Change in openSUSE Membership handling

Anyone can become openSUSE member after showing continued and substantial contribution to the project of any kind (bugs, support in forums, wiki edits, code contribution etc.). For those who don’t know what openSUSE Membership is or how to become a member I suggest to read this wiki article or older blogpost by Andreas.

Some time ago openSUSE Board decided to delegate the membership handling process to so-called Membership officials. They review applications and give -1, 0, +1 points depending on user’s contributions to the project. Once user receives +4 resp. -4 points, the application is accepted resp. rejected. The length of this process depends on how much you write about yourself in the application. If you make your contributions vivid in this description, it’s very easy to verify them and you can become openSUSE member in a few days.

In both cases, an email is sent automatically to the user informing about the result. If the membership is approved, additionaly admins are informed, so email/cloak/lizards account can be set up and Weekly News team can present the new members in the separate section in OWN. The officials team currently consists of 16 very active community members, who can be reached on email address membership-officials@opensuse.org and their list is in the mentioned wiki page.