18:09:48 #startmeeting 18:09:48 Meeting started Wed Aug 25 18:09:48 2010 UTC. The chair is michl. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot. 18:09:48 Useful Commands: #action #agreed #help #info #idea #link #topic. 18:10:09 #topic openSUSE Foundation 18:10:24 Alan sent an updated paper to me 18:10:33 Yeah let's dedicate today's meeting to fleshing that out and getting it finally pushed through 18:10:44 and I'll have a meeting with him on Monday together with Jos 18:11:09 #chair suseROCKs 18:11:09 Current chairs: michl suseROCKs 18:11:14 michl, Is it a change for better or worse or what? 18:11:24 #chair prusnak 18:11:24 Current chairs: michl prusnak suseROCKs 18:11:39 suseROCKs: honestly, I haven't read it yet 18:11:47 its printed out on my desk 18:11:54 I'll let you know tomorrow 18:12:09 michl: please don't forget to mention opensolaris thingie 18:12:24 well if there's anything relevant, I'd like us to be able to comment on it before you guys meet on Monday 18:12:28 prusnak: you mean the current opensolaris thingie, right? 18:12:37 what's the opensolaris thingie? 18:12:39 we are percieved more similarly to oracle/opensolaris than redhat/fedora 18:12:46 How so? 18:12:52 suseROCKs: good point, I'll send the document around to you guys 18:13:09 suseROCKs: opensolaris basically died because of oracle management 18:13:42 suseROCKs: i wonder what kind of news you read if you haven't noticed that :) 18:14:01 prusnak, ok so how will that relate to foundation? Just curious 18:14:09 #info michl received an updated document on openSUSE Foundation and will share it with the Board 18:14:34 #info for Monday there is a meeting scheduled with Alan and jospoortvliet 18:14:35 novell execs were asking why redhat does not have foundation for fedora 18:15:00 prusnak, honestly when sun became oracle... I lost interest and distrust in anything that goes on over there. I expect everything to die under the Oracle star 18:15:19 the point is that we are not percieved in public like FOSS company (redhat) but rather than software company (oracle) 18:15:33 prusnak: yes, Oracle, openSolaris should be mentioned in it as well 18:15:43 so foundation will help us significantly (when talking about perception in public) 18:15:43 Now, Novell has not exactly terminated openSUSE nor looks to be planning in doing so. 18:16:02 sn7: no, this is not going to happen 18:16:26 but opensolaris case is exactly the reason why having a foundation is good thing 18:16:27 prusnak, I think the better way to push it (and yes using opensolaris as an example) is to emphasize that we haven't achieved a sense of identity and ownership from the community wrt openSUSE and thus a Foundation would greatly enhance that perception by the public 18:16:30 Gents, please excuse me for a minute 18:19:21 ok we've gone silent or I've lost my internet connection again 18:19:45 * michl s back 18:20:01 suseROCKs: your connections seems alright 18:20:11 next topic ? 18:20:35 #topic Trademark Approval 18:20:37 sure I have another topic 18:20:44 ahh right in that vein perfect! 18:21:16 did we all clean up our trademark approvals? 18:21:20 * michl summarized the ones in the queue and proposed based on the votes a accept or reject 18:22:03 there's one that was raised in the queue and I have further questions/issues about this 18:22:07 if I doesn't hear differently I will send out tomorrow the accept or rejct mails 18:22:20 suseROCKs: you mean the furniture one ? 18:22:27 no, that one I endorse 18:22:39 suseROCKs: you shouldn't 18:22:43 I'm referring to the one about the guy in UK who wants to resell openSUSE for 5 pounds 18:22:52 suseROCKs: yes 18:23:20 suseROCKs: your question please ? 18:23:23 and saw henne raised the issue of whether this is acceptable based on open-slx and I have a broader issue about open-slx that we should clarify today 18:24:06 when you queried the board last year for any objections to open-slx being the exclusive redistributor, we didn't have any objections. But now I'm finding the agreement seems highly secretive 18:24:10 just for people not knowing open-slx, this is the company who produce ans sell the openSUSE retail box 18:24:54 we don't know the terms of the agreement, we do not know if people are allowed to redistribute at a nominal cost, I asked rupert a couple of weeks ago for info about open-slx status and every question was answered with "Sorry, NDA... can't discuss" 18:24:57 suseROCKs: why's that ? 18:25:21 suseROCKs: ask me ;-) 18:25:33 so we can't even know how well those boxes are selling so its hard for us on marketing team to know where market penetration is good. 18:25:53 michl, Well that's what I'm asking for clarification on here. What is secretive and what isn't? 18:26:33 see http://en.opensuse.org/Statistics 18:27:01 That reminds me.. prusnak (or who had the idea?) should finish popcoRn. 18:27:06 scroll down, dvd-biarch is the retail box and it reflects kind of 2-3.5% of all installations 18:27:49 and wrt market penetration, the retail box is very EMEA centric and in there kind of 85% or so are sold in Germany 18:28:10 open-slx has the right to do the retail box 18:28:30 michl, dvd-biarch includes the promoDVDs? 