Job opening for an artist/graphical designer at openSUSE Team at SUSE

openSUSE Team at SUSE is looking for an Artist / Graphical designer who help us in two main areas:

• The openSUSE distribution
• Different artwork needed for the project like merchandising, banners, etc.

This work will be done together with the openSUSE community so, besides good technical skills, it will be welcome previous experience in FLOSS communities. We have at SUSE several senior graphical designers, so the candidate will work in coordination with them too.

The candidate might work in Nuremberg, Prague (preferred) or even remotely (if you have previous experience working this way). Must be available to travel internationally three to four times per year, beside some regular visits to our offices in Nuremberg, where most of the openSUSE Team at SUSE currently works.

We are an international team so English is a requirement. Other languages will be welcome. The candidate will give talks, presentations, workshops, etc. so good communication skills will be also required.

We are looking for somebody that can join us soon since we would like to begin working on our release, to be published this fall, as soon as possible.

If you are willing to work at SUSE for openSUSE, please send us your CV through our career website. Please include external and internal (SUSE/openSUSE) references, if you have them, along with links or examples of your work.

If you have further questions, I would be happy to answer them.

2012 for KDE: the financial perspective

2012, a great year for KDE

2012 has been an important year for KDE from many perspectives. KDE e.V. turned 15 years old, Nokia finally quit Qt and a new ecosystem lead by Digia is laying on KDE to get mature. We have published our Manifesto, that is the result of long internal and very interesting conversations (I wouldn't call them discussions) about who we are, how did we get here and what we want. ALERT, out first experience in EU R&D projects, is now a reality. KDE has broken every record in the GSoC program, our KDE 4 series is getting mature and attention is coming back little by little to our software since users are understanding that we are delivering what we promised. Plasma is way more than a crazy idea and now many people perceive how powerful can be, not in a few years, but in a few months.

Applications like Krita, Calligra, Dolphin, etc. are getting more and more popular and others, that lost track in the past, like Kontact, are recovering the favor of many users since improvements and better integration with Akonadi and Nepomuk (semantic desktop), are becoming obvious. We feel that more and more people recognize us as a key member of the Free Software ecosystem, not just for our software, but also for our commitment with freedom and our well desired reputation as serious and stable organization.

Financial situation

2012 has been the year in which Nokia showed us once again that corporations can become your best allies, but also that their commitment with freedom and specific technologies are strong only as far as they are compatible with their strategy, which  can vary quiet fast. Once again, KDE has shown others that strong principles are a great base for not just surviving, but digesting changes.

Our economic model, like many other FLOSS community projects, was based on the support of big corporations that invested in us as R&D environments (they were interested in our technologies), as cheap talent ecosystems (recruiting well formed young developers) and as branding feeders (investing in community projects has positive effects in company reputation).

But that support to upstream project, specially to desktops, from big corporations, has been reduced the last few years for different reasons. We are not the next year big thing in the desktop/mobile space anymore and that have a reflection in our financial situation. Many of those who have supported us in the past, link success to market share. That has never been our battle but, we did very little to fight against that wave. It was profitable.

So our past economic model, is drained and we need to adapt ourselves to a new field in which SMB (Small and Medium size Business) and individual support must become more relevant. Since previous Boards made a good job, we can face today those challenges with little risk, in financial terms, taking the required time to make the internal changes that, if we do them right, will define our future in this area the following five years. As simple as that.

This model change will take some time. This 2012 we have taken relevant decisions and some more are coming in 2013. Results must become clear in 2014. This is a very tough sector and it is very risky to make plans, but I have faith in the path initiated in 2012. Many Free Software projects around us are growing like hell. We have to catch up a little, yes, but we have been here long enough to understand that running is not always the fastest way to get to the finish line... and frequently not the healthiest.

2013 goals

Our major goal for 2013 is to get take more steps toward sustainability, in a very volatile environment.

How do we want to achieve this from the financial perspective?

There are two main work lines:

1. Reducing our exposure to market changes.
2. Becoming a more flexible organization.

In this journey, we will need everybody's support. As a technical community, finances haven't been a priority for our members. This do not have to change in the future since KDE e.V. is here to support KDE community. Just a little more collective focus will be needed. More communication effort from our side, as Board/Organization, and from those involved in this area, will speed up the process. We are already working on it.

I feel lucky of playing a key role in KDE these days. I am having fun and I am optimistic about our future in the financial area. If during 2013 we confirm the switch we began this year, we will have a good platform for growing healthy and strong the following years.

How can you help us?

If you are a KDE community member, please consider joining KDE e.V. If you are simply a KDE user or fan, you can get involved in our project as contributor or, if you do not have time to invest, please consider supporting us economically through our Join the Game program. KDE financial activity is summarized in our Quarterly Reports, you can download in .pdf format. 

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.