openSUSE Strategy Discussion: Community Statement

http://en.opensuse.org/index.php?title=Documents/Strategy... contains 
the following statement that we'd like to discuss and enhance as written in 
the introductory email (http://news.opensuse.org/2010/06/17/a-strategy-for-
the-opensuse-project-proposals-and-discussions/),

Andreas

We are the openSUSE Community - a friendly, welcoming, vibrant, and active 
community. This includes developers, testers, writers, translators, usability 
experts, artists, promoters and everybody else who wishes to engage with the 
project.

To grow the openSUSE Community, we will put contributors first and focus on 
the following activities:

    * Build a lively and active community
    * Increase contributor visibility
    * Attract contributions by empowering our community to influence and shape 
the Project in all aspects
    * Make contributing easy by eliminating or greatly reducing bureaucratic 
obstacles and having great governance
    * Market the Project 

This includes the following activities in order to excel in our goals:

    * Create tools that support community activities
    * Establish the openSUSE Foundation
    * Improve visibility through announcements, news, blogs, tweets, etc
    * Give presentations about the Project
    * Establish Events: Conference organization
    * Emphasize the value of communication and recognize cultural diversity 
within our community
    * Foster governance discussions
    * Mentor new contributors
    * Praise contributors (Publicity, bounties, ...) 

We will also do the following activities:

    * Events: Attend shows, set up booths, have openSUSE Community rooms
    * Raise funds for the Project through the openSUSE Foundation
    * Helping new users and contributors
    * Encourage technical discussions (via mailing lists and forums)
    * Give presentations about the Project
    * Publications, whitepapers, ... in journals
    * Reaching multiplicators (journalists, key comm members, ...)
    * Customer intelligence (Surveys, segmentation, update statistics, ...) 

Note that we are very well aware that anything we do depends on the 
willingness of our community to drive it and make it successful. The openSUSE 
Community Board sees its leadership role in making coherent proposals and 
driving community decisions -- not in just taking decisions on behalf of the 
community.

Note that openSUSE has evolved from it's initial launch with little 
participation to being now a real open source project. It has many sponsors 
including Novell as main sponsor. The sponsors are part of the Project and 
will support it in various ways but not control the project. openSUSE being an 
open source project means that everybody in the community can contribute 
equally to it in all aspects of the project and should not depend on any of 
the sponsors doing everything.

We'd like to cite as well from the openSUSE Guiding Principles:

  We value respect for other persons and their contributions, for
  other opinions and beliefs. We listen to arguments and address
  problems in a constructive and open way. We believe that a diverse
  community based on mutual respect is the base for a creative and
  productive environment enabling the project to be truly
  successful. We don't tolerate social discrimination and aim at
  creating an environment where people feel accepted and safe from
  offense.

-- 
 Andreas Jaeger, Program Manager openSUSE,  aj@{novell.com,opensuse.org}
  Twitter: jaegerandi | Identica: jaegerandi
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