(Apologies for the cross posting, please do not reply to this post in EITHER list, all feedback should be sent directly to board@opensuse.org) Dear Community, On both the opensuse@ and opensuse-factory@ mailinglists we've had a recent uptick in off-topic discussions which often took a very contentious tone and nature. The Board have extensively reviewed the recent threads, and we would like to thank the vast majority of the community who dealt with these threads in a largely constructive way, even when individuals disagreed on the finer points being discussed. That said, there were a pair of individuals who repeatedly breached our Projects Guiding Principles throughout these discussions and ignored repeated warnings and guidance to try and encourage them to correct their tone and/or behaviour. Their failure to listen to both Board members & (equally importantly) the wider community can be seen to be a direct cause of the worst and most uncomfortable parts of the recent discussions. Upon reviewing the recent threads, the Board has taken the exceptional, and unanimous, decision to permanently ban those two people from the openSUSE mailinglists. The Board has taken this action with the aim of ensuring our lists are a healthy environment for discussion, which was not possible with these individuals inability to adhere to our Projects guiding principles. The individuals involved have been contacted directly. They will not be named by the Board in the interest of respecting their privacy & potential future interactions with other open source communities. This is not an attempt to moderate either of these lists of squelch discussion which we (the Board, or the Project) disagree with. Just as unanimously as the Board decided to take this action, the Board was equally unanimous in it's decision to not punish, sanction, or otherwise moderate any other individuals or lists as a whole. There is no intention to shutdown opensuse@opensuse.org or any other active openSUSE mailinglist. The Board is hopeful that without these two individuals bringing their unwelcome communication style to the lists, all openSUSE mailinglists have a better chance to fulfil their intended roles in the Project. opensuse@opensuse.org is the intended support mailinglist of the Project. Anyone with a problem, especially novices, should feel welcome to ask any question (especially technical ones) and should have a reasonable expectation of getting meaningful and helpful answers. It is not a mailinglist for debating the direction of the openSUSE Project as a whole or of specific technologies which openSUSE is heavily invested in. opensuse-factory@opensuse.org is the primary technical mailinglist of the Project. Technical discussions between contributors about the development of Tumbleweed & Leap are expected to happen here, if no more relevant list already exists for them. Requests from non-contributors are not unwelcome, but it should be recognised that repeating the same request for years is not likely to persuade a change of mindset. At some point people need to accept that some things are the way that they are, and they will stay that way until someone contributes a change. For example, that is the state where we are with systemd. It's removal from the distribution or the addition of alternatives has been requested repeatedly, and yet no openSUSE contributor has done anything in this area. Until we see contributions in this area the Board feels it is pointless for people to request otherwise, and respectfully request that no one on any of our mailinglists requests the removal of systemd or the addition of alternative init systems. But we also want to make clear that this request, and our recent actions, are not the start of heavy handed moderation of our mailinglists. We want these lists to be largely self-moderated with common sense being applied. Newcomers are going to post off-topic stuff, either in the wrong list or sometimes totally off-topic to the entire Project. Even established mailinglist posters are human and will make mistakes from time to time. When this happens the first efforts should be to welcoming, helpful, and then educational to encourage them to post on-topic and in the correct lists in the future. We want these mailinglists to be a healthy reflection of the general tone of the openSUSE Project, and this is what the vast majority of the list posters have consistently done even in recent days. Once again, the Board thanks you all for that. If the situation ever develops that our mailinglists need additional moderation, the Board has briefly discussed the possibility of establishing community moderators for our lists. We think the idea of self-policing has the most prospect of being successful. But at this time we see no need to investigate this further and hope that everything will start to return to 'normal' now. If anyone has any concerns about anything discussed in this email, please email the Board at board@opensuse.org Many Thanks, Richard Brown openSUSE Chairman On Behalf of the openSUSE Board -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org