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openSUSE Guiding Principles Take Effect
(11 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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It’s official: the openSUSE project Guiding Principles are now in force. The Guiding Principles are a framework for the project and give everyone a clear view of who we are, what we stand for, what the project wants and how it works. The Guiding Principles document was created by the openSUSE community and is embraced by Novell - the founder and largest sponsor of the openSUSE project. This important document will help ensure the success and continued progress of the project. Along with the Guiding Principles, we are also launching the openSUSE Board to offer a central point of contact to the community and make community participation in project governance easier. The openSUSE Board consists of both external community members and community members employed by Novell .
We encourage all to support the Guiding Principles here. Create your profile and support the Guiding Principles.
We want to especially thank all contributors to the Guiding Principles, and last but not least, all community members who make the openSUSE project such a success.
Have a lot of fun!
Adrian Schröter
Andreas Jaeger
Benjamin Weber
Cornelius Schumacher
Federico Mena Quintero
Francis Giannaros
Gerald Pfeifer
Jeff Jaffe
Justin Steinman
Klaas Freitag
Martin Lasarsch
Martin Schlander
Michael Löffler
Pascal Bleser
Roger Levy
“The board is headed by a chairperson with veto power over any decision. The chairperson is appointed by Novell and will typically be a Novell employee. ”
Community: Take ZENworks out the distro
Novell: We won’t, here we use out veto
Community: -silenced-
Novell can overrule the community or stop development at any time (like they make openSUSE Novell-red instead of SUSE-green).I know that it won’t happen but it CAN happen that way. Or do I miss anything? For the time beining I do not yet support the GP. Someone that can explain?
> Community: Take ZENworks out the distro
> Novell: We won’t, here we use out veto
You couldn’t think of a better example than one solved already without a board?
> Novell can overrule the community
Correct. You can find the same rule in other open source projects, like Ubuntu or Fedora.
> or stop development at any time
Of course nobody can force Novell to continue contributing. But then openSUSE is the base of the enterprise products.
Actually I don’t support the principles - the purpose of the “board” is unclear. In my opinion there should be the only leader who makes decisions. The board will lead to a mess.
The real question is will the community be able to do anything about openSuSE vis et vis Microsoft if it ever counts. Novel of and by itself is mostly harmless except for the small issue of backing a number of wrong horses.
The real harm that can come here is if Microsoft really wants something that the GPL cannot stop them with.
At least that’s my nightmare!
The board will give the community a much stronger voice for openSUSE with Novell.
> You couldn’t think of a better example than one solved already
without a board?
I just wondered what should have happened with a board :P. If ZENworks
was left in then openSUSE would have died….
Maybe we should only have boardleaders who’s parents are still alive
and productive. If the leader fails then we can fork him…..
Still wonder WHY Novell does need a veto-right. If they
can explain their plans in a good way they can earn support
from the community. Really, it’s not that I don’t want to
support the GP, I just want to know what exacly I support
> WHY Novell does need a veto-right.
Currently Novell is the main sponsor of the project and therefore we sat it up this way as a special precaution. I think this is done in other projects as well, e.g. at Fedora.
Be assured that I will not use my veto power lightly - Novell does not want to alienate the community.
maybe some of you should stop judging and foreseeing the future, and give the board a chance and see what happens.
Thanks Novell and OpenSuse for all the fine work to get this most amazing distro to all of us
Aren’t SUSE Linux and openSUSE Linux succeeding better than Novell’s stewardship of WordPerfect? The revenues continue to increase. The user base seems to be expanding. The product gets better overall.
Why should Novell have an overall veto right? They are paying for the hardware, bandwidth and a lot of people working on not only openSUSE but many Open Source Software projects. When you decide to pay for all that on your own, let us know what you call your Linux distribution.
I for one welcome Novell’s participation and willingness to keep the lights on. Thank you everyone at Novell for all the work. 10.3 is the best yet. Thanks for not making it perfect so I have something to look forward to in openSUSE 11.