Board Election/2008/Platforms/Stephen Shaw

From openSUSE

Introduction and Biography

As it mentions above I am Stephen Shaw, but to many of you I'm known as decriptor and I am running for one of the Novell seats on the openSUSE board.

Some of my personal history is that I'm 26(almost 27) and currently live and work in Utah. I am a family man with a wife and two kids at home. When I am not working, at home, or getting involved in the community, I am going to school for computer engineering at Utah Valley University.

I first started using Linux back in 1998 when someone gave me a copy of redhat. I didn't take much for me to gain a strong interest in Linux and what I could do with it. Soon I started to get into IT and started to administer Linux systems. Around 2003 I switched to SuSE and have never looked back. In more recent years I am moving more into the software side of Linux.

As an employee at Novell I have the opportunity to work on open source. Last year I worked on the XEN virtualization team as a QA intern. Part of my focus on that team was to test openSUSE 10.3. Since then I've moved to the SLED team to work on User Interface Automation. UIA is an accessibility framework that allows us to make winforms accessible on Linux. I'm currently the build manager for the UIA team.

As part of the community, I get involved as much as I can. There are several projects in the community which I currently contribute to. The Utah Open Source Conference is one of the bigger projects I work on. As part of its core team I am responsible for sponsorships and helping organize this annual event. I am founding editor of openSUSE-Tutorials.com. As a part of being on an accessibility team I have been able to get involved there as well. One of the areas is submitting updated accessibility packages to factory for our next build.

Major Issues

Though I think we have a great community and distribution of Linux, there are areas that I think we can improve on. One of the major areas is communication. More specifically, between the the existing community and people trying out openSUSE for the first time. Recently there have been some improvements in this area, but I want to see it continue.

Communication

Everyone has a preferred method of communication.  With the existing system we support 4 major methods,
irc, mailing lists, forums, and the wiki (non bidirection method, but one none the less).  Recently the
forums were combined into one which I think was a great step forward in unifying our community.  The goal
of a community is to have unity.  Currently there is a serious breakdown between these different areas
which divides us and does not allow for ease of collaboration.

Bugzilla

Bugzilla tends to come up as a concern for people that are new to the project.  I want to see it become
easier for people to contribute.  Bugzilla should never present a road block to someone who wants to
contribute.  Our policies should be easily discoverable, transparent and well defined.

Relationship between Novell and community

Novell has not always been an open source company.  They came from a completely different world.  I want to
see the relationship between Novell and the community get stronger.  I think strengthening this relationship
will help grow openSUSE, Novell, and the Linux community.  As part of working with Novell and working in
the Provo, Utah office I have an advantage and can work even closer with them.

Methodology for becoming an official branch or project under openSUSE

Currently there is not a way to determine if a project is officially a part of openSUSE/Novell.  An example 
of this is openSUSE-Education.  

Getting people involved

I do not view this as a major issue, but I do think it needs to always be a primary focus.  This is 
something that needs to be nurtured and constantly monitored to make sure it is always running smoothly.
Without a community we are no one.  We should always focus on building our community and getting them 
involved.

Minor Issues

Coming soon

Role of the board

I view this election as critical to the project. This is the first board that will be voted on by the community. It holds the future and should not be taken lightly. As openSUSE continues to transition into a community distribution there will be many easy and tough decisions. The new board needs to be ready and able to handle each situation with care.

Aims/Goals

Please list your aims and goals for both the openSUSE project and also the openSUSE distribution. You may highlight specific projects within openSUSE or sow the seed for new ones.