openSUSE:Foundation Invitation To Contribute

Over the past year and a half, there have been ongoing discussions and presentations from openSUSE community members formulating the merits of a non-profit foundation; to better fulfill the needs of the openSUSE community. Integral to successful growth is the ability to enable the community to actively participate in and take responsibility for all aspects of the project. Ownership and commitment are key in the transformation of the project to a non-profit foundation.

Why a Foundation?

The creation of a non-profit Foundation is an evolutionary step of the growing community, building upon years of dedicated work. It will foster a more effective, efficient, transparent, and inclusive openSUSE community.

A Foundation places openSUSE in a unique position, differentiating it from other distribution projects. The governance models pervasive in the community distribution space today, were created with a different set of objectives in mind. Our properly formed Foundation will match the values of the community contributors; users, and supporters a like. This creates a clear message that openSUSE as a distribution is created by the openSUSE community which is open and a self governed. The resulting culture will release the power of the community, bringing out the best in contributors and delivering the best software for users.

Your invitation to contribute

Plans continue to evolve and we invite you to join the community efforts to define the key policies, procedures, objectives, and legal form of the future openSUSE Foundation.

To facilitate the effort, we are utilizing the openSUSE wiki[1] to log the current state of the discussions and have created the opensuse-foundation[2] mailing list to engender further discussion. The discussions have been categorized into multiple topics. Each topic will be advanced through a moderator with the results recorded on the wiki. Review the wiki for status and results for each individual topic.

The resulting effort will build upon the current openSUSE project guideline documents providing the basis for the Foundation governing documents including membership, bylaws, board elections, trademarks and financial accounting. Contribute to the process and help us build the openSUSE Foundation.

[1] http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Foundation [2] http://en.opensuse.org/Mailing_lists