualifying criteria should be clearly defined and not reliant on interpretation. This is a flaw we have in the current system - because we require 'sustained and substantial' contribution, candidates are often veto'd/deadlocked because of a difference of opinion. In the proposed system, the only question is whether or not the contributor has contributed. If they have not, then they can't be a member. If they have, then they can. I don't think we can come up with a clearer or simpler criteria. What would you add? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Dear all, Completely agree that there is a need for change and I accept the proposed measures. I do have one question or proposal though - there should be a clear definition on what is accepted or considered as contribution. For example is advocacy considered as contribution or not? Furthermore there should be emitted a clear message what kind of contribution is needed mostly in short and long term. Regards, Dimitar Zahariev openSUSE Advocate +359899605664
On 11 Feb 2018, at 12:14, Richard Brown <RBrownCCB@opensuse.org> wrote:
On 11 February 2018 at 10:13, Carlos E. R. <robin.listas@telefonica.net> wrote:
On Saturday, 2018-02-10 at 18:06 +0100, Richard Brown wrote:
Seems good to me.
I have doubts about one part, though:
* openSUSE Members will retain all of the rights, benefits, and responsibilities they do today (Voting, Emails/Cloaks Recalling the Board, etc) * Any openSUSE contributor can apply to be a Member * The threshold for Membership will be reduced from "sustained and substantial contribution" to "a contribution and a desire to be a Member" (ie. not every contributor should feel compelled to engage with the Project in this way). * If the contribution can be automatically verified, they will automatically become a Member. (New tooling here will be required, but for example, a quick parse of the public mailinglists would be able to verify a good number of contributions, be they through bug reporting, package contributions, or support on the mailinglists) * If they cannot be automatically verified, they need to be manually verified, but only require a single +1 vote from the Membership committee.
This is the part I have doubts: single vote? And no veto possibility?
I think veto should be a possibility, but should be justified. And then perhaps a third person would have to decide between the pro and against, if the two can not agree.
on what grounds would it be justified to veto a potential member? If we go down such a road, I believe such disqualifying criteria should be clearly defined and not reliant on interpretation.
This is a flaw we have in the current system - because we require 'sustained and substantial' contribution, candidates are often veto'd/deadlocked because of a difference of opinion.
In the proposed system, the only question is whether or not the contributor has contributed. If they have not, then they can't be a member. If they have, then they can.
I don't think we can come up with a clearer or simpler criteria. What would you add? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On Sun, 2018-02-11 at 13:26 +0200, Dimitar Zahariev wrote:
Dear all,
Completely agree that there is a need for change and I accept the proposed measures. I do have one question or proposal though - there should be a clear definition on what is accepted or considered as contribution. For example is advocacy considered as contribution or not? Furthermore there should be emitted a clear message what kind of contribution is needed mostly in short and long term.
Regards, Dimitar Zahariev openSUSE Advocate +359899605664
I think this is a valid question. I haven't done much for the project except for opening bugs and writing blog posts, but I would like to eventually become a member. Does that count as contribution or do git commits count more? Jason -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Hi Jason, On 11/02/18 15:35, Jason S. Evans wrote:
I think this is a valid question. I haven't done much for the project except for opening bugs and writing blog posts, but I would like to eventually become a member. Does that count as contribution or do git commits count more?
Bug reporting is a contribution to the project. Blog writing about openSUSE helps in spreading the word; thus is also a contribution. Regards, Ish Sookun -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Hi Dimitar, On 11/02/18 15:26, Dimitar Zahariev wrote:
Completely agree that there is a need for change and I accept the proposed measures. I do have one question or proposal though - there should be a clear definition on what is accepted or considered as contribution. For example is advocacy considered as contribution or not? Furthermore there should be emitted a clear message what kind of contribution is needed mostly in short and long term.
The openSUSE wiki[1] lists examples of contributions "expected" by members. The list isn't exhaustive but it gives pretty much an idea about actions that benefit the openSUSE project & community. Regards, Ish Sookun [1] https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Members#Contributions -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Thanks, Ish! It’s my fault, somehow I missed the list of acceptable activities. So at least to me, it appears that advocacy covers the list to some extent (booths, talks, and etc.). I will reapply again ;) One more topic, probably worth discussion, one should first prove his/her worthiness and then become a member, or first become a member and then do what he/she can for the community. Regards, Dimitar Zahariev
On 11 Feb 2018, at 16:01, Ish Sookun <ish@hacklog.mu> wrote:
Hi Dimitar,
On 11/02/18 15:26, Dimitar Zahariev wrote: Completely agree that there is a need for change and I accept the proposed measures. I do have one question or proposal though - there should be a clear definition on what is accepted or considered as contribution. For example is advocacy considered as contribution or not? Furthermore there should be emitted a clear message what kind of contribution is needed mostly in short and long term.
The openSUSE wiki[1] lists examples of contributions "expected" by members. The list isn't exhaustive but it gives pretty much an idea about actions that benefit the openSUSE project & community.
