As you have probably already read, the openSUSE Election Committee has taken over and finalized a process and page about the upcoming openSUSE Board Elections. These are drawn on the preliminary work of the current Board and the community itself, through the mailing-list discussions and IRC meetings held in the past months.

It’s official: the openSUSE project Guiding Principles are now in force. The Guiding Principles are a framework for the project and give everyone a clear view of who we are, what we stand for, what the project wants and how it works. The Guiding Principles document was created by the openSUSE community and is embraced by Novell - the founder and largest sponsor of the openSUSE project.

Of all the community distributions, probably the least known is openSUSE. After two and a half years, the distro is not only still working out details about how its community operates -- including how its governing board is elected -- but also struggling to come out of the shadow of its corporate parent Novell, much as Fedora has emerged from its initial dominance by Red Hat.

Some Novell developers, who were also contributors to the OpenSUSE project, were laid off by the company. This has caused some other contriburors to apparently ask the OpenSUSE board about the future of the project.

The election committee announces the three new members of the openSUSE board:

After consideration of the project discussion I discussed the feature request
further with the openSUSE Board and other leaders within the openSUSE project
and came to the decision to follow the request: we will default the radio
button to KDE in the DVD installer.

The project chair has appointed Red Hat employee Colin Walters to the board. John Poelstra begins the year with open feedback to the board's work.

The GNOME Foundation Board regretfully announces that Jeff Waugh will be stepping down from the board in order to focus on work and other projects. The board thanks Jeff for his years of service to the board and the community, and wishes him success in his future work both inside and outside of GNOME. Jeff leaves big shoes to fill.

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