Following its announcement in August, the dedicated openSUSE Boosters team held its inaugural meeting in Germany last week to plan its activities to promote the growth of openSUSE and its community.

The openSUSE Boosters team is a hand-picked group of fifteen Novell employees with skills ranging all across the distribution, and who are dedicated to openSUSE development and working with the community. Since the team members are spread all over Europe and as far away as Mexico, we came together for a few days after the openSUSE Conference to get to know each other better and make plans.

Who They Are

So who are the openSUSE Boosters Team? Starting at the top we have Klaas Freitag, the team leader and one of the architects of the distinctive tools that make openSUSE, such as our feature tracker, FATE, and Hermes, the notification system of the Build Service. Stephan Kulow needs no introduction due to his role as openSUSE release manager. Rumour has it that his photo has been circulated to all the bus drivers in Nuremberg and Fürth so they take extra care not to run him over, such is his importance to the distribution. Henne Vogelsang, known for his no-nonsense attitude to organizing the community, keeps the plates spinning on the larger openSUSE project as project manager.

A trio of expert packagers from the Prague office, Michal Hrušecký, Pavol Rusnak, and Petr Uzel bring their skills to the team. With responsibility for hundreds of packages each and the knowhow to tackle upgrades and maintenance on some of the most complex packages smoothly, their experience will help the team solve problems facing the broad base of openSUSE contributors and make joining in on openSUSE at any level a rewarding experience.

For many openSUSE users, the graphical user interface is paramount. Egbert Eich joins us from the X.org developers’ team and will help us make sure that openSUSE keeps improving in performance and efficiency. As a member of the X.org Board of Directors, he has a wealth of experience in governing free software projects. The KDE desktop is represented by Luboš Luňák and Will Stephenson, while Vincent Untz and Federico Mena-Quintero look out for GNOME. Long term contributors to their projects, they have a close relationship with their users and appreciation of the issues faced daily by Linux users.

Peter Poeml, Marcus Rueckert, Robert Lihm and Thomas Schmidt will be making sure that getting hold of openSUSE is faster and easier than ever. As kingpin of the download system, a key distribution maintainer, graphic designer and developer of the Build Service frontend respectively, their skills cover all the important infrastructure to get openSUSE where it needs to be.

We spent a few days away in the countryside near the Novell office in Nuremberg, Germany, hatching our plans, deciding how to work on them, breaking the ice and enjoying the last of the sunshine. Staying on an organic farm, we had lots of country air and great food to nourish our creativity.

Plan of Action

Having introduced ourselves, what will we be doing? With a sturdy shield to repel SLE product managers, all of our time will be spent on openSUSE. As well as caring for our specialisms, we will also be working in three groups on various projects to improve openSUSE overall.

The first batch of three projects are firstly, to reorganise and improve contributor documentation on the openSUSE wiki, so it’s always easy to find out how to turn your time and skills into a part of openSUSE. Secondly, to bring all openSUSE’s infrastructure – the Build Service, the wikis, Hermes, Bugzilla, openFATE and so on under one umbrella page, so there is a clear portal each area. Thirdly, to develop a new factory.opensuse.org site that allows Factory developers and testers to get a view of the status of the cutting edge of openSUSE and become aware of problems. We’ll be working on these concurrently and blogging about our progress regularly, so expect lots of developments!

Call for Participation

All of these efforts are being developed out in the open, and anyone who wants to is welcome to contribute. We have a opensuse-boosters mailing list as well as the wiki pages listing us and our projects. As well as the first three projects, we have a long list of other technological, social and organizational improvements that we want to make to the project, which happen a lot quicker with the community’s involvement.

~ By Will Stephenson

The openSUSE Conference isn’t just an opportunity to work together — it’s also an opportunity to play together. During the conference, we’ll have several activities for attendees to get together and have a lot of fun!

Conference Social Event

Work Hard, Play Harder! – That will be the motto for Thursday Night. We’ll convert part of the Novell Office into Joe’s Tavern and everybody from the conference is invited to join us for some ice-cold Stuff and Flaming Joe’s! The party will get going at 7PM. Food, drinks and entertainment will be provided. See the “How to get there” page on, guess what, how to get there. The Office is also on the Conference Map.

