Do developers of openSUSE read the forum threads?
how can we directly talk to them?
how can i find their name and information?
Apart from mailing lists and the like where maybe others can point you to, there are two important ways:
a) for bugs: openSUSE:Submitting bug reports - openSUSE
b) for new features: https://features.opensuse.org/
BTW those can rather easily be found from the main OpenSUSE page on the web: openSUSE.org Read the paragraph: Participate and joing the community. They are all there.
Thanks, and what about:
Do developers of openSUSE read the forum threads?
Almost not.
why? when you go to Linux Mint or Bodhi Linux forum, you will see that the developers also participate in discussions just like other members. why openSUSE developers don’t do this?
Am 08.04.2012 14:36, schrieb ilAli:
>
> hcvv;2454654 Wrote:
>> Almost not.
> why?
You have to ask that to the developers only they can answer this. As
everybody in the community is free to read the forums or not the same
applies to developers.
–
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On 2012-04-08 14:36, ilAli wrote:
>
> hcvv;2454654 Wrote:
>> Almost not.
> why?
Ask them. As far as I know, they don’t like forums. You can search the
project mail list archive, I asked.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
Hi
From my perspective what is a ‘Developer’, there are a number of
developers and lots of openSUSE integrators/packagers about.
Since I maintain some packages in the distribution (which includes bug
reports, patching code and pushing upstream), does that make me a
developer?
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (x86_64) Kernel 3.0.13-0.27-default
up 11:08, 2 users, load average: 0.16, 0.10, 0.07
CPU Intel i5 CPU M520@2.40GHz | Intel Arrandale GPU
Am 08.04.2012 16:06, schrieb malcolmlewis:
> Hi
> From my perspective what is a ‘Developer’, there are a number of
> developers and lots of openSUSE integrators/packagers about.
>
> Since I maintain some packages in the distribution (which includes bug
> reports, patching code and pushing upstream), does that make me a
> developer?
>
You have a valid point here.
For example I work upstream at the GNU Octave project coding new
functions which of course are downstream integrated whenever a new
version is packaged. I also test/debug sometimes the octave rpm from the
science repo and provided the info to its packager how to make the
openSUSE rpm work with the opengl backend which he integrated. At the
moment I look why the octave-forge-java and octave-forge-gsl,
octave-forge-odepkg packages in science cannot be properly built for
openSUSE to find solutions for that.
So what does that make me? Not an openSUSE developer of course, but
still an upstream developer who is an openSUSE user and reads the forum
and participates, so what is the exact definition of a “developer”?
–
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On 2012-04-08 16:06, malcolmlewis wrote:
> Since I maintain some packages in the distribution (which includes bug
> reports, patching code and pushing upstream), does that make me a
> developer?
It makes you an exception to the rule that there are no devs here 
We are contributors (you and me, and others) in our own ways.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
IMHO the fact that many people here have different roles in the community is not the subject of this thread.
The OP asks how he can contact “the developers” (for whatever reason). The fact that some here are developing sometime some parts of what eventualy makes the distro openSUSE does not make these forums a good way to contact “developers”.
I think, apart from the general information allready given ealier, we could try to help the OP by asking him to specify if this is a general question, or if has a specific subject or type of developer in mind. And then try to give him addresses/URLs.
Am 08.04.2012 16:43, schrieb Carlos E. R.:
> On 2012-04-08 16:06, malcolmlewis wrote:
>
>> Since I maintain some packages in the distribution (which includes bug
>> reports, patching code and pushing upstream), does that make me a
>> developer?
>
> It makes you an exception to the rule that there are no devs here
>
> We are contributors (you and me, and others) in our own ways.
>
There is another exception in the wireless forum, Larry Finger who is a
dev and I guess there are more exceptions.
–
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GeForce GT 420
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xf86-video-geode
Am 08.04.2012 17:06, schrieb hcvv:
> I think, apart from the general information allready given ealier, we
> could try to help the OP by asking him to specify if this is a general
> question, or if has a specific subject or type of developer in mind. And
> then try to give him addresses/URLs.
>
That highly depends on which kind of developers.
Let’s say a new KDE feature is best asked upstream at kde.org for
exanmple (same for other upstream changes). A feature existin in a
software but due to some reason disabled in the openSUSE build is best
asked to the person who packaged it and a link can often be seen with
the rpm command, for example
martinh@ganymed:~> rpm -qi IPython | grep Packager
Packager : http://bugs.opensuse.org
For community repositories one can directly go to the obs project page
and click on the users tab to see who is the maintainer/bugowner and
send an email from there
https://build.opensuse.org/project/list_public
for the list of projects
for example when clicking on science and then users it leads to the list
of people who participate
https://build.opensuse.org/project/users?project=science
with their roles.
