I would like to raise the subject of openSUSE governance. At the moment openSUSE is governed by the openSUSE core team http://www.opensuse.org/Core_Team I have a few questions. How are decisions made? By some democratic informal voting or agreement? Or is it ruled by Andreas or Adrian? :-) or whoever actually takes on a particular responsibility makes the final decision for that area? The page http://www.opensuse.org/Core_Team_Issues shows that the team is trying to be more transparent. I would like to know what the view of the team is towards the inclusion of one or more Community members (or representatives) on the Core Team. I would see that this would be more symbolic than anything else, but would show the commitment that SUSE has towards the community. I would see the person being involved in discussions, planning, and putting the view of the community across, unhindered by being an employee. Peter 'Pflodo' Flodin.
Peter Flodin wrote:
I have a few questions. How are decisions made? By some democratic informal voting or agreement? Or is it ruled by Andreas or Adrian? :-) or whoever actually takes on a particular responsibility makes the final decision for that area?
Decisions are made based on the commercial needs of Novell. At least that's how I interpret the answers to earlier questions asked along the same lines.
I would like to know what the view of the team is towards the inclusion of one or more Community members (or representatives) on the Core Team. I would see that this would be more symbolic than anything else, but would show the commitment that SUSE has towards the community. I would see the person being involved in discussions, planning, and putting the view of the community across, unhindered by being an employee.
I certainly second this motion, but I suspect it belongs to the overall discussion of how open openSUSE is and/or is meant to be. /Per Jessen, Zürich -- http://www.spamchek.ch/ - managed anti-spam and anti-virus solution.
On Sat, 12 Nov 2005, Peter Flodin wrote:
I would like to raise the subject of openSUSE governance.
At the moment openSUSE is governed by the openSUSE core team http://www.opensuse.org/Core_Team
I have a few questions. How are decisions made? By some democratic informal voting or agreement? Or is it ruled by Andreas or Adrian? :-) or whoever actually takes on a particular responsibility makes the final decision for that area?
The page http://www.opensuse.org/Core_Team_Issues shows that the team is trying to be more transparent. I would like to know what the view of the team is towards the inclusion of one or more Community members (or representatives) on the Core Team. I would see that this would be more symbolic than anything else, but would show the commitment that SUSE has towards the community. I would see the person being involved in discussions, planning, and putting the view of the community across, unhindered by being an employee.
I'v just added this topic to http://www.opensuse.org/Core_Team_Issues - so, you may be sure that we will discuss this as soon as possible. Meanwhile it would be great to get some more opinions / comments on this topic! Everyone, don't hesitate to speak out now... ;) Regards Christoph
Meanwhile it would be great to get some more opinions / comments on this topic! Everyone, don't hesitate to speak out now... ;)
Well, I'd certainly be in favour of a couple of key community members being part of the Core Team. I think given that the 'brand', all marketing issues, trademarks relating to logos, and ultimately entrepreneurial risk belongs to Novell::SUSE that it makes sense for the majority of seats on the CT be held by staffers. I'd also like to see more of the CT blogging, but then, I'd like to see more of the developers blogging, period. -- James Ogley james@usr-local-bin.org Packages for SUSE: http://usr-local-bin.org/rpms Make Poverty History: http://makepovertyhistory.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 James Ogley wrote:
Meanwhile it would be great to get some more opinions / comments on this topic! Everyone, don't hesitate to speak out now... ;)
Well, I'd certainly be in favour of a couple of key community members being part of the Core Team. I think given that the 'brand', all
+1 I don't see active community members being that much involved up to now, especially on the field of packaging (topics James and I, amongst a few others, are involved in).
marketing issues, trademarks relating to logos, and ultimately entrepreneurial risk belongs to Novell::SUSE that it makes sense for the majority of seats on the CT be held by staffers.
Yes, obviously. I'm not having a problem with project and product management being made 100% by Novell/SUSE. They put many, many resources in it, they provide us with that fantastic, high-quality core distribution. That's perfectly fine with me. People complaining about not having their word to say in the product/project management have no clue about what it means, how much work is involed in it, how complex it is, and how much money Novell puts into that. To me, I prefer having less to say about the core distribution and have it done well, professionally, by qualified people who are paid fulltime to work on it than having some mess like Fedora. I can only speak on the topic of packaging and package management, as that's where I'm involved in. We talked already about the build servers, I addressed a number of ideas, directions and issues currently faced by community packagers, and I'd like to see them addressed in a way or another. Also, most of the mails and threads we had about that 2-3 months ago haven't been adressed nor picked up, drown into the mass of people asking for help about hardware issues and similar. That's not only lost time and efforts spending many hours writing mails and discussing about it, it's also demotivating. Personally, I don't really feel like trying to discuss it again and again, with not all that much coming from SUSE. I also know that Novell took the decision of "opening up" (aka openSUSE) too soon, rolling over the schedule the SUSE staff had in mind and hence, a lot of things still need some time to be done, discussed, decided. That's perfectly fine as well, but I'd like to have some more feedback. Not that you owe me anything lol, but it's just that building a community means involving it and keeping it informed about what's happening. If you stay for weeks and months without showing that something is happening (and how the progress is, even if it's not being worked on at the moment), people (in the community) lose their motivation about it. IMO, a proof is that on the opensuse-packager list, threads and ideas are only started by community members, not by SUSE staff. Christoph, I know you're very much involved into communication with the community, but I think there must be some more happening, also from other people @ SUSE.
I'd also like to see more of the CT blogging, but then, I'd like to see more of the developers blogging, period.
Yes, +100
Definately.
Also, this mailing-list has become almost unusable and unproductive, overwhelmed with trolling
(lately) and with people reporting issues that definately belong to suse-linux-e and not here.
During the last few weeks there have been many more threads and mails about hardware/driver support
issues than constructive discussions about the openSUSE community, how to interact and work together
(Novell and the community), etc..., what is what I was actually expecting from this list.
I've been really close to unsubcribe several times but then again, sometimes, there's a small thread
like this one popping up.
Proposal:
- - either create a new list "opensuse-community"
- - or clean this list from issues that belong to suse-linux-e
Furthermore, having users, questions and solutions to issues spread over 2 lists is very
counter-productive: less people to help, less people to see the solutions.
I know suse-linux-e is very high traffic, but nevertheless. Personally, it turns me off to see this
list spoiled with "my usb stick is slow", "my modem doesn't work", etc... - while such mails are
perfectly fine and deserve attention and help, they don't belong on this list. At least that's my
very humble and personal opinion about it. Maybe I'm wrong. If I am, please create a new list that's
dedicated to discussing things like the openSUSE community itself.
Progress, guys, and communication. While a number of topics have been advertised as being currently
addressed by the core staff (*), we don't see much happening for several weeks.
(*) http://www.opensuse.org/Core_Team_Issues
Let's just pick this one: "(Official) Web forums".
