The openSUSE board met yesterday to go through all the open membership applications.  Since many applied in the last days, we had to go over 67 applications.  Additionally there were some members that applied after the deadline for voting, we did not look at their applications for now and will handle them later.  Out of the 67 applications, we postponed 6 since we first needed to answer some more questions, approved around 30 and rejected the rest. So, we have right now 211 approved openSUSE members.

Details about membership are in the wiki but let me explain a bit more what membership means using some practical examples.

The wiki defines members as  “specifically distinguished contributors who have brought a continued and substantial contribution to the openSUSE project.”

So, what did we look for when people apply?  Note this is not a black and white decision list, these are just some things we look at and try to get a better understanding whether the applicant is really contributing to the project.

• contribution to openSUSE - and not some Open Source contribution that is used in openSUSE (btw. packaging and bug fixing for openSUSE is contribution)
• a clear reason stated in the contribution field (and we double checked the reasons)
• on-going contribution and not substantial contribution in e.g. 2005 and nothing since then
• contributors that are part of the community and not doing something with openSUSE without any interaction

We do not know everybody and so, we might have rejected some people.

In general, we look at contributions in these areas:

• Code and Packaging
• Wiki Editing
• Bug reporting and triaging
• Translation
• Continued User Support on any Communication Medium
• Giving openSUSE Talks/Presentation and/or promoting openSUSE

So, if we rejected an applicant wrongly, please contact the board and we will reevaluate the decision- and to avoid that moving forward, we’d like to see some clear statements what people consider as significant contributions. The board is also happy to look again in a couple of months.

Here’re some “contributions” that people mentioned, we rejected these applications:

• “Please kindly support to me.”
• “ok”
• “Testing” (but no bugs were found in the openSUSE bugzilla)
• “I hope I can contribute with good things for the community” (I like to see that applicant getting involved and the board will grant membership those great things are going on but not before)
• “Build Service: when I’ve enough time again”
• “opensuse is cool. i want to support it.”

Even if the dead line for voting has passed, people can still apply for openSUSE membership, there’re are more benefits than just voting for them - and this will not be the last vote.

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