Re: [opensuse-project] statements from the debate that are relevant to me:
Agustin Benito Bethencourt 12/07/12 9:22 AM >>> What do we have to do at SUSE to get more people involve in the Release process?
I think the community (which of course includes SUSE) could look into ways to make it easier for people to pitch in and get involved, but more importantly I think we need to do a much better job at getting the message out there about how easy it already is to be involved in the release process. Practical options I'd like us to consider include: * Revamping the website to make information about how to get involved much more prominent and welcoming. The website should also better convey the overall projects goal (which will tie into my answer to your second question) * Sorting the wiki out so it's a heck of a lot easier for everyone to use and search across - I'd like to see the death of the namespaces and perhaps replace it instead with 2 discreet wiki's, probably one for Users (ie the current SDB) and one for contributors (the current openSUSE namespace) - I think everything that currently exists in the 'Main' namespace, our 'product brochure' should be website, not wiki, material. * Do a better job of aggregating lots of our communication media (News, ML, Social Networking, etc) into one place contributors can go to stay involved (I think Connect++ could be a big part of such a solution) * Make it easier for people to get involved in our IRC channels, possibly with web-based access to IRC to dramatically lower the barrier to entry that exists for some new contributors. A lot of what I just suggested will require co-operation from SUSE in terms of manpower and infrastructure, and it might be sensible for your team at SUSE to take the lead on some of those things, either way, those are some areas I can see us working on in the near term.
Do we need to define targets for our distribution or that is a role for deployers and third parties?
In terms of actual development goals (eg. https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Goals_12.3) I think that's a place for our contributors to decide and the board to keep their noses out of But aside from the day to day, practical goals, I do think we need to sit down as a project and do a much better job of communicating who we are, what we are setting out to achieve, and who we intend our distribution to be used by. I think there is some merit in your ideas for a more 'business-orientated' approach, targeting SME's and turning our focus to being the 'ideal' linux distribution for SME's to use and contribute back to. I think it's a bold and ambitious target, and as my own involvement in openSUSE originated from use in an SME, I certainly can't argue that we aren't already capable in that area. Deciding on that as our focus could help provide the refinement and polish to really achieve something in this space, and would certainly make my answer shorter when I'm at conferences and people endlessly ask me "Why should I use openSUSE?" But 'business' is boring, I feel we'd need to be careful not to lose our unique "Have a lot of fun" vibe if we (the community) decide to head in that direction. The concerns about the economic side of things already is setting of alarm bells for me, which we'd have to resolve before I'd consider such a direction viable. I personally think our greatest strength as a project and distribution is the fact we embrace 'Choice' The fact we explicitly don't define how you're meant to use openSUSE is a strength - Whether you're a user who wants a server, a KDE workstation, a GNOME workstation, an appliance, a tablet, a toaster, we build, we distribute, you decide But we're not like other "do whatever you want" distros like Debian. While we do take the current and best from upstream and dump it all on our users to play with, we have tools like YaST (and SUSE give us Studio) which exist to help make that decision and deployment process easier. We're the distro where a relative novice can turn up and say "I want my box to be a desktop and a webserver and a mailserver and a VOIP server all at once" and it's half a dozen button clicks away instead of a month digging through documentation and configuration files. I think we don't do a good enough job at getting that message out to people, and I sometimes think we forget it ourselves, occasionally thinking we're making it easier for our users by taking choices away from them, rather than instead making it easier for them to make those choices. To give a specific example, revamping the desktop selection screen with screenshots and better descriptions to make it easier for a novice user to make an informed choice between GNOME and KDE is something I'd really like to see. I'm not sure my vision of 'choice' necessarily is enough to be a goal in-of-itself, nor do I think it is mutually exclusive to other proposed goal, whether that be a move to becoming 'business-orientated' or something else. I do think we could do with deciding on our direction, I just think we need to keep our strengths in choice and having fun at the same time, and do a better job of marketing all of it to the outside world.
What aspects of SUSE work in openSUSE can we improve in 2013?
After that long answer, this one is going to be nice and short - I'd like to see much better communication what the openSUSE team @SUSE is up to and where I (as a contributor) might be able to help out. With the changes to the team, I no longer understand who is doing what, and I think that's important In the past, with the 'Boosters', when they weren't working on something already established and open, it often felt they were off doing their thing in private, then releasing their awesome stuff for everyone else to pitch in after the fact. I'd like it if we (the wider community) could know what openSUSE@SUSE team has on the go at any one time, and hopefully this would lead to more opportunities for the community to help out in the early stages with whatever your team is taking the lead on.