Status: "On hold, waiting for new Novell support forums to be ready for beta test."
That's the status since.. what... one, two months ?
Maybe I sound harsh, but it's definately not my intention to bash or criticize (at least not without
trying to get some productive reaction out of it).
I'm deeply committed to openSUSE, been very actively involved into making SUSE better for everyone,
spending a huge amount of my free time to do so, and that's why I'd like to see it moving forward ;)
But maybe we're all just too impatient, too hungry for being involved in it, because some of us have
been waiting for years for this to happen. I certainly am. I should probably just wrap myself into
more patience.
Anyway, kudos to all the SUSE staffers, keep up the good work and.. maybe... communicate some more
about it ;-)
cheers
- --
-o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
/\\
Pascal Bleser wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
majority of seats on the CT be held by staffers.
Yes, obviously.
+1
I'm not having a problem with project and product management being made 100% by Novell/SUSE.
I have (well 90% is nice :-). If the community is to contribute largely, it needs voice. Opensource community can become a very heavy involvement for an individual and for many individuals. The return for Novell is obvious, but why should I work free for a company? why not going Debian, for example. It's not a troll. I know my answer, but I see quite few people really involved in opensuse aside of Novells corps, and I think it's also for lack of visible return. I don't mind money. but consideration, informations, support for things.
That's perfectly fine with me. People complaining about not having their word to say in the product/project management have no clue about what it means, how much work is involed in it, how complex it is, and how much money Novell puts into that.
going opensource have pros and cons
To me, I prefer having less to say about the core distribution and have it done well, professionally, by qualified people who are paid fulltime to work on it than having some mess like Fedora.
this is closed source work...
I can only speak on the topic of packaging and package management, as that's where I'm involved in. We talked already about the build servers, I addressed a number of ideas, directions and issues currently faced by community packagers, and I'd like to see them addressed in a way or another.
exactly what I say :-)
discussed, decided. That's perfectly fine as well, but I'd like to have some more feedback.
+1
Not that you owe me anything lol, but it's just that building a community means involving it and keeping it informed about what's happening. If you stay for weeks and months without showing that something is happening (and how the progress is, even if it's not being worked on at the moment), people (in the community) lose their motivation about it.
exactly
Also, this mailing-list has become almost unusable and unproductive
In my idea, the problem is simple. We need a list master, preferably from the community members. I don't mind people to unsubscribe others, but people in charge of saying "this is in chart" (in fact he won't say anything in this case) and "please this is not in chart, please redirect to suse-e...". Somebody have to take the charge and be trusted.
I've been really close to unsubcribe several times but then again, sometimes, there's a small thread like this one popping up.
+1
Proposal: - - either create a new list "opensuse-community" - - or clean this list from issues that belong to suse-linux-e
+1 this list should be reserved to * beta test (ask for bugs) if no other list is available * opensuse discussions (opensuse=web site) * "politics" discussions about opensuse
Maybe I sound harsh, but it's definately not my intention to bash or criticize (at least not without trying to get some productive reaction out of it).
+1
I'm deeply committed to openSUSE, been very actively involved into making SUSE better for everyone, spending a huge amount of my free time to do so, and that's why I'd like to see it moving forward ;)
for example, rumors about novell leaving kde, firing people are extremely destructive. We should know here As soon as a decision is taken what it is to be able to stop rumors
But maybe we're all just too impatient, too hungry for being involved in it, because some of us have been waiting for years for this to happen. I certainly am. I should probably just wrap myself into more patience.
Anyway, kudos to all the SUSE staffers, keep up the good work and.. maybe... communicate some more about it ;-)
in fact as many may know it's easier to keep work in charge than to spread it and control. easier, but very slow. many time ago, I was student (40 years ago, in fact), in my univeristy we had to walk around a table taking sheets of papers one after one to make printed courses (gestetner time). With that _we hold active members_. The day we had photocopiers, findinf members become harder. The question is: how can I give a small job to this people to keep him involved with my work. whatch one page, write on one forum... who is in charge to communicate with /dot? Freshmeat?.... jdd -- pour m'écrire, aller sur: http://www.dodin.net
Pascal Bleser wrote:
People complaining about not having their word to say in the product /project management have no clue about what it means,
I personally wouldn't be making such blanket statements about what people know or don't know. Just an observation.
Also, this mailing-list has become almost unusable and unproductive, overwhelmed with trolling (lately) and with people reporting issues that definately belong to suse-linux-e and not here.
I can't say I've noticed the list becoming unusable nor unproductive. There are many threads that I don't bother reading, but that's normal.
During the last few weeks there have been many more threads and mails about hardware/driver support issues than constructive discussions about the openSUSE community, how to interact and work together (Novell and the community), etc..., what is what I was actually expecting from this list.
This is only because of Novell not clearly defining what openSUSE was/is all about. Not just the list, but the whole project. If this list is for "constructive discussions about the openSUSE community", where does one take technical issues/discussions with e.g. alpha releases? /Per Jessen, Zürich -- http://www.spamchek.co.uk/ - managed anti-spam and anti-virus solution.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Per Jessen wrote:
Pascal Bleser wrote:
People complaining about not having their word to say in the product /project management have no clue about what it means,
I personally wouldn't be making such blanket statements about what people know or don't know. Just an observation.
So what do you actually want ? IIRC you've been complaining a few times that openSUSE is "not open". That may very well be constructive criticism, but what do you want ? Give some ideas, directions, proposals. You want to tell the SUSE devs what packages belong into the SUSE Linux product ? Are you going to do the support for those packages ? Are you going to test, Q&A it, take care of new releases, integrate and write security fixes, backport patches into those ? And if you don't care about the packaging, what is it exactly that you want to be able to do and that you currently cannot ?
Also, this mailing-list has become almost unusable and unproductive, overwhelmed with trolling (lately) and with people reporting issues that definately belong to suse-linux-e and not here.
I can't say I've noticed the list becoming unusable nor unproductive. There are many threads that I don't bother reading, but that's normal.
Well, the point is that there's already a list for that: suse-linux-e It just doesn't belong here.
During the last few weeks there have been many more threads and mails about hardware/driver support issues than constructive discussions about the openSUSE community, how to interact and work together (Novell and the community), etc..., what is what I was actually expecting from this list.
This is only because of Novell not clearly defining what openSUSE was/is all about. Not just the list, but the whole project. If this list is
Like what ? Seems there are quite a few threads you don't read ;)
for "constructive discussions about the openSUSE community", where does one take technical issues/discussions with e.g. alpha releases?
Create another list, dedicated to that, opensuse-testing or something.
IMHO it's better to have dedicated mailing-lists because (at least I'd think) most people are
interested in certain topics but not in having one mailing-list with dozens of different types of stuff.