Regards,
Ish Sookun
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Hi Dimitar, On 11/02/18 19:32, Dimitar Zahariev wrote:
One more topic, probably worth discussion, one should first prove his/her worthiness and then become a member, or first become a member and then do what he/she can for the community.
Anybody can contribute to the project, whether a member or not. However, it makes sense that before applying for membership one should be a contributor already and such should be verifiable by the board. Regards, Ish Sookun -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
I see. Thanks once again, Ish! Regards, Dimitar
On 11 Feb 2018, at 18:43, Ish Sookun <ish@hacklog.mu> wrote:
Hi Dimitar,
On 11/02/18 19:32, Dimitar Zahariev wrote: One more topic, probably worth discussion, one should first prove his/her worthiness and then become a member, or first become a member and then do what he/she can for the community.
Anybody can contribute to the project, whether a member or not. However, it makes sense that before applying for membership one should be a contributor already and such should be verifiable by the board.
Regards,
Ish Sookun
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Sunday, 2018-02-11 at 11:14 +0100, Richard Brown wrote:
On 11 February 2018 at 10:13, Carlos E. R. <> wrote:
On Saturday, 2018-02-10 at 18:06 +0100, Richard Brown wrote:
Seems good to me.
I have doubts about one part, though:
* openSUSE Members will retain all of the rights, benefits, and responsibilities they do today (Voting, Emails/Cloaks Recalling the Board, etc) * Any openSUSE contributor can apply to be a Member * The threshold for Membership will be reduced from "sustained and substantial contribution" to "a contribution and a desire to be a Member" (ie. not every contributor should feel compelled to engage with the Project in this way). * If the contribution can be automatically verified, they will automatically become a Member. (New tooling here will be required, but for example, a quick parse of the public mailinglists would be able to verify a good number of contributions, be they through bug reporting, package contributions, or support on the mailinglists) * If they cannot be automatically verified, they need to be manually verified, but only require a single +1 vote from the Membership committee.
This is the part I have doubts: single vote? And no veto possibility?
I think veto should be a possibility, but should be justified. And then perhaps a third person would have to decide between the pro and against, if the two can not agree.
on what grounds would it be justified to veto a potential member? If we go down such a road, I believe such disqualifying criteria should be clearly defined and not reliant on interpretation.
I don't know at the moment. I just have the gut feeling that it may be needed. One member of the committe might have a good reason, and he would have to explain to the committe, and then the committe would decide. Not really one person vettoing the new member, but one person vetoing the "one committe member decides to add this new member" decission, so let us think it over a bit. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. (from openSUSE 42.3 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iEYEARECAAYFAlqAz64ACgkQtTMYHG2NR9UT1gCdEEEaZ/DMCCeb5X8I2mIb1Xvc UYsAn160ziildYhs8iOAPyZljDx7+7Fw =rbq+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On 12/02/18 09:50, Carlos E. R. wrote:
On Sunday, 2018-02-11 at 11:14 +0100, Richard Brown wrote:
On 11 February 2018 at 10:13, Carlos E. R. <> wrote:
On Saturday, 2018-02-10 at 18:06 +0100, Richard Brown wrote:
Seems good to me.
I have doubts about one part, though:
* openSUSE Members will retain all of the rights, benefits, and responsibilities they do today (Voting, Emails/Cloaks Recalling the Board, etc) * Any openSUSE contributor can apply to be a Member * The threshold for Membership will be reduced from "sustained and substantial contribution" to "a contribution and a desire to be a Member" (ie. not every contributor should feel compelled to engage with the Project in this way). * If the contribution can be automatically verified, they will automatically become a Member. (New tooling here will be required, but for example, a quick parse of the public mailinglists would be able to verify a good number of contributions, be they through bug reporting, package contributions, or support on the mailinglists) * If they cannot be automatically verified, they need to be manually verified, but only require a single +1 vote from the Membership committee.
This is the part I have doubts: single vote? And no veto possibility?
I think veto should be a possibility, but should be justified. And then perhaps a third person would have to decide between the pro and against, if the two can not agree.
on what grounds would it be justified to veto a potential member? If we go down such a road, I believe such disqualifying criteria should be clearly defined and not reliant on interpretation.
I don't know at the moment. I just have the gut feeling that it may be needed.
One member of the committe might have a good reason, and he would have to explain to the committe, and then the committe would decide. Not really one person vettoing the new member, but one person vetoing the "one committe member decides to add this new member" decission, so let us think it over a bit.