In general.....in which aspects should SUSE focus its activity for 2013 (in openSUSE)?
I think my first answer covers most of my feelings about this. The release process needs attention, and we need to make sure that 12.3 and 12.4 both build on the lessons of recent releases. In the absence of any overarching 'goal', my feeling would be SUSE would be well positioned to act as 'troubleshooters', helping resolve particular pain-points in the project as they arise, then working with the community and the board to help make sure they don't occur again. There, sorry for the long replies, but you had great questions and wanted to make sure you got the full picture on how I feel about them Hope this helps - Richard On Friday, December 07, 2012 10:01:40 AM Agustin Benito Bethencourt wrote:
Hi,
these statements reflect issues that I would like to work on:
1.- 15:50:13 without it, the money would go to SUSE like the money from Google Summer of Code, but I could be wrong.
2.- 15:50:58 lupinstein: Last time heard, Jos telling in a mailing list that we do get money.. so thats great.. :) but we need some transparency there.. I believe.. which should be a role for the next board
3.- 15:52:37 it would be hard for me to give to SUSE, because I am not sure if it would all go to openSUSE.
4.- 15:53:22 anyway foundation would be a plus for transparency in my opinion.
It seems that two topics, transparency and increasing income are linked to the creation of the Foundation. This is a wrong approach to me. They are separate and not neccesarily linked topics.
The Foundation is, in any case, the consequence of a wider and more complex process. Having a company like SUSE should allow openSUSE to, in the case a foundation is created, to start it in a very mature and susteinable state. We are far from there at this point.
We can and should increase transparency in the economic area and we have to find ways for the project to become economically susteinable, so creating a Foundation could be a topic to discuss because it has a clear mid term future.
5.- 16:09:54 The KDE area didn't loose any members to open-slx, but the loss was more due to the reorganization of the boosters team
open-slx is an example of the opportunities openSUSE has to become "business friendly" Open Source Press is another example. Transforming openSUSE into a business friendly ecosystem will be a major topic in the coming new action plan.
What do you think?
Saludos -- Agustin Benito Bethencourt openSUSE Team Lead at SUSE abebe@suse.com
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On Friday 07 December 2012 11:42:23 Richard Brown wrote:
Do we need to define targets for our distribution or that is a role for deployers and third parties? In terms of actual development goals (eg. https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Goals_12.3) I think that's a place for our contributors to decide and the board to keep their noses out of
And who will represent those openSUSE users that are not contributors and not even Community members ? Wasn't this the reason why FATE was implemented ? As a platform where openSUSE users could request changes for their favorite distribution ? I agree that the board should not drive the actual development goals, however it should ensure the process itself. The current situation is that the contributor is making the call whether or not a change is implemented. I can take my own contribution as an example. Plymouth was an openFATE request, but despite several attempts nobody really picked it up. Together with some other community members, I managed to integrate it within the openSUSE boot process and submitted it to Factory. At that moment only me and the Release Manager decided to make Plymouth the default bootsplash and drop our old bootsplash. Where was the input from the community ? Let alone the input from our userbase. If we look around us, then we see that a majority of the users of linux distributions are talking about the fact that a small group of people are making decisions for them. We all know about these discussions and I feel strongly that we as the openSUSE distribution should prevent this kind of talk about us.
But aside from the day to day, practical goals, I do think we need to sit down as a project and do a much better job of communicating who we are, what we are setting out to achieve, and who we intend our distribution to be used by.
And how our users can contribute to or influence our goals. :-)
I personally think our greatest strength as a project and distribution is the fact we embrace 'Choice' The fact we explicitly don't define how you're meant to use openSUSE is a strength - Whether you're a user who wants a server, a KDE workstation, a GNOME workstation, an appliance, a tablet, a toaster, we build, we distribute, you decide
This would indeed be a great idea and an excellence goal for openSUSE. This is exactly what I am trying to emphasize on when it comes to our development goals. Our strength should be that we listen to our users and that we do not define what they can do with our distro. Maybe I have a too strong business background with regards to how I would like to see openSUSE to change to have a better communication and interaction with all its users. Regards Raymond -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Hey, On 07.12.2012 13:21, Raymond Wooninck wrote:
If we look around us, then we see that a majority of the users of linux distributions are talking about the fact that a small group of people are making decisions for them.
