Summary about what the openSUSE Team @ SUSE is doing

openSUSE 13.1 is about to be Released (Nov. 19th) and I would like to share what the team I am part of is doing.

I joined SUSE in June 2012, almost 18 months ago. I haven't written much about anything during this time. And it haven't been because I hadn't time, but because I haven't have enough energy. I have received though these past months several requests to write a little about what I do at SUSE, so here we go....

The openSUSE Team is a good mix of long term SUSE employees and fresh blood, youth and experience, openSUSE and other distros background, on site and remote workers, people with management or commercial/customer support experience together with integrators and developers, people coming from R&D or product focus companies together with people with a strong community profile.... a very diverse (1 Taiwanese, 2 Czechs, 1 Dutch, 1 Serbian, 4 Spaniards and 3 Germans) and talented group. We also have trainees in the team. Having students is something I like because it helps any team to develop engagement skills.

The Team has as major focus the openSUSE distribution. It is element around which the whole project circles. It is the key point that sustain everything else in openSUSE. Obviously we put effort in other actions but we try that everything we do is directly related, have its roots, in the distribution, in the software. Obviously we are not the only force in openSUSE, not even the most numerous. There are hundreds (literally) of people that participates in this collective effort.

The team have a big impact since we are dedicated full time to work on the project, we have focused our activity in limited areas and we are fairly well organized. But in terms of effort, the rest of the community has a much bigger weight than my team... fortunately :-).

Those familiar with KDE will understand what I mean if I name Blue Systems work in the project today.

From the community perspective we have focused our action in two major areas:
* The openSUSE Conference.
* openSUSE news portal (marketing).

In 2012, like it happened before, SUSE took the lead in organizing the Conference. This changed in 2013. A group of contributors led by Kostas and Stella, reputed community members, organized it, opening the door for a new model within openSUSE.

SUSE role in the organization changed. Now we support the organizers in different tasks instead of leading the organization. For me, this is a relevant success story that should serve as example for many in the future. I feel very comfortable in this new role because the efficiency of our contribution has increased significantly. Organizing an event FOR a community is different than supporting the community in organizing THEIR event, right?

In marketing my team makes a significant impact by keeping the News portal as a reference point of information about openSUSE. We focus most of our action around the openSUSE Releases. We also link the innovation brought by SUSE into openSUSE with our community. We help SUSE Teams in marketing their work when it makes sense.

These two actions leave us little time for supporting further initiatives in the news portal. We do it once in a while though, not in regular basis. The situation in this regard is not much different than other communities I know. Keeping the main news portal up and healthy requires more people than usually is available. A more collective approach is what we all want. It is not an easy goal to achieve in any case.

So we basically have concentrated our effort in three main areas:

• What we call "the future". You will know more about it soon.
• The openSUSE Development and Release process, that will have openSUSE 13.1 as the main result, coming in a few days (November 19th).
• Community work. Specially around the openSUSE Conference and the news portal.

I hope this overview provides some answers to those of you interested in what I am up to lately. You can follow closely our actions through our Team blog, that has Jos Poortvliet as main editor and the whole team as authors.

This week I am participating together with other colleagues in SUSECon'13 and openSUSE Summit 2013. If you are in the Orlando Area, FL, US, consider coming. You won't regret it.

Two risks when working as employee in Free Software communities

I would like to point two risks that I have experienced myself and as manager throughout the last few years working in open environments (Free Software Communities) or projects involving interactions with them.

1.- In any community, there is so much to do...., so many interesting and innovative areas, so many disruptive ideas that can make a difference. There are so many projects that, with a little extra effort and some knowledge, could improve so much....everybody would notice the change, the difference, the impact.

When working as employee or as sponsored contributor you interact with so many people that needs help, that deserves to be helped, that you can learn from... that if you are not strong enough, after a while, without noticing, a significant part of your agenda is somehow determined by those who you help. But although you work on the same project that they do, share principles and environment, they not necessarily share your goals, your responsibilities, your duties, your motivations.

Spreading the energy through different areas, working under demand instead of having a clear control of your agenda, focusing on short term results instead of mid term ones, becoming a pillar for everybody else work in detriment of your own goals, of your own results, is a common syndrome I have suffered myself for a while, specially when working remotely from home, and I have experienced as manager of teams and projects.

What makes the action of any team (or professional) significant in any environment, and particularly in a open ecosystem like a Free Software community, is their ability to maintain during a long period of time a sustained effort focusing its energy in a single point. Only when the plan is achieved or after a proper analysis, jumping to another one is the right thing to do (in normal conditions, obviously).

The effect is even bigger when those points of focus are linked, serving a mid/long term purpose, aligned in a concrete direction. Then the impact is multiplied by the alignment of other people around you.

