Another opening in openSUSE Team at SUSE

A few weeks ago I published in this blog the general requirements of the opening for my team at SUSE. I come here again with another description for another opening we have for the openSUSE Team at SUSE. The basic requirements are the following:

We are looking for a web developer, preferably with experience in Ruby - RoR (although other languages frameworks are also valid), that have worked on customer oriented projects. He/she must be familiar with popular Free Software data bases, control version systems, bug tracking tools, etc.

Since this team is very community oriented (20% of the working time will be related with engagement activities), is interesting that the candidate have a FLOSS community background.

The candidate will need to represent the team or openSUSE project in events, giving talks, participating in training sessions, meetings, etc. He/she must have good communications skills. Experience in international community oriented events is a plus.

The position is located in Nuremberg, Germany, although only English is required. Depending on the candidate’s experience and origin, it is possible to move back to his country to work remotely after 18-24 months, having to travel to Germany a few times a year.

In general, SUSE hires people from all over the world. We usually help those who are from outside the EU to get the work permit to work in Germany or Prague. But since we need to fill the position as soon as possible, it will be a plus, not a requirement, if you are a EU citizen or already have permission to work in a EU country. The position is also open for SUSE employees from US, Taiwan, China or other countries.

As a mentioned in a previous post, SUSE are growing and has a very good combination of a hacker and customer oriented atmosphere. The openSUSE Team at SUSE is formed by employees that work full time in this community project, which I think that it gives the position a plus for those who enjoy interacting with contributors and professionals in a learning and innovative ecosystem.

Finally, if you apply for one or our openings but you better fit in another one, or there are several good candidates for a single position, take in consideration that each selection process is not isolated. So escalating through a process for any opening, increases your chances to succeed in another opening for a different department.

• Apply to the opening
• Apply for other openings
• Further information about openings at SUSE

Applying to the opening through the above link ensures that your CV will be received by me, so please follow it so we make sure your CV do not get lost in my Inbox. ;-)

Finally, I want to say that the Team Leaders at SUSE check every CV we receive through HR. But due to the high amount of candidates we usually have, we cannot send a personal answer to every candidate (through the HR Department). Only those candidates that get to the final step of the process received them.


This is probably not the answer that you deserve as candidate from us but we simply cannot handle it in any other way. So if you just receive the standard automatic response, receive my apologies.

Last months

Last four months have gone fast, really fast:

• Akademy-es in Zaragoza
• Flying to Berling to work on KDE eV economic report and LinuxTag
• Moving to Nuremebrg
• Begin to work as openSUSE Team Lead at SUSE
• Prepare my Akademy keynote and my talk about KDE Connect
• Develop and present the economic report during KDE eV AGM plus Board elections
• Complete the administrative work derived from relocation
• Flying to GUADEC
• Looking for a flat and moving.

and working, of course. All of them time consuming, but specially, vital energy consuming. So this August I've been trying to cool down a little and go back to routine, now that I have my flat (how important is this step, right?).

Meanwhile, at SUSE.....

the openSUSE Release team, together with the community, have managed to release 12.2 RC2 on time. This could be no news for openSUSE users and supporters. But for us means that we are delivering even tough we are in a transition phase, and despite the fact that we are reducing the pressure over the Release Team instead of increasing it. Delivering on time is always a good sign.

12.2 RC2 is usable so, if you are a developer or an openSUSE power user, consider installing it and giving us feedback. No major bugs should be expected but your reports are very valuable to us. I already have it in my laptop and, except for little details, it works as expected. If you prefer to wait until September 5th, you will be able to install the fresh 12.2. openSUSE Team at SUSE is finishing these days the last few tasks, specially related with generating the Gold Master and creating marketing material.

This month of August openSUSE Team is also putting energy into the openSUSE Conference organization. As you probably know, this is not a normal event. We host four events in one

• Future Media
• openSUSE Conference
• Gentoo Conference
• Linux Days

so there is a lot to do, as you can imagine. Organizing Free Software events is something that follows me in every job I take, no matter where that is. I'm kind of getting used to it. Don't know if that is a good sign though.

openSUSE community in America has an important milestone in September at openSUSE Summit, the community conference organized right after the SUSE Conference in Orlando, Florida, USA. So if you live in South, Central or North America and like openSUSE, don't miss it. More than 50 people have registered already so it looks like is going to be a good opportunity to give a push to our community in North America.

So September and October are going to be busy months for me and the Team.

GUADEC 2012

I've been a couple of days at GUADEC in July. I realized that I know a lot of GNOMErs already, many more than I expected. It is one of the consequences of the Desktop Summit and having participated in GUADEC Hispana before. I had some interesting conversations with some GNOME developers and some SUSE employees. I had a lot of fun. GNOME is a great and mature community and they organize an awesome conference.

The organization was outstanding. Everybody agreed on that. Congratulations to the local team. Talking about contents, I am very interested in Tor project. If you have the chance to go through the web, don't miss it. It is a great one. They are interested in having GNOME as a platform for more people to take advantage of Tor. It is a great goal.

openSUSE Team at SUSE: we have an opening

As you know from a previous post, I recently joined SUSE as openSUSE Team Lead. After several years of great work, the team is now getting ready to face new challenges keeping the same basic goal: make openSUSE rock.