I think to protect ourselves against someone giving a +1 in a certain case without knowing some information this is a reasonable thing to do. It would have to be a pretty extreme case such as the person applying had previously been banned from mailing lists for being abusive to other members etc. The change I'd make though is, in such a case (or possibly in any case where the membership committee may have questions) I think that the person in question should be referred to and discussed / approved / rejected by the board not the membership committee. The reason for this is the membership committee is really an "Administrative" group that are just clearly implementing a set of policies that have been put in place and agreed to by the community where as the board handles all other issues like this such as final moderation of mailing lists. Really all this clause would do is prevent the case where someone is added as a member then removed from the project shortly after as they have been violating community guidelines. In the current proposal someone could be on there final warning from the board for "violations of community standards" and apply for and become a member (they are active after all and currently thats the only requirement). By adding a clause such as this it gives the board the power to say something along the lines of "your on your final warning we haven't been happy with your behavior to date, please apply again in a year and if your behavior has improved we will accept you". This also still falls under the safety net of if 20% of members feel the board has treated someone unreasonably they can get a new board. Really its a clause that hopefully never gets used but potentially gives the board the power to make a possibly messy situation less messy. +1 to everything else in the original plan -- 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 02/12/2018 02:12 AM, Simon Lees wrote:
I think to protect ourselves against someone giving a +1 in a certain case without knowing some information this is a reasonable thing to do. It would have to be a pretty extreme case such as the person applying had previously been banned from mailing lists for being abusive to other members etc.
The change I'd make though is, in such a case (or possibly in any case where the membership committee may have questions) I think that the person in question should be referred to and discussed / approved / rejected by the board not the membership committee. The reason for this is the membership committee is really an "Administrative" group that are just clearly implementing a set of policies that have been put in place and agreed to by the community where as the board handles all other issues like this such as final moderation of mailing lists.
Really all this clause would do is prevent the case where someone is added as a member then removed from the project shortly after as they have been violating community guidelines. In the current proposal someone could be on there final warning from the board for "violations of community standards" and apply for and become a member (they are active after all and currently thats the only requirement). By adding a clause such as this it gives the board the power to say something along the lines of "your on your final warning we haven't been happy with your behavior to date, please apply again in a year and if your behavior has improved we will accept you". This also still falls under the safety net of if 20% of members feel the board has treated someone unreasonably they can get a new board.
Really its a clause that hopefully never gets used but potentially gives the board the power to make a possibly messy situation less messy.
+1 to everything else in the original plan
I totally agree with this. -- -Gerry Makaro aka Fraser_Bell on the forums, IRC, and mail at openSUSE.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 8:29 PM, Fraser_Bell <Fraser_Bell@opensuse.org> wrote:
On 02/12/2018 02:12 AM, Simon Lees wrote:
I think to protect ourselves against someone giving a +1 in a certain case without knowing some information this is a reasonable thing to do. It would have to be a pretty extreme case such as the person applying had previously been banned from mailing lists for being abusive to other members etc.
The change I'd make though is, in such a case (or possibly in any case where the membership committee may have questions) I think that the person in question should be referred to and discussed / approved / rejected by the board not the membership committee. The reason for this is the membership committee is really an "Administrative" group that are just clearly implementing a set of policies that have been put in place and agreed to by the community where as the board handles all other issues like this such as final moderation of mailing lists.
Really all this clause would do is prevent the case where someone is added as a member then removed from the project shortly after as they have been violating community guidelines. In the current proposal someone could be on there final warning from the board for "violations of community standards" and apply for and become a member (they are active after all and currently thats the only requirement). By adding a clause such as this it gives the board the power to say something along the lines of "your on your final warning we haven't been happy with your behavior to date, please apply again in a year and if your behavior has improved we will accept you". This also still falls under the safety net of if 20% of members feel the board has treated someone unreasonably they can get a new board.
Really its a clause that hopefully never gets used but potentially gives the board the power to make a possibly messy situation less messy.
+1 to everything else in the original plan
I totally agree with this.
It's 2 weeks later and the above along with Carlos'es suggestions are both good idea in my mind. I see them working together like this: - By default, any one member of the membership-committee can approve a request - Any one member of the membership-committee can veto the default one member approval rule and force the application to a full membership committee vote - During the membership committee vote, borderline issues about following the guiding principles can be taken into account to delay/deny membership even for someone that is clearly contributing == My biggest concern is the email alias and IRC cloak. Does the project really want to give those to someone that files a few bugzillas with no concern to how well they follow the guiding principle? == I further think there should be 2 stages of guiding principle enforcement. If a member meets a first level of concern related to the guiding principle, or abuse of the email alias / IRC cloak, the board should have the ability to remove their membership. If the behaviour worsens, then they can be banned from the mailinglists, etc. as second level of response. Greg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On 28/02/18 07:06, Greg Freemyer wrote:
On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 8:29 PM, Fraser_Bell <Fraser_Bell@opensuse.org> wrote:
On 02/12/2018 02:12 AM, Simon Lees wrote:
I think to protect ourselves against someone giving a +1 in a certain case without knowing some information this is a reasonable thing to do. It would have to be a pretty extreme case such as the person applying had previously been banned from mailing lists for being abusive to other members etc.
The change I'd make though is, in such a case (or possibly in any case where the membership committee may have questions) I think that the person in question should be referred to and discussed / approved / rejected by the board not the membership committee. The reason for this is the membership committee is really an "Administrative" group that are just clearly implementing a set of policies that have been put in place and agreed to by the community where as the board handles all other issues like this such as final moderation of mailing lists.