And so on. So it all depends on many details what to ask and for what.
–
PC: oS 11.4 x86_64 | Intel Core i7-2600@3.40GHz | 16GB | KDE 4.8.2 |
GeForce GT 420
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| nVidia ION
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xf86-video-geode
And so on. So it all depends on many details what to ask and for what.
Didn’t I say
we could try to help the OP by asking him to specify if this is a general question, or if has a specific subject or type of developer in mind. And then try to give him addresses/URLs.
Which I hope is read by the OP.
As long as the OP does not specify what he wants, it is rather useless IMHO to burry him beneath a hunderd different solutions.
i do not want to ask a specific question from developers, i only want to know why they don’t participate in discussions and maybe why they don’t listen to users.
i think distroes that have active developers in their forums will be more successful than others in long therm.
Your ideas are not wrong in general, but on the other hand, think of all those devs digging through all the threads here where people start with not even telling what they have, often having the same problem as many before them, but not searching before asking, posting in the wrong subforums and all the rest. That would be a lot of wasted time they could use to develop.
I think the present situation is not too bad:
- Some developers lurk here in the subforums they are interested in, that is fine.
- People who feel they found a bug can post here. They can then find out if there is a solution they missed. They can also find out if there is general support that this is a bug. And they can, with support of the others, file a bug in Bugzilla. Such a bug, which support from other forums members is much more likely to be taken serious
- People who feel that they have a case for a feature can likewise post here to check in advance if they get support. Often a feature looks nice for person SA, but person B will then show that it makes the world more misserable for others. Again, such a feature request can then be done with a much stronger background then when one acts on ones own and will get suport from others more easy.
In the last two cases you can see the forum as a filter to weed out impulsive but not to good ideas. And you can see the forums as helping supporting the real bugs and the good ideas.
HTH.
Am 08.04.2012 20:06, schrieb ilAli:
>
> i do not want to ask a specific question from developers, i only want
> to know why they don’t participate in discussions and maybe why they
> don’t listen to users.
What makes you think they do not listen to the users? You do not contact
them. so how should they listen.
http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:How_to_participate
Subscribe to the openSUSE mailing lists which discuss current
development and you are in contact with them or join the IRC to discuss
in real time.
> i think distroes that have active developers in their forums will be
> more successful than others in long therm.
>
I very much doubt that. You personally may prefer a forum for being in
contact with others and discuss things, many other people do not see
that as a useful way but prefer mailing lists for example.
The simple fact that S.u.S.E. -> SuSE -> openSUSE exists now two decades
seems not to indicate that it failed to be successful in the long term.
–
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| nVidia ION
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xf86-video-geode
On 2012-04-08 20:06, ilAli wrote:
> i think distroes that have active developers in their forums will be
> more successful than others in long therm.
Well, as I said, most openSUSE devs choose not to use the forum, but other
systems they like. It is their choice. And not all of them choose the same
media.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
Although there are exceptions It’s very common in Linux for developers to participate on mailing lists rather than forums. I’m not sure of the exact reason for it but I suspect that it’s a combination of old habits and the barrier to entry being perceived as slightly higher on a mailing list (and so the quality of communication might be filtered a bit more in theory). That said there are still probably developers who read the forums and even reply every now and then. They are people too. But I wouldn’t expect an answer here to a developer inquiry. As mentioned there are more developers on the mailing list because that’s what they prefer. 
I think you have to go back to what is a dev - to me a dev is someone who writes and maintains pieces of software and I would expect those who meet my definition to possibly (at their choosing) participate in places specific to their endeavors like app and distro specific forums, the softwares’ irc channel, the apps’ website which will have notice of where/how they prefer to be communicated with and desktop.org’s sub sites like kde-apps.org and gnomefiles.org where you see a fair amount of interaction if the the dev placed their app there). I think distro specific forums won’t see app dev’s unless it’s their distro of choice or it’s a distro specific app.
I think devs listen to users but just because you don’t see results doesn’t mean the don’t care, it’s probably that they don’t have the time as most devs work for free and when time allows. Remember also there’s a lot of users with their own idea of what should be and what gets done gets done because the dev has the time and inclination to do it.
I once read somewhere that dev don’t like forums because they can get overpowered by user requests and complaints.
Finally if you look at any of the bugzilla’s there way more requests then there are devs to do them
Obviously these are my observations.