At least, for me, it's like that. I'm not interested into helping people with hardware issues or
questions on how to do this or that on SUSE, or reporting stuff that doesn't work. (been there, done
that for years, I have other things to do ;)). For others, it's precisely what they want to do.
But maybe I'm wrong, who knows.
cheers
- --
-o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
/\\
Pascal Bleser wrote:
So what do you actually want ? IIRC you've been complaining a few times that openSUSE is "not open".
I think probably I have :-)
That may very well be constructive criticism, but what do you want ? Give some ideas, directions, proposals.
Given that Novell/SUSE are already struggling with this internally and have not really invited public participation in their discussion, I've held back. When they're prepared to discuss this in the open, I'll add my 2Rappen.
You want to tell the SUSE devs what packages belong into the SUSE Linux product ?
Not me personally, no. There a few things I'd like to have a say in, but which packages get included, I'm not too worried about.
Are you going to do the support for those packages ? Are you going to test, Q&A it, take care of new releases, integrate and write security fixes, backport patches into those ?
Nope, but that's beside the point.
And if you don't care about the packaging, what is it exactly that you want to be able to do and that you currently cannot ?
Pascal, all I said was that your statement "that anyone who wants a say in the opensuse product/project management has no clue about it", is wrong and more than a little arrogant. As for my own participation in openSUSE, it's currently restricted to bugreports only - I think there are many others areas where community input would be useful. For instance (as you may be aware), I'd like to have JFS install-support reinstated. I've also suggested how it could be done with no impact whatsoever. However, just getting to talk to the right people and not being turned down by level1&2 staff was just far more hassle than I'm prepared to work with. /Per Jessen -- http://www.spamchek.co.uk - managed anti-spam and anti-virus solution.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Per Jessen wrote:
Pascal Bleser wrote: ...
That may very well be constructive criticism, but what do you want ? Give some ideas, directions, proposals.
Given that Novell/SUSE are already struggling with this internally and have not really invited public participation in their discussion, I've held back. When they're prepared to discuss this in the open, I'll add my 2Rappen.
So basically you're still not giving an example of how you imagine the interaction between Novell and us. I still don't see where your problem is. Just citing your mail in this thread: "Decisions are made based on the commercial needs of Novell. At least that's how I interpret the answers to earlier questions asked along the same lines." I'd say that yes, it definately applies to certain decisions, such as what is included and supported in the SUSE Linux distribution (i.e. product management). And further on: "I certainly second this motion, but I suspect it belongs to the overall discussion of how open openSUSE is and/or is meant to be." Ok. So... what's your point here ? What makes you say openSUSE isn't open ? I wouldn't say openSUSE is open yet either, but why don't you give us some precise points why you don't think it is ? I'd be really interested to know, because I suppose you do have some valid points about it, and discussing that on this very list would be interesting and beneficial for everyone.. don't you think? But maybe I've found one thing that bothers you - citing you again, from a past mail on this list (http://lists.opensuse.org/archive/opensuse/2005-Sep/0517.html): "So we've hit the crux of the problem - which seems pretty critical. Although openSUSE is an "open" project, what goes and what doesn't is still decided by the commercial needs requirements of Novell/SuSE. In many ways also reasonably understandable, but it does beg the question - how open is OpenSUSE really? [...] Note - patches and proposals are only accepted provided they coincide with SuSEs commercial plans and requirements."
You want to tell the SUSE devs what packages belong into the SUSE Linux product ? Not me personally, no. There a few things I'd like to have a say in, but which packages get included, I'm not too worried about.
Err... ok.. so... it's not the packages. What's it then ?
Are you going to do the support for those packages ? Are you going to test, QA it, take care of new releases, integrate and write security fixes, backport patches into those ?
Nope, but that's beside the point.
I don't think so. What I just wanted to say is that AFAICR several people on this list have been requesting some packages for inclusion and when having been said "no", they bashed openSUSE for not being "open". And that's exactly the point. One cannot, on one hand, expect that "openness" means that the SUSE Linux product management includes whatever package is requested, and on the other hand that it goes through the full cycle of packaging, testing, QA, security fixes, etc..
And if you don't care about the packaging, what is it exactly that you want to be able to do and that you currently cannot ?
Pascal, all I said was that your statement "that anyone who wants a say in the opensuse product/project management has no clue about it", is wrong and more than a little arrogant.
Product management, to me, means what packages are included in the product "SUSE Linux" (OSS or not). People who have requested packages for inclusion and who got a "no" in return and who say that's not ok, in my opinion, don't have a clue about what they're requesting. "arrogant" ? Sorry if I've let it sound like that. Maybe I was a bit too emotional about it ;P
As for my own participation in openSUSE, it's currently restricted to bugreports only - I think there are many others areas where community input would be useful. For instance (as you may be aware), I'd like to
Definately.
have JFS install-support reinstated. I've also suggested how it could be done with no impact whatsoever. However, just getting to talk to the right people and not being turned down by level1&2 staff was just far more hassle than I'm prepared to work with.
Now tell me how that has nothing to do with my previous post and comments about people wanting to
influence the product management.... ?
cheers
- --
-o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
/\\
Pascal Bleser wrote:
What makes you say openSUSE isn't open ? I wouldn't say openSUSE is open yet either, but why don't you give us some precise points why you don't think it is ?
Actually, Robert Schiele did it very eloquently in a post yesterday.
But maybe I've found one thing that bothers you - citing you again, from a past mail on this list (http://lists.opensuse.org/archive/opensuse/2005-Sep/0517.html): "So we've hit the crux of the problem - which seems pretty critical. Although openSUSE is an "open" project, what goes and what doesn't is still decided by the commercial needs requirements of Novell/SuSE. In many ways also reasonably understandable, but it does beg the question - how open is OpenSUSE really? [...] Note - patches and proposals are only accepted provided they coincide with SuSEs commercial plans and requirements."
Thanks for digging that up, I forgot I wrote it.
Err... ok.. so... it's not the packages. What's it then ?
It could be setup, it could be features, what's supported and what isn't for instance. It could be desktop setup - all sorts of non-package related topics.
Nope, but that's beside the point.
I don't think so. What I just wanted to say is that AFAICR several people on this list have been requesting some packages for inclusion and when having been said "no", they bashed openSUSE for not being "open".
What if those same peopl had offered to also contribute the necessary effort in QA, testing and such - would it have been accepted? Right now, the answer is "no". And that isn't particularly open.
Pascal, all I said was that your statement "that anyone who wants a say in the opensuse product/project management has no clue about it", is wrong and more than a little arrogant.
Product management, to me, means what packages are included in the product "SUSE Linux" (OSS or not). People who have requested packages for inclusion and who got a "no" in return and who say that's not ok, in my opinion, don't have a clue about what they're requesting.