Really all this clause would do is prevent the case where someone is added as a member then removed from the project shortly after as they have been violating community guidelines. In the current proposal someone could be on there final warning from the board for "violations of community standards" and apply for and become a member (they are active after all and currently thats the only requirement). By adding a clause such as this it gives the board the power to say something along the lines of "your on your final warning we haven't been happy with your behavior to date, please apply again in a year and if your behavior has improved we will accept you". This also still falls under the safety net of if 20% of members feel the board has treated someone unreasonably they can get a new board.
Really its a clause that hopefully never gets used but potentially gives the board the power to make a possibly messy situation less messy.
+1 to everything else in the original plan
I totally agree with this.
It's 2 weeks later and the above along with Carlos'es suggestions are both good idea in my mind.
I see them working together like this:
- By default, any one member of the membership-committee can approve a request
- Any one member of the membership-committee can veto the default one member approval rule and force the application to a full membership committee vote
- During the membership committee vote, borderline issues about following the guiding principles can be taken into account to delay/deny membership even for someone that is clearly contributing
I think that this really should be decided by the board rather then the membership committee. The board has clear rules about how its elected and replaced and deals with these issues in every other part of the project, whereas the membership committee is just a bunch of volunteers helping apply a basic set of rules as an administrative task. -- 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
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Wednesday, 2018-02-28 at 17:05 +1030, Simon Lees wrote:
On 28/02/18 07:06, Greg Freemyer wrote:
On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 8:29 PM, Fraser_Bell <Fraser_Bell@opensuse.org> wrote:
On 02/12/2018 02:12 AM, Simon Lees wrote:
...
It's 2 weeks later and the above along with Carlos'es suggestions are both good idea in my mind.
I see them working together like this:
- By default, any one member of the membership-committee can approve a request
- Any one member of the membership-committee can veto the default one member approval rule and force the application to a full membership committee vote
- During the membership committee vote, borderline issues about following the guiding principles can be taken into account to delay/deny membership even for someone that is clearly contributing
I think that this really should be decided by the board rather then the membership committee. The board has clear rules about how its elected and replaced and deals with these issues in every other part of the project, whereas the membership committee is just a bunch of volunteers helping apply a basic set of rules as an administrative task.
IMO, only if the membership committee doesn't reach an agreement, or in appeal. After all, the committe task is to aprove or not new members... - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. (from openSUSE 42.3 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iEYEARECAAYFAlqWpi0ACgkQtTMYHG2NR9Uw7gCghwCosp5WbKDeBPxWBZOYH/Wc 70sAoIPs6a7WQTNfo9qaYs5b2IDe+F/2 =qii6 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On 27 February 2018 at 21:36, Greg Freemyer <greg.freemyer@gmail.com> wrote:
== My biggest concern is the email alias and IRC cloak. Does the project really want to give those to someone that files a few bugzillas with no concern to how well they follow the guiding principle?
== I further think there should be 2 stages of guiding principle enforcement.
If a member meets a first level of concern related to the guiding principle, or abuse of the email alias / IRC cloak, the board should have the ability to remove their membership. If the behaviour worsens, then they can be banned from the mailinglists, etc. as second level of response.
I do not like this suggestion The Guiding Principles are expected to be followed for all people involved in the openSUSE Project - Members and Non-Members Your suggestion would create a model where Members would get an extra 'strike' where they could breach the Guiding Principles but avoid severe sanction by 'just' loosing their Membership. Where as non-Members would be far more likely to face removing from the project. Sure, being a member does open up that gradiated option, which I would expect the Board to consider for a Member who is not compliant with the guiding principles. But I do not like the idea of codifying that Members would be immune from summary removal from the Project. I think that's a judgement that should only be made by the Board, collectively. Recent experience has solidified my opinion that the Board model works well. I have more faith in not only it's collective ability to make right decisions, but (more importantly) it's collective ability to realise when it's decisions are wrong and take steps to correct them. I don't think it would be in the Project's best interest to codify rules that would remove options from their toolbox of dealing with negative behaviour in the project. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 8:20 AM, Richard Brown <RBrownCCB@opensuse.org> wrote:
On 27 February 2018 at 21:36, Greg Freemyer <greg.freemyer@gmail.com> wrote:
== My biggest concern is the email alias and IRC cloak. Does the project really want to give those to someone that files a few bugzillas with no concern to how well they follow the guiding principle?
== I further think there should be 2 stages of guiding principle enforcement.
If a member meets a first level of concern related to the guiding principle, or abuse of the email alias / IRC cloak, the board should have the ability to remove their membership. If the behaviour worsens, then they can be banned from the mailinglists, etc. as second level of response.
I do not like this suggestion
The Guiding Principles are expected to be followed for all people involved in the openSUSE Project - Members and Non-Members
Your suggestion would create a model where Members would get an extra 'strike' where they could breach the Guiding Principles but avoid severe sanction by 'just' loosing their Membership. Where as non-Members would be far more likely to face removing from the project.
Sure, being a member does open up that gradiated option, which I would expect the Board to consider for a Member who is not compliant with the guiding principles. But I do not like the idea of codifying that Members would be immune from summary removal from the Project. I think that's a judgement that should only be made by the Board, collectively.
