Board Election/2008/Platforms/Henne Vogelsang

From openSUSE

Introduction and Biography

I am active in the openSUSE community since before the dark ages, around 1999 AFAIR, and a SUSE employee since beginning of 2001. My history with this project/company is very diverse and includes things from representing SUSE Linux in national German TV to util-linux maintainer. But who cares about the past. Its a foreign country, they do things differently there :)

My day job here at the mother ship is to care lovingly for the SUSE base system. Me and my team (hey kids!) maintain a lot of the basic under-the-hood utilities from sysvinit to X. Personally i care for around 100 packages in FACTORY, mostly network related. Apart from that i do also a lot of tasks of the same quality for the project. I'm one of the packman seniors keeping that repository kickin' since 2002, run together with Pete and the operators the #opensuse/#suse IRC channel and maintain all of the opensuse mailing lists and the corresponding server. I of course also somehow participated in most of the important steps the openSUSE project took in the last years. The start of openSUSE out of the SUSE Linux community, the BuildService, Guiding Principles and so on.

Major Issues

I don't think we have any issues overall in this project. We are a living, breathing community that nicely steps forward in all aspects. Just look at the things we achieved in the last years. Amazing things, we are moving forward full-force :) We have a working structure, passionate developers that are deeply integrated into the project. The different Teams of the project are working hard to deliver one of the best quality Linux distributions and surrounding offer of documentation and support. Quality all the way baby! And i think we have users that really care about that. We are not something you use and are not passionate about. So all in all i cant think of a better community then ours :)

Nevertheless there are opportunities for improvement. But these are know to all of us and there are people constantly working on them. For instance there are still parts of the project that are disconnected and operate on their own set of rules and visions. The board needs to make sure that the openSUSE community acts in all areas like we defined in the Guiding Principles.

We also tend to run into situations where a decision is dragged down the road for too long because it would be a controversial and/or unpopular one. I think the board needs to step up here and use its power, make a decision and explain why. After all thats one of the things why we elect it for.

Another area that needs improvement is collaboration with Novell. The board members that are employed by Novell need to use their knowledge of the company to get the project further and to articulate better to the company what the openSUSE community wants and needs. In general i think the board needs to make sure that it is informed and involved in all the areas of this project so it really can represent all the interests.

Minor Issues

It not really minor but one of my major personal itches that needs scratching is the ability to contribute code-wise to this project. This needs lobbying, processes, documentation and guidance.

Role of the board

Working under-the-hood and let my actions speak rather then my blog would also be my approach to the board member task. I like the board to become the guiding entity we imagined it to be in the guiding principles. This, i think, is only possible if you are not afraid to take your mandate, step up and throw yourself into the nasty areas of uncertainty and dispute. Settle things with the willingness to decide in the best interest of the whole openSUSE project. I also imagine the board to be a more pro-active one that involves itself into all areas of the project. Therefore i think the board needs people that have seen it all and understand that a project like this is built on hard work, compromises and R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

Aims/Goals

I don't have any other goals then the ones we all have. I want to have a lot of fun while creating the world's best and most innovative Linux distribution to make our users happy and foster the success of free and opensource software in general and Linux in particular. I want the project to emphasize on the open in our name and to work transparently together with with everybody involved.

Mission Statement

• Guiding - Take our values and our vision and oversee that the project really runs by these.
• Involvement - Get the board involved in and informed about all major parts of our community so it really can represent the whole project.
• Decision Making - Stepping up, making decisions where decisions can't or won't be made by other entities then the board