Creative Commons Short Film Nights

Movies free to copy and distribute. Movies that can be shared both with friends and with the Internet community. For many that’s hard to believe, but it’s reality. Thanks to Creative Commons, which is established as both an alternative and a complement to the traditional ways of commercial distribution when it comes to media. The Creative Commons night at the KommKino Nuremberg will show that the CC-model is also working for the distribution of short films. Together with the openSUSE Conference the KommKino will show short movies and music videos licensed under Creative Commons-licenses on Friday and Saturday. Everyone who brings an USB-Stick, external harddrive or notebook will be able to take the movies home. The movies start at 9:15 PM, admission is free. The KommKino is very close to the Main Railway Station. See the Conference Map and the “How to get there” page for directions.

I’m proud to announce that the download area of http://www.opensuse-education.org/ is sponsored now by 6 (!) mirrors. A big “thank you” to each of them:

• InterNetX GmbH (special thanks for the biggest bandwith ever!)
• Unixheads
• Peter Poeml (special thanks for the help with mirrorbrain)
• openSUSE (sponsoring two mirrors)
• Skynet
• Belnet

Like openSUSE, the openSUSE-Education team use a great software named MirrorBrain from Peter Poeml, which makes it possible to redirect download requests transparently to the nearest mirror. As result, our endusers normally didn’t even noticed that they get their files from a mirror instead of the original system.

Result: even if our current hoster still limits the bandwith of our main server, our users get their software faster than ever.

We are pleased to invite you (Editors/Translators) to the Weekly-News
Team Meeting.

The Topics from our Meeting are placed in:

http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_Weekly_News/Meetings/Topics_current

New Topics can included until Sat, 10h UTC

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Date: next Saturday {7/25/09}

Time: 14:30h UTC
Channel: #opensuse-newsletter @ irc.freenode.net

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From openFATE’s launch in January ‘09 the addition of a new feature was limited to openSUSE members. Due and thanks to several requests out of the openSUSE community we changed this and are happy to announce today that openFATE now allows feature requests for non-members as well. This will lower the bar again to participate directly in the project and in the development of openSUSE, openSUSE Build Service and openFATE itself.
We’re looking forward to receive more qualified feature requests to make our openSUSE distribution and the project itself fit your needs better from day to day. To use openFATE please check first here

Have a lot of fun!

Want to help spread the word about the openSUSE Project and encourage more people to become part of the openSUSE Community? Are you ready to roll up your sleeves and spread the word about the openSUSE Project? Do you want to teach new users about Linux, speak about openSUSE at local events, help distribute openSUSE media, and mentor new contributors to the openSUSE Project? Then you’re ready to become an openSUSE Ambassador!

What do Ambassadors Do?

Since this is a new program for openSUSE, the Ambassadors will help define the role over time. But the general scope is clear: openSUSE Ambassadors help introduce openSUSE (the distribution and the project) to new users and contributors.

Ambassadors act as evangelists for the openSUSE Project and free and open source software. They help to mentor new users and contributors by answering questions on the mailing lists and in forums, by assisting users at installfests, or by helping new contributors get started with the openSUSE project.

openSUSE Ambassadors help to spread openSUSE DVDs at events, to local Linux User Groups, schools, universities, and businesses that might benefit from using openSUSE. Ambassadors staff booths at Linux events and answer questions about openSUSE, and explain the benefits of the project and how to get started with openSUSE.

Ambassadors promote the project and spread openSUSE by speaking at events, LUG meetings, computer user groups, or any group that might be interested in learning about the openSUSE Linux distribution and openSUSE Project. Ambassadors help bring new contributors to the project and help them become productive within the project.

In general, openSUSE Ambassadors are friendly openSUSE enthusiasts who help introduce openSUSE to new users and contributors. Ambassadors make “first contact” with new Linux users and help them get started and excited about openSUSE and Linux. They spread excitement about the project and (of course) have a lot of fun.

Signing Up

If you’d like to sign up for the openSUSE Ambassador Program, see the “How do I Join?” section on the openSUSE wiki. If you have questions about the Ambassador’s program not answered on the wiki, feel free to bring them up on the openSUSE Marketing mailing list.

You don’t need approval to get started. Just follow the steps on the openSUSE wiki and have a lot of fun!

