“One person can make a difference and every person should try.” – John Fitzgeral Kennedy

Dear all,

In the last elections I’ve had 23 votes, and it’s to those persons that I address mainly in this hour, one hard one for me, with a ‘broken heart’ regarding many things…

A few weeks ago, I’ve emailed “admin@opensuse.org” requesting some changes to my user account, and later I’ve informed the Board about the reasons behind revoking my status as openSUSE member, also making them aware that I would continue to submit regularly the packages I currently maintain for the project and that I would be continuing to keep working for GNOME:Ayatana. I don’t really require ‘membership’ status for it, neither I want to be agraciated or recognized for my work, which is mainly directed towards openSUSE users, because I mainly see them as the source of motivation for this.

People will still me around on GNOME Meetings (those I can attend), I will still be around on #opensuse-gnome and #opensuse-pt… In fact people will notice that really nothing has changed, besides loosing an IRC mask, being listed as member. The real change is that I’ll longer take part in strategical or political mailing lists, neither I will be involved in anything regarding the orientation of the project. I’d rather continue giving something back to the project in the form of packages and will cut down all the superfluous stuff.

Behind this are reasons, most of them personal, and an increasing demand for my time in my personal life… things needed to be prioritized and I need also some rest on my mind, and staying away from certain areas of the project seem the right way to get some peace in my mind. The time that I removed from openSUSE project is being redirected to support the marketing of a new initiative in Portugal, which is also done as volunteer pro-bono work. There’s a national uproar involving the Firefighters future in Portugal. This is where I’m going to apply in full many of the experiences that I’ve taken from open source marketing (specially regarding distribution of digital contents) with an endeavor focused on digital marketing and social networks. This is also my true area of expertise (Marketing Management), and through this project I expect nothing else than high visibility as a professional, serving a cause that I fully trust on.

I hope that the 23 people that shared a vote of trust in me won’t feel that I’ve walked away on them, I haven’t, but I’m seeing that openSUSE is marching in the right direction. I hope only that they revoke one decision from the previous board and show some benevolence towards a redeemed contributor.

openSUSE is stronger than ever, and will succeed! I hope to see as a user/contributor a more daring project claiming for what should be ours and fighting for becoming the most popular Linux distribution! Anything else that doesn’t place us on the top, shouldn’t be considered! That is my position regarding the future and what openSUSE should fight for! Honor our sponsors, honor our contributors and keep an endless fighting spirit until it reaches such point!

A warmth ‘Thank You’ for the awesome experiences that the project has allowed me to live, for all the fun I’ve had! And the best of luck for the future! I am sure everyone’s work will be rewarded!

Stand strong people!

Nelson Marques.

The Open Source Hardware Definition has reached a major milestone, hitting version 1.0 with this morning’s announcement by the Open Hardware Summit team.  This is remarkable news for all involved in the development of Open Source Hardware (OSHW), as this really exciting community had been growing by leaps and bounds in the last couple of years, but had no single, unified symbol that different development shops could rally under.

Now, with the Definition having reached 1.0, and a logo soon to be announced to stamp hardware and project websites, the hardware crowd will be able to rally under flags similar to Tux the penguin and Beastie the daemon — not to mention the Open Source Definition and the GPL.  As a Free/Open Source Software dude regularly cheerleading the Open Hardware crowd, I am impressed at how fast this young community came this far, as the 0.3 draft was circulated at the Open Hardware Summit last September in New York.

The Definition is not meant as a license, it rather mirrors the Open Source Definition that we are so familiar with — and indeed, a very energetic Bruce Perens was one of the opening speakers of the Summit last year, and has been actively commenting on the forums on the different drafts.  Similarly to the Open Source Definition, the Open hardware definition is an umbrella meant to cover a number of differing licenses, all requiring the “source” (in this case, unobfuscated designs) of the board to be made available with the hardware as a minimum precondition.

Community members are invited to spread the word by blogging, tweeting (#OSHW), endorsing the definition, contributing designs to the logo contest, and, of course, labeling their work as OSHW 1.0.

This is a very exciting moment for the open culture movement in general, as yet another field of knowledge comes organized in the copyleft / CC / Some Rights Reserved approach.

F2 keeping an eye on Bruce Perens, who is keeping an eye on the keynote before his, at the New York Open Hardware Summit.

