Gesendet: Mittwoch, 22. Januar 2020 um 16:32 Uhr Von: "Richard Brown" <rbrown@suse.de> An: opensuse-project@opensuse.org Betreff: Re: [opensuse-project] openSUSE Board election 2019-2020 - Final candidates list
Hi Sarah, Hi Richard, You have misunderstood a lot of my answers.
I feel there are a number of factual inaccuracies and tonal concerns I wish to raise with your answers
Where are the concerns? You are the first one who has responded. That is a mailing list and I am open for discussions.
Background: I was asked really often at open source events how another company can sponsor openSUSE. We had to say that it would not possible because all of our money is going via a SUSE credit card and the money would be lost (same with the GSoC money, which has to be transferred to other organizations because of this issue). No company wants to pay Open Source Developers with such a background of an open-source project. Therefore, most openSUSE Contributors are working for SUSE or SUSE Business Partners. This topic popped up more than 3 times during my last Board Membership (really created by SUSE employees each time!).
There are a number of other ways besides money that other companies and projects can, do, and have sponsored openSUSE.
Yes. But that all has the issue that we don't have a foundation. We had supperior offers for hardware sponsorships and they had been canceled because "SUSE Linux GmbH" is listed as a co-contractor[0]. Such companies would accept a foundation. Another case is the sponsorship for openSUSE Conferences. I have organized a German organization in the past. There were a lot of problems to receive information about sponsorships before. We sponsored the food then. But during a meeting this year, I heared that our Board does not want to support openSUSE any more because of these problems. You can watch the food of the last conference. Do you want to have only sandwiches for guests at the conference? The topic "paied Open Source Developers" is coming from a study conference of the SBB foundation. A speaker told about "New Work" and that it is modern to offer 20% of working time for non-profit projects. I know different IT companies who want to support open-source projects on this way. Do you mean, they want to give us these Developers without being allowed to publish the openSUSE logo on the homepage? What is the requirement for doing that? They have to be a sponsor, too.
I disagree with the implication in the above that openSUSE is not able to recieve any such sponsorship.
My experience at openSUSE shows the opposite.
Obviously I agree that direct monetary sponsorship is currently problematic, but given openSUSE is rarely short of money for the activities we do, I do not think it's the highest priority for the Project at this time.
Solution: Creation of the foundation! I had to suggest this solution more than 3 times before that was accepted by SUSE employees in the Board. I told about all the benefits how we can manage our own money then, receive new sponsors, SUSE can use more money for their own, SUSE can sponsor us continuously and we would be able to receive more Contributors.
The idea of an openSUSE Foundation has been a recurring topic for the openSUSE Project since before 2011.
I outright reject the statement that you "had to suggest this solution more than 3 times that was was accepted by SUSE employees in the Board".
We had long discussions about resolving the problem with the money. Google Summer of Code and openSUSE Asia Summit are only examples of our Board Meetings. Every time, I have repeated the suggestion with the foundation with all benefits for us and SUSE. I have experience with foundations from my student life and one employer who wanted to safe his open-source project with that. After 1.5 hours discussions without any predictable end (topic openSUSE Asia Summit in the past) all the other Board Members agreed that this would be the only possible solution. We can use the time for other topics in the future.
There is no difference between the Board members who are democratically elected by the community, and I think it is inappropirate for a potential Board member of to express a "them vs us" outlook between those elected Board members employed by a certain company and those who are not.
Yes. That is right. There is no difference in the Board. But it was peculiar that all the time SUSE employees were complaining about money topics at the openSUSE Board. The shortest way is another one.