That is more than a little different to what you wrote. You can't expect to me read what you meant instead of what you wrote :-)
have JFS install-support reinstated. I've also suggested how it could be done with no impact whatsoever. However, just getting to talk to the right people and not being turned down by level1&2 staff was just far more hassle than I'm prepared to work with.
Now tell me how that has nothing to do with my previous post and comments about people wanting to influence the product management...?
It's all about openSUSE and how open it is or not. /Per Jessen, Zürich
Per Jessen wrote:
It's all about openSUSE and how open it is or not.
I think maybe not all packages can be included, even in an opensource product, but the reason should be obvious for all... jdd -- pour m'écrire, aller sur: http://www.dodin.net
On Saturday 12 November 2005 20:43, Pascal Bleser wrote:
Per Jessen wrote:
Pascal Bleser wrote:
That may very well be constructive criticism, but what do you want ? Give some ideas, directions, proposals.
Given that Novell/SUSE are already struggling with this internally and have not really invited public participation in their discussion, I've held back. When they're prepared to discuss this in the open, I'll add my 2Rappen.
So basically you're still not giving an example of how you imagine the interaction between Novell and us. I still don't see where your problem is.
The idea is that we will have a system next year where all discussion can happen connected to the relevant parts. For instance you can subscribe to the X.org system and discuss and contribute there the future changes.
Just citing your mail in this thread: "Decisions are made based on the commercial needs of Novell. At least that's how I interpret the answers to earlier questions asked along the same lines."
I'd say that yes, it definately applies to certain decisions, such as what is included and supported in the SUSE Linux distribution (i.e. product management).
My hope is that this will become less important, since it will be easy to install additional software easily later. And the pool of additional software is anyway way larger than anything what we could include into SUSE Linux directly (except we want to force everybody to download really large iso files)
And further on: "I certainly second this motion, but I suspect it belongs to the overall discussion of how open openSUSE is and/or is meant to be."
Ok. So... what's your point here ? What makes you say openSUSE isn't open ? I wouldn't say openSUSE is open yet either, but why don't you give us some precise points why you don't think it is ?
We have simply to admit that we are not really open yet. There is no easy way for SUSE external people to submit additions or changes for now. But we really plan to deliver this next year. The idea is that it doesn't matter anymore, if you submit something with a @suse.de or any other account. On the other hand it is not possible for all of developers to be on this mailing list, because of the traffic and their daily work (they are quite busy on working on the SLES 10 stuff). The reason, why it is not possible for now is that our internal build system simply trusts everybody. This means that we can't grant access to it or we wouldn't be able to deliver any SLES (EAL certified) product anymore. This will be solved with a separated build system. The source from this build system will be taken later to produce the SLES based products in the internal one (After reviewing the code).
I'd be really interested to know, because I suppose you do have some valid points about it, and discussing that on this very list would be interesting and beneficial for everyone.. don't you think?
But maybe I've found one thing that bothers you - citing you again, from a past mail on this list (http://lists.opensuse.org/archive/opensuse/2005-Sep/0517.html): "So we've hit the crux of the problem - which seems pretty critical. Although openSUSE is an "open" project, what goes and what doesn't is still decided by the commercial needs requirements of Novell/SuSE. In many ways also reasonably understandable, but it does beg the question - how open is OpenSUSE really? [...] Note - patches and proposals are only accepted provided they coincide with SuSEs commercial plans and requirements."
The decision power what will be in the Linux distribution on opensuse.org will go to the openSUSE community. If our product management disagrees to ship this we will have a fork. We should of course try to avoid this and I am in good hope that we can achieve this, because SUSE Linux should become the product from the community and for the current and future community. bye adrian -- Adrian Schroeter SUSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nuernberg, Germany email: adrian@suse.de
On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 01:53, Pascal Bleser wrote:
Also, this mailing-list has become almost unusable and unproductive, overwhelmed with trolling (lately) and with people reporting issues that definately belong to suse-linux-e and not here.
Proposal: - either create a new list "opensuse-community" - or clean this list from issues that belong to suse-linux-e
Furthermore, having users, questions and solutions to issues spread over 2 lists is very counter-productive: less people to help, less people to see the solutions. I know suse-linux-e is very high traffic, but nevertheless. Personally, it turns me off to see this list spoiled with "my usb stick is slow", "my modem doesn't work", etc... - while such mails are perfectly fine and deserve attention and help, they don't belong on this list. At least that's my very humble and personal opinion about it. Maybe I'm wrong. If I am, please create a new list that's dedicated to discussing things like the openSUSE community itself.
I have to agree strongly with your comments. I think that people with general problems should be directed to the suse-linux-e mailing list. As you said it is counter-productive to have two lists competing with each other in providing support. -- Regards, Graham Smith
On Saturday 12 November 2005 13:25, James Ogley wrote:
Well, I'd certainly be in favour of a couple of key community members being part of the Core Team. I think given that the 'brand', all marketing issues, trademarks relating to logos, and ultimately entrepreneurial risk belongs to Novell::SUSE that it makes sense for the majority of seats on the CT be held by staffers.
+1
I'd also like to see more of the CT blogging, but then, I'd like to see more of the developers blogging, period.
+1 -- Pob hwyl / Best wishes Kevin Donnelly www.kyfieithu.co.uk - Meddalwedd Rhydd yn Gymraeg www.cymrux.org.uk - Linux Cymraeg ar un CD
+1 +1 On Sat, 2005-11-12 at 16:11 +0100, Kevin Donnelly wrote:
On Saturday 12 November 2005 13:25, James Ogley wrote:
Well, I'd certainly be in favour of a couple of key community members being part of the Core Team. I think given that the 'brand', all marketing issues, trademarks relating to logos, and ultimately entrepreneurial risk belongs to Novell::SUSE that it makes sense for the majority of seats on the CT be held by staffers.
+1
I'd also like to see more of the CT blogging, but then, I'd like to see more of the developers blogging, period.
+1
On Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 02:19:16PM +0100, Christoph Thiel wrote:
Meanwhile it would be great to get some more opinions / comments on this topic!
And also suggestions which areas you - anyone of you - would like to have some influence in. I've heard the following two most often, I think: - your (possibility for) involvement in the packaging tools and build infrastructure, which we will change to the better, but not immediately, and not next week. - selection of packages to be included on the base distribution. What else is there? Don't hold back things you think are unlikely to be opened up anyway. thanks, Sonja -- Sonja Krause-Harder (skh@suse.de) Research & Development SUSE Linux Products GmbH
- your (possibility for) involvement in the packaging tools and build infrastructure, which we will change to the better, but not immediately, and not next week.
Not next week? Pah, Some use you lot are! [:)] But yes, this is an area I would see myself naturally fitting in, assuming you mean working in a packager capacity.
- selection of packages to be included on the base distribution.
