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List:       opensuse-factory
Subject:    Re: openSUSE Release Engineering meeting 03.05.2023 - MicroOS KDE
From:       Sarah Julia Kriesch <ada.lovelace () gmx ! de>
Date:       2023-05-14 16:22:12
Message-ID: trinity-1f8f004a-518d-42c6-b9de-75f0ec60ba19-1684081332266 () 3c-app-gmx-bs71
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> Gesendet: Sonntag, 14. Mai 2023 um 13:51 Uhr
> Von: "Richard Brown" <rbrown@suse.de>
> An: factory@lists.opensuse.org
> Betreff: Re: openSUSE Release Engineering meeting 03.05.2023 - MicroOS K=
DE
>
> On 2023-05-13 09:40, Eric Schirra wrote:
>
> > A user base, as the name suggests, lays a foundation for the commercia=
l
> > product. Microsoft has mastered this like no other company.
> > So if the developers keep to themselves and don't focus on increasing
> > the user
> > base, sooner or later the commercial sector will feel the effects.
> > So, the more openSUSE users, the less users who support SLES at work.
> > Thus
> > SLES has sometime no more e relevance. I have made the experience that
> > if you
> > want SLES products, you have to fight for it. That used to be
> > different.
...
> Again, the statistics suggest there is no such relationship.
> SUSE's SLE sales have grown many, many times larger than openSUSE's
> userbase, at rates much faster than any growth openSUSE's userbase may
> have seen.
>
Wow! The number of SLE users have been growing after the recognition, that=
 it is wrong to reject possible customers and partners?
That is no surprise. Many escalations were required to achieve a better op=
en source community feeling in your headquarter town.
Sometimes I pitied your crisis Manager. In the same time you did your defa=
ult "marketing only" presentations with the goal to keep all the knowledge=
.
I can say, that you can not receive any new Contributors on this way. The =
reason is, that nobody knows the background and how to develop on your sof=
tware
until you give some hints. The SUSE user base would be bigger, if you all =
would be allowed to represent your knowledge and your products.

Your competitors have received more new customers than SUSE - or better sa=
id - they have received your rejected customers.
I can be happy, that I have received a point of contact within SUSE, if su=
ch a situation would happen again.

> This has included SLE sales growing when openSUSE's userbase has not.
> Talking to SLE customers, very few cite openSUSE as a reason they chose
> to buy SLE.
> And, very few customers have used the new Leap > SLE migration path.
>
Yesterday I thought a little bit about your principles, that Developers sh=
ould be the users.
If you transfer your statements from yesterday to SLE sales statements, th=
en your growing number of SLE Developers have to be your customers.
I know only one company, who has paid their own products for their own emp=
loyees, that they can be paid afterwards. But that can only work with addi=
tional
external customers.

> So really, no, you cannot make a strong argument that SUSE needs to
> invest in openSUSE's userbase for it's business.
> SUSE will invest in it's userbase.
> openSUSE needs to invest in it's contributor base to keep itself
> sustainable.
>
If you do not invest "knowledge" and code sharing into the openSUSE user b=
ase or any other community for receiving new Contributors,
then you are the single Contributor and you can call your code closed (ope=
n) source.
I think back to a time, where you said, that openSUSE Developers should fi=
x their own found bugs and develop their own wished features.
After following this thread, I can say, that you are in exactly this wishe=
d situation now. You have received a reputation and you are the Developer
without sharing the required knowledge. Then you have to fix all for your =
own.

Best regards,
Sarah
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