On 2020-01-22 21:31, Sarah Julia Kriesch wrote:

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Gesendet: Mittwoch, 22. Januar 2020 um 16:32 Uhr Von: "Richard Brown" An: opensuse-project@opensuse.org Betreff: Re: [opensuse-project] openSUSE Board election 2019-2020 - Final candidates list

Hi Sarah, Hi Richard, You have misunderstood a lot of my answers.

Hi Sarah, After reading your email, I don't think I misunderstood much at all, but I do really appreciate your responses and the opportunity to elaborate my concerns.

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I feel there are a number of factual inaccuracies and tonal concerns I wish to raise with your answers

Where are the concerns? You are the first one who has responded. That is a mailing list and I am open for discussions.

My concerns are outlined in the email below..or do you mean to suggest with this statement that my concerns don't count because I'm the only person raising them? Isn't the whole point of public discussions so that individuals like myself can raise the concerns that bother us? aren't board members meant to represent the whole community, even the people they disagree with and who disagree with them?

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Background: I was asked really often at open source events how another company can sponsor openSUSE. We had to say that it would not possible because all of our money is going via a SUSE credit card and the money would be lost (same with the GSoC money, which has to be transferred to other organizations because of this issue). No company wants to pay Open Source Developers with such a background of an open-source project. Therefore, most openSUSE Contributors are working for SUSE or SUSE Business Partners. This topic popped up more than 3 times during my last Board Membership (really created by SUSE employees each time!).

There are a number of other ways besides money that other companies and projects can, do, and have sponsored openSUSE.

Yes. But that all has the issue that we don't have a foundation. We had supperior offers for hardware sponsorships and they had been canceled because "SUSE Linux GmbH" is listed as a co-contractor[0]. Such companies would accept a foundation.

Another case is the sponsorship for openSUSE Conferences. I have organized a German organization in the past. There were a lot of problems to receive information about sponsorships before. We sponsored the food then. But during a meeting this year, I heared that our Board does not want to support openSUSE any more because of these problems. You can watch the food of the last conference. Do you want to have only sandwiches for guests at the conference?

I find your statements above to run incongruently with reality. openSUSE has has events sponsored, non-financially, by countless sponsors. Just in the last 12 months that includes the following companies and organisations: arm ltd amazon Tuxedo Red Hat/Fedora Oracle/MySQL Linux Magazine Simplify Inc Radiant Utama Interinsco TBK BTech Linksys MyCoop And I'm sure I am missing a number of other examples and to those wonderful sponsors of the openSUSE Project. As a candidate for the openSUSE Board, I find your attitude expressed on this topic to be dismissive of the sponsors openSUSE already has and defeatist towards finding more such sponsors in the future. These are attitudes I do not want to see in a Board candidate I wish to vote for and I would hope that such feedback, while possibly uncomfortable for you to read, is helpful for you to recieve in some way.

The topic "paied Open Source Developers" is coming from a study conference of the SBB foundation. A speaker told about "New Work" and that it is modern to offer 20% of working time for non-profit projects. I know different IT companies who want to support open-source projects on this way. Do you mean, they want to give us these Developers without being allowed to publish the openSUSE logo on the homepage? What is the requirement for doing that? They have to be a sponsor, too.

As you know as a former Board member, under the openSUSE Trademark Guidelines, the openSUSE Board can, if they wish, define the terms, conditions and requirements for any organisation to be able to use the openSUSE logo. https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Trademark_guidelines "All other uses of the openSUSE Marks need to be reserved by us, but we are available to discuss terms for use. " If a Company wants to sponsor developers and in return use the openSUSE Trademark, they should already be able to under the current rules. You seem to be suggesting that if you are elected you will 'fix' the status quo, but the problem you are stating does not appear to exist as far as I can see. Therefore I do not understand what point you are trying to make here as part of your campaign to join the Board in 2020.

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I disagree with the implication in the above that openSUSE is not able to recieve any such sponsorship.

My experience at openSUSE shows the opposite.