Again, yes, I would see this as an area to have influence in, allied with decisions on how to package them. A good example of this (and I know I've never added this to bugzilla - my bad) is Abiword. I've been doing packages of Abiword for ages now, effectively the closest this Abiword has to an official SUSE packager. I follow the Abiword team's convention of packaging it like this: abiword -plugins-tools -plugins-impexp -clipart Whereas SUSE have retained a monolithic package. Now, I'm not saying one way is inherently better than the other way, but it's an example of a point for discussion. -- James Ogley james@usr-local-bin.org Packages for SUSE: http://usr-local-bin.org/rpms Make Poverty History: http://makepovertyhistory.org
On Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 08:58:43PM +0000, James Ogley wrote:
But yes, this is an area I would see myself naturally fitting in, assuming you mean working in a packager capacity.
No, you don't need a seat in the core team for that ;-) I meant input on how the packaging tools and build infrastructure should be developed. Incidentally, the current core team doesn't decide on that either, but the people who are actually implementing it.
- selection of packages to be included on the base distribution.
Again, yes, I would see this as an area to have influence in, allied with decisions on how to package them. A good example of this (and I know I've never added this to bugzilla - my bad) is Abiword.
Again, you don't need the core team for that, but more responsive developers - point taken as SUSE R&D could (and in my opinion, should) be more active on the lists, but for this kind of package-specific discussion bugzilla is a terrific platform now that it's open. So what could a community core team member do that is not possible through "normal" contributions and discussions on this list? I am really interested and don't want to counter all your good arguments, but at the moment a large part of the core team work is more or less administrative stuff, and coordinating work with other departments (e.g. for infrastructure). Having a voice from the community right there just for the sake of it and for transparency is a major reason and we'll discuss it in any case. I just wouldn't want anyone of you to be bored in regular conf calls if it isn't worth it. Sonja -- Sonja Krause-Harder (skh@suse.de) Research & Development SUSE Linux Products GmbH
On 13/11/05, Sonja Krause-Harder
I am really interested and don't want to counter all your good arguments, but at the moment a large part of the core team work is more or less administrative stuff, and coordinating work with other departments (e.g. for infrastructure).
Having a voice from the community right there just for the sake of it and for transparency is a major reason and we'll discuss it in any case. I just wouldn't want anyone of you to be bored in regular conf calls if it isn't worth it.
It may be perfectly true that once we all learn what the core team actually does, that it would be impossible to get a community member to volunteer to be part of it :-) I think if anything has come out of this discussion, it is that we are all hungry for information, and impatient about progress. Peter 'Pflodo' Flodin.
I think if anything has come out of this discussion, it is that we are all hungry for information, and impatient about progress.
Some less impatient than others ;) -- James Ogley james@usr-local-bin.org Packages for SUSE: http://usr-local-bin.org/rpms Make Poverty History: http://makepovertyhistory.org
So what could a community core team member do that is not possible through "normal" contributions and discussions on this list?
This is a tricky question to answer Sonja because we don't exactly know details of the CT's remit. We know what was discussed at the meeting on October 28th, because that's on the Wiki, but that doesn't necessarily reflect the entirety of its responsibilities. I appreciate your comment about the danger of the role being deadly for a non-employee; it's a good point that anyone wanting to serve on the CT should bear in mind. -- James Ogley james@usr-local-bin.org Packages for SUSE: http://usr-local-bin.org/rpms Make Poverty History: http://makepovertyhistory.org
Sonja Krause-Harder wrote:
[...] So what could a community core team member do that is not possible through "normal" contributions and discussions on this list?
Influencing the "big picture" (well, you've asked to mention things that are unlikely to happen, too) ;-) Have a look at my other email in this thread and you might understand what I mean. Cheers, Thomas
On Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 09:01:45PM +0100, Sonja Krause-Harder wrote:
On Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 02:19:16PM +0100, Christoph Thiel wrote:
Meanwhile it would be great to get some more opinions / comments on this topic!
And also suggestions which areas you - anyone of you - would like to have some influence in. I've heard the following two most often, I think:
- your (possibility for) involvement in the packaging tools and build infrastructure, which we will change to the better, but not immediately, and not next week.
What would definitely help to settle the dust would be if those working on some improvements everybody is talking about and nobody knows about show or at least tell how far they are up to now. For example if they are working on a tool they could put it somewhere that others could look into it even when it is not usable at all yet. Otherwise from an outside point of view you get more and more the impression that everything might just be one big marketing show with no real background. Don't consider this an offense. I don't want to say that this is the case but people that have some experience with software development companies are likely to have that feeling.
What else is there? Don't hold back things you think are unlikely to be opened up anyway.
Information, information and uhm... information. If you hear the sentence "this is discussed internally" after proposing an idea is not really motivating. If something is actually discussed internally that I proposed I am not interested in the fact that people discuss about that internally but what they think about it and what are the problems that hindered them until now to do it that way. Maybe I had a solution for that problem but if nobody tells me about what the problem is, I cannot propose a solution. I once asked about information on how the BuildRequires are calculated from #neededforbuild. One of your colleagues told me then that this is done in a file that is part of Autobuild which is a top secret project. Actually this was before openSUSE. I asked then that I don't want Autobuild but only the information how the rules for the calculation are. I didn't succeed. When I told another colleague about the fact that I consider such things a problem, this colleague told me that there is actually nothing secret with Autobuild. So what? Is this now secret stuff and some people are just lying about that fact? And what is so secret about how you calculate the dependency information? Or is this not secret stuff? But why is such information then not provided? Actually the project should somehow be moved outside the Novell "confidential firewall". --- I understand that there is confidential information within Novell but this should not cover stuff that is essential for the _open_SUSE project. Robert -- Robert Schiele Tel.: +49-621-181-2214 Dipl.-Wirtsch.informatiker mailto:rschiele@uni-mannheim.de
On 13/11/05, Robert Schiele
On Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 09:01:45PM +0100, Sonja Krause-Harder wrote:
What else is there? Don't hold back things you think are unlikely to be opened up anyway.
Information, information and uhm... information.
If you hear the sentence "this is discussed internally" after proposing an idea is not really motivating. If something is actually discussed internally that I proposed I am not interested in the fact that people discuss about that internally but what they think about it and what are the problems that hindered them until now to do it that way. Maybe I had a solution for that problem but if nobody tells me about what the problem is, I cannot propose a solution.
