On Feb 10, 2008 1:02 PM, Thomas Hertweck
Francis Giannaros wrote:
[...] Who said you *had* to sign them? I haven't seen that stated anywhere,
You said so, and the Wiki says so: if you want to be an openSUSE member, you have to sign the documents.
[...] You can still be part of the community, or a "member" in a looser sense, but you cannot be an "openSUSE member" in terms of the criteria we have defined.
Finally, I think you start to realize the problem. There have always been members of the SuSE community (since the mid '90ies), later on they have become members of the openSUSE community. Now you have changed the meaning of "membership" by introducing artificial new criteria, applications, approvals etc.
One curious thing here: you acknowledge that the meaning of the word (as we mean it) is different to your meaning of "member", and yet you go on to still suggest that others are members in the respect *you* suggest. There would be some very big confusion if "openSUSE member" was a widely used term in some particular way before it was more clearly defined by us. Fortunately, however, it was not. Secondly, the word is very applicable in this scenario.
Many people that I (and obviously others) consider as members of openSUSE do now fall short of your criteria and therefore are no longer considered as members (according to your definition). This, from my point of view, disregards their very valuable contributions, though these contributions might be small in absolute terms! Your own sentence cited above shows how obscure the situation now is: you talk about "loose members" and "openSUSE members".
How else would you prefer me to differentiate between the way you use the term and they way in which we've defined it? That there is a confusion here is obvious (confusion is what you get when two people use a word differently :-).
You shouldn't have called your approach a "membership".
And yet you have provided no substantiation for this other than that "you consider people as members who are not"; when we disagree (as we have defined the criteria very clearly), what exactly do you expect?
In principle it comes down to two questions: Can you measure contributions in an open community with such a variety of people and skills in absolute terms (see my email to Pascal)?
What absolute terms? We do not need to proffer some type of explicit metric in order to compare contributions to. As Pascal said, this is not a mathematical formula for you to plug in and get out an explicit result. It's been patently clear that the decision (at least currently), is up to the board. It is also clear that there is reasoning involved, examples of contributions that are valid; no crazy magic involved in the process.
And secondly, should you be allowed to change the definition of "membership" although it has already been used over the last ten years and it has gained a certain meaning?
It is untrue that the term has been widely used in the openSUSE community in the way that you suggest. If anything, that is something I know, or do you think I'm not involved at all? :)
You don't have to agree with me and some others, it's okay to have different opinions, but I expect from you - as a board member - that you (at least) realize the concerns that have been raised, and that you start thinking about it.
I have said from the beginning that I'm open to any suggestions for change.
If you only want to represent that part of the community that agrees with your own opinion, then there's something wrong.
When a project goes from being closed source into opening up as a community project there are going to be a *lot* of changes around the place. Turning a closed project into an open one is an awful lot harder than just creating a new open community and project. With change there are always people that will disagree. The vital point will always be to listen to the concerns with an open-mind, but also to not let invalid or unpractical concerns drag the project behind. Needless to say, so far I'm incredibly pleased with the membership effort (this of course includes the community response to it). We've had countless membership requests (95% or so which will probably be accepted if they haven't been already), and many people feeling very positive about it. Though the process is of course not perfect and I hope it can be improved as time goes on.
PS> Please stop sending me private copies of list postings. Everybody has to be subscribed in order to be able to write to the list. I obviously read this list and there's no reason why I would like to receive your emails twice! Use a "reply-to-list" functionality.
It was gmail wackiness.
PPS> That's my last email in this thread. I think everything has been said and there's no need for repetition.
Just read your latest email (the one after this one), but I've covered most of your points in this email anyway. 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