There are some changes going on, and I’d like your help/input once again.
I’d like to know what your idea or concept of openSUSE community is to you. So please take the time and elaborate on this. It will help more than you know.
Support each other with respect, without prejudice or expectation of intelligence and expect the same.
As far as openSUSE is concerned, don’t expect perfection - If you do, you’ll be sadly disappointed.
First of all: To get help, when it is needed in a readable and understandable way from almost every direction.
Second: To give help in sections were you can help in the same way.
Third: To meet with people, who share the same “Hobby” ;)openSUSE.
To help where I can
to get help when I need it
to increase my patience
watch openSuse grow
while openSuse is not perfect it is nice to see the community strive for perfection
to have fun
Supporting each other, sharing experiences, with respect for all, regardless of whatever.
About (striving for) perfection: as far as I’m concerned, no need for that, useless. Accept imperfection, life (and development, growth etc.) is easier that way. Perfection is impossible, since it’s a status, and no status lasts longer than it’s recording.
I appreciate this so much.
Going forwarding, the leaders of openSUSE have two main goals or objectives. One is technical, the other is community. Technical is kinda easy to do, but community not so much. And what if the community has their own ideas about technical, like saving KDE 3.5. Well, someone post an article about this Trinity Desktop Environment so I forwarded it on to the leaders. I work for openSUSE, and I am all about community. I like the technical to, don’t get me wrong. But with out the community, we have nothing.
So please, speak your mind about what community means to you.
The community…
Together we drive the advancement of openSUSE and in general GNU/Linux and the Free Software concept…
Jonathan R wrote:
> So please, speak your mind about what community means to you.
personally, i think it would be great if the ‘community’ wasn’t so
fractionated…
to me it seems we don’t have ‘a community’, instead we have a few
separate parts that hardly every communicate with each other…
here in these fora are mostly new folks trying to figure out how to
make this wonderful software work for them, so they can complete their
jump from Ship Redmond…and a few trying to help them…
then there is another group who hang out in mail list and
IRC…apparently they are too busy ‘developing’ to come here and see
the results of their development and innovation (hear the moans and
groans at yet another “black screen” or “no sound” and etc)…they
only ‘listen’ to us mortals if we can figure out how to ‘talk’ to them
through the bug or FATE reports they designed to make it easy for
themselves…never mind that it pretty complicated to figure out how
to actually make those reports…
and of course then there are corporate workers, with a board room and
stock holders…who as far as i can tell spend their days worrying
about “the bottom line” and don’t even seem to realize that they are
using us to boost that line, and seem to spend precious little time
patting all the rest of us on the head and making us feel wanted,
useful and appreciated…i wonder our value to them…that is, how
many people would they have to hire and pay to get all the bug finding
we do…
so, what is community? i guess it is three groups (at least) of folks,
all with different goals and different views of what “the openSUSE
community” is, or should/could be…
oh, i forgot to mention: there are also those with “titles”, like:
moderators, ambassadors, wiki-team members, administrators, CEO, CFO
and others i guess…i’m not sure where those fit in, i guess they the
‘leaders’…
–
palladium
On Fri, 22 Jan 2010 00:56:38 +0000, palladium wrote:
> oh, i forgot to mention: there are also those with “titles”, like:
> moderators, ambassadors, wiki-team members, administrators, CEO, CFO and
> others i guess…i’m not sure where those fit in, i guess they the
> ‘leaders’…
Personally, I don’t see it as a “leadership” role (though I guess it
could be seen that way), but more as a “facilitator” role.
It’s entirely possible to expand beyond the three different elements to
the community you describe, though: I also participate in the wacom
mailing lists, and recently I saw an announcement for the updated
linuxwacom driver packages for 11.2 posted on that list; I had a chat
with the person who posted the announcement (Max) and thanked him for
posting the announcement since I have an Intuos4 tablet and was looking
for the updated driver package.
We had a very interesting discussion (actually “are having” is a better
description; I owe him a reply currently) in which I had an idea about
how to better disseminate information from OBS. I need to think the idea
through a bit more myself, but then I’ll probably talk to the OBS folks
and see what might be possible there.
Thus, “facilitator”. 
Jim
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Moderator
Hi,
My initial reply to this question is:
I see the community as the users of openSUSE who take time to learn from
and share their knowledge of openSUSE & LINUX in general with each
other. This is true of the forums, IRC channels & WIKI.