Again, see the incomplete list of companies I've already posted above. Are you suggesting that you weren't aware of any of these sponsorships in the last year or the many similar sponsorships that occurred when you were previously a Board member?

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The idea of an openSUSE Foundation has been a recurring topic for the openSUSE Project since before 2011.

I outright reject the statement that you "had to suggest this solution more than 3 times that was was accepted by SUSE employees in the Board".

We had long discussions about resolving the problem with the money. Google Summer of Code and openSUSE Asia Summit are only examples of our Board Meetings. Every time, I have repeated the suggestion with the foundation with all benefits for us and SUSE. I have experience with foundations from my student life and one employer who wanted to safe his open-source project with that. After 1.5 hours discussions without any predictable end (topic openSUSE Asia Summit in the past) all the other Board Members agreed that this would be the only possible solution. We can use the time for other topics in the future.

I recall the discussions you cite, and I remember vividly your repeated assertions that you have experiences with Foundations from your student life. I also remember the expressions of experience from other members of the Board who were in that discussion, including those who work for SUSE. I didn't want to go into too much detail in my original email because it was a private discussion of the team. But as you have now directly referred to the conversation, I feel I must firmly state that I still outright dismiss your characterisation of the discussion that you, individually "had to suggest this solution more than 3 times that was accepted by SUSE employees in the Board". The Board, as a team, decided to reinvigorate the project's efforts to look into a Foundation. Your statement above, even after your clarification, reads to me like you wish to take singular credit for this effort. This team included people on all sides of the debate from all backgrounds and employment states. I do not like picture of "Sarah vs SUSE" you paint with your choice of words. I do not think it is appropriate for an individual in a Team to try and take singular credit for a decision made by the whole team. That is not an attitude that I wish to see in a candidate asking for my vote for them in this election. Again, I'm sorry that might be uncomfortable for you to read, but isn't the purpose of this thread to give the opportunity for community members like myself to give feedback on the answers given by Board candidates?

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There is no difference between the Board members who are democratically elected by the community, and I think it is inappropirate for a potential Board member of to express a "them vs us" outlook between those elected Board members employed by a certain company and those who are not.

Yes. That is right. There is no difference in the Board. But it was peculiar that all the time SUSE employees were complaining about money topics at the openSUSE Board. The shortest way is another one.

Peculiar or not, I think it is inappropriate for a potential Board member to run on a campaign where they actively single out any other members of the Project because of the employer they might have. When that employer is also the primary sponsor of the project, I wonder how effective the Board member candidate will be at working with the Project's primary sponsor. I would much rather vote for a candidate who sees all of our contributors as equals.

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2) openSUSE infrastructure in Provo Background: I am one of the Founders of the openSUSE Heroes Team and was allowed to coordinate our first wiki project between Germany and Provo. The openSUSE infrastructure is in Microfocus hands and they need very long to respond on issues and we are not allowed to receive access as a community. Additionally, SUSE is not part of Microfocus any more which makes it more difficult to receive good support in the future. Solution 1: Migration of all openSUSE systems from Provo to Nuremberg / Prague (perhaps missing space?) Solution 2: Migration of all openSUSE systems from Provo to any German hosting data centre with access for openSUSE Heroes

It is my personal and professional experience that issues I report to admin@opensuse.org are no more likely to be resolved if they relate to openSUSE infrastructure in Nuremberg than if they related to openSUSE infrastructure in Provo.

Really? We are waiting for a database dump for our forums since September. A one line fix for the broken rss feed needed 2 months. In my experience our Heroes Team interacts mostly faster.

