Karsten König schreef:
Am Mittwoch, 9. Juni 2010, 10:43:23 schrieb Andreas Jaeger:
The crucial part about independence is not the data center sponsorship by Novell. The crucial part is sponsoring a lot of developers to make openSUSE successful.
In the past you had to be a Novell employee to make certain things happen. We changed all of that - and if there's still a place where Novell employees are in charge it's mainly because of nobody stepping up to do it instead of Novell controlling it. There are a few places where that contribution is not possible today, e.g. proper handling of feature requests, and we work actively on removing those barriers.
Hm I don't really buy into that, I understand Novell has no problem of the community taking openSUSE where they want to, but they sure don't want their own people to do what they want all the time, so Novell is steering openSUSE through the people working on it. This is totally fine for me, someone who contributes alot to openSUSE is in charge of his part and thus controls the way openSUSE is headed, maybe alot of the critcism can be eliminated with beeing more truthful in the direction that Novell also wants a reward on their contribution to openSUSE. Novell isn't charity, but in some statements that looks like it wants to be just that. I think we all know and accept open source couldn't succeed with someone paying bills around it.
The Foundation can create contracts and rules for investments, and/or returns, and take responsibility for it as legal embodyment of the Goals, protected by the statutes and law. Bills have to be paid, allways, but 'charity' is the word that can be undone by the product that is delivered. That is why a foundation can have a workshop that generates money, without being commercial. (this aspect will be essential to protect the goals from 'pulling plugs'..) The money generated by the workshop is used to serve and reach the goals, taxfree.(!) Which can be pay off a loan, or give employees something for their efforts. The foundation must also embody a person able to calculate all the costs, and make balance between the ins and outs. Here oS will become independant. By knowing the costs, and being responsible and accountable for them.
So, independence has two facets: * independence from the money of Novell * independence from the control of Novell
I'm convinced that the majority of the community does not want independence from the money of Novell. For example every ambassador ask for goodies from Novell for their local events. Yes, we want more money to grow openSUSE - and that's what has been said is why the openSUSE Board works on an openSUSE foundation.
Money has to be generated by oS Foundation itself.
Independence from the control of Novell is something the project has already - it just has to grab it. And that's the discussion IMO that we should have - on how to grab it. How to grab is knowing what is needed, and fullfill that.
We have now people part of our server administration team that are not Novell employees, we have with Bryen an openSUSE marketing lead that is not a Novell employee etc. As part of the marketing team lead by Bryen I do right now the openSUSE Build Service announcements. And that kind of self-reliance and independence where Novell is part of the community - and where contribution and not money roles - is the one the project is moving towards,
I guess everybody has his aims in contributing to openSUSE, or any other project, and they do it for a reason, what's Novells reason? Most non-employed people do it for their satisfaction, be it shaping something, improving his own experience, helping others etc etc. But I don't remember any public statement what Novell expects from it's support for openSUSE, except what reads like general charity. I can think of alot out of my head, be it gaining expertise, having a good testbase for future products, improving future products through external contributions, earning a good reputation as opensource contributor, providing interesting work topics for employees, etc.
http://en.opensuse.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions#What_is_the_relationship_o... tries to shortly address this, btw also stating 'Novell [...] retains ultimate responsibility for the project.' The entry states it's the base for SLE, that's it, well this obviously contradicts the wish for a totally independent community as it might create something that just won't sell as SLE ;-)
Regards, Karsten
This is part of the reason why oS should profile herself into the Foundation. -- Enjoy your time around, Oddball, aka M9. OS: Linux 2.6.27.19-3.2-default x86_64 Huidige gebruiker: oddball@AMD64x2-sfn1 Systeem: openSUSE 11.1 (x86_64) KDE: 4.2.1 (KDE 4.2.1) "release 103" -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org