<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<p><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans">Raphael can you or someone please
forward this to Council as Mailman is currently broken? Thanks
in advance.<br>
</font></p>
<p><font face="Bitstream Vera Sans">Ladies and Gentlemen</font>,</p>
<p>First please know that I try to be aware of and that I do
appreciate everyones contribution, efforts, and hard work. I need
to single out our developer community here and acknowledge that in
some ways Y'all are doing an incredibly good job. Your hard work
and efforts are very much appreciated.<br>
</p>
<p>Need to sound off and bounce some serious thoughts off all of
you. I'm aware these are direct challenges to officers of the
Association and to Council. That is intentional.<br>
</p>
<p>FWIW-1: Starting to think we have serious governance issues at
OMA and, especially, with the distribution.</p>
<p>1. Decision making process seems utterly broken. <br>
</p>
<p>2. The disconnect between developers and rest of Community is so
profound as to be damaging to the Association and the
distribution.<br>
</p>
<p>FWIW-2: What ever transpired in Hungary has never been
disseminated to the Community still to this day. This goes to both
points in FWIW-1. I'm tired of hearing I cant's and we cant's on
issues like this. That is not an excuse for not communicating with
Community. If it's to much trouble to communicate with Community
then Association should dissolve. If addressing this isn't a more
important issue than switching urpmi to dnf than we go back to
FWIW-1.</p>
<p>FWIW-3: I need to get a yes or no decision on the main-testing
repo in ISO's issue. By any measure this is irresponsible. I can't
imagine QA-Team approving something like this. Whatever the cause
of this is we need to address and fix the real problem not resort
to, again, irresponsible<b> </b>practices. This is, to me,
embarrassing and holds the potential for a public relations
disaster. <b>For the distro this is a suicidal decision.</b> If
addressing this isn't a more important issue than switching urpmi
to dnf than we go back to FWIW-1.<br>
</p>
<p>Two things about this.</p>
<p> a. It should have been discussed. Was it? If it was I'm not
aware of it. I was blind sided by this. I don't care for being
blind sided.</p>
<p> b. This should have been announced. Was it? As above...</p>
<p> c. If this was discussed and announced than there may be serious
communications failure.<br>
</p>
FWIW-4: The issue of default file system on the ISO's is similar to
to the issue about main-testing repo in the ISO's. <br>
<p> a. It should have been discussed. Was it? If it was I'm not
aware of it. I was blind sided by this. I don't care for being
blind sided.
</p>
<p> b. This should have been announced. Was it? As above...</p>
<p> c. If this was discussed and announced than there may be serious
communications failure.</p>
<p>Aside: Both of these (FWIW3 and 4) are issues that do affect
QA-Team (and the Community at large) and IMO QA-Team should have
been part of the decision making process. This is disrespectful of
our time and effort. Both of these issues effect far to many
people to be decided by one person or a small group. Besides which
such behavior makes the Association and distro look dictatorial
rather than inclusive.<br>
</p>
<p>FWIW-5: We need to get our own house in order before we even
think of releasing ISO's for public consumption. This is the
responsible course of action for the Association.</p>
<p>FWIW-6: For those of you who have decided to switch from urpmi to
dnf perhaps it would have been wiser to include more people in the
discussion and decision making process or at least let the
Community know that this is going on. From the outside looking in
it appears that a very small group of people are deciding what is
best and the rest of us can like it or leave. Again this could
have been handled better. The fact that the Community by and large
has not stepped up is not an excuse, you don't engage a Community
by not trying. If what we are doing isn't engaging Community then
we need to ask why it isn't working and correct that. <br>
</p>
<p>In summation:</p>
<p>1. We're never going to be able to engage the Community and grow
the distro if we don't even try. And we aren't trying. <br>
</p>
<p>2. The way we are currently governing the Association and more
specifically the distribution is exclusionary not inclusive. If we
wish to grow the distro we need to change this 180 degrees. <br>
</p>
<p>3. I personally feel on the outside looking in as if "It's OK for
ben79 to do testing but he better keep his nose out of important
stuff". And bear in mind it doesn't matter if this is literally
true in this instance perception is everything. If there are
others feeling this way imagine the damage that has been done to
Association and distro.<br>
</p>
<p>4. Would it be possible that all of us, me included, find a way
to learn how to communicate with and initialize communications
with users, testers, people on forums and mailing lists,
publications, ect. in such a way as to engage and attract
participants and grow the distro? Currently we seem to be doing
the opposite. Surely there is some source of education on this. If
developers aren't willing or inclined to do this then we must have
someone to interact with developers and communicate with the
Community and the Linux public at large on behalf of and in
cooperation with our developer community.</p>
<p>Since I'm not privy to Council meetings how or where will I be
able to find answer to these important questions?<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Thanks,</p>
<p>Ben Bullard
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">ben79
--------------------
OpenMandriva-QA Team
</pre>
<br>
</body>
</html>