We released the trademark guidelines last week and have gotten a fair amount of feedback (thanks!) and a few requests for using the mark outside the automatic use cases set out in the trademark guidelines.

Those requests are being considered right now – but I wanted to make one thing very clear (again): If you’d like to use the openSUSE marks, but the use case in the guidelines says that you would need to remove the marks, that doesn’t mean there’s no hope of using the marks!

If you want to use the openSUSE marks and don’t have automatic permission in the guidelines, please send an email to permission@novell.com and ask about it. The worst thing that can happen is that you’d be denied permission – but if  the marks are being used in a manner that reflects well on the openSUSE Project and helps spread openSUSE, there’s a good chance that permission would be granted – but that your use case is one where it’s felt that it should be reviewed first.

The permission process is relatively painless, and we really do want to be as open as possible – so don’t assume that because the guidelines don’t grant automatic use that you wouldn’t be granted use on review.

Next week’s openSUSE Project meeting should be fairly substantial. If you can make it, please do! The meeting will be at 17:00 UTC on #opensuse-project on Freenode. The agenda is here, feel free to add to it if there’s something we should discuss. (As if the topics on the agenda already weren’t enough!)

If you weren’t at FOSDEM this weekend, you missed some great talks and the opportunity to meet lots of free software folks. And I do mean lots — not sure if they have an accurate headcount of attendees, but it’s in the thousands.

Gave a talk on openSUSE on Saturday (slides in previous post). Will work on generalizing those slides a bit so other folks in the community can go out and talk about openSUSE as well. The one point I really wanted to highlight in the talk was all of the great things we have going on in and around openSUSE — particularly around openSUSE.

Some of the great projects I mentioned during the talk: openSUSE Education, MirrorBrain, e5 Datasoft’s work on ARM in the openSUSE Build Service, Csync, Nomad, Helping Hands, working on Netbook support, KIWI-LTSP, openFATE, Kablink, and much more. (If you’re working on an openSUSE-related project, including projects using the build service, and don’t see the project listed there — let me know!)

Having an awesome Linux distro is just part of the fun. Seeing how people use and remix the distro, that’s when things get truly interesting.

Back to FOSDEM itself. I didn’t get to attend too many talks, but sat in on some in the openSUSE Dev room and also caught Ted T’so talking about Ext4. I was just watching, not taking notes, so all I can really say in detail is “cool” and “wow, we’ve come a long way since I started using Linux 13 years ago…” I remember having a limitation on file sizes of 2GB… we’re a long way from that now. (I think there probably is still some limitation on the size of files, but that’s probably way bigger than the dinky 120GB hard disk in my ThinkPad…)

Talk about your “hallway track,” by the way. One of the things that I think about a lot is whether a conference has a good “hallway track,” which is to say — not only the sessions, but do you get anything done talking to people in the (big surprise here) hallway?

All of the tables for projects are in the hallways of ULB, and you have to navigate some pretty crowded halls on the way to and from tables and talks. (Imagine a sort of low-key rugby game, with backpacks…)

Really good show, and it’s obvious why it continues to draw major crowds.

I have the good fortune to be doing a talk on openSUSE at FOSDEM the weekend after next.

If you were in front of a room full of a few hundred FOSS folks, what would you want to say about openSUSE?

Or, if you were one of the few hundred people in the room, what would you want to know about openSUSE, the openSUSE Build Service, and so forth?

Will be posting some slides and ideas as I get closer to the talk. Suggestions welcome.

First day of Linux.conf.au has been a lot of fun. Monday was all “miniconfs,” which is topics that aren’t part of the “main” LCA programme, but pretty good stuff nonetheless. I attended the open source in business miniconf and gave my talk on promoting open source projects. Seems to have gone over OK, though I probably need to re-re-work it and add more funny.

As usual, the LCA volunteers have done a bang-up job of organizing the conference. Really impressed by the stuffed “Tuz” that I got with registration — it’s a 3D implementation of this cute fella. Knowing what goes into getting plush toys made, I’m deeply impressed they pushed this through design, production, and delivery in the space of a year or so. (It might sound like a lot of time, but it really is a time-consuming process, and remembering that the folks doing it are volunteers… well, I’m impressed.)

Had a great time last night going to dinner with other LCA attendees at The Drunken Admiral restaurant in Hobart. (Highly recommended if you find yourself in Hobart, Tasmania…)

Will be catching up on email today, hopefully.

With the openSUSE launch last week, I spent quite a bit of time talking to press — either on the phone, via e-mail, and on IM — about openSUSE 11.1.