1. Understanding ME

One of the fundamental demands to allow that interpersonal relations grow more richer, positive and mature is the necessity of understanding yourself and others. Each individual is the result of genetic and hereditary aspects, also from the network of situations that develop during his growth, influenced by family, friends, school, neighbors and other persons that are taken by reference by each one of us.

The ME in each individual is built in function of the image that he acquires from the world, in function of experience, of people and situations perceptioned, in short, from the perception one does from reality. The way that we see and evaluate the world and others, develops in functions of the socio-cultural context in which we live.

Each individual is unique and different from all the others, nevertheless, he has to live in society and interact with others, which will be different from himself.

2. Understanding the OTHERS

The first impression we take from someone we meet for the first time, is going to influence our future relation and it’s conditioned by:

* Psychological Factors;
* Previous experience;
* Expectations;
* Motivations;

If it’s positive, it will benefit the interpersonal relation, or if it’s negative, it will make the interpersonal relation harder.

Before someone which is unknown to us, or before someone from whom we only are aware of a few characteristics,  we have a tendency to create a global impression of that person, in short, we categorize her.

Through  categorization people are gathered into pre-determined social groups according with the characteristics we identify on them and in function of the signs we watch on them.

2.1 Social Group

Personal Group – collectivity to which I feel to bellong, as my family, my religion, my professional category, social class, etc.

External Grups – collectivities to which I don’t belong, as in other families, other religions, other professional categories, etc.

The personal groups create their own cultural components, which leads them to develop beliefs about the external groups. Usually we make a general idea about people, often forgetting important particular characteristics.

The base line is on knowing how we organize the various elements that we watch on the subject, in a single unique and coherent impression.

Categorization simplifies the knowledge that we have about someone else, which makes their behavior predictable and understandable. Nevertheless often we categorize others incorrectly, because there are not 2 equal individuals. It is necessary to confirm our categorization e and specially be open to confirmation or reformulation of our first impressions, otherwise we get:

1. Prejudice;
2. Stereotypes;

A prejudice is an attitude hostile or negative to a determined group based on malformed or incompleted generalizations. This generalizations are called stereotypes and mean to provide personal identical characteristics to any person from a group despite of their individual difference to the rest of the members of that group.

The negative consequences of prejudice and stereotypes is on incorrect generalizations that label people e do not allow that them are seen and treated as singular individuals with very own personal characteristics.

We might make evaluation mistakes and prejudice to assume that the individual is what it’s stereotype (race, creed, profession, genre) portraits as pattern.

Interpersonal competences allow us to deal effectively with interpersonal relations, to deal with other people in the proper way to the needs of everyone and to the demands of the situation. An harmonious interpersonal relation implies knowledge about yourself and about the others.

To practice interpersonal relations it means to understand the others as they present themselves, establishing an attitude of empathy, understanding them and respecting their individuality. People differ in the way of understanding, think, feel and act; those personal differences are inevitable.

It is up to each one of us to have the capacity of understanding, and the attitude of accepting the diversity e singularity of others. Without respect for the others, a good interpersonal relation won’t be possible, and it brings consequences to US and to the OTHERS, and eventually to the organization they represent.

—–

I’ve decided to organize this notes and make a blog post on Lizards as I believe that we as a community should promote this issues, as our sanity and future are heavily related to them. In the industry, many companies place a lot of money and efforts to promote trainings and this topics amongst their employees. We openSUSE, as a community should also do the same, as our target is actually people. Any member/contributor/enthusiast of openSUSE is in a way the public relations of openSUSE. Ignoring this fields and not making an investment on them might do us more harm than good on the long run.

As many are aware, I recently applied for the Board, this was one of the topics I was preparing to bring to the Community. My formation is on Marketing Management and not on Psychology or Sociology/Anthropology, and I believe there are people far more qualified than me in the community to develop this topic and maybe to try and deploy it on the field.

To understand this text and it’s goals is something that everyone of us needs to do, and maybe place a bit more of effort in our interpersonal relations with other members. I we can deploy more synergies in promoting the good side of people and not the bad side.

Dedicated to friend which isn’t no longer around, or maybe he is.

Nelson Marques

PS: Feel free to improve the text and correct what you believe that is wrong or make it more objective and better understandable. Feel free to share it.

Well, it’s just a small announce… I was in Yemen for some time, around 16 days, for work. I wasn’t able to answer emails and work for openSUSE, and I’m really sorry for that. But I just went back Yesterday and tomorrow I’ll start to work again.

My first goal is to package XBMC that recently released a new version.. so… STAY TUNED!

Have a lot of fun, Andrea