On Wed, 2019-10-02 at 13:44 +0200, Henne Vogelsang wrote:
If we don't change, nothing happens and everything stays at it is, and most people know how things are currently. Nobody even has an idea of an overview of what will and would need to happen if we change the name.
See Simons mail for instance, the description of the reasons to changing the name are very concise and practical. The reasons to not change the name are abstract and imprecise.
So if you put the vote forward like that, people will have a vote on something they can imagine very well (a.k.a. status quo) versus some *undefined* future. Into the undefined, exactly because it's so boundless and vague, you can interpret everything that you might want to have changed in openSUSE, no matter if that really changes or not after the vote.
If the Project votes for not changing the name, I expect the following consequences - The Board will work very hard to establish the openSUSE Foundation under that name, with some kind of trademark aggreement with SUSE's various legal entities Worldwide - Negotiations will be long, protracted, and complicated, given it will likely have significant legal impact for both the openSUSE Project and SUSE in various legal juristictions (eg. USA and EU) - After committing all of that work, the eventual outcome might be that changing the name might still be impractical, but at least the work will have been done to thouroughly investigate that. Yes, sure, this means the vote has potentially unbalanced outcomes - one option is immediately actionable with a goal that is immediately realisable and one is an option which is more uncertain. To be as blunt as you taught me to be, such is life. It is unreasnoble to expect SUSE and the openSUSE Board to conduct the months of work required to potentially keep openSUSE operating under the same name while having a Foundation if the community is open to changing the name of the Project. Regardless, either option compells the Project to months or years of work, and before any such large burden is undertaken, it should be well justified. Which means the desire of the community needs to be asked. Which means we need a vote. Hence the need for this vote to identify the desires of the community at large, which is necessary to justify the work required in either case. -- Richard Brown Linux Distribution Engineer - Future Technology Team Phone +4991174053-361 SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, D-90409 Nuernberg HRB 247165, AG München GF: Felix Imendörffer -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org