In 2009, I hope that many members of the openSUSE community will have opportunities to speak to press at one point or another, in order to promote and educate about the work that’s being done within openSUSE. I can give high-level overviews of features and trends in the community, but no one is going to explain the importance of work on specific projects as well as the people who actually do the work. So don’t be surprised if you get an email from me or someone in Novell PR saying “hey, can you talk to somebody about your work…?”

Since I’ve been on both sides of the fence (interviewer and interviewee), I’d like to give a few suggestions for talking to press if the opportunity presents itself:

• Be expansive — I’ve noticed that many developers give fairly terse answers, up to and including responses like “you can see what’s new in the release notes.” While technically accurate, it’s not what reporters and journalists (or their editors and readers) are looking for. Take the opportunity to explain the features and how they benefit their intended audience. If you wonder why some projects get better press than others, one reason is that the projects in question understand how to work with press and give them material to work with.I can’t stress this one enough. When a door is opened and you have the opportunity to talk about the good work that’s being done, take it. Give some detail, and show enthusiasm.Responding to questions is sort of like creating a useful bug report. Saying “it doesn’t work” gives the developer little to work with. Saying “look at the release notes” gives the reporter little to work with.

• Be responsive — if you say you’re going to respond by a certain day or time, do so. If you can’t, try to pass the request on to someone who can respond in a timely fashion. (Which is one good reason to involve PR – part of their job is to find the right person to respond and shepherd the response through in time to meet the reporter’s deadline.)
• Be polite — the standard of communication between developers is, let’s face it, fairly blunt. Successful interactions with the press need to be diplomatic. If an article gets a fact wrong, a polite correction is OK – a flame isn’t. The adage about not picking fights with people who buy ink by the barrel still applies, even when there’s no actual ink involved.If it helps, try to remember that press are not generally able to be experts on all thing they cover. (This goes back to rule 1 – be expansive…) Most reporters genuinely try to get the facts right, and when they don’t will welcome polite corrections.
• Be on message – as a reporter, I hated talking to executives who’ve gone through media training and think that a good interview practice is to parrot the same responses to every question in order to “stay on message.” I don’t recommend that.However, I do recommend thinking about what you are trying to accomplish by participating in an interview. If you want to highlight XYZ features in the latest release of a project, make sure you get that message across.Do not feel obligated to stick with the original premise of a question. If a reporter gives you something like “Well, lots of people say that project ABC is better at blah than your project, why is that?” Reframe the question, and don’t give a quote that reinforces a position you don’t agree with. (I get a lot of questions trying to position openSUSE as a competitor to Fedora, for instance, rather than as a competitor to Windows. I won’t go down that path. While I’m happy to talk about what makes openSUSE unique and interesting, the goal is not to win users away from Fedora, it’s to spread Linux to users stuck on proprietary platforms like Windows.)

  Also remember, you should never feel obligated to answer all of a reporter’s questions. A “that’s not my area,” or the like is perfectly acceptable.

• Be careful – remember that when you’re talking to press about a story, everything you say is “on the record,” and don’t count on information being offered “off the record” staying that way.I’m not saying that many reporters will purposefully report information offered off the record (though some will), I’m saying that all reporters are human and subject to mistakes. Information that’s not offered can’t be reported. And don’t confirm “rumors” and such — sometimes a smart reporter will take a shot and luck into getting someone to confirm it.
• Be the media – don’t wait for press to come knocking at your door. If you’re working on projects that you can talk about, do so. Early and often. Blog and use social media (Twitter, Identi.ca, Facebook, etc.) to mention your work, hitting milestones, any hurdles that the community could help with. Join the openSUSE-marketing mailing list / team if you’re working on a project that could benefit from publicity and ask for some assistance in publicizing. (Remember, of course, that as blogs are often quoted by IT press, you shouldn’t say anything on your blog you don’t want to see on the front page of Slashdot or Digg…)

I can’t overstress that last bit. It’s easier than ever to get the word out about open source projects, and taking the time to blog and so forth about work being done on projects can pay off big time.

Release day is finally here! I hope that all the people who’ve worked hard on this release have a chance to step back and marvel at what has been accomplished by the openSUSE Project.

Despite a short release cycle, switching build systems, and a pesky power outage that slowed development for a few days, the project has put out another solid release and kept the Web infrastructure from melting under the load, too.

I’d really like to give a big “thank you” to all the people that have been involved in this release. The very best part of my job is working with all the contributors who make openSUSE Linux happen. I couldn’t ask to work with a more dedicated or more talented group of people. They deserve major thanks for making it all happen. And, of course, the upstream projects, too — without the help of the wider community, openSUSE Linux wouldn’t be possible.

