Ho Ho Ho!

Were you a very good Member this year? Only 49 days until Santa is coming to town.

You know whats better? 3 and a half days before that we will have the results of the openSUSE Board elections! But to actually get results all the cool, good looking and smart (pick any one) openSUSE Members have to vote for the candidates. If you already have applied as a Member in the past and got rejected we would like to strongly suggest to re-apply. Just because your contributions weren’t enough the last time it has to be true this time right? We have recently added the possibility to re-apply in users.opensuse.org, so just click on the “Reapply for membership” link.

If you did not apply for an openSUSE membership yet, simply head over to users.openSUSE.org, login, and then go to your profile page and select the “I want to Become a Member” link, and there mention your contributions.  Once you are accepted as a Member you will receive an @opensuse.org email address, can cloak your freenode.net IRC nick with the opensuse/membber cloak and Planet SUSE wil syndicate your blog which you can start directly at Lizards.openSUSE.org. But most importantly you can vote in the upcoming  ballot which will start December 8th, 2009. So…

It has been a year since the first-ever elections where the community voted in a new openSUSE Board. Replacing the bootstrap board selected by Novell, the Community elected, as its representatives, non-Novell employees Pascal Bleser and Bryen Yunashko and Novell employees Federico Mena-Quintero and Henne Vogelsang. In May, due to overwhelming work responsibilities, Federico stepped down and runner-up Stephen Shaw assumed his position. Michael Loeffler was appointed by Novell as Chairperson of the Board.

As agreed upon, prior to last year’s elections, the highest vote-getters in both Novell and non-Novell positions would assume a two-year term, and the second vote-getters would get a one-year term. This was a one-time arrangement, with the intention of ensuring there would be an election every year for half the electable board positions. As such, we will be holding elections again this year. All winners this year and subsequent elections will have a two-year term.

The Board has several announcements to make regarding the upcoming elections.

• The Board has recently agreed that as our community continues to grow, it is important that the diversity of voices of our community needs to be adequately represented and heard during Board discussions.  As such, we are adding a new elected non-Novell position to the Board, effective immediately with the next election. This position will also be for a two-year term. The new Board makeup will be two Novell employees, three non-Novell employees, and a Chairperson selected by Novell. The Board grows from 5 seats to 6 seats.

• As the number of openSUSE members has seen a strong increase over the last 12 months we won’t have the “Nomination of second voters” again.

• We are proud to see some returning members of last year’s Election Committee along with some newcomers. New members Kevin Dupuy, Sascha Manns, and Thomas Schmidt join returning members Claes Backstrom and Andrew Wafaa.

• The Election Committee has begun initial discussions and will make their own announcement in the near future regarding campaign guidelines and timelines.  With this, effectively all discussions, planning and announcements pertaining to the election will be handled by the Committee and the Board steps out of further election discussions.

At this time, the Board would like to remind you that only Members of the openSUSE Community are eligible to vote in the upcoming election. If you are not currently a member and have actively participated in the Project as a developer, packager, tester, advocate, evangelist, or some other form of active participation, we urge you to apply for membership at users.opensuse.org before the Election Committee’s announced deadline for application.

See you all in Nuremberg for the openSUSE Conference this week!

The openSUSE Board is pleased to announce a number of new openSUSE members and we reached currently 330 openSUSE members. See the list below or just browse the membership list for more details. We’re happy that we accomplished another round of approvals and want encourage everybody who shows continued and substantial contribution to the openSUSE project to apply for membership. Please note that contribution can be made in any areas of the project like bug reporting and triaging, translation, user support on any communication medium, promoting openSUSE by giving openSUSE talks and presentations, coding and packaging and others. Apart of an @opensuse.org email address and other benefits all openSUSE members are eligible to vote for Board seats and we’ll have 2 Board seats running for re-election in October ‘09.

How to become a member? See here for details.

The openSUSE Board wants to thank all people contributing to openSUSE and helping to make the openSUSE project more community driven from day to day.