This is very true. And is one of the main motivations of starting this thread. We all understand that Novell will not release control of the SUSE Linux product anytime soon. If that is the sort of project people want to be part of, then they are probably in the wrong place. But we just want to have an input, and be acknowledged. It is very clear from the activity in this thread that I have touched on a subject that is probably central to why we are all here. There are some simple things about human psychology in relation to reward for effort, and validation of views. It is a fact that most people like to feel important, to feel that they make a difference etc. For example. I feel good when I start a thread on the mailing list that generates a lot of activity and people say threads like this stop them from unsubscribing. It is quite simple, I got a reward, that makes me motivated, which then creates a proportional expenditure in time and dedication to the openSUSE project. I think what is required is to create a structure that is inviting, open (as in transparent), and inclusive. The parent is right, when he quotes "this is being discussed internally", with no visible result in weeks or months being a non-motivation. It should be acknowledged that the Core Team has started to put issues on it's new issues page, and that it is only through having discussions like this that the core team can learn what the community wants and needs. Peter 'Pflodo' Flodin
On Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 09:48:29AM +1100, Peter Flodin wrote:
I think what is required is to create a structure that is inviting, open (as in transparent), and inclusive. The parent is right, when he quotes "this is being discussed internally", with no visible result in weeks or months being a non-motivation.
Point taken and understood. Please understand that I won't promise anything now as it wouldn't help you anyway ;-) But I'll take it as a homework for the core team and SUSE R&D (openSUSE is new to us, too...). Sonja -- Sonja Krause-Harder (skh@suse.de) Research & Development SUSE Linux Products GmbH
On Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 03:39:27PM +1100, Peter Flodin wrote:
I would like to raise the subject of openSUSE governance.
At the moment openSUSE is governed by the openSUSE core team http://www.opensuse.org/Core_Team
I have a few questions. How are decisions made? By some democratic informal voting or agreement? Or is it ruled by Andreas or Adrian? :-) or whoever actually takes on a particular responsibility makes the final decision for that area?
The page http://www.opensuse.org/Core_Team_Issues shows that the team is trying to be more transparent. I would like to know what the view of the team is towards the inclusion of one or more Community members (or representatives) on the Core Team. I would see that this would be more symbolic than anything else, but would show the commitment that SUSE has towards the community. I would see the person being involved in discussions, planning, and putting the view of the community across, unhindered by being an employee.
You are raising an interesting question. I will not give an answer to this question because I think this is not the question that has the highest priority to be solved now. I will try to explain why I think so. The current situation is not yet that you have an open development platform with openSUSE but up to now openSUSE is a platform that is useful to do product marketing and to organize public tests of the software. For an _open_ development platform (like Debian) you need the following three things: 1. Access to the product and its source itself. You already have this with openSUSE but you already had this before when you purchased the SUSE Linux product or downloaded it when it appeared on the FTP server. 2. Have the opportunity to change anything you like. Obviously you have this as well with open source software thus no problem here. 3. You need an infrastructure that enables you to build the full product in a straight forward way _independent_ of any vendor (in this case Novell). With what openSUSE currently provides you can build single packages in a straight forward way but not the full distribution. And even when building the packages as documented on the openSUSE site does sometimes have different results than what you get from the "official" build. I will now explain why you currently don't have (3) with the openSUSE project and why this point is important. The source of all these problems is not that people like Andreas or Adrian are not willing to cooperate (actually they are quite cooperative in most cases) but the fact that the tools they use internally are different than the tools that are available in the public. This is not a problem by principle because if you have public tools that can do the required work, you are fine and don't need to care about how they do it internally. But actually this scenario is utopian because if the SUSE staff uses other tools internally _every_ change to their internal tools is likely to break the tool set that is in the public. In theory someone can always fix the public tools for this case but to do this you must _notice_ the problem. Someone from the SUSE staff will not notice the problem because he or she is using the internal tool set. Someone that does not work for them might notice it but due to the fact that he is not aware of the internal change he has to reengineer that change with the same problems as if he was reengineering the behavior of some proprietary closed source tool (because the internal tool set _is_ actually a proprietary closed source tool set). Because of all this it is currently more productive to do a complete fork of the whole tree than to continuously reengineer SUSE internal changes. If someone does a complete fork this is obviously not useful for the openSUSE project. So to fix this problem it is required that the SUSE staff is using the _same_ tool set as every other developer can use. I know that there are plans to implement such a change in the development process but currently you don't have this. And now to the reason why this is important: If you want to govern something you need some power to enforce your opinion. If you are able to do something on your own (build a variant) if you don't find an agreement with others you have the chance to prove the superiority of your opinion. If you are not able to do it on your own you can only enforce opinions that are perfectly compatible with the opinion of those people that have the tools to implement your idea. Novell or the SUSE staff obviously cannot and would be stupid to implement every idea of everybody involved in some way. This is definitely _not_ what I would call governance then. So before you want some external governance about the project you need better information flow between SUSE staff and non-SUSE people but Pascal said almost everything about that already that comes to my mind and I don't intend to repeat this now. For those people that continuously mix up governance about the project with governance about the Novell products: Be aware that Novell like every other company would be plain stupid to outsource their product management for commercial products. Now you are free to start flaming at me. ;-) Robert -- Robert Schiele Tel.: +49-621-181-2214 Dipl.-Wirtsch.informatiker mailto:rschiele@uni-mannheim.de
Robert Schiele wrote:
You are raising an interesting question. I will not give an answer to this question because I think this is not the question that has the highest priority to be solved now.
KUDOS, Robert ! -- .~. Nicola -=KOOLINUS=- Losito /v\ http://www.koolinus.net | http://kool-solutions.blogspot.com // \\ /( )\ Linux Registered User #293182 ^^ ^^ icq:62837984 * Jabber-ID:koolinus@jabber.linux.it
Robert Schiele wrote:
Now you are free to start flaming at me. ;-)
would be silly... the point is how many people are active right now outside of Novell, and why ? jdd -- pour m'écrire, aller sur: http://www.dodin.net
On Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 08:56:32PM +0100, jdd wrote:
the point is how many people are active right now outside of Novell, and why ?
I don't know about the number. The number actually depends on the threshold value you set for "active". I have two possible reasons in my mind but there might be more: - Just for fun. They think it is a cool thing to do something with the SUSE distribution. - For specific needs. They want to have some additional stuff or something in a different way as provided by the Novell provided version because they need it for their business, project, or personal needs. Robert -- Robert Schiele Tel.: +49-621-181-2214 Dipl.-Wirtsch.informatiker mailto:rschiele@uni-mannheim.de
the point is how many people are active right now outside of Novell, and why ?
Whoops missed this question - Well, I'm active. As for why, it's because I believe in SUSE as an exceptional distribution (and yes, I know I bring the ex-staff bias), and want to help improve it further. I work on GNOME because I have used it since the pre-1.0 days, and it's what I prefer and am most familiar with, so feel that's an area I can really contribute. I see myself as serving the [Open]SUSE community, both those who already use it, and hopefully those who will migrate to it - both from other distros and less free OSs - in the future because of its user-friendliness and quality. -- James Ogley james@usr-local-bin.org Packages for SUSE: http://usr-local-bin.org/rpms Make Poverty History: http://makepovertyhistory.org
James Ogley wrote:
the point is how many people are active right now outside of Novell, and why ?