On Monday, Google announced the accepted projects for all of the Google Summer of Code organizations. The openSUSE Project has nine projects that were accepted for the Summer of Code 2009.

The following students have had projects accepted:

• Eryu Guan: Porting openSUSE to MIPS platform
• Marcus Huewe: Integrating oauth into the openSUSE Build Service
• Peter Libic: Prototype git backend for OpenSUSE Build Service
• Kusum Madarasu: openSIS-MySQL
• Jan-Simon Möller: Porting openSUSE to ARM platform
• Udit Sajjanhar: OpenID Support for openSUSE Build Service
• Jeffrey Shantz: YaST Education Module
• Peter Somlo: Synchronization with Mobile Devices
• Mohit Verma: NLP+Voice UI system for the openSUSE desktop

Of course, we received more than nine excellent proposals. While we couldn’t accept every proposal that we’d have liked, we’d like to thank all of the students who submitted proposals.

Also, a big thanks to all of the mentors who have volunteered to mentor, worked with students to answer questions about proposals, and provide guidance so far.

The next step is the Community Bonding Period to help students get acclimated with the project and learn how to work within the openSUSE Project. Some of our students are already long-standing members of the community, but please give all of them a warm welcome and any assistance they need in getting started.

Coding starts officially on May 23rd. Let’s get ready to have a great summer!

Quick status update on the Google Summer of Code program for openSUSE. The deadline for student applications has passed, and yesterday was the “duplicate resolution” meeting for organizations that had a student that had been accepted to multiple organizations.

openSUSE has 9 slots. This isn’t 100% set in stone at the moment, but it’s pretty firm. Likewise, our top selections for those slots look very good, but they’re not set in stone. The final accepted proposals will be announced on Monday, April 20th. As soon as those are announced, we’ll post the news here as well.

The next step in the GSoC timeline is the community bonding period which will allow students to get up to speed with the organization, get prepared to work on their project, and get to know members of openSUSE and their mentors better. Please extend a warm welcome to our students during this time period.

While students are officially working with a single assigned mentor through the Summer of Code program, we can all be “unofficial” mentors and help students new to the project feel welcome and provide help if they need it.

At the same time, during this period students need to provide Google with their payment info and so forth so that Google can issue payments.

Coding begins officially on May 23rd.

The “midterm” begins on July 6th. We should make sure that students have plenty of feedback going into the midterm period and there are no surprises when we give evaluations.

The midterm evaluation is due on July 13th at 19:00 UTC. For the full timeline, see the Summer of Code site. We’ll try to always provide updates via openSUSE News and the openSUSE Announce mailing list, but it’s also up to students and mentors to be familiar with the timeline and to read the appropriate Google mailing lists!

The Google Summer of Code application period ended last Friday, April 3rd. We’re now in the interim period until April 15th. The full timeline is available on Google’s site.

During this time, mentors will be reviewing student applications and ranking them. There’s still time for mentors to sign up, but mentors must be signed up by April 15th. Mentors should attend the openSUSE Project meeting this week if possible.

We should have all applications ranked and paired with a mentor (if applicable) by April 15th. If you’re interested in being a mentor, please be sure that you’re signed up to gsoc-mentors@opensuse.org (gsoc-mentors+subscribe@opensuse.org) to discuss students and applications.

We’re also meeting in the #opensuse-soc channel on Freenode to discuss Google Summer of Code topics. If you have general GSoC questions, head over to #gsoc on Freenode. There’s usually a bunch of people in the room who can answer questions.

Just a final reminder: The Google Summer of Code applications are due for students tomorrow by 19:00 UTC.  Get those applications in now, folks! (That’s Friday, April 3.) We’ve posted about GSoC previously here and here.

Mentors: If you’re not signed up in the Google system yet, please do so. If you’ve signed up, please be sure to also subscribe to the gsoc-mentors@opensuse.org mailing list. (gsoc-mentors+subscribe@opensuse.org)

Have questions? Join #opensuse-project or #opensuse-gsoc for openSUSE-specific questions. Join #gsoc on Freenode for general questions about Summer of Code. If the question isn’t addressed in the Google FAQ, drop me an email.

Google is highly unlikely to extend the deadline, so get those apps in now or be prepared to wait until GSoC 2010.