So, if you haven’t already, head over to the announcement and then to the download page and get yourself some fresh openSUSE 11.1. (I hear it makes a great Christmas present…)

One of the things that we want to do as a project is to have more community involvement in major decisions, like the release schedule. Right now, we’re discussing the proposed 11.2 release schedule on the openSUSE-Project mailing list. Yes, 11.1 is not out the door yet, and we’re already talking about the 11.2 release.

From Michael’s email on opensuse-project:

First we talked about July ‘09 release to come close to an 8 months release cycle. But KDE 4.3 is scheduled for release on June 30th and probably an OpenOffice.org release will be out end of June as well – both wouldn’t make it into a July openSUSE 11.2. Therfor we’re now thinking about a September release. Beside of getting the most current OpenOffice and KDE in this would even have one additional upside. It probably would be just in front of our openSUSE conference. So the conference could be used for very a focused openSUSE 11.3 planning. But it has its downside as well. Finalization of the release would happen during the summer holiday season. To address this we we added one Beta to stretch the development time a bit.

Here’s what we’re talking about:

2009-02-05 openSUSE 11.2 Alpha 0
2009-03-05 openSUSE 11.2 Alpha 1
2009-04-02 openSUSE 11.2 Alpha 2
2009-04-30 openSUSE 11.2 Alpha 3
2009-05-28 openSUSE 11.2 Alpha 4
2009-06-25 openSUSE 11.2 Beta 1
2009-07-09 openSUSE 11.2 Beta 2
2009-07-24 openSUSE 11.2 Beta 3
2009-08-06 openSUSE 11.2 Beta 4
2009-08-20 openSUSE 11.2 RC1
2009-09-03 openSUSE 11.2 GM
2009-09-10 openSUSE 11.2 Public Release

The downside of this is that it would probably miss the GNOME release. But I’m not sure we can satisfy all schedules. (If anyone can persuade the GNOME & KDE folks to sync up their release schedules, that would be spiffy.)

If you’re interested in participating in the discussion, head over to openSUSE-project and chime in. If you’re not subscribed, now would be a great time to do so! (To subscribe to the project mailing list, just send an email to opensuse-project+subscribe@opensuse.org)

A question has come up a few times recently that I’d like to throw out for discussion: How can we show some of our outstanding contributors that we recognize and appreciate their efforts, without offending other contributors who are also doing outstanding work?

While I was in Nuremberg last week, I had several conversations (and a few online) about the fact that we have some really excellent community contributors and wouldn’t it be great if we could have awards or something to say “thanks!” and recognize those folks publicly.

I know of quite a few people who definitely deserve an award for all their hard work on openSUSE — both inside and outside of Novell’s walls. And that’s just the people I’ve noticed — which is to say, no matter how you slice it, we’d end up missing some people.

Thoughts and suggestions?

Looking around, I’m seeing a lot of great stuff going on in the openSUSE community — watching the openSUSE-marketing list, I’m seeing a lot of work being done on Sneak Peeks and publishing and translating openSUSE Weekly News.

And there’s more! The Contrib repo is moving forward, which should be a major step forward in terms of getting new packages in and maintained by community members and making those easy to access for openSUSE users.

There’s work being done to support ARM in the openSUSE Build Service. I had a chance to sit down with Martin Mohring in Munich to talk about ARM and openSUSE on new platforms while I was in Germany last week, and I’m really impressed and excited by all the work that’s going into supporting ARM with openSUSE, and the possibilities.

Oh, and I keep hearing something about a release next week, too… If you haven’t, make sure you grab one of the countdown banners and display them proudly on your Website! Like so:

I guess this is why Ars says that openSUSE is one of the best distros of the year:

OpenSUSE is one of the oldest Linux distributions, but it has gone through some significant changes since its original launch in 1994. Under Novell’s stewardship, OpenSUSE has become significantly more inclusive and community-driven. The distro announced its first community-elected board this year and has grown its base of contributors considerably. The distro has also made major technical advancements, including major improvements to its package management system and support for installation from a Live CD.

OpenSUSE delivers a powerful user experience and is one of the few distros that provides equally outstanding support for both GNOME and KDE. Its KDE 4 environment is the best out there, which is why OpenSUSE has become the reference distro for all of our KDE reviews. Its GNOME environment is also top-notch and provides the perfect selection of applications in the default installation.

I’m continually impressed and inspired by all the work that goes into openSUSE. As always, there’s always more work ahead. But, if you step back and look at the state of the project today compared to a year ago, or two years ago, there’s been clear progress on every front — and no signs of slowing down.