To achieve this task, we want a senior developer to join us.

openSUSE Team at SUSE is a multidisciplinary group of professionals that works in many different areas in constant evolution so learning is part of our natural process. We have a clear R & D focus. We will work in projects covering several different technologies, so we are looking for somebody that is open minded, not afraid to work with a wide range of tools.

The position involves mentoring. It won't be just about designing solutions, solving problems and delivering, but also about engaging new developers and motivate them. Our team have high exposure to the openSUSE community and internally at SUSE. We also work with other communities and companies. Therefor communication skills (with other engineers) is a relevant skill for this position.

openSUSE Team has members in other parts of the world so having experience working remotely will be a plus. The team is based in Nuremberg. So the new member will be located there and will travel to events a few times per year.

SUSE is now operating as an independent business unit of The Attachmate Group, it is growing and profitable. At openSUSE Team we are defining our action plan for the near future and we want this person to get involved in this process. So I think it is a great moment for joining us.


If you are a senior developer, care about Free Software, are a team player willing to help openSUSE and want to work in the open in projects with a great potential impact, getting a lot of exposure, consider applying to our opening. 

Akademy 2012: my story

Another Akademy is gone. This was a good one. Beautifully organized (probably the best one), nice city, good venue... Of course it wasn't perfect, but I've been in way more expensive events where things didn't go as smooth as in this Akademy. Thanks to the Akademy-team for the effort. I liked Tallinn. I'll be back.

I didn't attend to this Akademy in shape. As you already know, two weeks before the event, I moved to Nuremberg to begin my new job at SUSE. Going through the last step of the hiring process, packing everything and moving in just some days was challenging. Add to that finishing the economic report to send it to KDE e.V. members before the event, catching up with KDE Connect activities (and the talk) and finishing the keynote preparation and arriving late at night to the hotel.....it is easy to understand why my keynote wasn't as good as I would like to, and you probably expected.

I'll do better next time. Sorry.

By Sunday I felt much better and my KDE Connect talk was a little better. I explained the basics of the program and I could talk to several companies about it. Congrats to the ones that got an Akademy Award. They are well deserved.

And then Spain won the Eurocup. Oh man, what a feeling. After so many years without winning, these last six years taste like glory for football fans like myself.

I don't even remember what I did the day after. Probably doesn't matter. I will never forget the feeling of knowing we are the best ever.

On Tuesday we had the KDE eV General Assembly. I presented the economic report and the conclusions. I feel good about the presentation since I think I managed to give the message I prepared clearly. I got elected as Board Member so I'm not 'temporary' anymore :-) Congrats to Pradeepto too, who also was elected.

By Wednesday I was in shape, so BoF were smooth.

As usual, when you come back home from these events.....you are exhausted. I was, once again.

I would like to mention here what I already expressed during Nokia's/Qt talk at Akademy. First of all, my respects for standing in front of KDE contributors. These things are not easy. Others in the past didn't even show up. You not just did, but also gave explanations. Yes, the ones you had, but explanations at the end. Thank you. It has been an amazing journey and more is yet to come. We in KDE don't feel this is the end but a new beginning.

I liked to see together once again the KDE Spain crew. They (ups, we) are not kids anymore. We are getting more and more responsibilities within KDE. This is the result of many people's effort, but above all, is the result of Albert passion, hard work and vision. KDE Spain is nowadays not just the most mature KDE little sister, but is also economically healthy and growing, Bilbao is trying to be selected to host next year's Akademy....

Albert...thanks.

The results of the election for the new Board came during Akademy. Aleix Pol is now the new President. He'll be a good one. Congratulations Aleix...and the rest of the new Board members.

I will write soon deeply about KDE Connect and the economic report. 

I have a final request for sponsors, as contributor........

Dear sponsors, in Free Software communities, there are people like me, who do not code, but still have a little sensible heart that suffers while watching others during several days having lots of fun playing like kids with nice new toys (devices) they receive from you during events. 

New life, new country, new job, new community, new....

So yes, everything is new these days for me.

On Monday June 17th I moved to Nuremberg to join SUSE to lead a team that is 'under construction', that will follow openSUSE Boosters experience.In a few weeks I will be able to give you more details about our plans since at the moment I'm working on them along with some Boosters, other SUSE/openSUSE members and new people that is joining us. Obviously openSUSE community members will be the first to know.

So basically, I'm in a new city/country, working for a new company building a partially new team and I will be involved in a new community (openSUSE) .

On the personal side, I'm going through the natural process everybody that moves from one country to another goes. SUSE people is helping me and I have some friends in this city so I'm doing fine.

I will begin to learn German in a couple of weeks, after Akademy. It's going to be a tough task, I know. But hey, it is something I will bring with me forever, right?

I would like to thank SUSE for this opportunity and to my family and friends for all the support I've received the last few months so I could get to this point.

Now it is time to work hard and work smart.

