Hello, Am Sonntag, 15. März 2020, 14:03:40 CET schrieb Neal Gompa:
On Sun, Mar 15, 2020 at 7:45 AM Sarah Julia Kriesch wrote:
I would like speaking well about Richard and having a frienship as with everybody else in the community. But I am sorry so say that - that is not possible with such flouts and aggro from the other side.
Having known all of you folks as long as I've been actively involved in the openSUSE community this go-around (which is five years now!), I have never known Richard to be anyone but a joyful, enthusiastic supporter of the openSUSE community. It was Richard that introduced me to other great members of the openSUSE community, including Stasiek, and when we met in-person at Flock in 2018, we had a fantastic conversation of project governance (I've been a member of the Mageia Council for a couple of years now). While Richard can easily bait people with the rest of them, he largely reserves that for presentations, where he professes his love for openSUSE and its wonderful community.
That's his public face, and I know and agree that he has done quite some good things for openSUSE. I also understand that your "outside view" picture looks exactly like you describe it. Sadly I have also seen some things that clearly don't fit into this positive picture :-( Most of them were in private or in board meetings (which also means I can't easily disclose them), therefore you'll have to trust me that your picture is totally incomplete. At least a few things went public - see for example the link in my non- random signature. I also know that Sarah isn't the only person who (diplomatically spoken) doesn't like Richard anymore.
I've extremely confused about the acrimony you have with Richard, especially even now as he isn't even a member of the Board or the Chairman anymore. I also don't get what *any* of this matters with the issues at hand, since again 1) Richard is not the Chairman nor on the Board, and 2) you stepped down of your own volition and *then* disclosed all this.
The strange thing is that a part of the reason why 2/3 of the board forced Sarah to step down was a _two year old_ (and IMHO questionable) warning. Since the board included this as part of the decision when forcing Sarah to resign, it shouldn't be a surprise that some of this history becomes part of the discussion now.
The best I can gather is that *you* have a problem with the openSUSE community. And I don't think *that's* right either.
I know Sarah longer (and better) than you, and I'm *very sure* that she doesn't have a problem with the openSUSE community. Quite the opposite. She is doing her best, helps in some areas (maybe not the most visible ones), and has suggested improvements to make our community life easier. Yes, there is an obvious exception when it comes to a specific person, but that's something that gets fueled by both sides - for example, it was Richard who started the long and malicious discussion on Sarah's board application, and it was also a (non-public) completely unfair action by Richard that started all this 3 years ago.
I think a lot of people here don't understand the nuances of project governance that well. It's important to note that the openSUSE Board *does nothing* most of the time.
Argh - did you really have to disclose this? ;-)
The Board's major purpose is to arbitrate disputes and to handle sponsorships of the openSUSE Project, including being the bridge between SUSE and openSUSE. If we as a community want the openSUSE Board to do more things, then that's a completely separate conversation. But as it stands, you are asking for the Board to do things it does not have the ability to do.
Assuming you talk about supporting the infrastructure migration from Provo to Nuremberg - there were several cases where the heroes _had to_ ask the board for support because requests to Provo were ignored for a long time. It kind of became a standard workflow to request something in Provo, send reminder mails for some weeks (without any response) and finally ask the board to escalate it :-/ Sadly, "does not have the ability to do" is closer to the truth than I'd like. As you've probably seen in my other mail, even for the board or its (current and previous) chairman, it was really hard to get something done in Provo - but at least it somehow, somewhen it worked after twisting several arms. More than once, I asked if SUSE would pay a flight to Provo so that I can visit the MF-IT guys and give them a live demo of my safety boots and/or a CAT5 o Nine Tails [1]. Of course I can't speak for everybody in the heroes team, but I'm quite sure that nobody who ever had to deal with MF-IT disagrees with Sarah's statement that the board should support the heroes when it comes to these things.
As Richard has said many times, openSUSE is a "do-ocracy". It is mostly self-organized and self-governing within individual groups that wish to do governance. That has its pluses and minuses, but it has enabled folks like myself and Stasiek to make huge impacts in the openSUSE Linux distribution as well as other aspects of the Project.
Right, and I'm really thankful for everything you and all the people in the openSUSE community do.
So, in the end, I'd like to just ask... Can you please just let it go? It's in the past, dredging it up isn't going to help anybody now.
Given all the (mostly non-public) history, I'm afraid that's very hard for Sarah - and IMHO it would at least require that Richard also stops doing silly things.
It's not like Gerald is going to be able to do anything about what happened 2+ years ago unless SUSE has a TARDIS hidden somewhere in the Nuremberg office. Having visited the SUSE office there, I'd be impressed if they managed to hide one anywhere (most rooms are not big enough to hide such a thing!).
I'd really like to comment on this, but I had to sign a NDA before being allowed to visit the non-public areas of the SUSE office last year ;-) Regards, Christian Boltz PS: non-random signature, as indicated above [1] https://www.getdigital.de/LART-Netzwerkpeitsche-CAT5-o-Nine-Tails.html -- The discussion meandered along a little further, wandering into important topics like potentially sponsoring a pony if a humane way could be found to brand it with the openSUSE logo — a brilliant opportunity that, for some unknown reason, was not pursued further. [from https://lwn.net/Articles/776324/] -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org