And yet there are tickets regarding Nuremberg-hosted infrastructure that have been open just as long if not longer: Some quickly identified examples: Ticket #4314 - related to lists.opensuse.org (hosted in NUE) - open since 09/06/2015 Ticket #17604 - related to lists.opensuse.org (hosted in NUE) - open since 08/03/2017 Ticket #17676 - sponsor wishing to provide a new mirror using the sources hosted in NUE - open since 12/03/2017 with the user still waiting for access since the last ping 11 months ago Ticket #37099 - related to download.opensuse.org (hosted in NUE) - open since 12/06/2018 Ticket #40061 - another sponsor wishing to provide a mirror from NUE - open since 21/08/2018 And I'm sure I could go through more of the admin@opensuse.org ticket list to find more examples. To re-iterate my points in my original email - It is an objective fact that issues in both Provo and Nuremberg take too long to fix - There is no evidence that Provo issues take any longer than Nuremberg issues, therefore there is no evidence that moving openSUSE infra from Provo to Nuremberg is a good solution - Even if there was, I do not think is it appropriate for Board members to demand the course of action that sponsors or other volunteers will have to take out. And because you were insulting enough to suggest I want a broken infrastructure, I will re-iterate here, of course I do not want a broken infrastructure - but it's not the Board's job to tell our infrastructure volunteers or sponsors how to do their job.

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3) Bad reputation of openSUSE Leap & openSUSE Tumbleweed Background: We are the openSUSE project with many different sub- projects. We don’t offer only Linux distributions, but we are well known for that and most people are associating us with that. I had given many presentations about openSUSE during my last Board Membership and represented us at different open source events. The existing openSUSE Board does not do that very much. They have another focus at the moment. Solution: We need more openSUSE Contributors representing openSUSE and I can do that as an openSUSE Board Member again. After that, we can be one of the top Linux distributions again. 😉

I disagree that you need to be a Board member in order to represent openSUSE and I dislike the implication that those two roles are somehow linked.

You are writing what I have written as a solution... I wrote that we need more openSUSE Contributors there. It is not necessary to be a Board Member to represent openSUSE. It is welcome to see openSUSE Board Members at open-source events. That is giving openSUSE an higher value there then.

You stated the problem was "Bad reputation of openSUSE Leap & openSUSE Tumbleweed" You stated, in the section of your reply starting with "Solution" a single sentence that reads "We need more openSUSE Contributors representing openSUSE and I can do that as an openSUSE Board Member again" I disagree that you need to be a Board member to represent openSUSE and I disagree with the implication that those two roles are somehow interlinked.

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As I state above, I agree the Project needs more ambassadors, advocates, and cheerleaders but I think the representation of openSUSE can and should be handled by anyone in the Project.

You are elected as a openSUSE Board Member because you are representing the openSUSE Community. We have the name "Student Representative" for elected Students at our university. We have been electing Board Members. Our focus should be to resolve problems. But we are representing the community, too. Additionally, I am not only one candidate with this idea. ;)

Please don't tell me as a voter what my vote means. When I cast my vote in this election, I am not electing a "Student Representative" for openSUSE. I am not electing a "Project Representative" for openSUSE, because I and all of my other voters can represent openSUSE. When I cast my vote I am electing a Board member who's primary role is to help resolve conflicts in the Project, to communicate with SUSE and our other sponsors, and to be trusted to make decisions when no one else in the Project is able to. None of those roles require or expect Board members to running around representing openSUSE to address the Project's perception.

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I'd rather see Board members spend their time on tasks requiring the trust and responsibility vested in them by the electorate.

I hope my fellow voters elect people based on their ability to handle tasks the community could not otherwise easily solve themselves.

Which additional (missing) tasks do you see? One role does not exclude others. I did not decline to resolve issues. I can resolve problems as a Computer Scientist (not only technical things).

With all due respect, I do not wish to see a Board member trying to address issues like a computer scientist. In my view the major issues the Project faces right now require Board members skilled in empathy, diplomacy, and other (I hate this term) "soft-skills" to interact with all the parties involved and encourage the people engaged with this Project to help openSUSE to improve itself. I do not think those abilities or attitudes have been expressed in this thread to date, but I hope my feedback has been detailed and constructive enough to be of some benefit. And if not, well, at least I can take comfort in being able to engage in this election process in a new way. Regards, -- Richard Brown Linux Distribution Engineer - Future Technology Team SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH Maxfeldstr. 5 90409 Nuremberg Germany (HRB 36809, AG Nürnberg) Managing Director: Felix Imendörffer -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org

Gesendet: Mittwoch, 22. Januar 2020 um 22:29 Uhr Von: "Richard Brown" An: opensuse-project@opensuse.org Betreff: Re: [opensuse-project] openSUSE Board election 2019-2020 - Final candidates list Hi Richard,

now I can understand your concerns better. Your questions could be a new Q&A. I have answred the questions by Gerald and said what to improve and not what is working and I want to continue/ do again.