Who does, decides. One of the basic principles that makes FOSS great. Why would we give that up? Henne -- Henne Vogelsang http://www.opensuse.org Everybody has a plan, until they get hit. - Mike Tyson -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On Friday 07 December 2012 13:30:57 Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Hey,
On 07.12.2012 13:21, Raymond Wooninck wrote:
If we look around us, then we see that a majority of the users of linux distributions are talking about the fact that a small group of people are making decisions for them.
Who does, decides. One of the basic principles that makes FOSS great. Why would we give that up?
So if I put in all the time that I have and make big changes (e.g. remove the need for an initrd, replace systemd with Upstart, etc), then the openSUSE community would really allow me to implement those changes in Factory ? The above is just an example, but I am sure that you agree that not everything falls into the category of "Who does, decides". Certain elements are based on a SUSE strategy, upstream strategy, etc. It is up to us as a community (indeed) to see what would fit in the distro and what not. But wouldn't if be even better to validate those things against our userbase ? Some great ideas to make openSUSE even better might live among those that are not a community member or believe that they do not have the abilities to contribute to the project. In the end if we are becoming a Foundation and we want to raise money, then we are becoming dependent on our userbase. Ignoring them now, could mean they will ignore us when we want something from them. But the greatness of FOSS is that everybody has freedom of choice. So I am sure that there might be people that agree with me and there will be a lot of people that do not agree with me. Raymond -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Hey, On 07.12.2012 13:50, Raymond Wooninck wrote:
On Friday 07 December 2012 13:30:57 Henne Vogelsang wrote:
On 07.12.2012 13:21, Raymond Wooninck wrote:
If we look around us, then we see that a majority of the users of linux distributions are talking about the fact that a small group of people are making decisions for them.
Who does, decides. One of the basic principles that makes FOSS great. Why would we give that up?
So if I put in all the time that I have and make big changes (e.g. remove the need for an initrd, replace systemd with Upstart, etc), then the openSUSE community would really allow me to implement those changes in Factory ?
Sure, as long as nobody else is doing the same, a similar or opposite thing. Then you have to compromise or go up the escalation ladder.
The above is just an example, but I am sure that you agree that not everything falls into the category of "Who does, decides". Certain elements are based on a SUSE strategy, upstream strategy, etc.
Nothing except SUSEs contributions to this project are based on SUSEs strategy. Like your contributions are based on your strategy and upstreams contributions (we take) are based on upstreams strategy.
It is up to us as a community (indeed) to see what would fit in the distro and what not. But wouldn't if be even better to validate those things against our userbase?
Yes nobody is arguing that. The questions is who decides what we do based on this input. And that's the one who does it. If 90% of the users (you ask in fate) are against something it's still in the doer's discretion to do it anyway.
In the end if we are becoming a Foundation and we want to raise money, then we are becoming dependent on our userbase.
Being dependent on your userbase doesn't mean you are bound to do as they say. Henne -- Henne Vogelsang http://www.opensuse.org Everybody has a plan, until they get hit. - Mike Tyson -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Hey,
On 07.12.2012 13:50, Raymond Wooninck wrote:
It is up to us as a community (indeed) to see what would fit in the distro and what not. But wouldn't if be even better to validate those things against our userbase?
Yes nobody is arguing that. The questions is who decides what we do based on this input. And that's the one who does it. If 90% of the users (you ask in fate) are against something it's still in the doer's discretion to do it anyway.
In the end if we are becoming a Foundation and we want to raise money, then we are becoming dependent on our userbase.
Being dependent on your userbase doesn't mean you are bound to do as they say.
History is filled with dead companies that didn't listen to their users. Distros only exist for their users, I don't think distros are likely to get away with ignoring that risk. Just an observation. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (-1.5°C) http://www.dns24.ch/ - free DNS hosting, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Hey, On 07.12.2012 14:13, Per Jessen wrote:
History is filled with dead companies that didn't listen to their users.
Again: "Listening to" is not the same as "do as they say". Henne -- Henne Vogelsang http://www.opensuse.org Everybody has a plan, until they get hit. - Mike Tyson -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Hey,
On 07.12.2012 14:13, Per Jessen wrote:
History is filled with dead companies that didn't listen to their users.
Again: "Listening to" is not the same as "do as they say".
Henne
I'm sorry if I wasn't being clear. To "listen to" is in fact the same as "do as they say" : http://www.dict.cc/?s=listen%20to The topmost entry is the one you want. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (-1.4°C) http://www.dns24.ch/ - free DNS hosting, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Hey, On 07.12.2012 14:24, Per Jessen wrote:
Henne Vogelsang wrote:
On 07.12.2012 14:13, Per Jessen wrote:
History is filled with dead companies that didn't listen to their users.