18:28:42 when it comes to I burn openSUSE media and sell it for some bugs this doesn't infere open-slx business 18:28:52 so it is allowed for everyone 18:29:20 suseROCKs: no promodvd is a seperate item just below bi-arch 18:29:43 sn7: i am in contact with guy who is implementing this feature in smolt 18:29:52 michl, ok 18:30:02 so you answered 2 of 3 questions I had... 18:30:13 what was third? 18:30:21 3rd question is does a portion of sales come back to openSUSE in some way? 18:30:41 suseROCKs: no money involved in the agreement 18:30:59 but open-slx will contribute back to the project when the business is healthy 18:31:17 and they already did, eg wiki transition 18:31:30 yes, there was big money in that :-) 18:31:59 ok so the whole "Sorry, NDA!" was a bit over the top then 18:32:07 more secrets to publish ? 18:32:47 no but just would like us to remind open-slx to work more closely with the artwork team and the marketing team in openSUSE in future 18:33:20 yes 18:34:15 prusnak, you have any comments on this topic? otherwise michl can move on 18:34:42 well, i was just told that it is hard to communicate with open-slx guys 18:34:55 but i don't have my own experience 18:35:20 prusnak, I think that could be resolved with better interaction. Right now, we don't see them here 18:35:31 prusnak: so, if you don't have your own experience you shouldn't talk bad thing you heard ;-) 18:36:04 that's right! For example, I heard good things about michl, but without my own experience, I won't talk about it 18:36:10 that's why I did emphasize the no own experience part 18:36:10 prusnak: for "hard to communicate" you always need two sides involved 18:36:26 * sn7 imagines a Möbius strip for michl 18:36:26 ;-) 18:36:39 i don't want to dig into this topic further now 18:36:54 we are missing two important people for this - rupert and henne 18:37:08 #topic Status Membership approvals 18:37:26 another topic I wanted to get into :-) 18:37:53 prusnak: can you give an insight? 18:38:00 checking 18:38:18 we currently have 20 open tickets 18:38:20 * VenomVelvet is confused 18:38:33 * suseROCKs pats VenomVelvet 18:38:34 which is good 18:38:44 prusnak, yes and no 18:38:44 but i'm afraid membership officials are not creating ones 18:38:50 ... the new ones 18:38:58 may I ask a question to the previous topic? 18:39:14 prusnak: so there might be additional ones queuing up at users.opensuse.org ? 18:39:19 VenomVelvet, go for it 18:39:20 michl: correct 18:39:33 michl: will check tomorrow 18:39:51 Is is ok for a guy in .uk to burn openSUSE on DVDs and sell boxes for 5 pounds? 18:39:51 I just noticed that the membership # is slowly rising but in users.o.o I see a queue of 50 or so 18:40:42 according to GPL2 this is okay 18:41:01 VenomVelvet, as long as its a nominal cost (to help reduce costs for the distributor) and is not significantly changed, we're supporting it 18:41:03 sounds like the licence to print money to me but ok... 18:41:14 and from our side it is okay to use our trademarks if no bit is changed (software wise) 18:41:21 we have a license to print geeko bucks too. 18:41:31 VenomVelvet: if you don't sell it for 50 pounds it is ok 18:42:11 prusnak: you can even sell it for 500 pounds, but as long as there are DVDs available for 2 or 3 pounds you won't make business ;-) 18:42:18 VenomVelvet, In fact it is useful in certain countries to allow this where people have poor internet service but there are "CD Burning" companies to alleviate that in their countries for a few bucks 18:42:41 yes... ok. agreed 18:42:42 prusnak, I think michl just challenged us. Wanna go into business? :-) 18:43:04 hehe 18:43:04 ok let's get back to membership topic. I have some concerns here. 18:43:39 #1 When we outsourced membership, the idea was to a) get this off our plate and b) have a team come up with efficient ways to streamline the procecss for speedier approvals 18:43:59 JFYI I wrote an email to membership-officials if they need help from my side 18:44:29 #2 While we have outsourced it, technically the membership is still our domain. And while its good we outsourced, we have turned this into an "out of sight/out of mind" thing in that we're not regularly keeping tabs on the process 18:45:06 #3 I'm getting complaints lately that some people have waited a loooong time for their approvals, just like when we did our own approvals. So looks like we didn't acheive much here. 18:45:48 and you propose to do what? 18:46:07 Figure out where we went off track from our original goal 18:46:50 prusnak, has there been any assessment in the team about how to streamline the process? 18:47:19 the process is set up, it is much effective than it used to be when we used wiki 18:47:24 ... much more ... 18:47:42 how so? 18:47:44 it will be even more effective once we get rid of that copying 18:48:11 prusnak: yes, I think the manual copying is a big hurdle 18:48:15 effective => intuitive and easy 18:48:20 but 18:48:21 and opens the door for a growing queue 18:48:25 it is not more effective 18:48:46 because people don't have motivation to do that 18:48:51 i guess 18:49:11 when we did the work last year, we usually took about 4-6 weeks turnaround. Any indication what the turnaround time is now? 18:49:27 yes 18:49:34 2 tickets - 3 months ago 18:49:38 also want to mention when I applied for GNOME Foundation membership, I got approved in like 2 weeks. Really fast. How can we mimic that? 18:49:40 2 tickets - 2 months ago 18:49:48 the rest is under 4 weeks 18:50:13 prusnak: and maybe the ones in users.o.o are missing here 18:50:15 no actually it was 1 week not 2 18:50:23 sure, i'm talking about retro now 18:50:26 but I don't like to compare what was some time ago 18:50:53 prusnak, the ticket dates are when it was entered in retro. Correct? not when the application was filed? 