Berlin as Free Culture innovation pole: an idea

In November 2011 I wrote a project for Saragossa city council to create there an innovation pole of Spanish Free software Communities. Two basic ideas were behind this project:

• Hosting in Saragossa the legalized communities that are established in Spain, so they could:
• Share facilities and services for to reduce expenses
• Increase the collaboration between them
• Develop a continuous program of activities in one place that could create enough energy to ignite local impact (a pole) collecting synergies from local organizations.
• Work together on attracting sponsors to cover expenses.

• Helping other non structured or legalized movements and communities to do so by giving them basic services needed at the beginning. After a fixed period, these new communities would become part of the initiative and contribute like normal members.

You can read details about that idea in the following blog post (there are links to other articles It is not 100% finished due to.....oh dear, as usual, lack of time)

I talked to Presidents and Boards from several local communities and initially liked the idea. Now the city Council, like every Public Administration in Spain, are concentrating in cutting down expenses so it seems the initiative will have to wait.

Last week I spent a few days in Berlin. KDE shares office there with FSFE. Other relevant foundations like Wikimedia, LibreOffice, etc. are placed there, know each other and have relations already. 

I was wondering if it would be possible to push such an initiative there. It makes sense to me. What do you think?

Creating an incubator of Free Culture organizations would be possible if the already existing ones join efforts and a local entity provide them (us) the facilities and initial support. We have the resources and contacts to make it sustainable and it would be easier to get sponsors to partially finance the structure needed.

Together we can go much further.

KDE Connect: becoming an official KDE eV program for organizations

During the last 3-4 weeks we have been testing if KDE Connect attract attention from different organizations. To do so, we have done the following:

• Make a presentation during  Akademy-es in Saragossa
• Talk to different organization representatives and KDE people at LinuxTag about the project to get feedback.

Both experience has been positive so we think we are now prepare for the following step, getting the ok from KDE eV to the Action Plan.

Back in February, I presented the project general design to KDE eV and we agree on keep pushing it,  creating a team and developing an Action Plan. After some work, it is time to discuss it. So within the Board of Directors first and then within the eV, we will discuss the proposal made by KDE Connect team to make sure KDE networking program for organizations is a success.

To reinforce the project, along with Akademy team, we have decided to organize a networking session during Akademy 2012, on Monday 2nd, during the afternoon, so organizations attending to our event can participate and get a clear idea of what KDE Connect pretend and how they can take advantage out of it.

If you are interested in attending please stay tuned to this blog or Akademy website. Participation will be free (of cost) but you'll need to register.

Thank you for your monetary contribution to KDE

This post is dedicated to everyone of you who contributes (or did) to KDE with donations, sponsorship or participating in any of our corporate programs we are currently running.

KDE publish a quarterly report where we include the major activities we do thanks to the money we receive from you. We also publish some numbers so we give you some information about how we are doing in terms of income/expenses. During the AGM, the Treasurer presents the report from the previous year and some numbers to give KDE eV members an idea of how the current financial year is going. To that AGM we invite Patrons and supportive members, so they can also have direct information and can ask questions.

But I would like to go beyond numbers and actions, reports or cold analysis. I would like to point out how important is that money for many young students from countries that do not offer the opportunities we are used to in Europe or North America, for example.

For many of them, the economic support we offer them to participate in our activities allow them to become part of KDE. Attending to Akademy or any sprint means much more than just the opportunity to meet KDE developers. For many of them, the economic support we provide them allows them to access to a future avoided for most of their friends, impossible to provide by their families or educational system. It means a passport to a deserving future.

I've seen in the past as a KDE member first, as a Desktop Summit organizer later and now as KDE eV Treasurer, how relevant is that help we provide, how much they deserve it, how good use of it they do in general and how that benefits to KDE. But above all, I've seen how their lives have changed, how many opportunities brings for them collaborating with a Free Software project like KDE and what a great role we play as opportunity providers.

I'm very proud of participating in a project that really change people's life, specially to those that, because of where the live, they have very few opportunities to get what me and many others can get. And it is possible because of your support.

Thank you.

KDE as incubator and as an umbrella for other projects: KDE project definition

In KDE we discussed some years ago about who we were and should we define our selves as a project. In simple words, we came up defining KDE as the community the develop the software.

This could be seem as trivial, but in fact, it has a big impact in many areas beside marketing. We put in value our people and our relations, that mean, our ecosystem, above our technologies or our software. 

KDE is currently discussing another hot and relevant topic for the following years, with implications in many areas. We are trying to define what is a KDE project.

An obvious use case we are trying to give a good solution to is a project that is born in KDE and gets commercial success. KDE is becoming a great incubator for commercial activities run by KDE members, so we need to define a few, simple and basic rules to improve them without hurting the project. We have a huge potential in this incubator role.

But there is also another use case that, to me, could have even bigger impact on us. I'm talking about those project who are not KDE right now but could become part of our ecosystem in the future. To them, the definition we give to a KDE project and its implications are key for their possible future as part of KDE.

Our community is a great place to develop your ideas, to share, collaborate and to become successful from different perspectives, including commercially. We need to improve our role as business/project incubators and, at the same time, attract to KDE those projects who could be more successful under our umbrella than by themselves. There are many of those out there. Let's make it easy for them to join us.