Whoops missed this question - Well, I'm active. As for why, it's because
my question was more "why are there so little people..." (contributors on this list, authors of wiki pages...) My experience is: some people have spare time. Having gotten help from suse or liking suse they come and lurk www.opensuse.org if they don't find something to do, may be simple, they will go elsewhere. So an important subject should be: what task could be given to newcommers. and when somebody asks "what can I do", there should be one people in charge of responding. I know this is difficult, but this only can group people around opensuse. some answers could be: test some part of the distribution (with so many packages, there should be many workplaces :-), take in charge That wiki page... give responsability, give infos - create a special "member team list", anything that make sense as a moral reward. on a page "task to do", there should be a list and a list of names associated, and a note "help still needed" or "staff complete". jdd -- pour m'écrire, aller sur: http://www.dodin.net
jdd wrote:
[...] my question was more "why are there so little people..." (contributors on this list, authors of wiki pages...)
I can't speak for others but maybe they have similar "problems"... a) I have a full-time job and only little spare time. b) Taking responsibility for one sub-project is time-consuming, even if it's only the maintenance of a web page. Things change frequently at the moment (as I am authoring a German Kernel Howto, I know what I am talking about ;-). c) I am active in other projects and/or on other mailing lists (e.g. suse-linux). d) The communication via wiki or a forum is not very efficient for development purpose (it's great for the end-user because he can find lots of information there). Mailing lists are much better for a development community because everybody receives everything without having to scan lots of web pages or forum posts etc. which is very time-consuming. e) This mailing list is not very efficient either. There are too many subjects that belong to suse-linux-e or suse-linux or that are completely off topic. Furthermore, the quoting of mails is sometimes very awful which makes it difficult to follow threads. f) (this is a bit more general) The whole opensuse project lacks from my point of view a clear thread - things are scattered around, there are lots of rumours, maybe people just don't know where to start. When I have to include 17 repositories just to get a fully functional distribution and I don't know much about the authors (whom shall I trust?) and only maybe half of the packages can be updated via YOU (those officially maintained by SuSE), well, I consider this as being not very attractive. Things should be a bit more centralised. g) There is a lack of communication between SuSE and the community. Just as a very simple example: the feedback form on SuSE's web site has been like a big black hole for years now... Maybe some feedback was included in the next distribution, some feedback was rejected (of course), but you never got any direct response. Furthermore, I have asked many times for information concerning the SuSE kernel patches (it's horrible to read through all the patches just to get an impression what's going on, they are not very well documented!), or other more technical stuff related to e.g. HAL. I did not get this information, or it was only by private email from a SuSE employee (thanks a lot for all the unofficial support over the years!). h) (this is my personal point of view) There have been certain developments in SuSE Linux over the last couple of years that did actually detract me a bit from SuSE Linux. I am an experienced Unix/Linux user, but SuSE put the focus very much on new Linux users and especially people coming from Windows. This brought us many "features" that were *not* ready for the end-user at release time (e.g. resmgr, subfs, suseplugger, ...) and some obscure kernel patches and all of this caused a lot of trouble (I have experienced many problems with the IDE barrier patches in the default kernels of 8.0 and 8.1). When asked about the increasing instability of SuSE Linux, I got the answer from SuSE that "the market requests such things". At that point I had to realize that I am maybe no longer part of the target group of SuSE. Considering my colleagues and friends, many experienced Linux users are no longer using SuSE. Maybe others have made different experiences, but from my point of view this is quite an important indication. i) ... (to be continued) Just to make my point clear: this email is not meant to upset anybody or to disregard what has been achieved so far (neither the work of SuSE nor the work of the opensuse community). But there are really things to be improved, and I have good arguments for all that it said above (people from the suse-linux mailing list might know me very well). I have been using SuSE since version 4.x and I have experience with lots of other distributions (e.g. our clusters here in UK are running on RedHat and RedHat Enterprise, some clients on Fedora, clusters in other offices are running Fedora Core 3) as well as commcercial Unices like SGI IRIX or HP-UX. Maybe I don't have much time to contribute as an "active" member to opensuse, but I keep an eye on all the developments and sometimes I feel it's time to express my opinion... ;-) With best regards from London, Thomas
On Sun, 2005-11-13 at 13:14 +0000, Thomas Hertweck wrote:
d) The communication via wiki or a forum is not very efficient for development purpose (it's great for the end-user because he can find lots of information there). Mailing lists are much better for a development community because everybody receives everything without having to scan lots of web pages or forum posts etc. which is very time-consuming.
e) This mailing list is not very efficient either.
g) There is a lack of communication between SuSE and the community. Just as a very simple example: the feedback form on SuSE's web site has been like a big black hole for years now...
+1 all around. A suggestion - why not setup an integrated OpenSuse forum and mailing list - So a user could subscirbe to a forum (say OpenSuse-dev) and whenever someone posts to the forum, it also sends an email with the post to the mailing list - that way there's an archive for users to view/search, but everything happens in the mailing list way. Then if someone responds to the mailing list, have the mail mgr auto post the response so that it shows up in the forums as well. I'm suggesting we truly integrate a forum and mailing list. And I'd also suggest that Suse developers need to be more active externally - you're an open project now - why collaborate/email/discuss internally without collaborating with the community. You may be surprised at some of the benefits. Other projects have done this well...
On Sunday 13 November 2005 18:09, Michael K Dolan Jr wrote: ...
And I'd also suggest that Suse developers need to be more active externally - you're an open project now - why collaborate/email/discuss internally without collaborating with the community. You may be surprised at some of the benefits. Other projects have done this well...
the main problem here is that plenty developers do fear the traffic on this mailing list and that we still not have a transparent system to follow and discuss issues depending on specific components of the system. What we could do is to define more mailinglists to specific areas to improve this (you can see a way better response time already on the opensuse-* lists). bye adrian -- Adrian Schroeter SUSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nuernberg, Germany email: adrian@suse.de
Adrian Schroeter wrote:
the main problem here is that plenty developers do fear the traffic on this mailing list adrian
with reason. what lacks is _one_ people in charge of communicating to the community. one people we could trust, so also trusted from Novell (that is quite high in Novell's hierarchy). One that could stop rumors but of course such people are busy and expensive... jdd -- pour m'écrire, aller sur: http://www.dodin.net
On Sunday 20 November 2005 11:42, jdd wrote:
Adrian Schroeter wrote:
the main problem here is that plenty developers do fear the traffic on this mailing list adrian
with reason.
what lacks is _one_ people in charge of communicating to the community.
one people we could trust, so also trusted from Novell (that is quite high in Novell's hierarchy). One that could stop rumors
but of course such people are busy and expensive...
