On Feb 6, 2008 4:14 PM, Cornelius Schumacher
One of the first things that the openSUSE board have been working on is getting some clear acknowledgment through for all good openSUSE contributors. The result of this can be seen through what we think of as "openSUSE Members"[0].
I'm happy that there is now a defined way to get an opensuse.org mail address. That's good.
We hope that this will further distinguish active and helpful contributors to openSUSE, and in doing so bring the openSUSE community closer together.
I'm also very much in favor of giving active contributors recognition. We have great examples how this can work, e.g. the "People of openSUSE" series.
But I'm a bit concerned about tying this to the status of a "member" of the project. openSUSE is an open and inclusive project. People should feel like members when they are taking part in the community. I don't think this should require any formal approval. This feels like an additional barrier which goes against our desire to grow the community.
Being an open, global project is certainly the top thing on the list, and nothing should detract from that. We should always be open and accessible to others -- and in fact I think the idea of membership only complements this. Nearly all open source projects have something similar to this (like KDE e.V.). What we do need to keep an eye with things like this is that the process and requirements are transparent. I want to work on making it even more transparent, and the current method should definitely be seen as a "beginning" with serious consideration later on how well it scales, how appropriate it is, etc. There shouldn't be anything secret, exclusive, or bureaucratic about it. We should work hard to make everyone feel involved instantly, and we should definitely distinguish and acknowledge the active and helpful contributors. The point is never to imply that only those who are members are part of the community -- on the contrary, everyone involved in anything related is part of the community, and 'membership' is just an umbrella for those active contributors who it would be fitting to give i.e. o.o addresses and cloaks to, and who for example we might see as representatives of the openSUSE project. Kind thoughts, -- Francis Giannaros http://francis.giannaros.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org