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Hi Sarah,

Hi Richard, You have misunderstood a lot of my answers.

Hi Sarah,

After reading your email, I don't think I misunderstood much at all, but I do really appreciate your responses and the opportunity to elaborate my concerns.

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I feel there are a number of factual inaccuracies and tonal concerns I wish to raise with your answers

Where are the concerns? You are the first one who has responded. That is a mailing list and I am open for discussions.

My concerns are outlined in the email below..or do you mean to suggest with this statement that my concerns don't count because I'm the only person raising them? Isn't the whole point of public discussions so that individuals like myself can raise the concerns that bother us? aren't board members meant to represent the whole community, even the people they disagree with and who disagree with them?

Your concerns count. I want to explain all. I meant that you would be the first one with concerns. It would be boring without you in the community. I would not answer to resolve them, if I was watching that as unimportant. :)

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Background: I was asked really often at open source events how another company can sponsor openSUSE. We had to say that it would not possible because all of our money is going via a SUSE credit card and the money would be lost (same with the GSoC money, which has to be transferred to other organizations because of this issue). No company wants to pay Open Source Developers with such a background of an open-source project. Therefore, most openSUSE Contributors are working for SUSE or SUSE Business Partners. This topic popped up more than 3 times during my last Board Membership (really created by SUSE employees each time!).

There are a number of other ways besides money that other companies and projects can, do, and have sponsored openSUSE.

Yes. But that all has the issue that we don't have a foundation. We had supperior offers for hardware sponsorships and they had been canceled because "SUSE Linux GmbH" is listed as a co-contractor[0]. Such companies would accept a foundation.

Another case is the sponsorship for openSUSE Conferences. I have organized a German organization in the past. There were a lot of problems to receive information about sponsorships before. We sponsored the food then. But during a meeting this year, I heared that our Board does not want to support openSUSE any more because of these problems. You can watch the food of the last conference. Do you want to have only sandwiches for guests at the conference?

I find your statements above to run incongruently with reality.

openSUSE has has events sponsored, non-financially, by countless sponsors. Just in the last 12 months that includes the following companies and organisations:

arm ltd amazon Tuxedo Red Hat/Fedora Oracle/MySQL Linux Magazine Simplify Inc Radiant Utama Interinsco TBK BTech Linksys MyCoop

And I'm sure I am missing a number of other examples and to those wonderful sponsors of the openSUSE Project.

As a candidate for the openSUSE Board, I find your attitude expressed on this topic to be dismissive of the sponsors openSUSE already has and defeatist towards finding more such sponsors in the future. These are attitudes I do not want to see in a Board candidate I wish to vote for and I would hope that such feedback, while possibly uncomfortable for you to read, is helpful for you to recieve in some way.

I did not say anything against existing sponsors. Go through your list. Most existing sponsors are SUSE Business Partners or projects with the same backgound. I can say, that is 10-25% of possible sponsorships. Let's analyse the issue. Last conference we had only sanwiches as food. We asked for the reason. The answer was "not enough sponsoring". Therefore, your list was not enough. I have known that there were issues because of the existing workflow with SUSE in the past (with an organized sponsor by me). We had received really good food then. These organizations and other potential companies as sponsors exist, too. Therefore, I went to our community meeting to receive more information. We want to support open-source projects and no company. Additionally, sponsors want to know what will happen with the money. These questions had been unanswered. Therefore, such sponsorship partners don't sponsor any more. So you can see the background of this issue. What is the solution? We should have openSUSE as a co-contractor instead of SUSE. As openSUSE Board Members, we have to think about how to make us attractive again as an ope-source project. Is that better understandable?