Again: "Listening to" is not the same as "do as they say".
I'm sorry if I wasn't being clear. To "listen to" is in fact the same as "do as they say" :
http://www.dict.cc/?s=listen%20to
The topmost entry is the one you want.
Erm, I'm not really in the mood to discuss semantics with you, especially because we're both no native speakers, so please concentrate on the meaning. I mean: "Listen to" is paying attention to what the users say. "Do as they say" is implementing whatever the majority of users decides. I'm all for listening to our userbase, I'm all against developing by majority vote or committee. Henne -- Henne Vogelsang http://www.opensuse.org Everybody has a plan, until they get hit. - Mike Tyson -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Henne Vogelsang wrote:
Hey,
On 07.12.2012 14:24, Per Jessen wrote:
Henne Vogelsang wrote:
On 07.12.2012 14:13, Per Jessen wrote:
History is filled with dead companies that didn't listen to their users.
Again: "Listening to" is not the same as "do as they say".
I'm sorry if I wasn't being clear. To "listen to" is in fact the same as "do as they say" :
http://www.dict.cc/?s=listen%20to
The topmost entry is the one you want.
Erm, I'm not really in the mood to discuss semantics with you,
Erm, you started it.
especially because we're both no native speakers, so please concentrate on the meaning. I mean:
"Listen to" is paying attention to what the users say. "Do as they say" is implementing whatever the majority of users decides.
Yeah, I know what you mean - well, let me paraphrase, hopefully ignoring semantic issues - we will not survive as a distro if we do not deliver what our users want. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (-0.9°C) http://www.dns24.ch/ - free DNS hosting, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Hi, On 12/07/2012 07:21 AM, Raymond Wooninck wrote:
On Friday 07 December 2012 11:42:23 Richard Brown wrote:
Do we need to define targets for our distribution or that is a role for deployers and third parties? In terms of actual development goals (eg. https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Goals_12.3) I think that's a place for our contributors to decide and the board to keep their noses out of
And who will represent those openSUSE users that are not contributors and not even Community members ? Wasn't this the reason why FATE was implemented ? As a platform where openSUSE users could request changes for their favorite distribution ?
Yes, but as a project we are driven by volunteer contributions and just because users put stuff into openFATE and vote it to the top of the list doesn't mean it will get implemented. In the end, those who do the work have the power over what gets implemented and goes into the distro. We as a community are not in a position to direct developers/packagers/maintainers to work on something that may not be interesting to them and do the work just because users voted for a given feature in openFATE. This does not mean we should ignore what is in openFATE and maybe this is an area where the board can keep an eye on openFate and if something is not getting picked up the board can send out a call for volunteers. But that would be about the extend of it. On the other hand this may also be a great area for the openSUSE team at SUSE to jump right into the fray. Augustine does have the power to direct the team members to work on specific tasks that may lie outside a given team member's "scratch your itch" zone.
I agree that the board should not drive the actual development goals, however it should ensure the process itself. The current situation is that the contributor is making the call whether or not a change is implemented. I can take my own contribution as an example. Plymouth was an openFATE request, but despite several attempts nobody really picked it up. Together with some other community members, I managed to integrate it within the openSUSE boot process and submitted it to Factory. At that moment only me and the Release Manager decided to make Plymouth the default bootsplash and drop our old bootsplash. Where was the input from the community ? Let alone the input from our userbase.
Well, I think there was input in that the item was in openFATE for a while. Thus, the input was there. However, the final decision rests with those that do the work. Those that do the work get by default the most say. Those that do not pitch in can certainly provide input and make there voices heard, and they should. However, it is up to those doing the work to decide about how much of the input from non contributors they will consider. This reminds me a lot of the systemd arguments we had on the -factory and other lists. To this day there have been many that complain about systemd and argued in favor of keeping SysV-init. Yet non of those that complained has stepped up to the plate to maintain the SysV-init system for the distribution in the years to come. Anyway, please lets not derail the discussion and get on the systemd tangent. I just mention it as an example in recent memory, there are other examples ;) .
If we look around us, then we see that a majority of the users of linux distributions are talking about the fact that a small group of people are making decisions for them. We all know about these discussions and I feel strongly that we as the openSUSE distribution should prevent this kind of talk about us.
