Holiday Wishes from the openSUSE Board

Seasons Greetings to everyone in the openSUSE Community and beyond from the openSUSE Board!

As we come to the end of 2010, we’d like to take a moment to reflect on a banner year in the Project. We’ve had some very good progress this year and 2011 promises to be an even greater year. This year, we hosted our second annual openSUSE Conference in Nuremberg, Germany with over 70 presentations and many BoF discussions. Attendance grew from the first year.

Also, this year, the Board rolled up its sleeves and opened up a discussion with the Community about the strategic direction of openSUSE. A finalized strategic statement is imminent. The creation of an openSUSE Foundation is well underway. We’re currently reviewing legal documents related to the creation and are very excited about this. The Foundation will be a step forward in further empowering our Community. More and more people are stepping up to champion openSUSE’s role in the open source world. We saw ambassador growth in countries like Brasil and Greece, and stengthened in other places like India, Europe and the United States. We’re seeing more people available to show up at conferences and events to present and demonstrate openSUSE.

In addition to releasing openSUSE 11.3, the openSUSE Build Service also reached a critical milestone earlier this year with the release of 2.0. A gem of our Project, the Build Service aims to not only make package management easier for our own distro but to also make it easier with other distros. Truly an open project. Community days abounded all over the place throughout the year from Collaboration days to bug/hacking days as teams set aside time to complete tasks and move forward with their plans. The openSUSE Board will be holding its final meeting of 2010 this Wednesday at 19:00 UTC in the #opensuse-project IRC channel on Freenode. We invite you all to attend, as all of our meetings our public and we do appreciate the many contributions our Community offers during our meetings, particularly during the “Where can we improve?” session we implemented earlier this year. Incidentally, it is election season again for the openSUSE Board and we’re excited to see so many candidates. If you’ve been thinking about running for one of the two seats, we encourage you to apply for candidacy ASAP!

To be sure, serving on the Board is a rewarding experience, and also requires commitment and dedication. 2011 is going to be a turning point year for the Project. With the creation of the Foundation and implementation of the openSUSE Strategy, there is no doubt that many new initiatives from the Community will come forth and the Board will play an important role in guiding and shaping the future of openSUSE as a Project.

So, as we close here, we’d like to wish each and every one of you a safe and joyous holiday season with friends and loved ones. You can be sure that as we Board members toast in the New Year from various corners of the world, we’ll be thinking of you all and rejoicing being part of a strong, dedicated and passionate community.

See you all at Wednesday’s meeting, and in 2011!

The openSUSE Board Pascal Bleser, Rupert Horstkötter, Pavol Rusnak, Henne Vogelsang, Bryen Yunashko,