Why not a second turn?

Being a board member (present at almost every conference call, reading the mailing lists and other task) consume free time. It has increased during the last semester too. And we’ve got some new business opportunities here at Ioda-Net Sàrl in 2015, and those need also my attention for the next year(s). I prefer to be a retired Board member, than not being able to handle my responsabilities.
But I’m not against the idea of a "I’ll be back" in a near future. Moreover with a bit more bandwidth in my free time, I will be able to continue my packaging stuff, and other contributions.

What a journey!

With the new campaign running, I found funny to bring back to light my 2013 platform written 2 years ago. And spent 5 minutes on checking the differences with today. I’m inviting you to discover the small interview between me and myself

1. Which sentences would you say again today?

I’m a "Fucking Green Dreamer" of a world of collaboration, which will one day offer Freedom for everyone.

Clearly still a day by day mantra and leitmotiv. But even if I’m dreaming, I never forget that
Freedom has a price : Freedom will only be what you do for it.

2. Which thing you would not say again, or differently ?

Well, as there’s no joker card, let’s start by this one:
"A Visible Active Board > A Visible Active Project." With the experience and time, and interaction, (the one who said fight, get out please :-)), I would said this is not as easy as it sound first.
I’m pretty sure, I was more quieter since I was on the board, than before. Because it’s too hard to make a clear distinction, when you just want to express something as "a simple contributor": you are on the board, and then whatever you can try to trick the fact: you’re still a board member.

So making the Board visible like a kind of communicant Alien, will certainly not improve that much our project.
It’s written everywhere, almost everybody agree, the board is not the lighthouse in the dark showing you the future.
Anyone, I repeat, anyone in this community is a potential vector of a future for openSUSE.

So in my past platform "Guardians of the past, Managers of the present, Creators of the future." I would replace Creators of the future by kinda "enabler"

3. In the last 2 years, where did openSUSE mostly evolve?

I think we moved from a traditional way of building distribution to some creative alternative, the rolling but tested Tumbleweed, and the hybrid Leap are really good things that happened.
I believe that if we have also some hard time on mailing list, which are exhausting, they also have a positive aspect (yeap:-)). If we fight, then it’s certainly because of our faith in something. Is this one defined? Not sure! But I’m pretty convinced that all members around have a good image of it.

4. What would be an advice to your successor (even if he doesn’t care about it)?

We are a tooling community, we love tools. Beware of one thing, if you get hurt by a tool, you can become the worst asshole you’ve never met. With tools, you can also hurt other people.

My advise, watch your step and keystroke!

5. Something more you would like to share?

I’ve invested time and energy during 2014 and beginning of 2015, to run booth, talks, represent openSUSE’s project all around. It was awesome to go to those events and meet people, involved or interested about openSUSE.

Perhaps some of you don’t know, but we have friends all around us, in many communities, and when the magic about working together appears, it just blast my heart.

Thanks for reading and for your support during this period

Truly green yours

It’s campaign season, and time for me to make sure all voters know what I stand for regarding openSUSE, “The Finest Distro, Period.”  As I mentioned in my announcement, if elected to The Board, my intended involvement would focus on these three principle goals:

A) Improving the visibility of openSUSE among the huge variety of distro offerings that exist. Specifically, improving the amount of press and exposure of openSUSE to offset the over-represented exposure that other distros receive.  Since openSUSE is the The Finest Distro, Period (as I asserted above), we can do better to make it known.

B) Promote openQA, and make it the bedrock of quality assurance for openSUSE. Improve the confidence that the community and the public should have in the quality of our great product! The Quality of openSUSE — out of the box, and updated over the wire, over time — is dependent upon a battery of high quality testing. Perception is everything in this business. Great testing will give us great quality, great results, and great users.

C) Support the improvements that have been incrementally made over time by prior board members, building on their successes. There are too many accomplishments to enumerate here, but the project has come a long way under some great leadership. We don’t need huge changes in leadership or direction; we need to capitalize on our prior successes and press forward.

And I wish to add one more goal to my original list:

D) Continue to foster community involvement and attract new talent to the project through high quality openSUSE Conferences. Bringing together the best talent to oSC events does a great deal to build bridges of trust and move the project forward in a unified way. A high quality oSC improves the quality of the brand and the product.

But of course, the few members of the Board are just a small functioning part of a successful community. The real success of openSUSE is a result of the hard work, the passion, and commitment of the members. As a member of the board, I intend to be someone who brings out the best in others; to help you do what you do best; to bring good people together fo the strength of the project. openSUSE is “The Finest Distro, Period,” only because its contributors are The Finest. Period.

As the polls open in a few days, please vote for Craig Gardner (@ganglia). You’ll get a firmly committed member of the board, who wants to help you — the community — to find even greater success.  And don’t forget to have fun.

People using HTTP requests to download packages are sadly very affected by this limitation at the end of each month, and I apologise for the trouble caused. Thanks to the FTP-Server Admins of openSUSE, we’ve already a place to host our ISO-Images, containing the same files as the frozen repositories. We’ve also a FTP (ftp://ftp.opensuse-education.org/) and a RSync-Server up and running (rsync rsync.opensuse-education.org::download/) – which should make it a bit easier until we’ve the final decision from the new openSUSE-Board, if they can provide some space for us.

Until then, feel free to offer additional space for our repositories. We’ve already an offer from Peter Poeml to help us configuring a “Mirrorbrain” setup.

Thanks! OK, just a reminder that you have less than 160 hours to register for the openSUSE board election if you haven’t done so already.

For the mathematically challenged, 160 hours is just under seven full days! Yes, that is how long you have left to get your membership application in to be able to vote on the upcoming board election. It is also the amount of time you have left to get your notification of intention to run for the first community elected Board.

You can only run for the board if you hold openSUSE Membership, you can only vote for your favourite candidates if you have openSUSE Membership. Do you see a pattern here? Good!

Also it would be good if all of the current candidates could ensure that they have filled in their platforms on the openSUSE wiki as requested before then. Some have already, I appreciate that people are busy, but if you want to be on the Board (or vote for the board) you have to be prompt. Slackers will not be tolerated!

Obligatory Political Image