That is a noble goal. However, I am uncertain about the achievability of the goal. In the end those with the fingers in the code make the decisions and that by definition are the package maintainers and those are few compared to the user base. I think by the time we are done pruning our lists and collecting statistics about our packages we will find that many packages have only one or two maintainers and therefore there are only 1 or 2 people making decisions about the direction of any given package. This is not to say that there are not opportunities for us to address the feeling of "helplessness" in the user community. As Richard pointed out, from the distro point of view and from a developer point of view we need to do a better job in communicating decisions and why they were made. While this communication will not take away the fact that few decide, it will make it much easier for those that are not part of decision process to follow along and support the decision, thus alleviating the feeling of being "run over by a train". Later, Robert -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU SUSE-IBM Software Integration Center LINUX Tech Lead rjschwei@suse.com rschweik@ca.ibm.com 781-464-8147 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On Fri, 2012-12-07 at 12:38 -0500, Robert Schweikert wrote: This does not mean we should ignore what is in openFATE and maybe this
is an area where the board can keep an eye on openFate and if something is not getting picked up the board can send out a call for volunteers. But that would be about the extend of it. On the other hand this may also be a great area for the openSUSE team at SUSE to jump right into the fray. Augustine does have the power to direct the team members to work on specific tasks that may lie outside a given team member's "scratch your itch" zone.
On that note, some of the features on openFATE have outdated statues. E.g. the GRUB2 feature is still listed as Rejected, and the feature for switching to SHA-512 password hashes is still open. Just to name a couple. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On 12/08/2012 05:12 AM, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
On Fri, 2012-12-07 at 12:38 -0500, Robert Schweikert wrote: This does not mean we should ignore what is in openFATE and maybe this
is an area where the board can keep an eye on openFate and if something is not getting picked up the board can send out a call for volunteers. But that would be about the extend of it. On the other hand this may also be a great area for the openSUSE team at SUSE to jump right into the fray. Augustine does have the power to direct the team members to work on specific tasks that may lie outside a given team member's "scratch your itch" zone.
On that note, some of the features on openFATE have outdated statues. E.g. the GRUB2 feature is still listed as Rejected, and the feature for switching to SHA-512 password hashes is still open. Just to name a couple.
You should have the permissions to mark them as done if you notice something like this ;) It's nice that people can give input but currently that input gets basically ignored. So, either we find a way to do something with the input, or we should shut down openfate, Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger aj@{suse.com,opensuse.org} Twitter/Identica: jaegerandi SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GF: Jeff Hawn,Jennifer Guild,Felix Imendörffer,HRB16746 (AG Nürnberg) GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On Sat, 2012-12-08 at 13:51 +0100, Andreas Jaeger wrote:
You should have the permissions to mark them as done if you notice something like this ;)
It's nice that people can give input but currently that input gets basically ignored. So, either we find a way to do something with the input, or we should shut down openfate,
Andreas Yes, but I can't add new openSUSE versions to the product list. E.g. I changed Grub2 to "Done" but it is still "Rejected" from 11.4, the most recent release it was considered for, since I can't add 12.1 or 12.2: https://features.opensuse.org/308497
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On Sat, 08 Dec 2012 09:05:25 -0600 Michael Catanzaro <mike.catanzaro@gmail.com> wrote:
Yes, but I can't add new openSUSE versions to the product list. ... https://features.opensuse.org/308497
It is fine. It is solved for distribution. -- Regards, Rajko. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On Sat, 08 Dec 2012 13:51:56 +0100 Andreas Jaeger <aj@suse.com> wrote:
It's nice that people can give input but currently that input gets basically ignored. So, either we find a way to do something with the input, or we should shut down openfate,
IMHO, that should be on Agustin's list to check what else exists there that is solvable within his team and what should go on longer list for potential contributors. -- Regards, Rajko. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Hi,
This would indeed be a great idea and an excellence goal for openSUSE. This is exactly what I am trying to emphasize on when it comes to our development goals. Our strength should be that we listen to our users and that we do not define what they can do with our distro.
I think I already answered this on a previous mail.
Maybe I have a too strong business background with regards to how I would like to see openSUSE to change to have a better communication and interaction with all its users.
We totally agree here. And it is not simple at all to do it. How can we improve? Again, is it about improving FATE or something else? Saludos -- Agustin Benito Bethencourt openSUSE Team Lead at SUSE abebe@suse.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Richard Brown wrote:
Agustin Benito Bethencourt 12/07/12 9:22 AM >>> What do we have to do at SUSE to get more people involve in the Release process?