A key toward success is selecting targets with high impact, spreading its positive effect through the entire project. This multiplying effect requires a high amount of energy in early stages (activation energy).  The chances to create a significant and direct impact in several areas of any project at once are very low unless your team is big... and many not even then.

So the first risk is the loose of focus and its consequence is a reduced impact of the work done.

2.- Working in a Free Software community is one of the most rewarding experiences I have had in my life. I feel appreciated. My contributions counts. Many people is aware of them. I can work to make them more noticeable. The more popular my contributions become, the more people express me gratitude. The more relevant I become, the more people listen and interact with me...

This process is a spiral that you can learn how to climb in an effective way after some years. We end up learning how to play the game.

When you are a long term contributor and you are in charge of a key part of a project this is exactly what might happen. You arrive to the top of the pyramid, which is a comfortable zone. Too comfortable sometimes. If internal and external balanced forces are not applied, like competition, an adequate professional environment, external pressure/challenges... even the best professional can become too pleasant.

Reward can become a strong drug. It might elevate you in a bubble that, in the mid term, might have a direct and negative impact in the quality of the work you deliver. This is specially true for engineers/contributors that lead significant areas of a community project in which there are not enough contributors to create quality assurance procedures. Or are not applied to the leaders.

The second risk is the lose of "self demand" and its consequence is the reduction of quality of your work.

In my case, changing responsibilities and working environments every few years have helped me. I am not sure to what extend though. Others should judge it, I assume.

A champion instead of a leader.

I am one of those who actively supported Canonical in the past. Mark Shuttleworth succeed in linking his success to our success in Ubuntu's early years. I believe that customers/users are smart. Ubuntu became, still is, the number one distribution for good reasons.

In his journey toward success, Mark played hard, too hard sometimes. Not many put attention on it because the results were spectacular. Some did. KDE did and we suffered attacks for not following the trend. What some didn't understand back then is that there was a price to pay for Canonical's success. Mark made that price unaffordable for KDE. We have being around for over 15 years also for good reasons. We survived the early attacks to Qt, Nokia's disaster...  and obviously we were confident we would survive the explosion of Ubuntu and Mark's particular way of understanding leadership. We had our own roadmap. We still do and put quiet some effort on explaining it.

But we as a community were not blind or insensitive to what Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical were doing. The fact that Kubuntu is the number one distro among KDE developers and that Mark has been in several Akademy is just a reflection of the way most people in KDE appreciated what he represented. Canonical's effort, Ubuntu success, has been good for all of us, including KDE. I have no doubt about it. There were more things we shared than those that separated us. I still think this is the case nowadays.

I use an Android based phone. I am becoming more and more concerned about the embedded space. Linux based devices are becoming more and more popular but our freedom has not increased significantly. We need a strong action towards freedom, focusing not just in software but also in data and services. At this point I think that the problem has been identified. Now it is more about taking action. This is why in KDE we have been working on it for some time. And this is why, once more, KDE and Ubuntu might share a vision. We have another opportunity to work together to achieve it.

The situation today is different from the one in which Mark's leadership was born though. Today he has a history that can be evaluated and the battle ahead of us in the embedded space has very little to do with the desktop one. Mark's action will need to leave a greater room for other players, for other opinions, for other technologies. He cannot expect to be followed this time just because his vision is shared, just because his success is good for all of us. He still don't seem to understand that, for many, it is very important how success is reached.

But to me there is something else he needs to demostrate. Mark needs to create a profitable project, compatible with the Free Software spirit, so he can sustain his effort long enough, unlike he did in the past. The battle we need to fight in the embedded world will be long and expensive. Mark has demonstrated he is not persistent enough. I don't know if it was because he did not want to or he simply couldn't. He failed explaining his "turns".

Instead of avoiding the mistakes he made in previous years, he is digging into them. Instead of searching for allies in his new effort, he moves toward isolation. Instead of concentrating more on making his project sustainable, he is increasing costs by creating new technologies on his own and increasing the barrier to adopt them. Instead of leading us toward a solution, he is dividing those who should fight by his side.

He works toward becoming a champion, not a leader.

Most of my colleagues has nothing against Canonical becoming a champion of freedom in the embedded space. He is putting his own money and reputation in place. All my respect for that. But many of us do not understand the motivations and reasons behind Canonical decisions (Unity, Mir... ). We are not stupid. Mark simply failed in explaining them. So it is hard for me to digest his irritation when KDE colleagues do not support him as he expected.

Mark Shuttleworth has done and will do many relevant actions for increasing our freedom. He has created a great company full of talent and positive energy, capable of achieving a remarkable success once again. Ubuntu is still a great community, of course. I wish them nothing but luck in this trip through the embedded world. I just hope Mark understands AND assumes the consequences of the choice he made some time ago: becoming a champion instead of a leader.