List of new members

Andreas Ernst (aeps)
Axel Braun (docb)
Carolina Acevedo (caro_acevedo)
Chuck Payne (terrorpup)
crane cai (cranecai)
David Haller (dnh)
Dominik Heidler (dheidler)
edy purwanto (edypurwanto)
Fred Blaise (chapeaurouge)
Glenn Doig (doiggl)
Greg Freemyer (gregfreemyer)
Grozdan Nikolov (microchip8)
James Willcox (snorp)
Jan Karjalainen (jankarjalainen)
Jason Ferrer (jetchisel)
jean-christophe baptiste (phocean)
Karsten Keil (kkeil)
Luis Lastra (llastra)
mao huanxue (vsu)
Marco Mendoza (secomlinux)
Michal Hrusecky (-miska-)
Michal Seben (mseben)
Michal Svec (msvec)
Olli Tuominen (otuominen)
Rainer Sigl (SiglRainer)
Rajesh Ganesan (ganesanrajesh)
Raymond Wooninck (rwooninck)
Rasmus Plewe (rasmusplewe)
Robert Schweikert (rjschwei)
Sid Boyce (sboyce)
Siegfried Olschner (sdolschn)
Stanislav Brabec (sbrabec)
Stephan Kleine (bitshuffler)
Stephen Holmes (stephen_holmes)
Suresh Jayaraman (sjayaraman)
Vittorio Manfredini (vitsoft)

Please see below the Meeting Minutes of the openSUSE Board. We welcome any feedback and recommend to use the opensuse-project mailing list so more people can participate. As always the openSUSE Board is reachable through board@openSUSE.org

Board Meeting July 01, 2009
7pm – 8:45 UTC

Participants:
Michael Löffler (michl)
Bryen Yunashko (suseROCKs)
Pascal Bleser (yaloki)
Stephen Shaw (decriptor)
Hendrik Vogelsang (henne)

List of topics:
- membership approval still way to slow as it is a manual process and we don’t have anybody who could enhance users.opensuse.org, This might be a good project for hackweek project.
- Creation of an openSUSE foundation. Work in progress. Was a bit slowed down through vacation and events.
- Ambassador program has had a good start and has lots of enthusiasm and activity.
- Opening of factory – done. Groups are now forming up.
- hack week, Hackweek IV will be held from July 20-27, product in openFATE to be used to get people together

Board Meeting July 14, 2009
7pm – 9:15 UTC

Participants:
same as above

List of topics:
- membership approval, this time the Board members promised to vote, michls proposal to add a third vote automatically where already 2 same votes exist was denied. (side note – the Board delivered on this promise, meanwhile all requests from the last import are worked through, we have around 30 new openSUSE members and the next requests are imported to be worked through)
- openSUSE Foundation, the bylaws are drafted by a Novell employee with strong interaction of zonker and michl, as there were several questions by other Board members about the foundation michl will get Alan with the openSUSE Board in direct contact to answer those questions more efficiently
- some tech talk started by decriptor, baseline most important to have the latest stuff regardless if it adds value to the users – just joking

Next Board Meeting July 27

Please see below the Meeting Minutes of the openSUSE Board. We welcome any feedback and recommend to use the opensuse-project mailing list so more people can participate. As always the openSUSE Board is reachable through board@openSUSE.org

June 3, 7-9:15pm UTC
Participants:
Stephen Shaw, (decriptor)
Federico Mena Quintero, (federico1)
Hendrik Vogelsang, (henne)
Michael Löffler, (michl)
Bryen Yunashko, (suseROCKs)
Pascal Bleser, (yaloki)
Joe Brockmeier, (zonker)

List of topics:
* Ambassador program
Announced and already pretty many people signed in for it.

* Foundation
Zonker and michl will meeting with a Novell expert on such stuff on Monday June 9 to evaluate which possibilities we have and which way openSUSE should take.

* Membership requests
We are too lame, 15 requests out of the last round are waiting for more than 4 weeks for final approval now. Just another 70 requests were imported into the tool today.

* open openSUSE Factory for contribution
Henne drove this project inside Novell for a while now and we had at the Board several discussions around it. Meanwhile it is announced and is an important step to bring the whole project ahead.

* openSUSE Board presence at the openSUSE conference
There need to be a strong Board presence but in a very interactive way so no big presentation but rather round table conversations about the status of the project and its future.

