Novell increasing openSUSE support

[Posted August 12, 2009 by corbet]

From:		Roland Haidl <rhaidl-l3A5Bk7waGM-AT-public.gmane.org>
To:		opensuse-project-stAJ6ESoqRxg9hUCZPvPmw-AT-public.gmane.org
Subject:		More Support for the openSUSE Project
Date:		Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:57:27 +0200

Hi,

this is my first public message to openSUSE project, and that means first
I'd like to introduce myself: My name is Roland Haidl aka rhaidl, and I
started to work in SUSE nearly ten years ago. In that time I managed the
SUSE documentation, usability, design etc. After Novell having bought
SUSE I took over several other management task.

Now, while Novell/OPS engineering adopted to a new strategy regarding
openSUSE, we decided that the people, who Novell dedicated
to work in the openSUSE project, come under my responsibility.

For me that is awesome and something new - as it is in general. Why, since
we already had Novell people working for openSUSE in the past? Well, the
new thing that with this step Novell decided to intensify its openSUSE
sponsorship.
Now we have a group of people that is exclusively dedicated to the
openSUSE project.

It is not longer the "when time is left, please work in the openSUSE
project" thing we often had before, we now have the singular situation to
have a team of more than 10 experts in Novell to only work on openSUSE
community topics. This is the Novell "openSUSE Team", and it is there to
be a part of the community and make it easier for people to join in, enjoy
and contribute.

We (speaking as part of the Novell management) learned to trust the
community, and, as a result of this, want to support the project even
more. For proof let's see how the team will work.

Of course the team also has reponsibilities, that is basically the openSUSE
distribution and the healthy growth of the project.
Both challenges will and can only be done in a strong community with YOU
and I hope you appreciate the existance of the new team as much as I do.

The people working in the team are all well known since they already worked a
lot in the community. I leave it up to the team to introduce itself. As
the lead of the team we nominated Klaas Freitag, who is an experienced
manager on the one hand and a community guy on the other. Henne
Vogelsang takes over the role as project manager openSUSE, and Stephan
Kulow will continue to be the release manager for the next openSUSE
distribution.

Best,
Roland
--

Roland Haidl - Director Operations&Communities OPS - Novell Inc.
SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG NÃ¼rnberg)

--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe-stAJ6ESoqRxg9hUCZPvPmw@public.gmane.org
For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help-stAJ6ESoqRxg9hUCZPvPmw@public.gmane.org

to post comments

Resources assigned to a Linux distro

Posted Aug 12, 2009 16:41 UTC (Wed) by abacus (guest, #49001) [Link] (8 responses)

Anyone any idea about the resources assigned to other major Linux distro's, e.g. Fedora ?

Resources assigned to a Linux distro

Posted Aug 12, 2009 17:12 UTC (Wed) by sharms (guest, #57357) [Link] (3 responses)

I am not even sure the numbers matter.

10 apathetic corporate junkies can not equal 1 enthusiastic community member, so what is more interesting is the question "Which notable resources are assigned?".

Resources assigned to a Linux distro

Posted Aug 13, 2009 0:22 UTC (Thu) by pr1268 (guest, #24648) [Link]

10 apathetic corporate junkies can not equal 1 enthusiastic community member

"Apathetic" and "corporate junkies" are such harsh terms. One would think (hope) that the ten Novell employees chosen for this assignment are at least competent, willing, and eager Linux hackers.

Resources assigned to a Linux distro

Posted Aug 13, 2009 5:47 UTC (Thu) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

True, and I'm sure both Novell and Red Hat employ many corporate junkies.
However, they also employ many great community members (like Stephen Kulow
and Klaas Freitag, btw) and I think it's not that hard for management to
pick those for working on their respective community products...

Resources assigned to a Linux distro

Posted Aug 13, 2009 13:56 UTC (Thu) by sharms (guest, #57357) [Link]

Just to clarify 10 was an arbitrary number, and wasn't meant to suggest the resources were the ones I was saying. Just in general that the best resources outperform most other resources, so count alone isn't that good at quantifying it.

Resources assigned to a Linux distro

Posted Aug 12, 2009 17:57 UTC (Wed) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link] (3 responses)

I believe that Jef Spaleta's recent blog posting can help you get some idea:
http://jspaleta.livejournal.com/46436.html

Resources assigned to a Linux distro

Posted Aug 12, 2009 18:27 UTC (Wed) by sharms (guest, #57357) [Link]

That is a great link -- I am curious how big SuSE is with regards to engineers.

Resources assigned to a Linux distro

Posted Aug 12, 2009 22:56 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

Uhm....

I do not have specific information as to how many paid manhours Red Hat invests into Fedora or to the open source ecosystem in a broader sense. I think its noteworthy information, but I don't have access to it. There are certainly paid positions that Red Hat staffs for the Fedora project such as infrastructure and release management but I don't have a complete listing as to who is directly tasked with doing work inside Fedora as part of their day-job as it relates to job description or job performance evaluations.

Nor do I know how much personal time Red Hat employees invests off-the-clock as volunteers in open development more broadly. How much of the kernel work that is attributed to Red Hat is done on personal time by a Red Hat employee? Hard question. I suspect such volunteer time investment its significant up and down the open software stack where Red Hat is paying for people to do upstream development. I suspect further that sort of effect is a general effect for everyone who is paid specifically to develop open source solutions regardless of employer (as compared to people who choose to develop open solutions as part of their work even when their employer hasn't stated a preference).

I break-out Red Hat "maintainers" in my analysis only because Red Hat holds a special position in the Fedora project make-up and its important to try to understand where project momentum is and the role of independent contributors. Even when I try to lump all Red Hat employees together regardless of how much paid time they spend on Fedora..the momentum in the contributor base is in the external community segment...and that's very good to see..as the world outside the Red Hat fence line is the bigger potential pool of contributors than the one inside. That being said, I seriously doubt most of those 250+ Red Hat employees are tasked as part of their dayjob to maintain any Fedora packages, but by assuming its all paid time I create a conservative estimate for volunteer growth. Conservative estimates are good.

If you have suggestions on enhancing the methodology I'm using...I'm all ears.

-jef

Resources assigned to a Linux distro

Posted Aug 12, 2009 23:05 UTC (Wed) by jamesh (guest, #1159) [Link]

Those numbers are not exactly comparable with the "10 experts" Novell is announcing. Novell was contributing to OpenSUSE before this announcement and will presumably continue to contribute above those 10 experts in the future.

Novell increasing openSUSE support

Posted Aug 12, 2009 19:29 UTC (Wed) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (1 responses)

This is the inevitable result of OpenSuse's talk of going rogue and defaulting to a DE which is not in Novell's business interests. Novell is tightening its grip. I knew that they *would* be doing that. The only question was exactly how they would choose to do it. This method has the advantage of generating positive press.

Novell increasing openSUSE support

Posted Aug 13, 2009 0:52 UTC (Thu) by pzb (guest, #656) [Link]

This was planned (and done) prior to the DE discussion. I don't think that it really has an relationship to the desktop direction. The engineers who are now dedicated to openSUSE and community work have experience with a number of projects, and include both KDE and GNOME members.

Disclaimer, I work for SUSE but do not directly work on openSUSE.