Meanwhile, I would like to see no more of this "Tea Party" game, that hurts us all so badly. My colleagues at KDE do not deserve it. Ubuntu community and Canonical employees either. Even Mark Shuttleworth's reputation deserves better than what he is receiving lately. It is in his hands to revert this situation that he has created. I encourage him to, at least, not making it worse. We all have enough challenges already.

Insides about the new openSUSE Team at SUSE blog

Yesterday we created a new blog [1]to communicate to our community and readers what do we do as a team within the openSUSE project. It is a collective effort and it will be part of our duties to create and publish contents for it.

Its main goal is to talk about what we do so in the long run, it becomes a reference channel to follow up the activity of the group of people that SUSE employs to work full time in openSUSE.

Once of the discussion topics we faced was how to make compatible this blog, that has a corporate nature, with our personal blogs, our work in the community and the motivations of our team members. It is a very interesting topic since it is not trivial in practice to separate the information you handle as employee and your work within a community, in a case like our ours, employees that work for a community.

The easy approach is to say that, by default,  all what we do is public and treated as "community" work, or the opposite, but there are many corner cases, some of them relevant, that are not cover by these general approaches. Usually this topic has no relevance until something happens, usually bad. We need to understand that, as employees, we hold a responsibility that, if non properly managed, can potentially harm our company. It also can hurt us as professionals or affect our community. Often you are not a perceived as a regular community member only, but as a company advocate/representative too.

As a manager, I have to make compatible the community interest, the personal interest of the people under my responsibility and the company interest. In a company like SUSE, specially when talking about openSUSE, conflicts are small in this regard. We are a very open company in general and in my area in particular. I am glad of being part of a company that understand Free Software.

But under certain situations, nobody is out of risk. I even face this limitations being the KDE Treasurer. Being open is one thing and publishing all the information is another one. Obvious in theory but....where are the limits in practice? Who should take care of ensuring those limits are respected? What measures should be taken to satisfy all parties interest? When managing information, how to be fair with your community, yourself and your company at the same time? 

It is impossible to clearly define how to react in every case, what things should be kept private and what things don't, how to deal with the information you get as an employee but should be publish as part of your everyday activity within the community....

But what is possible is to create a clear field in which the people involved can move as freely as possible, making sure that some processes are put in place to avoid harmful mistakes. But above all, you have to rely on people, train them and be close to them so they understand the risks and the possible conflicts. Experience usually helps a lot in this field.

Behind this team blog, there are some processes that try to answer some of the previous questions and concerns, reducing the risk for the company and the authors but, at the same time, keeping the spirit of our work and goals: being open. I will talk about the concrete measures in a couple of months, when we get some conclusions about their efficiency.

I hope you will find the blog interesting.

[1] Link to the blog: https://lizards.opensuse.org/author/calumma/

Are you a senior KDE developer? Join openSUSE Team at SUSE

openSUSE Team at SUSE is looking for a senior KDE developer that is willing to join the company to work on openSUSE distribution and customer products where KDE technologies are present.

As those of you who are closer to KDE and/or openSUSE know, Will Stephenson has been leading this area the last few years. He is now facing new professional challenges within SUSE so we are looking for somebody that coordinates the openSUSE Team efforts related with KDE together with the openSUSE community, upstream and other SUSE Teams.

Our default openSUSE desktop, KDE, is obviously a relevant piece of our puzzle. But beyond pure KDE work, the selected candidate will also work in other areas of the distribution and will play an important role as openSUSE/SUSE advocate in technical forums.

openSUSE currently ships other desktops too so it will be important for the selected candidate to drive high levels of cooperation with the openSUSE GNOME (and others) team and upstream in cross-distro development efforts.

As a preferred choice, we are looking for a KDE developer willing to move to our Headquarters in Nuremberg, GE or to our office in Prague, CZ.

If you are interested, please check the opening details and send your CV through the SUSE Careers website. Links to your contributions to KDE and contacts for references are welcome.

In a more personal note......

Will, thanks for standing strong and work hard for openSUSE and KDE. Good luck in your new position.

Distribution hacker wanted: join the openSUSE Team at SUSE

openSUSE Team at SUSE is looking for a hacker willing to work on the openSUSE distribution with us. You can find the details of the job opening at the SUSE career website.

So we are looking for a software engineer with experience in a Linux distribution or a recognized upstream project, that wants to work full time in our distribution and enjoys being part of a community effort. 

He/she will work in English and attend to community events so some international traveling should be expected. We would like to increase our team located at SUSE offices in Prague (I love Prague), although Nuremberg/remote work are also options.

If you are interested, apply through the SUSE career website. Please do not forget to provide us links to your code and references if you have them. There are many other interesting openings at SUSE for senior and junior professionals, specially software developers. Put an eye on the Career page at SUSE website.

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.