Recent experience has solidified my opinion that the Board model works well. I have more faith in not only it's collective ability to make right decisions, but (more importantly) it's collective ability to realise when it's decisions are wrong and take steps to correct them. I don't think it would be in the Project's best interest to codify rules that would remove options from their toolbox of dealing with negative behaviour in the project.
Feel free to incorporate or ignore the suggestion, but I was trying to give the board additional options, not take any away. Currently I think there are 3 options for addressing guiding principle violations: - warn contributor - temporarily ban contributor from various contribution areas, primarily the mailing lists - permanently ban contributor I assume the board is able to pick from those which it chooses to use for any given situation. I'm just saying it should be formally stated that the board can take away a member's opensuse alias and IRC cloak as an additional option for addressing guiding principle violations. Greg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On 02/11/2018 02:14 AM, Richard Brown wrote:
On 11 February 2018 at 10:13, Carlos E. R. <robin.listas@telefonica.net> wrote:
On Saturday, 2018-02-10 at 18:06 +0100, Richard Brown wrote:
Seems good to me.
I have doubts about one part, though:
* openSUSE Members will retain all of the rights, benefits, and responsibilities they do today (Voting, Emails/Cloaks Recalling the Board, etc) * Any openSUSE contributor can apply to be a Member * The threshold for Membership will be reduced from "sustained and substantial contribution" to "a contribution and a desire to be a Member" (ie. not every contributor should feel compelled to engage with the Project in this way). * If the contribution can be automatically verified, they will automatically become a Member. (New tooling here will be required, but for example, a quick parse of the public mailinglists would be able to verify a good number of contributions, be they through bug reporting, package contributions, or support on the mailinglists) * If they cannot be automatically verified, they need to be manually verified, but only require a single +1 vote from the Membership committee.
This is the part I have doubts: single vote? And no veto possibility?
I think veto should be a possibility, but should be justified. And then perhaps a third person would have to decide between the pro and against, if the two can not agree.
on what grounds would it be justified to veto a potential member? If we go down such a road, I believe such disqualifying criteria should be clearly defined and not reliant on interpretation.
This is a flaw we have in the current system - because we require 'sustained and substantial' contribution, candidates are often veto'd/deadlocked because of a difference of opinion.
In the proposed system, the only question is whether or not the contributor has contributed. If they have not, then they can't be a member. If they have, then they can.
I don't think we can come up with a clearer or simpler criteria. What would you add?
I would add that adhering to this: https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Guiding_principles#openSUSE_Guiding_Princip... would/should be the PRIMARY qualification for Membership. If up to me, it would also be that violating this would prompt a warning from the Board of possible suspension of Membership, and in Extreme Cases would result in Cancellation of Membership. (With an Appeal process, of course.). IM(Sometimes-not-so-H)O -- -Gerry Makaro aka Fraser_Bell on the forums, IRC, and mail at openSUSE.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On 12 February 2018 at 01:12, Fraser_Bell <Fraser_Bell@opensuse.org> wrote:
I don't think we can come up with a clearer or simpler criteria. What would you add?
I would add that adhering to this: https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Guiding_principles#openSUSE_Guiding_Princip...
would/should be the PRIMARY qualification for Membership.
If up to me, it would also be that violating this would prompt a warning from the Board of possible suspension of Membership, and in Extreme Cases would result in Cancellation of Membership. (With an Appeal process, of course.).
Adherence to the Guiding Principles is a prerequisite for anyone contributing to the openSUSE Project. It provides the lens through which the Board forms it's opinion when called to resolve disputes, regardless if the 'disputed' are Members or not Failure to adhere to the Guiding Principles can, in the worst case, lead to an individuals participation in the openSUSE Project being unwelcome. In such a case the individuals involved are asked to leave the project, or in the worst cases, their access to any openSUSE infrastructure is revoked. So sure, in a way you're not wrong, but I don't see the benefit of tying the Membership scheme to that; it might give the impression that non-member contributors are not subject to the Guiding Principles, which is very far from the truth. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Hi Richard,
Em 10 de fev de 2018, à(s) 15:06, Richard Brown <RBrownCCB@opensuse.org> escreveu:
1) Connect is a pain to use - It's unmaintained, and our openSUSE Heroes infra team very much want to stop running the server. 2) Connect is a REAL pain to use - a significant percentage of membership requests do not include any claimed contributions, so the committee cannot verify those contributions and have no choice but to reject them. 3) Connect is an ABSOLUTE pain to use - the membership committee never get notified when there is new application, meaning that applications can often linger for weeks or months before enough vote positively or negatively to accept an application. 4) Connect is an UNGODLY pain to use - anyone reapplying for membership immediately shows up the committees queue with their previous voting score - which has on way too many occasions led to instant-deapproval when the committee didn't realise the person was applying for a second time. (I'm pretty sure this even happened to me, back in the day).
I can’t agree more.