But when I think about it, there is a lot more to it than that; the
community helps openSUSE to evolve and spread by:
-pointing out issues (forums/IRC/bugzilla)
-resolving issues that are pointed out (forums/IRC/bugzilla)
-pointing out missing features (openFATE)
-voting for the most important missing features(openFATE)
-developing missing features (OBS)
-documenting openSUSE to allow others to use it efficiently (WIKI)
-using openSUSE
-telling others about openSUSE (which allows all areas of the community grow)
…
All the areas of the community I mentioned above depend greatly on each
other, as I’m sure everyone here realises.
–
Regards,
Barry Nichols
@ Jonathan_R
I still don’t really know, what you wrote, that “there are chances going on” with openSUSE.
What does this mean? Also, I would like to know more about the two different ways, the developers of SUSE will go on.
Is this the first small try, to tell us, that there will be no more “open” SUSE so far? Do we have to pay for it in future?
It is a bit tricky to write about a community, if you don’t really know, where it is leading to. Like the way, “everything you say from now on can be used against you”:.
For me it is important to keep a community. Once for help, twice for - let it be called “exchange” between users. And even more - for fun (If it is not fun, why do you write posts in here;)?).
To take the first thought from above again: Why has this community became an important topic, which has to be discussed? That is the most important question to me.
@ojio
Jonathan is likely referring to what is taking place in the wiki, where a major review and edit of all the wiki articles is taking place.
Is this the first small try, to tell us, that there will be no more “open” SUSE so far? Do we have to pay for it in future?
rotfl!
The SUSE Linux Enterprise business is entirely based on openSUSE, similarly to RedHat and Fedora. No more openSUSE, no more business for Novell!
@caf4926
Does this mean, that everything, what is written so far, is going to be “deleted” or at least to be checked about sense? Or is this in the mean of “useful/useless” for futher developement of the distro or not?
@Spyhawk
To ask, if I understood you right: You think, novell keeps openSUSE free, to keep their enterprise distro running?
In the way, let the community do the developement and bugfixing?
This would lead in the same direction, caf was thinking in the post before, right?
And my question was not so stupid as I thought it was?
It will be deleted if necessary or Checked for content and accuracy etc…
So far, so good. But how the community is affected to this? This was the first question to open this thread, wasn’t it?
Do the “lectors” think, the ones who wrote the single posts are so offended by the deleting of their posts, that they would turn their backs to openSUSE? And what should this mean for openSUSE?
Sorry, but I still can’t understand the connection between the first question about the community and the - hidden? - intension of this thread:?! If there should be one?
It is the right of every owner - whatever he owns: a forum, a car, a wiki,… - to change things in/on it. Normally there is no need to ask for permission to do so.
I suggest you take up your argument on the wiki IRC. It’s not really a forum topic.
Ok. Think you are right.
It was not my intention to write “of topic”. Sorry for that.
I have been around here a long time. I have seen people come and go. I have always felt at home here. However, some have not felt that way. We need to change that. No one should leave here felling like they were left out.
How many threads have we seen here about SUSE Vs (insert distro name) that turned into a flame fest? Or threads about another distro having problems and they are feasted upon? This has to end. We are all Linux and we should all be family. Where is that group hug smilie?
We do have some Novell folks here, but most of the community do not know who they are. We also need more of them. They are the ones that pay the bills, pull the strings, get things done, etc., and the community needs to hear from them personally. If it is just a weekly post from one of the big dogs, such as the CIO or CEO, it would mean a lot to the rest of us. This should not be a news article. It has to be a forum post, so that it is more personal. Get in here and let us know you care. 
We also don’t have enough support from the developers in the forums. If they would drop in sometimes and just let everyone know that they are reading the bug reports and that they are actually working on our issues, it would help morale. Just come by and say, “I feel your pain” so to speak.
It would make a big difference with the huddled masses. This is one of the things I liked so much about Arch Linux. The developers were a big part of the forums, and they made you feel like they were fighting for you. :good:
These are just a few “off the top of my head” ideas. I am sure other folks have even better ideas.
Summarizing: respect for and from all. Communicate. Don’t rant, communicate and get things changed. There’s enough quality around to make “flame fests” obsolete.