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The topic "paied Open Source Developers" is coming from a study conference of the SBB foundation. A speaker told about "New Work" and that it is modern to offer 20% of working time for non-profit projects. I know different IT companies who want to support open-source projects on this way. Do you mean, they want to give us these Developers without being allowed to publish the openSUSE logo on the homepage? What is the requirement for doing that? They have to be a sponsor, too.

As you know as a former Board member, under the openSUSE Trademark Guidelines, the openSUSE Board can, if they wish, define the terms, conditions and requirements for any organisation to be able to use the openSUSE logo. https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Trademark_guidelines "All other uses of the openSUSE Marks need to be reserved by us, but we are available to discuss terms for use. "

If a Company wants to sponsor developers and in return use the openSUSE Trademark, they should already be able to under the current rules. You seem to be suggesting that if you are elected you will 'fix' the status quo, but the problem you are stating does not appear to exist as far as I can see. Therefore I do not understand what point you are trying to make here as part of your campaign to join the Board in 2020.

You are right in this case! Sorry that I did not write more about the perspective of other companies. If a company want to support us with Developers, they want to be able to receive the name "Sponsor" That counts more and more in the future. You are not a Sponsor with default Contributors. That is more. In the future, they want to write "We support these open-source projects and you are allowed to do that during working time!". Sponsoring will be part of that, too. They won't choose openSUSE as such an open-source project, if there would be such financials obstacles. I have received such a feedback in Chemnitz, too. :)

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I disagree with the implication in the above that openSUSE is not able to recieve any such sponsorship.

My experience at openSUSE shows the opposite.

Again, see the incomplete list of companies I've already posted above. Are you suggesting that you weren't aware of any of these sponsorships in the last year or the many similar sponsorships that occurred when you were previously a Board member?

Yes. I appreciate all existing sponsors. But I have an open ear for all. I had organized a sponsorship during my last Board Membership and I was surprised about the problems. If I hear about such things, I want to analyse the background to improve the situation. I want to be a Board Member of a "real" open-source project. If I receive the feedback, that the co-contractor would be the problem (in different cases) I try to find a solution for that.

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The idea of an openSUSE Foundation has been a recurring topic for the openSUSE Project since before 2011.

I outright reject the statement that you "had to suggest this solution more than 3 times that was was accepted by SUSE employees in the Board".

We had long discussions about resolving the problem with the money. Google Summer of Code and openSUSE Asia Summit are only examples of our Board Meetings. Every time, I have repeated the suggestion with the foundation with all benefits for us and SUSE. I have experience with foundations from my student life and one employer who wanted to safe his open-source project with that. After 1.5 hours discussions without any predictable end (topic openSUSE Asia Summit in the past) all the other Board Members agreed that this would be the only possible solution. We can use the time for other topics in the future.

I recall the discussions you cite, and I remember vividly your repeated assertions that you have experiences with Foundations from your student life. I also remember the expressions of experience from other members of the Board who were in that discussion, including those who work for SUSE.

Every time I had waited for suggestions by you or others in the Board. Default people with such conflicts have expectations. In this case, SUSE employees came to us because of conflicts with their own employer. They were allowed to suggest solutions, too. You did not suggest the Foundation as a solution. We had the same problem every time and we from the community wanted to have a long-term solution. Other Board Members had tried to transfer the GSoC money to the openSUSE Asia Summit, too. But thas was not possible. How can we solve such a conflict between SUSE and openSUSE? Therefore, this idea was suggested my me for a better community life. That has been approved by all of the Board then.

I didn't want to go into too much detail in my original email because it was a private discussion of the team. But as you have now directly referred to the conversation, I feel I must firmly state that I still outright dismiss your characterisation of the discussion that you, individually "had to suggest this solution more than 3 times that was accepted by SUSE employees in the Board".

I don't forbid to write your past opinions here. :)

The Board, as a team, decided to reinvigorate the project's efforts to look into a Foundation. Your statement above, even after your clarification, reads to me like you wish to take singular credit for this effort. This team included people on all sides of the debate from all backgrounds and employment states. I do not like picture of "Sarah vs SUSE" you paint with your choice of words.