Hm, how high do you need ? I for myself have to admit that I didn't follow this list either in the last weeks (because I first wanted to concentrate on some stuff for next year and secondly, I have to admit that the desktop decision issue (which was taken back) did hit me hard (causing workload and some depressions)). However, I can imagine one concrete person, but I can't tell the name yet, of course :) bye adrian -- Adrian Schroeter SUSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nuernberg, Germany email: adrian@suse.de
Adrian Schroeter wrote:
Hm, how high do you need ?
hig enough to be trusted, but low enough to have time :-). the recent affair of Novell firing people and leaving SUSE show that some high level decision can be misunderstood
However, I can imagine one concrete person, but I can't tell the name yet, of course :)
I could also give names, but the name itself is no very important, the clue is how important this person will be seen by Novell, how important the SuSE OSS community is seen by Novell. I think that jumping opensource is a _very_ important decision, and I hope it has been clearly understood by Novell. The jump itself can be easily computed, but the jump back, if ever, can be really destructive for the society public image, far more than the number of involved people can let think. jdd -- pour m'écrire, aller sur: http://www.dodin.net
On Sun, 20 Nov 2005, jdd wrote:
hig enough to be trusted, but low enough to have time :-).
the recent affair of Novell firing people and leaving SUSE show that some high level decision can be misunderstood
"leaving SUSE.." - this is simply false, or are you just quoting rumors?
However, I can imagine one concrete person, but I can't tell the name yet, of course :)
I could also give names, but the name itself is no very important, the clue is how important this person will be seen by Novell, how important the SuSE OSS community is seen by Novell.
I think that jumping opensource is a _very_ important decision, and I hope it has been clearly understood by Novell. The jump itself can be easily computed, but the jump back, if ever, can be really destructive for the society public image, far more than the number of involved people can let think.
If you ask me (and this is my personal opinion on this matter), Novell is seriously committed to open source and this is really top prio @ Novell. We are just not totally their yet... Regards Christoph
On Sun, 20 Nov 2005, jdd wrote:
the main problem here is that plenty developers do fear the traffic on this mailing list adrian
with reason.
what lacks is _one_ people in charge of communicating to the community. one people we could trust, so also trusted from Novell (that is quite high in Novell's hierarchy). One that could stop rumors
I don't think this is really necessary and reasonable. It would be much better to try to avoid having humours in the air, by communicating in a more transparent and open way. Anyway, are you saying that you don't trust the @suse.de people on this list - why? ;) Regards Christoph
Christoph Thiel wrote:
On Sun, 20 Nov 2005, jdd wrote:
I don't think this is really necessary and reasonable. It would be much better to try to avoid having humours in the air, by communicating in a more transparent and open way. Anyway, are you saying that you don't trust the @suse.de people on this list - why? ;)
it's not a matter of _my_ opinion. I think I begin to know you all and appreciate :-), but reading here the threads about rumors it seems not so easy to stop them. I had quite a harsh contact with my LUG on this subject. Many people _like_ rumors. I'm not aware of all what have been said, but I think there will probably been an initial mistake from Novell, may be not explaining the gnome/kde stuff here *before* official release or making the communicate not clear enough. I want only as a proof the fact that this come again in spanish later. (of course my own mail was a quote, not a fact - you see this is "hot" :-() and I'm very happy with Novell involvement, but Large companies (I don't say that for Novell) have accustommed us to not be so trustfull. I think it's important than there is _one_ trustee, because if there are many voices, necessarily they are not all exactly the same and this gives dubt. when you say "this can't be", I'm sure you think this really but do you really know what is about? (don't think it's me that asks, but any customer) clearly there are many Novell corps here, and very good persons. But anybody should know when they speak freely and when they are Novells voice (may be a different e-mail for official comments) sorry, I'm not english native, so I sometime wonder if I can make me clear enough. I don't wan to upset anybody. jdd -- pour m'écrire, aller sur: http://www.dodin.net
On Sun, 20 Nov 2005, jdd wrote:
I don't think this is really necessary and reasonable. It would be much better to try to avoid having humours in the air, by communicating in a more transparent and open way. Anyway, are you saying that you don't trust the @suse.de people on this list - why? ;)
it's not a matter of _my_ opinion. I think I begin to know you all and appreciate :-), but reading here the threads about rumors it seems not so easy to stop them. I had quite a harsh contact with my LUG on this subject. Many people _like_ rumors.
Well, it's really difficutlt to stop rumors, mainly because "A rumor is one thing that gets thicker instead of thinner as it is spread".
I'm not aware of all what have been said, but I think there will probably been an initial mistake from Novell, may be not explaining the gnome/kde stuff here *before* official release or making the communicate not clear enough. I want only as a proof the fact that this come again in spanish later.
That's why I said, it makes much more sense to try to avoid rumors instead of having people deny rumors. Hopefully that lesson has been learned by now.
sorry, I'm not english native, so I sometime wonder if I can make me clear enough. I don't wan to upset anybody.
It's totally fine! Don't worry. Regards Christoph
On Sunday 13 November 2005 09:15, jdd wrote:
my question was more "why are there so little people..." (contributors on this list, authors of wiki pages...)
My experience is:
some people have spare time. Having gotten help from suse or liking suse they come and lurk www.opensuse.org
I had spare time, and was using it to support a program that was supposed to eventually be included in 9.3. All went well. The maintainer sent packages and I tested. Not on 9.3, but 9.2 at the time as I wasn't part of the beta team. After several trials, it was found that it worked quite well on 9.2, and I assumed it would in 9.3. Went right out, purchased 9.3, and installed as I've done since the 6.4 days. But now I had a little pride that I actually had contributed something. Tried the program in question, and lo and behold it didn't work. Hmmmm. Wrote the maintainer, explaining my problem, and furnished every piece of info he asked for and then some. It's still sitting on my ftp server. Since that time, it's never been fixed, and appears to have died. As I am not a programmer, I don't know where to start looking. Wish I was. So all the time I spent went for nothing. Kind of depressing. I check every once in a while in hopes of an update, but after almost a year, nothing has happened.
if they don't find something to do, may be simple, they will go elsewhere.
I doubt I'll go elsewhere, as I am very comfortable with SUSE. I'm just not going to make many more purchases unless it's something I really need or want. Mike http://www.mikenjane.net/?page_id=18 -- Powered by SuSE 9.3 Kernel 2.6.11 KDE 3.4.0 Kmail 1.8 For Mondo/Mindi backup support go to http://www.mikenjane.net/~mike 3:36pm up 14 days 0:36, 4 users, load average: 2.33, 2.40, 2.43
participants (15)
-
Adrian Schroeter -
Christoph Thiel -
Graham Smith -
James Ogley -
jdd -
Kevin Donnelly -
Michael K Dolan Jr -
mike -
Nicola -kOoLiNuS- Losito -
Pascal Bleser -
Per Jessen -
Peter Flodin -
Robert Schiele -
Sonja Krause-Harder -
Thomas Hertweck