Freedom and Democracy

Well, I think I have to explain that french title…

Nah, let’s not bother and move on

Part of democracy is that if you don’t cast your ballot you have no influence! So don’t let others decide for you, when you can act!

Members, we need your vote!

We’re almost 500 members, and this message is for you.
Our freedom to choose our direction and control our project as we wish works only when we vote. As in real world democracies, not voting gets you nowhere.

So why this reminder?

Because : I want you to vote!

• First you read the stategy document (it’s really quickly done)
• Think about it (Well, you have 10 days left for that)
• Take a decision : Can you support that strategy?
  1. If 50% of your neurons +1 agree : vote yes
  2. if not : vote no
  3. if you really don’t know : vote I don’t know/care.
• Connect to connect.opensuse.org and cast your vote.

What we need here is to send a strong signal that 99% of our members are alive and care about our project.
Otherwise, why would we bothered to become members, and keep that status, if not to infuence?

Ideas

Why not add this signature to your mails you use on ML and/or forums?

The openSUSE Strategy, I've casted my vote! And you? http://bit.ly/iB2Dzh

When?

Oh come on, I really hope that you’ve acted before reading this line

Dead line is 29 June

Links related

[1] Aux armes citoyens : La Marseillaise
[2] etc the singing version by Serge Gainsbourg
[3] Cast your vote connect poll
[4] Article on news.o.o

The fun side of community and technology was inspiring people all over, in opposite to some situations I remember on the last years conference where we had to deal with unpleasant topics. This seemed to have completely went away, instead people were aiming to solve problems together in a constructive way or, even more fun, worked on new things without so called stop-energy.

It seems to me that a kind of openSUSE core-community stabilizes. People know each other, it has sorted who finally really is interested in openSUSE and continously contributes. That builds trust, and to that adds the self confidence which results out of the good quality of the recent distros we as a community were able to release. This nicely turned out for me in the strategy discussion lead by Jos. People were supportive, sorted out issues here and there, but moved ahead and came to decisions together on a topic which had endless and partly unpleasant discussions on mailinglists before. The power of meeting face to face on the one hand, but also signs that we learned from the last years and grew up.

From the talk quality the conference for me personally was one of the best FOSS conferences I have attended until now. All keynotes were done with great passion, uniquely and addressed specifically on current topics in our community. Hennes on the first day painted a good frame for the whole conference in his unique style. Cornelius and Vincent on day two were also great, they did not play friends just to let the sun shine on the conference, but for me they proofed that the openSUSE community has built a fundament were we not only accept each other but can work together werever it makes sense to tackle the higher challenges. Gerald speaking on Friday was repeating facts of the relationship between Novell and openSUSE. It was good hear it again that Novell wholeheartly supports the openess of the openSUSE project and what that means from a corporate point of view. Today Frank was introducing the project Brezen which will increase the ease of use of openSUSE a lot for the user and free software developers. Great that there is already code, I am really looking forward to see stuff coming into our distro.

You see, quite a lot happened on osc10. I will continue writing but I am too tired now…