Yes. The openSUSE Board is a team. I have written for a new application here. Therefore, I wanted to reference something with a successful improvement for the community. Additionally, I wanted to say that I want to finish my idea together with all the other Board Members. If you would be a candidate for the openSUSE Board again, didn't you spcify any good ideas by yourself in the past during your last Board Membership? ;) I do not think it is appropriate for an individual in a Team to try and

take singular credit for a decision made by the whole team. That is not an attitude that I wish to see in a candidate asking for my vote for them in this election. Again, I'm sorry that might be uncomfortable for you to read, but isn't the purpose of this thread to give the opportunity for community members like myself to give feedback on the answers given by Board candidates?

That is the point! That is an application for the Board and I have to show my goals and what I am doing/ have done for the community. :) Therefore, I give examples with good ideas from my side which are improving our community life. I don't want to have it as a singular credit. That is only an example what I had contributed to the Board. Everybody in the Board can make suggestions. Anybody can have an idea to improve something. In this case, I tell here about one idea from me in the past, which has been approved as a long-term solution by all in the Board.

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There is no difference between the Board members who are democratically elected by the community, and I think it is inappropirate for a potential Board member of to express a "them vs us" outlook between those elected Board members employed by a certain company and those who are not.

Yes. That is right. There is no difference in the Board. But it was peculiar that all the time SUSE employees were complaining about money topics at the openSUSE Board. The shortest way is another one.

Peculiar or not, I think it is inappropriate for a potential Board member to run on a campaign where they actively single out any other members of the Project because of the employer they might have. When that employer is also the primary sponsor of the project, I wonder how effective the Board member candidate will be at working with the Project's primary sponsor. I would much rather vote for a candidate who sees all of our contributors as equals.

My goal was to improve the collaboration between SUSE and openSUSE. That has been a conflict between SUSE and openSUSE. If SUSE employees in the Board need support for conflicts between their employer and our open-source project I am open to resolve such conflicts. You (and everybody else in the Board) were allowed to suggest a long-term solution, too. That is an example that I can not resolve only conflicts in the community. I am doing that with our partners and optional partners, too. :)

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2) openSUSE infrastructure in Provo Background: I am one of the Founders of the openSUSE Heroes Team and was allowed to coordinate our first wiki project between Germany and Provo. The openSUSE infrastructure is in Microfocus hands and they need very long to respond on issues and we are not allowed to receive access as a community. Additionally, SUSE is not part of Microfocus any more which makes it more difficult to receive good support in the future. Solution 1: Migration of all openSUSE systems from Provo to Nuremberg / Prague (perhaps missing space?) Solution 2: Migration of all openSUSE systems from Provo to any German hosting data centre with access for openSUSE Heroes

It is my personal and professional experience that issues I report to admin@opensuse.org are no more likely to be resolved if they relate to openSUSE infrastructure in Nuremberg than if they related to openSUSE infrastructure in Provo.

Really? We are waiting for a database dump for our forums since September. A one line fix for the broken rss feed needed 2 months. In my experience our Heroes Team interacts mostly faster.

And yet there are tickets regarding Nuremberg-hosted infrastructure that have been open just as long if not longer:

Some quickly identified examples: Ticket #4314 - related to lists.opensuse.org (hosted in NUE) - open since 09/06/2015 Ticket #17604 - related to lists.opensuse.org (hosted in NUE) - open since 08/03/2017 These issues have a lower priority because Google is listed as a solution in ticket #17604.

Ticket #17676 - sponsor wishing to provide a new mirror using the sources hosted in NUE - open since 12/03/2017 with the user still waiting for access since the last ping 11 months ago There were tickets with higher priorities. Last week we have received the good messages that we have more time for mirrors now. Ticket #37099 - related to download.opensuse.org (hosted in NUE) - open since 12/06/2018 Ticket #40061 - another sponsor wishing to provide a mirror from NUE - open since 21/08/2018 This mirror is configured and the ticket is almost finished.