The Board would therefore like to propose a much streamlined Membership scheme for the future. The structure we propose would be something like:
* openSUSE Members will retain all of the rights, benefits, and responsibilities they do today (Voting, Emails/Cloaks Recalling the Board, etc) * Any openSUSE contributor can apply to be a Member * The threshold for Membership will be reduced from "sustained and substantial contribution" to "a contribution and a desire to be a Member" (ie. not every contributor should feel compelled to engage with the Project in this way). * If the contribution can be automatically verified, they will automatically become a Member. (New tooling here will be required, but for example, a quick parse of the public mailinglists would be able to verify a good number of contributions, be they through bug reporting, package contributions, or support on the mailinglists) * If they cannot be automatically verified, they need to be manually verified, but only require a single +1 vote from the Membership committee. * Once becoming a Member, they can remain a member as long as they have an interest in the Project. - If ongoing contributions cease or the contributions cannot be automatically detected, Members will be asked by a bot if they wish to remain a Member.
I liked this proposal, when I submitted my membership, it really took very long to be analyzed that I started to think whether I did something wrong.
Given the nature of this change, the Board would like the feedback and consensus of the Project as a whole. If the overwhelming responses to this post is approval of this approach, then we'd like to see the Project start implementing it post-haste, possibly even before the upcoming next election.
I agree with almost everything here and I think this will make things better.
However, of course, if there is a significant debate to be had, the right way of resolving this might be a vote by the current Membership - this is one of the reasons why this proposal is announced today; After the election problems we had with connect.opensuse.org last year the Board wanted to be sure we had an alternative voting platform available if we need it. Our awesome openSUSE Heroes have just completed confidence tests of one such system, so if we need it, it's available.
A new voting platform for those things will be very nice. However, I would like to see the members more involved in the big decisions related to the distribution. I think we can use this new voting platform so that the members can really help in big decisions. I miss that. The famous naming controversy would be much more defendable if a voting was arranged and 50% of the members accepted it (personally, I did not like the naming initially but now I agree with it). Another option is to turn the decisions into something like enterprise with open capital do. The members will have a percentage of the total “stocks” and the members of the board will have another. Every big decision will be voted concurrently by the board members and the openSUSE member, given the share each one have. Now, what big decisions means is something for another debate :) Well, this is just my 2 cents. Cheers, Ronan Arraes (Ronis_BR)-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
-----Original Message----- From: Ronan Chagas [mailto:ronisbr@gmail.com] Sent: 11 February 2018 16:00 To: Richard Brown Cc: opensuse-project Subject: Re: [opensuse-project] Proposal: Reforming openSUSE Membership To Better Reflect Our Ethos Hi Richard,
Em 10 de fev de 2018, à(s) 15:06, Richard Brown <RBrownCCB@opensuse.org> escreveu:
1) Connect is a pain to use - It's unmaintained, and our openSUSE Heroes infra team very much want to stop running the server. 2) Connect is a REAL pain to use - a significant percentage of membership requests do not include any claimed contributions, so the committee cannot verify those contributions and have no choice but to reject them. 3) Connect is an ABSOLUTE pain to use - the membership committee never get notified when there is new application, meaning that applications can often linger for weeks or months before enough vote positively or negatively to accept an application. 4) Connect is an UNGODLY pain to use - anyone reapplying for membership immediately shows up the committees queue with their previous voting score - which has on way too many occasions led to instant-deapproval when the committee didn't realise the person was applying for a second time. (I'm pretty sure this even happened to me, back in the day).
I can’t agree more.
The Board would therefore like to propose a much streamlined Membership scheme for the future. The structure we propose would be something like:
* openSUSE Members will retain all of the rights, benefits, and responsibilities they do today (Voting, Emails/Cloaks Recalling the Board, etc) * Any openSUSE contributor can apply to be a Member * The threshold for Membership will be reduced from "sustained and substantial contribution" to "a contribution and a desire to be a Member" (ie. not every contributor should feel compelled to engage with the Project in this way). * If the contribution can be automatically verified, they will automatically become a Member. (New tooling here will be required, but for example, a quick parse of the public mailinglists would be able to verify a good number of contributions, be they through bug reporting, package contributions, or support on the mailinglists) * If they cannot be automatically verified, they need to be manually verified, but only require a single +1 vote from the Membership committee. * Once becoming a Member, they can remain a member as long as they have an interest in the Project. - If ongoing contributions cease or the contributions cannot be automatically detected, Members will be asked by a bot if they wish to remain a Member.
I liked this proposal, when I submitted my membership, it really took very long to be analyzed that I started to think whether I did something wrong.
Given the nature of this change, the Board would like the feedback and consensus of the Project as a whole. If the overwhelming responses to this post is approval of this approach, then we'd like to see the Project start implementing it post-haste, possibly even before the upcoming next election.
I agree with almost everything here and I think this will make things better.
However, of course, if there is a significant debate to be had, the right way of resolving this might be a vote by the current Membership - this is one of the reasons why this proposal is announced today; After the election problems we had with connect.opensuse.org last year the Board wanted to be sure we had an alternative voting platform available if we need it. Our awesome openSUSE Heroes have just completed confidence tests of one such system, so if we need it, it's available.