- openSUSE infrastructure in Provo Background: I am one of the Founders of the openSUSE Heroes Team and was allowed to coordinate our first wiki project between Germany and Provo. The openSUSE infrastructure is in Microfocus hands and they need very long to respond on issues and we are not allowed to receive access as a community. Additionally, SUSE is not part of Microfocus any more which makes it more difficult to receive good support in the future. Solution 1: Migration of all openSUSE systems from Provo to Nuremberg / Prague (perhaps missing space?) Solution 2: Migration of all openSUSE systems from Provo to any German hosting data centre with access for openSUSE Heroes
It is my personal and professional experience that issues I report to admin@opensuse.org are no more likely to be resolved if they relate to openSUSE infrastructure in Nuremberg than if they related to openSUSE infrastructure in Provo.
Really? We are waiting for a database dump for our forums since September. A one line fix for the broken rss feed needed 2 months. In my experience our Heroes Team interacts mostly faster.
openSUSE also recently experienced a prolonged outage of one piece infrastructure hosted by a German hosting data centre with access for openSUSE heroes.
Since somebody joined the Heroes again, infrastructure topics from Germany have been resolved faster. That counts for hosted at SUSE and in the data centre.
Therefore I disagree that moving anything from Provo to Nuremberg or anywhere else is mandatory or necessarily helpful in order to fix anything.
Do you prefer a non working infrastructure? The Heroes Team is giving all. But that is not possible with MF-IT.
I agree that openSUSE needs to have vastly improved support of its infrastructure, but I do not think the Board should be demanding the details of what steps should be taken to reach that solution. I strongly feel the details should be left to the volunteers and sponsors who will be responsible for providing that support.
That is necessary if you want to keep that in Provo. Admins don't work there without escalations. Our new Chairman had to ask for a database dump[1]. I prefer such topics as Heroes topics, too. MF-IT does not listen to our Heroes Team. Therefore, we need escalations via the Chairman or another place for the infrastructure.
- Bad reputation of openSUSE Leap & openSUSE Tumbleweed Background: We are the openSUSE project with many different sub- projects. We don’t offer only Linux distributions, but we are well known for that and most people are associating us with that. I had given many presentations about openSUSE during my last Board Membership and represented us at different open source events. The existing openSUSE Board does not do that very much. They have another focus at the moment. Solution: We need more openSUSE Contributors representing openSUSE and I can do that as an openSUSE Board Member again. After that, we can be one of the top Linux distributions again. 😉
I disagree that you need to be a Board member in order to represent openSUSE and I dislike the implication that those two roles are somehow linked.
You are writing what I have written as a solution... I wrote that we need more openSUSE Contributors there. It is not necessary to be a Board Member to represent openSUSE. It is welcome to see openSUSE Board Members at open-source events. That is giving openSUSE an higher value there then.
I think it would be a much better to encorage that anyone can, and should, represent openSUSE regardless of their status in the Project.
One role does not suspend the other one. Read my solution correctly.
- What should the board do differently / more of?
The existing openSUSE Board is working mostly on the topic with the foundation. That is good. Thank you! But the role of a Board Member contains the representation of the community, too. We would have one less risk with that.
As I state above, I agree the Project needs more ambassadors, advocates, and cheerleaders but I think the representation of openSUSE can and should be handled by anyone in the Project.
You are elected as a openSUSE Board Member because you are representing the openSUSE Community. We have the name "Student Representative" for elected Students at our university. We have been electing Board Members. Our focus should be to resolve problems. But we are representing the community, too. Additionally, I am not only one candidate with this idea. ;)
I'd rather see Board members spend their time on tasks requiring the trust and responsibility vested in them by the electorate.
I hope my fellow voters elect people based on their ability to handle tasks the community could not otherwise easily solve themselves.
Which additional (missing) tasks do you see? One role does not exclude others. I did not decline to resolve issues. I can resolve problems as a Computer Scientist (not only technical things).
Regards,
Richard Brown Linux Distribution Engineer - Future Technology Team
Best regards, Sarah [0] https://en.opensuse.org/images/f/f1/Equipment-Donation-Agreement.pdf [1] https://lists.opensuse.org/heroes/2019-12/msg00004.html -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org