I think the community (which of course includes SUSE) could look into ways to make it easier for people to pitch in and get involved, but more importantly I think we need to do a much better job at getting the message out there about how easy it already is to be involved in the release process.
I think one significant hurdle is simply knowing which jobs need doing. For people out there thinking "I like openSUSE, I would like to help out", the first thing is finding out what there is to do and how well it matches ones skillset. We can't just say RTFW.
But aside from the day to day, practical goals, I do think we need to sit down as a project and do a much better job of communicating who we are, what we are setting out to achieve, and who we intend our distribution to be used by.
+1 to all three of those.
I think there is some merit in your ideas for a more 'business-orientated' approach, targeting SME's and turning our focus to being the 'ideal' linux distribution for SME's to use and contribute back to.
Yes, there could well be some merit to that, but SME's require stability and reliability, even more so than large enterprises. Just an observation. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (-1.5°C) http://www.dns24.ch/ - free DNS hosting, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On 12/07/2012 07:39 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
Richard Brown wrote:
Agustin Benito Bethencourt 12/07/12 9:22 AM >>> What do we have to do at SUSE to get more people involve in the Release process?
I think the community (which of course includes SUSE) could look into ways to make it easier for people to pitch in and get involved, but more importantly I think we need to do a much better job at getting the message out there about how easy it already is to be involved in the release process.
I think one significant hurdle is simply knowing which jobs need doing. For people out there thinking "I like openSUSE, I would like to help out", the first thing is finding out what there is to do and how well it matches ones skillset.
Yes, and one step in this direction is to collect statistics on our packages and project (this is in the works) and make those statistics public and listing projects and packages that need help. Another step is to document roles and expectation levels to allow those who want to jump in to match their skills. I have also started working on this from a packaging and distro point of view. Standing up a mentor program would be a great way to help people that want to help to get started and to be a "central" place to collect information about what needs to get done. And I am certain other people will have great ideas in these directions. Later, Robert -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU SUSE-IBM Software Integration Center LINUX Tech Lead rjschwei@suse.com rschweik@ca.ibm.com 781-464-8147 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Hi, On Friday, December 07, 2012 12:49:26 PM Robert Schweikert wrote:
On 12/07/2012 07:39 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
Richard Brown wrote:
Agustin Benito Bethencourt 12/07/12 9:22 AM >>>
What do we have to do at SUSE to get more people involve in the Release process?
I think the community (which of course includes SUSE) could look into ways to make it easier for people to pitch in and get involved, but more importantly I think we need to do a much better job at getting the message out there about how easy it already is to be involved in the release process.
I think one significant hurdle is simply knowing which jobs need doing. For people out there thinking "I like openSUSE, I would like to help out", the first thing is finding out what there is to do and how well it matches ones skillset.
Yes, and one step in this direction is to collect statistics on our packages and project (this is in the works) and make those statistics public and listing projects and packages that need help.
From the discussions we have had at SUSE, we all agree in the concept of
This need has been detected, discussed and we agree we need to take action. We are taking the first few steps and more are coming. As a general statement..... no numbers = no analysis = no improvements. public statistics from the public software belonging to the public project (openSUSE) coming from anonymous users. Since this is a sensitive topic we will need to agree in the implementation.
Another step is to document roles and expectation levels to allow those who want to jump in to match their skills. I have also started working on this from a packaging and distro point of view.
This is a good approach. We need to do the same. Saludos -- Agustin Benito Bethencourt openSUSE Team Lead at SUSE abebe@suse.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Hi,
I think there is some merit in your ideas for a more 'business-orientated' approach, targeting SME's and turning our focus to being the 'ideal' linux distribution for SME's to use and contribute back to.
Yes, there could well be some merit to that, but SME's require stability and reliability, even more so than large enterprises. Just an observation.
Is it possible to bring excitement to developers/contributors (shipping the latest, for instance....) and still increase the stability and reliability of the distribution, to present a piece of software that allow us to lead a niche? Some might think that those two goals are not compatible, but I don't. I think it is worth trying to achieve both. Saludos -- Agustin Benito Bethencourt openSUSE Team Lead at SUSE abebe@suse.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
On 12/07/2012 06:42 AM, Richard Brown wrote:
Agustin Benito Bethencourt 12/07/12 9:22 AM >>> <snip> What aspects of SUSE work in openSUSE can we improve in 2013?