A new voting platform for those things will be very nice. However, I would like to see the members more involved in the big decisions related to the distribution. I think we can use this new voting platform so that the members can really help in big decisions. I miss that. The famous naming controversy would be much more defendable if a voting was arranged and 50% of the members accepted it (personally, I did not like the naming initially but now I agree with it). Another option is to turn the decisions into something like enterprise with open capital do. The members will have a percentage of the total “stocks” and the members of the board will have another. Every big decision will be voted concurrently by the board members and the openSUSE member, given the share each one have. Now, what big decisions means is something for another debate :) Well, this is just my 2 cents. Hi All, Just in case, I have just updated my Connect profile. I guess that the board has its own social ML etc. I have a lot of experience with companies 24/24, 7/7, what normally happens is that there are committees/sub committees etc. who do interact and report in a fashionable way. The process can be long, but if everybody plays the game correctly, it can be easy to follow. We just need to remember that we sometimes have a job to do for a living and also contributing to the project should be earmarked and the time allocated for the project should not under-estimated. Otherwise, it becomes a burden. So when it comes to voting, I am inter-alia a Transition Manager, sometimes change is mandatory for an organization to go forward. So be it! Whatever can ease the way we contribute is welcome! At the end of the day, we have a lot of fun, honest :) Jimmy Pierre President NUI.fr -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On 02/10/2018 09:06 AM, Richard Brown wrote:
Hi Project,
The Board has been considering the state of the current openSUSE Membership system and it's role in the Project's governance.
For those who are unaware, openSUSE Members are the individuals who have voting rights in openSUSE Board elections, so directly elect 5 out of the 6 people in the projects senior conflict resolution & leadership body.
Currently, to become a member, an openSUSE contributor must first contribute to the Project. After contributing in a "sustained and substantial" manner, they can Apply to become a member. This application requires the applicant to fill in the 'Contributions' section in their connect.opensuse.org profile and applying to the openSUSE Members group. A Membership committee then reviews those applications, confirms whether or not the claimed contributions are valid and meet the criteria of "sustained and substantial". This requires that the balance of votes of the committee reaches at least 3 positive votes. (eg. 4 positive votes and 1 negative vote results in the Applicant being approved. 5 positive votes and 3 negative votes results in the Applicant not approved).
Approved members then receive @opensuse.org email addresses and IRC cloaks, and are eligible to run in openSUSE Board elections.
Besides that, an openSUSE Member really isn't any different from any other contributor - we're not a project where you need to be a Member in order to be able to contribute to the Project in any meaningful way. In addition to the above, openSUSE Members have the capability of recalling the Board, causing a re-election of the Board if 20% of the membership believe they are not correctly being served by their current Board.
Members remain members until they no longer wish to be members. Membership lapsing used to be entirely on a voluntary basis. Recently we have experimented with using bots to identify activity of Members. If a member is no longer visibly active in the Project in any way, we have recently begun repeatedly asking (using the contact details available) whether they wish to remain a member. Any answer, guarantees that membership remains. Failure to answer removes that contributor's status as an openSUSE Member. It can be re-instated at any time upon request.
So, that is the status quo, why has the Board been thinking about this?
Well, your Board collectively feels that this system currently has a number of practical and philosophical flaws, which we would like to see addressed by the Project.
The primary issue of concern is the one which led to the 'activity check' and 'ask if users want to remain a Member, if no activity detected' approach introduced over the last year. The Board feels it's really important that it is accountable to the Project.
In it's primary role as arbitrators of disputes in the Project, or as decision-makers of last resort, it's capability to act effectively in that role is compromised if it is perceived to not represent the Project at large. That is why we have that rule that 20% of the Members can recall the Board. It's designed to be so low, so the Board can be seen to be so directly accountable to the Membership (and by proxy, the Project at large).
Before we have the 'activity check', our Membership list included a great deal of former contributors who had no longer any interest in the Project. This made reaching this 20% threshold harder and harder, undermining the whole point of that low threshold.
The removal of Members who are no longer part of the Project has made it easier for the Membership to recall the Board. But the Board feels this is not enough.
Over the years, especially recent ones, openSUSE has appealed to a new generation of contributors. Our distributions are significantly larger than ever before, moving at a pace of hundreds of changes a week. openSUSE is home to a growing family of sub-projects, beyond just Linux distributions. openSUSE has strong contribution bases in more and more countries, as demonstrated by examples like our openSUSE Asia summits.
And yet, the number of openSUSE Members remains at best relatively static, or shrinking as a result of the 'activity check'.
In short, there is a strong case to be made that the Membership scheme, in it's current form, can not possibly reflect the Project at large.
The Board have identified a number of practical reasons for this stagnation in the membership scheme.
