-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 06/03/2015 10:02 PM, Robert Martens wrote:
So far, I haven't seen anyone participating in this discussion recognize the root cause of the need for the discussion or the letter: there has been an overloading of the meaning of the English word 'member'.
Those that apply have one understanding of the meaning of 'member' and those that reject that application have another.
Perhaps, if you better labeled the status gained by the granting of certain privileges, people would wait until they felt qualified. Maybe, 'openSUSE elector' could be used for that which must be requested?
Or even something as simple as “openSUSE Member” and “openSUSE Voting Member” which would have the privileges attached to it. I know that we might be “splitting hairs” for many, but it is a possibility at least to have a “membership” level for anyone to feel a part of the community while still keeping decision-making held within the contributors.
Sincerely, Bob Martens
On Jun 3, 2015, at 5:40 PM, PatrickD Garvey
wrote: On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 10:07 AM, Robert Schweikert
wrote: On 06/03/2015 10:00 AM, Klaas Freitag wrote:
On 03.06.2015 15:32, Robert Schweikert wrote:
On 06/03/2015 09:04 AM, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
On Tuesday 02 June 2015 14:16:33 Henne Vogelsang wrote: > > So you want people who never have done anything > "continued and substantial" to our project to join the > body that elects our board? I'm pretty sure that this > isn't a good idea :-)
I want people who want to contribute feel welcome, even if they haven't done anything yet. I'm pretty sure that is a good idea.
I want the board to be elected by people who express that they want to be part of the community. I want it to be a representation of the people who feel part of the community. I'm pretty sure that is a good idea as well.
I want to operate from a point of view that people mean well when they want to join openSUSE and optimize for getting new contributors on board, not for protecting against potential abuse. I'm pretty sure that this also is a good idea for an open community like openSUSE is.
> Please don't confuse being part of the openSUSE project > with being a "openSUSE Member".
There is confusion. As Richard said, too many people are applying as members under wrong assumptions. The fact that we need rejection mails, membership committees validating contributions, Wiki pages with red warnings, etc. shows that there is an issue with becoming part of openSUSE.
The big problem is that we will never hear from those people who didn't even try to become part because they were discouraged by how we handle this. We lose these people without even knowing about them.
So to live up to our expectations as open community, to remove a barrier in becoming a contributor, to encourage people to join us, we could get rid of the validation and rejection step and just let everybody become a member who wants to.
This way the board would be the representative of all self-proclaimed members of the openSUSE community, which I think is exactly what it should be.
The work would still be done by those who are active. The decisions would still be taken by those who do the work. We still would have protection mechanisms like the veto power of the chairman of the board or the guiding principles.
But we would have a more open, more welcoming, more inclusive community. That's what I would really like to see.
Then why bother having membership at all?
If everyone who wants to be a member gets to be a member just for filling out the application then we might as well not have it. The board can then be elected by the general population on the internet and everyone can run.
But the general population on the internet is not at all interested in openSUSE. If it was, yes, why not let them vote? Filling out the application means "I am interested in openSUSE and wanna work on and with it" - and that makes the difference...
We are not in the danger that Fedora or Ubuntu will swarm over us and vote their buddy into the board. We are rather in the danger of having very few being interested in openSUSE any more, and thus we should follow Cornelius' wise advice IMO, to simplify and open up.
The debate is really misplaced. It has become so simple to contribute to openSUSE that I proclaim the endless possibilities to contribute are over whelming and scare people off.
A "non-member" contributor has just as many possibilities to contribute and help out as the "member" contributor. The term "member" is a more or less logical consequence of our governance model of the project with an elected board. Somehow the pool of people that vote needs to be defined. A "anyone who is interested" on election day model is probably not the best approach. Those interested on election day will not be involved in the project long enough to notice the effects of their decision.
Again, if the messaging is the problem, which is what jdd originally started out with, lets fix the messaging, lets fix the member page, lets fix the membership such that we have members that actually still contribute on a more or less regular basis. Those that are members but no longer contribute should be recognized for their past contributions, but should not necessarily continue to be able to vote or have @opensuse.org e-mail addresses. Lets fix the confusion about what being a member means. If people really think one has to be a member to contribute lets get that addressed and set the record straight .
Later, Robert
So far, I haven't seen anyone participating in this discussion recognize the root cause of the need for the discussion or the letter: there has been an overloading of the meaning of the English word 'member'.
Those that apply have one understanding of the meaning of 'member' and those that reject that application have another.
Perhaps, if you better labeled the status gained by the granting of certain privileges, people would wait until they felt qualified. Maybe, 'openSUSE elector' could be used for that which must be requested?
Lets make the assumption that the issue lies with the overloading of "member" as in: Member of the openSUSE community: A person that contributes to the project but does not vote, have an @opensuse.org e-mail etc. (no form required) openSUSE Member: A person that has provided sustained substantial contributions to the project and has applied for and received membership "blessing/status/INSERT_OTHER_NOT_QUITE_APPROPRIATE_WORD_HERE". Has voting rights and @opensuse.org e-mail.... Now lets rename the two and see where we end up Member of the openSUSE community: A person that contributes to the project but does not vote, have an @opensuse.org e-mail etc. (no form required) openSUSE Voting Member: A person that has provided sustained substantial contributions to the project and has applied for and received membership "blessing/status/INSERT_OTHER_NOT_QUITE_APPROPRIATE_WORD_HERE". Has voting rights and @opensuse.org e-mail.... Would we not end up in the same predicament? Having to explain the difference between "member" and "voting member", having to separate these two in a friendly way such that those that apply to become a voting member and do not get accepted as such don't run away because the form e-mail they received is not friendly? Would we not need to fix the wiki to avoid all the red warning labels? Add all the arguments that have already been made in this thread. No matter the "title" chosen, the basic conundrum remains. Given the governance model of the project and the logical need to limit the pool of people with certain rights/obligations to those that "show they care" creates a certain degree of separation. No matter what the "title" bestowed on each group, an explanation of/to both is required. Therefore I proclaim that we can do just a good a job explaining the first (current) double meaning as we can explaining the modified naming. Later, Robert - -- Robert Schweikert MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU Public Cloud Architect LINUX rjschwei@suse.com IRC: robjo -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJVcEcwAAoJEE4FgL32d2Ukw9oIAK+dNxQsWinBJlx1CP2BcVVt fJ+9EQ3RYlgm3TiynQCs2tdW56QG5nZmrGOwda1OoIzDZ19V+60q87BQr8zhh5nE frO3TMEmQuCfSg92gzbPP6voJHeBnXbT3H3rTQGtCM2S67HElR7AjRTY8mFqqEt4 INnFcr/HrCH06FQrYoRhtBaMmRdJJMBrX6Jhd/SK+57VRnRvlwbMCyNqaRH/Zaar aFVWFjn53ENGIcRQ3PbJbfuc4KL1Noz164NqemV8FYzkvt7IMiFmUdogeT4qY3gD gUJysRmHnUoRn3k9PKvyhcq2B0NZF/CLi595Nj+zWpQRsrY6/ab1jPqL+PWun+M= =0jby -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org