The openSUSE Heroes Team is not the only one where special tickets need some time longer. The ticket of download.opensuse.org does not have any negative effict for the outside. Therefore, that has a lower priority. I can show you bug reports with such a long waiting time. Tickets with high priority are resolved really fast. Did you see that?

And I'm sure I could go through more of the admin@opensuse.org ticket list to find more examples.

To re-iterate my points in my original email - It is an objective fact that issues in both Provo and Nuremberg take too long to fix - There is no evidence that Provo issues take any longer than Nuremberg issues, therefore there is no evidence that moving openSUSE infra from Provo to Nuremberg is a good solution - Even if there was, I do not think is it appropriate for Board members to demand the course of action that sponsors or other volunteers will have to take out.

Do you mean, we have to wait for a database dump in Germany more than 3 months? I know that you have received ssh access for Provo as our Chairman in the past. Do you want to volunteer for us in Provo, if that was fun for you? ;) In my experience, MF-IT does not interact without kicking them. Our community team is more effective. Additionally, I have chosen this topic, because I have an open ear for our community. If the Heroes Team has such problems with Provo continiously, I want to think about a solution for them. I prefer to keep our openSUSE Contributors insted of loosing them because of MF-IT. We have escalations to the Board because of this issue. Therefore, we need a solution here. That is a job for openSUSE Board Members, too. I want to have a happy community.

And because you were insulting enough to suggest I want a broken infrastructure, I will re-iterate here, of course I do not want a broken infrastructure - but it's not the Board's job to tell our infrastructure volunteers or sponsors how to do their job.

I have asked our volunteers what they prefer (see above)! I would not list that as an candidate, if I was not asking for feedback in the community.

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3) Bad reputation of openSUSE Leap & openSUSE Tumbleweed Background: We are the openSUSE project with many different sub- projects. We don’t offer only Linux distributions, but we are well known for that and most people are associating us with that. I had given many presentations about openSUSE during my last Board Membership and represented us at different open source events. The existing openSUSE Board does not do that very much. They have another focus at the moment. Solution: We need more openSUSE Contributors representing openSUSE and I can do that as an openSUSE Board Member again. After that, we can be one of the top Linux distributions again. 😉

I disagree that you need to be a Board member in order to represent openSUSE and I dislike the implication that those two roles are somehow linked.

You are writing what I have written as a solution... I wrote that we need more openSUSE Contributors there. It is not necessary to be a Board Member to represent openSUSE. It is welcome to see openSUSE Board Members at open-source events. That is giving openSUSE an higher value there then.

You stated the problem was "Bad reputation of openSUSE Leap & openSUSE Tumbleweed" You stated, in the section of your reply starting with "Solution" a single sentence that reads "We need more openSUSE Contributors representing openSUSE and I can do that as an openSUSE Board Member again"

I disagree that you need to be a Board member to represent openSUSE and I disagree with the implication that those two roles are somehow interlinked.

I did not write anywhere that you have to represent openSUSE. Everybody can do that. I wrote above that I have an open ear for the community. I am doing that for our users and optional partners, too. How do you want to receive feedback for improvements without repesenting openSUSE as an openSUSE Board Member? Do you mean you receive all feedback via email?

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As I state above, I agree the Project needs more ambassadors, advocates, and cheerleaders but I think the representation of openSUSE can and should be handled by anyone in the Project.

You are elected as a openSUSE Board Member because you are representing the openSUSE Community. We have the name "Student Representative" for elected Students at our university. We have been electing Board Members. Our focus should be to resolve problems. But we are representing the community, too. Additionally, I am not only one candidate with this idea. ;)

Please don't tell me as a voter what my vote means. When I cast my vote in this election, I am not electing a "Student Representative" for openSUSE. I am not electing a "Project Representative" for openSUSE, because I and all of my other voters can represent openSUSE. When I cast my vote I am electing a Board member who's primary role is to help resolve conflicts in the Project, to communicate with SUSE and our other sponsors, and to be trusted to make decisions when no one else in the Project is able to.