After that long answer, this one is going to be nice and short - I'd like to see much better communication what the openSUSE team @SUSE is up to and where I (as a contributor) might be able to help out. With the changes to the team, I no longer understand who is doing what, and I think that's important
Well, while I often harp on the communication and visibility of action in progress, and sometimes I feel it somehow comes back around and steps on Henne's toes, I have to say that for much of the Boosters items there was sufficient communication from the "Stand-up meetings" that allowed people to follow what was going on. Additionally from these meeting minutes one could figure out who was working in what specific area and could send of an e-mail to the person in question. Thus I do not share your feeling that the Boosters were often operating in the own little universe behind closed doors. Later, Robert -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU SUSE-IBM Software Integration Center LINUX Tech Lead rjschwei@suse.com rschweik@ca.ibm.com 781-464-8147 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Hi, On Friday, December 07, 2012 11:42:23 AM Richard Brown wrote:
Agustin Benito Bethencourt 12/07/12 9:22 AM >>>
What do we have to do at SUSE to get more people involve in the Release process?
I think the community (which of course includes SUSE) could look into ways to make it easier for people to pitch in and get involved, but more importantly I think we need to do a much better job at getting the message out there about how easy it already is to be involved in the release process.
This is something we will put more effort, yes.
Practical options I'd like us to consider include: * Revamping the website to make information about how to get involved much more prominent and welcoming. The website should also better convey the overall projects goal (which will tie into my answer to your second question) * Sorting the wiki out so it's a heck of a lot easier for everyone to use and search across - I'd like to see the death of the namespaces and perhaps replace it instead with 2 discreet wiki's, probably one for Users (ie the current SDB) and one for contributors (the current openSUSE namespace) - I think everything that currently exists in the 'Main' namespace, our 'product brochure' should be website, not wiki, material. * Do a better job of aggregating lots of our communication media (News, ML, Social Networking, etc) into one place contributors can go to stay involved (I think Connect++ could be a big part of such a solution) * Make it easier for people to get involved in our IRC channels, possibly with web-based access to IRC to dramatically lower the barrier to entry that exists for some new contributors.
A lot of what I just suggested will require co-operation from SUSE in terms of manpower and infrastructure, and it might be sensible for your team at SUSE to take the lead on some of those things, either way, those are some areas I can see us working on in the near term.
These are nice suggesstions, thanks. We will add them to our ToDo list. The tools are important, obviously, and there are many improvements we can put on the table to lower barriers. But we already have in general nice tools compared to others and we have put a lot of effort into them in the past. Are tools the priority for engaging people during the Release process? I think it is time to look into other directions as well.
Do we need to define targets for our distribution or that is a role for deployers and third parties? In terms of actual development goals (eg. https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Goals_12.3) I think that's a place for our contributors to decide and the board to keep their noses out of
A community project can be seen as a meeting point in which each part work together to achieve a common goal that helps them to achive their individual goals. Each one of you is here for a reason and SUSE has its own reasons for supporting the project. We have to work to make those goals compatible, not the same one.
But aside from the day to day, practical goals, I do think we need to sit down as a project and do a much better job of communicating who we are, what we are setting out to achieve, and who we intend our distribution to be used by.
How can SUSE help on this? Should we? If there is something we can do, we will try.
I think there is some merit in your ideas for a more 'business-orientated' approach, targeting SME's and turning our focus to being the 'ideal' linux distribution for SME's to use and contribute back to. I think it's a bold and ambitious target, and as my own involvement in openSUSE originated from use in an SME, I certainly can't argue that we aren't already capable in that area. Deciding on that as our focus could help provide the refinement and polish to really achieve something in this space, and would certainly make my answer shorter when I'm at conferences and people endlessly ask me "Why should I use openSUSE?"
But 'business' is boring, I feel we'd need to be careful not to lose our unique "Have a lot of fun" vibe if we (the community) decide to head in that direction. The concerns about the economic side of things already is setting of alarm bells for me, which we'd have to resolve before I'd consider such a direction viable.
This is a technical community and is the technical focus and work what bring excitement. Without excitement there is no success as community. Making this excitement compatible with defining a target that give us opportunities to lead one or several niches is something we want to achieve at SUSE. We can do it and I think it will be good for the community too, as far that each one of you can keep doing what you like the most.