18:51:10 yes 18:51:31 suseROCKs: GNOME project is 11 years old today, openSUSE is around four 18:51:46 do you want to compare effectivness of processes in these two projects? 18:51:48 prusnak: key will be one person who takes over responsility and push others to vote 18:51:52 prusnak, sure, but doens't mean we can't learn from what others do. 18:52:11 michl: that is the wrong approach I guess 18:52:24 i was filling the tickets before 18:52:36 prusnak: I doubt, it worked with the Board membership approvals that way 18:52:39 I stopped doing it a month and a half ago 18:52:59 and since then noone created new ticket or indicated the need for help 18:53:42 when I start doing it again we'll have single point of failure again 18:53:55 I move that one way or another, we get this queue of ~70 applicants approved by mid-Sept 18:54:23 I mean - I can do it 18:54:29 it will take me less than an hour 18:54:29 prusnak, I agree with that issue you have. I guess some automated ticket-creation process would be helpful 18:54:34 but is that what we want ? 18:54:51 no that isn't, it defeats the whole purpose of why we did this in the first place 18:54:54 suseROCKs: it would be helpful but we have noone who will do it 18:55:06 so we have to stick to crappy copy-paste 18:55:10 for now 18:55:21 ok we're muddling two separate issues here 18:55:39 issue 1: Efficient and automated process of populating the tickets 18:55:50 Issue 2: Backlog of applicants who are screaming for approval 18:56:18 i disagree 18:56:21 we have one issue 18:56:21 both can be solved with one person take the responsibility and push others 18:56:33 membership officials are not working like we expected 18:56:55 i.e. they are not autonomous 18:57:27 here's my issue.... 18:57:30 prusnak: do they have access to users.o.o ? 18:57:50 michl: yes, all is set up correctly to my best knowledge 18:57:59 I've got ambassadors who have already proven their merit for membership. They are applying and want to print up business cards with @o.o addresses. They can't do so until membership is approved. 18:58:02 and if it wasn't i would expect someone to complain 18:58:29 prusnak: so what makes them no autnomous ? 18:58:45 lack of time? lack of motivation? 18:58:47 i don't know 18:58:47 and as "event season" is fast approaching us, this is holding back their ability to develop their materials for distribution 18:59:19 suseROCKs: you know that nothing is blocking you from creating the tickets in retro, right? :-) 18:59:48 prusnak, that's not the point... 19:00:07 if we can agree that I should file all remaining users from users.o.o to retro.o.o I will do it tomorrow 19:00:10 the point is we outsourced it and netierh you n or me should have to do that. 19:00:44 prusnak: maybe a friendly reminder to the approval team list ? 19:00:58 yes do that first 19:01:05 I did it already 19:01:16 it doesn't be solved in a day but it should move ahead again 19:01:58 okay, next topic 19:02:25 #topic where do we fail? 19:02:42 I guess that's just a carry over from last meeting, right? 19:02:52 no that's a permanent topic 19:03:04 but I have one question, what is meant by Services Documentation ? 19:03:27 that's my AI, I need to discuss with henne further about proper location/page 19:03:58 basically in the last meeting we agreed we needed admin@o.o to be more prominent on our pages and then we agreed that other key contact info should also be there such as press@o.o, etc. 19:04:25 ahh, now I get it 19:04:31 so it'll get taken care of this week (unless henne is out this week?) 19:05:09 suseROCKs: don't know, at least yesterday I've seen him and today he was active in IRC 19:05:16 so there is hope ;-) 19:05:59 ok 19:06:14 I think we can close this topic as we pretty much identified "where we failed" in other topics :-) 19:06:46 right 19:07:29 so thanks to holiday season we're having a rather short meeting and coming to the #topic Q&A's 19:07:34 michl, Can you take the aI also to inform henne and rupert that we have tentatively discussed having board F2F on the Monday prior to Conf? 19:07:49 I can 19:08:08 let's get that nailed down so we can plan travel arrangements 19:08:34 as I'll be traveling in Europe, I'll need to know whether to depart for NUE on Sun or Mon 19:08:59 and then prusnak will have to give me some tips on Praha for post-Conf visitation 19:09:13 ;-) 19:09:37 impressed I said "Praha"? :-) 19:10:15 ok everyone in the channel... Now's your time to ask questions of the board or we'll leave! 19:11:22 3 19:11:24 2 19:11:28 1 19:11:33 prusnak: I've replied to your mail 19:11:35 meins! 19:11:42 thank you and good night 19:11:49 #stopmeeting 19:11:52 is there a full workflow description for approvals somewhere? 19:11:59 #endmeeting