* read and write access to news.openSUSE.org?
The Board suggest to extend the group of people with read and write access for news.opensuse.org. Anyone interested please send a mail to board@opensuse.org and as for write access or even suggest another person to get it. Approval body will be the openSUSE Board.

* Federico resigned due to work over load, Stephen Shaw (decriptor) is the uprunner and takes over his seat

LinuxTag is going well so far, but tomorrow will be the big day! The openSUSE Day takes place tomorrow (Saturday, June 27th) at LinuxTag, and we have a full track of excellent talks that will be of interest to new users as well as openSUSE contributors and users.

openSUSE Day kicks off at 10:00 a.m. (a completely reasonable and sane time, plenty of time to grab breakfast and coffee even if you’ve been to social events the evening before!) with a break for the LinuxTag keynotes between 13:00 and 15:00. Here’s the rest of the schedule:

• 10:00 – 10:30: openSUSE Day Introduction — Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier
• 10:30 – 11:00: Easy-LTSP – Configure an openSUSE LTSP server easily – Jan Weber
• 11:00 – 12:00: Was ist neu in openSUSE 11.2? – Andreas Jaeger
• 12:00 – 13:00: Do it Yourself: openSUSE Home Theater PC – Henne Vogelsang
• 13:00 – 15:00: Break for keynote
• 15:00 – 16:00: Wine – Windows Applikation und Spiele für Linux – Marcus Meissner
• 16:00 – 16:30: Warum mein WLAN nicht funktioniert? – Helmut Schaa
• 16:30 – 17:00: AppArmor in der Praxis – Christian Boltz
• 17:00 – 18:00: SUSE Studio: Maßgeschneidertes Linux für Jedermann – Cornelius Schumacher

If you’re in or around Berlin, you don’t want to miss it!

As you know, Federico Mena-Quintero has ceded his seat on the openSUSE Board. We are all sad to see him go, but know we are grateful for his continued and ongoing contributions to the openSUSE Project.
The openSUSE Board is happy to announce Stephen Shaw (decriptor) to be a new openSUSE Board Member filling up the vacant seat after Federico’s resignation. We thank Stephen that he took up the position in such a quick and decent manner. We know Stephen for a long time and think he is a perfect fit due to his long term contribution and activities around the openSUSE community.
Stephen as of last years elections was the runner-up to Federico’s seat. He takes Federico’s seat and this seat is due for re-election this year in November.
Please join us in welcoming Stephen to the Board.  We look forward to his fresh ideas and contributions as we gear up for openSUSE Summit this coming September 17-20 in Nuremberg, Germany.

Sincerely,
Michael Loeffler
openSUSE Board Chairman

Please see below the Meeting Minutes of the openSUSE Board. We welcome any feedback and recommend to use the opensuse-project mailing list so more people can participate. As always the openSUSE Board is reachable through board@openSUSE.org

May 20, 7-9pm UTC
Participants:
Michael Löffler, (michl)
Bryen Yunashko , (suseROCKs)
Pascal Bleser , (yaloki)

List of topics:

• Foundation
  We’ll investigate more into the creation of an openSUSE foundation. We reached out already to Novell how they feel about and received positive feedback. The foundation at the beginning should be a more independent body then openSUSE is today and should make it easier to collect donations in a transparent way to use directly for community efforts.
• Expanse spotlight.o.o to Board Members
  All openSUSE Board members will have access to spotlight.opensuse.org to post/blog there.
• openSUSE Membership requests
  The membership requests still are a pretty manual process. We imported out of users.opensuse.org another bunch of requests and are in the process of evaluation. But we need to admit we could have been faster with that.
• Status of “ambassador program”
  The Ambassador program will be announced soon by zonker (meanwhile happened)
• Add features to openFATE without being member?
  During community week the request was stated several times to make it possible to add new features for non-members as well. We had a discussion about it and the Board recommends to make this request happen as we think there are more up then down sides. See also Feature 306460

Next openSUSE Board Meeting on June 3, 7pm UTC

Some pretty good news for the ZYpp team! Ark Linux after some evaluation has choosen to use zypper with their next release.

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.