Didn't I resolve conflicts with my solution? I had resolved conflicts in the community as a openSUSE Board Member. I have found a long-term solution to resolve conflicts between SUSE and openSUSE. I have analysed the problem with conflicts between sponsoring between openSUSE/SUSE and optional partners. Gerald wanted to know "what can be improved in the future Board". The existing Board is resolving conflicts, too. Therefore, that is not any good idea for improvements. Representation by openSUSE Board Members besides of other Advocates at open-source events has the positive effect to receive feedback by all (users and Contributors). On this way, we can improve us and our reputation.

None of those roles require or expect Board members to running around representing openSUSE to address the Project's perception.

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I'd rather see Board members spend their time on tasks requiring the trust and responsibility vested in them by the electorate.

I hope my fellow voters elect people based on their ability to handle tasks the community could not otherwise easily solve themselves.

Which additional (missing) tasks do you see? One role does not exclude others. I did not decline to resolve issues. I can resolve problems as a Computer Scientist (not only technical things).

With all due respect, I do not wish to see a Board member trying to address issues like a computer scientist. In my view the major issues the Project faces right now require Board members skilled in empathy, diplomacy, and other (I hate this term) "soft-skills" to interact with all the parties involved and encourage the people engaged with this Project to help openSUSE to improve itself. I do not think those abilities or attitudes have been expressed in this thread to date, but I hope my feedback has been detailed and constructive enough to be of some benefit. And if not, well, at least I can take comfort in being able to engage in this election process in a new way.

Computer Scientists have the qualification to resolve (technical) problems. I don't address that alone. But I have learned to transfer this qualification to interpersonal problems which are conflicts (in your terminology). I have an open ear for all. That is the same as Requirements Engineering for the community what is needed to improve. After that you have to find solutions for problems and conflicts. That is what I have done above. Why are optional sponsors unimportant? I want to see our community growing and with happy Contributors. I am doing the same with the Translation Team and you can read their feedback on this mailing list. Which of your listed "soft-skills" is missing? It seems, you want to disregard resolving conflicts with optional new partners and what is happening in the community. I know why I did not say anything about my professional qualification in the Q&A. That was a list with answers for the Q&A by Gerald (what to improve, watched risks, ...). That is unimportant for an openSUSE Board Member. That is correct. But it is important how you are using your skills and how you resolve issues/conflicts. And I wanted to show you how I have received this qualification via my professional education.

Regards, -- Richard Brown Linux Distribution Engineer - Future Technology Team Best regards, Sarah

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Hello, Am Freitag, 24. Januar 2020, 13:12:57 CET schrieb Richard Brown:

On 24. Jan 2020, at 12:51, Sarah Julia Kriesch wrote:

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I know that you have received ssh access for Provo as our Chairman in the past. Do you want to volunteer for us in Provo, if that was fun for you? ;) I do not, and have never received ssh access for any infrastructure in Provo.

Richard, are you really sure about that? Nearly 3 years ago, you escalated the problems with MF-IT, and as part of that, asked for root access for some services hosted in Provo (wikis, www.o.o, lizards and news) so that we don't always have to wait for / rely on MF-IT. IIRC (and I'm 99.9% sure) they gave _you and a SUSE admin_ root access. You probably never used that root access yourself [1], but nevertheless: AFAIK you indeed got root access to those servers in Provo back then. For completeness: The "99.9% sure" is completely based on my own /dev/brain, and I also found an old IRC log[2] that agrees with my brain. I'm sorry to say that, but that also means that your statement is wrong, and Sarah is right. Regards, Christian Boltz PS: Having to escalate stuff to MF-IT didn't end yet - Gerald "enjoys" to continue this, well, tradition... [1] not too surprising, and not meant in a negative way - getting mysqldumps and similar admin tasks are not a chairman's job, and you already had to waste^Wspend lots of time to escalate this and to get root access on these servers. [2] from end of March 2017 -- Error: File not found -- search behind couch? (Y/N) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org