Hi Peter, On Sat, 17 Sep 2005, Peter Flodin wrote:
I am a little confused with one regard of the openSUSE project and the goal of making SUSE Linux the most widely used Linux. And something that I believe will need to be changed in the near future to achieve that goal.
It has become quite clear that the openSUSE project is not really a user project, and in its current form is a developer only project. Just look at the example of normal users asking for help on this supposedly general openSUSE mailing list and told to go to a non-opensuse place because this is a development list.
Actually the openSUSE project aims to achieve both, "making SUSE Linux the easiest Linux for anyone to obtain and the most widely used Linux distribution", "leverage open source collaboration to make SUSE Linux the world's most usable Linux distribution and desktop environment for new and experienced Linux users" and "dramatically simplify and open the development and packaging processes to make SUSE Linux the platform of choice for Linux developers and software vendors". [Note, this was taken from http://www.opensuse.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions and may include some marketing buzz ;))]
This now also confuses the aim of the openSUSE wiki (my main contributional input to this project so far), who is it aimed at? The end-user or the openSUSE developer/contributor?
At the moment it is _the place to go_ if you are interested in openSUSE, no matter if you are a developer or an end-users. From my point of view both "audiences" are able to contribute to openSUSE / SUSE Linux in their own way. (While developers are able to contribute packages, bugfixes, etc, end-users are also able to contribute in terms of documentation and helping other users and/or reporting bugs, too.)
If I want to write SUSE end-user wiki should I go to: http://wiki.novell.com/index.php/Cool_Solutions_Wiki_Main_Page ? or perhaps submit articles to http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/ (and even earn points).
No, please stick with the wiki on openSUSE.org. We are currently working on importing the support database (SDB) to the wiki, which I regard as a huge step towards the "end-user group".
I would like openSUSE be a distro with a user community to rival anybody and here is what I believe openSUSE should do: 1. Rename SUSE Linux OSS to openSUSE Linux - you can't build a user community if you have nothing to build it around. 2. OpenSUSE.org has to be a full self contained entity with a "everyone is Welcome here" attitutude. This therefore requires web forums for support. Mailing lists and news readers are not good enough for newbies. There is no choice. If you don't like web forums, get over it or don't go there, the mailing lists should be untouched.
Please let's not reiterate this dicussion again. You may rest assured that we are taking this issues very serious! I would just ask you to be patient for the time being, as we will need some time (I guess 1-2 weeks) to sort our things and get back to you as soon as we are done. (The lasts weeks have been very busy, the SUSE Linux 10 release is coming closer and we also had Brainshare in BCN.) Regards Christoph