1) Connect is a pain to use - It's unmaintained, and our openSUSE Heroes infra team very much want to stop running the server. 2) Connect is a REAL pain to use - a significant percentage of membership requests do not include any claimed contributions, so the committee cannot verify those contributions and have no choice but to reject them. 3) Connect is an ABSOLUTE pain to use - the membership committee never get notified when there is new application, meaning that applications can often linger for weeks or months before enough vote positively or negatively to accept an application. 4) Connect is an UNGODLY pain to use - anyone reapplying for membership immediately shows up the committees queue with their previous voting score - which has on way too many occasions led to instant-deapproval when the committee didn't realise the person was applying for a second time. (I'm pretty sure this even happened to me, back in the day).
We COULD just fix connect to address the problems above, but they've been known for a long while and no contributor has stepped up to fix them. Even if they were resolved, would remain logistical issues
1) The Membership committee, by design has to a small group of trusted individuals. With the Project as diverse as it is now, it's practically impossible for that small group to have an oversight of contributions across the whole Project. This makes it very hard for them to judge whether the contributions are "sustained and substantial" under the current system.
2) Even with notifications addressing the fact the committee do not know when applications are waiting, the "+3 on balance" requirement often means that an application can be deadlocked by just a few individuals voting down a potential member. "Sustained and Substantial" is a subjective measurement, which is always going to lead to differences of opinions.
It's not all about practicalities, like I said, the Board have identified a number of philosophical problems with the Membership scheme in it's current form also
As a project, we generally operate with a mindset of 'those that do, decide'. Committees, permission, and other such obstacles, are things we actively avoid when establishing processes in the Project. We have a strong ethos of empowering anyone to contribute and not having barriers to entry. The Board currently feels the Membership scheme in it's current form runs counter to this mindset and ultimately undermines it. No matter how well meaning the individuals in the committee are, ultimately some committee currently decides if your contributions are 'good enough' to be a Member.
We'll let a random person off the street contribute patches to core parts of our software, but they're not good enough to have an opinion on how the project is led?
We're not great at putting down our collective philosophy, but I think it's not too bold to say that it's not a very "openSUSE" way of thinking. (For more of my thoughts on how our ethos and "those that do, decide" makes us special, you can watch my FOSDEM talk from last weekend [1])
The Board would therefore like to propose a much streamlined Membership scheme for the future. The structure we propose would be something like:
* openSUSE Members will retain all of the rights, benefits, and responsibilities they do today (Voting, Emails/Cloaks Recalling the Board, etc) * Any openSUSE contributor can apply to be a Member * The threshold for Membership will be reduced from "sustained and substantial contribution" to "a contribution and a desire to be a Member" (ie. not every contributor should feel compelled to engage with the Project in this way). * If the contribution can be automatically verified, they will automatically become a Member. (New tooling here will be required, but for example, a quick parse of the public mailinglists would be able to verify a good number of contributions, be they through bug reporting, package contributions, or support on the mailinglists) * If they cannot be automatically verified, they need to be manually verified, but only require a single +1 vote from the Membership committee. * Once becoming a Member, they can remain a member as long as they have an interest in the Project. - If ongoing contributions cease or the contributions cannot be automatically detected, Members will be asked by a bot if they wish to remain a Member.
Obviously this new system has some risks which the old system does not. In theory "bad actors" could sign up to become openSUSE members, and collectively sway Board elections and such to install inappropriate people into the Board. The Board understands this was a fear which was a major consideration leading to the original structure and requirement for "sustained and substantial" contributions. However, the Board feels this is an unlikely risk in this day and age. Even if that risk is realised, it should be sufficiently mitigated by boards rule preventing 40% of Board members being employed by the same company. Worse case, our healthier Membership scheme could trigger a re-election if 20% of the Membership collectively feel things are going in the wrong direction.
So on balance we feel this is the best way forward to ensure openSUSE Membership is easy, engaging, and enables the Membership to more accurately reflect the Project as a whole.
Given the nature of this change, the Board would like the feedback and consensus of the Project as a whole. If the overwhelming responses to this post is approval of this approach, then we'd like to see the Project start implementing it post-haste, possibly even before the upcoming next election.
However, of course, if there is a significant debate to be had, the right way of resolving this might be a vote by the current Membership - this is one of the reasons why this proposal is announced today; After the election problems we had with connect.opensuse.org last year the Board wanted to be sure we had an alternative voting platform available if we need it. Our awesome openSUSE Heroes have just completed confidence tests of one such system, so if we need it, it's available.
Thanks and have a lot of fun,
Richard Brown on behalf of the openSUSE Board {Christian Boltz, Richard Brown, Tomas Chvatal, Sarah Julia Kriesch, Gertjan Lettink, Bryan Lunduke}
I would like to see this happen. -- -Gerry Makaro aka Fraser_Bell on the forums, IRC, and mail at openSUSE.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
participants (14)
-
Carlos E. R. -
Christian Boltz -
Dimitar Zahariev -
Felix Miata -
Fraser_Bell -
Greg Freemyer -
Ish Sookun -
Jason S. Evans -
jimmypierre.rouen.france＠gmail.com -
Per Jessen -
Richard Brown -
Ronan Chagas -
Simon Lees -
Stasiek