The openSUSE Board election 2010

The openSUSE Board Election process, started in December 2010, is heading full-speed for the planned announcement of the results on January 26, 2011. Today the voting begins and it’s time to take a closer look at the candidates and make up our minds! In this election we will have 2 seats to be voted upon as the board periods of Pascal Bleser and Henne Vogelsang expire. With the existing company affiliations in the board (Pavol Prusnak- Novell, Bryen Yunashko - none, Rupert Horstkötter - openSLX) the restraint is that at most one of the to be elected members can be affiliated with Novell and at most one with openSLX. According to the election rules, no single organization or company can control more than 40 percent of the electable Board seats. That means, in this election, that if two candidates from either Novell or openSLX score a first and second place, only the one with most votes will have a seat. The other seat will to go to the third candidate in line (provided of course that person is not also affiliated with the same company).

This time we have seven candidates, all contributors with different experiences and backgrounds. You can check their user pages, blogs and the platform page explaining their vision and plans for openSUSE:

• Chuck “PUP” Payne, ambassador from the US (blog) Platform

• sebas, open-slx user experience expert (blog) Platform

• Kostas Koudaras, ambassador from greece (blog) Platform

• Peter Linnell aka mrdocs, OSS It consultant Platform

• Henne Vogelsang, Booster, currently Board Member, Novell (blog) Platform

• Sankar P, Programmer, Hacker, FOSS Enthusiast, Novell (blog) Platform

• Nelson Marques, Contributor (blog) Platform

The openSUSE board was set up to lead the overall project. The main tasks for members of the board are:

• Act as a central point of contact

• Help resolve conflicts

• Communicate community interests to Novell

• Facilitate communication with all areas of the community

• Facilitate decision making processes where needed

The board should provide guidance to and support for existing governance structures, but shouldn’t direct or control development, since community mechanisms exist to accomplish the goals of the project. The board does however document decisions and policies, as well as mediate when issues arise. The board decides on usage of the trademarks of openSUSE, deals with conflicts, works with the Novell openSUSE community manager on funding decisions, works with the community on the organization of events and in general does a lot of ‘small things’ often only visible when they are not handled. The board members are elected according to Board Election rules by the members of the community who’ve been accepted as official ‘openSUSE Members’ and the chair person is appointed by Novell. Current chair is Alan Clark.

Our current Board has had a busy time in the last year, setting up the foundations for a great 2011 for openSUSE. And the new Board members will need to put in some hard work to bring openSUSE to this new level. This includes the work on setting up the Foundation and the new responsibilities waiting for the board once that work has completed. Moreover challenges that might come up related to the Attachmate takeover of Novell have to be handled but also the usual day to day work in the community must continue.

Ballots have just been opened and all openSUSE members whose membership is in good standing are eligible to vote. Please verify if your email address is valid and that you are able to read emails sent to your openSUSE address!  The ballots are being done via the web on connect.opensuse.org and have been announced on opensuse-project IRC channel and Mailing Lists. Once a vote has been submitted it may not be changed afterwards. Finally, voting will end on January 26th, 2011 when the ballots close. Shortly thereafter, you can expect the announcement of our two new board members!

More detailed information can be found on the generic Board Election and board election 2010 wiki pages.

Have a good vote!