I personally think our greatest strength as a project and distribution is the fact we embrace 'Choice' The fact we explicitly don't define how you're meant to use openSUSE is a strength - Whether you're a user who wants a server, a KDE workstation, a GNOME workstation, an appliance, a tablet, a toaster, we build, we distribute, you decide
But we're not like other "do whatever you want" distros like Debian. While we do take the current and best from upstream and dump it all on our users to play with, we have tools like YaST (and SUSE give us Studio) which exist to help make that decision and deployment process easier. We're the distro where a relative novice can turn up and say "I want my box to be a desktop and a webserver and a mailserver and a VOIP server all at once" and it's half a dozen button clicks away instead of a month digging through documentation and configuration files.
I think we don't do a good enough job at getting that message out to people, and I sometimes think we forget it ourselves, occasionally thinking we're making it easier for our users by taking choices away from them, rather than instead making it easier for them to make those choices. To give a specific example, revamping the desktop selection screen with screenshots and better descriptions to make it easier for a novice user to make an informed choice between GNOME and KDE is something I'd really like to see.
I'm not sure my vision of 'choice' necessarily is enough to be a goal in-of-itself, nor do I think it is mutually exclusive to other proposed goal, whether that be a move to becoming 'business-orientated' or something else. I do think we could do with deciding on our direction, I just think we need to keep our strengths in choice and having fun at the same time, and do a better job of marketing all of it to the outside world.
Choice is the base of Free Software, but is a double side concept, as I understand you point here (correctme if I am wrong). Choice can also mean loose of focus, extra work, risks in loosing quality.... Balancing choice with available resources is something hard to do, but neccesary. We, at SUSE, can help a lot in the marketing area, but it will only be a complementary work to the viral marketing the community do. And viral marketing is based on common and clear messages.
What aspects of SUSE work in openSUSE can we improve in 2013?
After that long answer, this one is going to be nice and short - I'd like to see much better communication what the openSUSE team @SUSE is up to and where I (as a contributor) might be able to help out. With the changes to the team, I no longer understand who is doing what, and I think that's important
This is not just your perception. This is a fact. It will take us a couple more months to have simple and clear answers. But I can tell you a few things that are clear already: * We will work in the open. * We will work as a single team. * We will use the Release as our major engagement platform. * We will try to lead not just support. This is the basic reason for most of the changes we are going through and why it is taking us so long to get ready. It is not simple at all.
In the past, with the 'Boosters', when they weren't working on something already established and open, it often felt they were off doing their thing in private, then releasing their awesome stuff for everyone else to pitch in after the fact.
I'd like it if we (the wider community) could know what openSUSE@SUSE team has on the go at any one time, and hopefully this would lead to more opportunities for the community to help out in the early stages with whatever your team is taking the lead on.
There is no engagement if you do not communicate in advance what you are going to do and present it in a easy to follow way, as first step. This is something we understand now and before. But when you work full time at fast speed, the implementation is not simple at all. This topic will always be a matter of conflict. We will need to constantly put an eye on it. It will be important that people like you raise the red flag when we forget it.
In general.....in which aspects should SUSE focus its activity for 2013 (in openSUSE)? I think my first answer covers most of my feelings about this. The release process needs attention, and we need to make sure that 12.3 and 12.4 both build on the lessons of recent releases. In the absence of any overarching 'goal', my feeling would be SUSE would be well positioned to act as 'troubleshooters', helping resolve particular pain-points in the project as they arise, then working with the community and the board to help make sure they don't occur again.
12.3 is too close to do heavy changes, but we will work on several aspects that hopefully will open us more to contributions. There are no simple actions to solve problems but we are committed to make the Release process something this community feel as "yours". I have the feeling that it is now perceived as "ours". And this is not neccesarily a matter of who does the job. Saludos -- Agustin Benito Bethencourt openSUSE Team Lead at SUSE abebe@suse.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
Hey, On 10.12.2012 11:08, Agustin Benito Bethencourt wrote:
Choice can also mean loose of focus, extra work, risks in loosing quality.... Balancing choice with available resources is something hard to do, but neccesary.
There is no one in a FOSS project like ours that has the power to balance available resources, they balance themselves for reasons mostly beyond anyone’s influence and understanding. Choice (and hence extra work) is the fundamental fuel for this process, the more choice you have, and the easier it is to act on that choice, the more contributors you have. Henne -- Henne Vogelsang http://www.opensuse.org Everybody has a plan, until they get hit. - Mike Tyson -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org
participants (9)
-
Agustin Benito Bethencourt -
Andreas Jaeger -
Henne Vogelsang -
Michael Catanzaro -
Per Jessen -
Rajko -
Raymond Wooninck -
Richard Brown -
Robert Schweikert