Annual Discussion with openSUSE Board: Adding a legal structure to openSuse
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openSUSE Conference 20191 / 40
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Videoconferencing
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:06
Right, yeah, thanks everybody for coming This is the sort of fun part of fun. Hopefully everybody's behind fun at the whole conference Yeah, so The regular and your sort of conference board meeting
00:24
Last year we had a whole bunch of topics and we kind of Rambled on about all of them for the better part of an hour and then had questions at the end This one is a little bit different because if you've been kind of keeping up with the mailing lists There's pretty much only one topic that's on the board's mind at the moment
00:40
this idea of a foundation or some legal structure and Yeah, we're gonna be talking about this now and please if you have any Thoughts comments questions as we go along the microphone is at the end is sort of always open And you know, we can kind of just work our way through it as we go
01:02
And axel, I think we said you would start explaining why with what we're thinking and why we're doing this so over to you now Yeah, we'll do thank you rich Yeah, welcome everybody to the board meeting to the question-and-answer session ask the board as Richard already mentioned
01:20
We spent a lot of time this year in Investigating whether we need a legal structure and if we need one What would be the ideal one so To spend some words up front I mean, we all know Zeus and open Zeus have common roots history and value
01:41
so we are basically sharing the genetics and we're also sharing the logo for the most part and I think this is a greater benefit a win-win situation for both of us, which we definitely want to keep So everything that we're doing here is not to separate us from Zeus it is
02:01
to gain more flexibility for The open to the community what we've noticed in organizing the last Conferences but as well and in sponsoring other projects or receiving money from sponsors It is an issue that the open Zeus a community
02:24
Has no legal entity behind it and if if there is a Company, for example that wants to sponsor us or we as a community sink This project is beneficial and we want to donate some money for it. We just can't do it at the moment Just for legal and as well for tax reasons. So the idea is now
02:46
Let's put a legal structure in behind of open Zeus And just to kind of add a little bit of extra context sort of from the SUSE aside, you know SUSE is you know keen and always trying to help open SUSE in these kind of things like taking sponsorship like arranging hardware and
03:04
you know providing services, but You know just with the nature of you know, the fact it is a company, you know when dealing with other companies you know suddenly things like donations become way more complicated because you know An external company might not want to give SUSE or GmbH a huge chunk of money
03:21
And dealing with things like invoices and taxes, you know with the lack of an open SUSE legal entity gets Yeah gets complicated with that. So it's not a case of SUSE doesn't want to help with that. But just Because of the nature of the organization that it is it can't
03:41
so Yeah, I think the motivations we have already Mentioned partnering with our organizations out of SUSE receiving donations being able to give donations as well to other projects and So also what Richard mentioned in case we need some additional hardware some services something like that
04:01
we could easily sign a contract with another company to provide us the service even if it is on a on a free basis for us so that they are Charging their efforts and getting a kind of a donation received from our end. All this is currently not possible So we have event investigated various
04:21
Options various legal options. What could they be? First of all a so-called foundation in German a stiff tone This is a model and different legal or local legal Legislations was it the right word? I don't know. I'm not a lawyer
04:42
That other projects like for example the document foundation who's driving the development of LibreOffice have chosen a German one is the so-called if how and I ain't a dragon of fine. We've translated this now with an Association this is fairly simple thing to set up. You just need seven people
05:04
You pull a template From a Website from the the court website fill it in go to court and get registered Another option could be an umbrella organization. So that means we are joining
05:26
Organization like what are they called rich SPF or something like that? Exists to help either help provide these kind of services for open source projects or be like
05:42
Home for them more legally, right? Yeah. Thanks so in that case the umbrella organization would sign the contracts and Receive a fee from us. For example, I don't know what they're charging 10% of the donations or whatever and
06:00
option for We keep it as it is which is of course not the intention that we're having um to make a very very long and discussion short The proposal of the board is the so-called foundation stiffness model
06:21
the reason for this is The foundation based on its Set up on its rules is much much more stable Like the EV like the Eingertragen affine in the worst case
06:41
Just a construction but not far from reality we get a bunch of new members into the EV and they are suddenly changing the purpose of open-source from providing a community and develop a distribution to selling t-shirts or whatever and yes if they has a if they can get a qualified majority
07:04
They can do that and then open-source as such is gone And this is something that we strictly want to avoid we want to get some legal independence But we want to make sure that the structure of open-source and the purpose of is as a non-profit
07:20
organization dealing with free software keeps persistent and the ideal Legal form that we could found up to now is the foundation and From the the Sousa side of things, you know one of the One of the unique problem one of the unique aspects when like talking to Sousa about this is of course
07:41
Like we said at the beginning, you know, you know keeping that closeness and that relationship is sort of a key part you know both from the sort of the community and the board's motivations, but also from Sousa's and Looking at how other projects have done this, you know, there's there's lots of open-source projects out there that have an Eevee And you know, sometimes they have some of these problems with influence. Sometimes they don't
08:04
But no one really Has an open-source has built a foundation or built an Eevee in the open-source world in the circumstances that we're doing this you know normally it's a case of a project starting from the ground up and they need some legal entity just so they can Exist or they're forming their foundation or their Eevee in response to you know a
08:25
Nasty situation with their previous corporate sponsor and then and therefore the foundation is some lifeboat of independence to get away from you Know the nasty corporate entity the one of the things we have here is we want to stay close with Sousa Sousa wants to stay close with open Sousa and
08:41
But we we want the foundation for the purposes. We've been talking about How do you how do you model that? How do we Structure that so the foundation is is solid and stable in its own right and solid and stable You know with its relationship with Sousa basically, can we use this foundation approach to?
09:01
Codify into law the weird and wonderful and unique relationship we have with Sousa and that's kind of where we're investigating now and kind of why we've chosen this route compared to the others where you know, The yeah The the legal framework might be looser and therefore actually harder to kind of pin down the the key parts we want to keep
09:23
So one of the main benefits of a foundation over an Eevee for example is we can keep the way The open Sousa board is founded We can keep the way membership works the organization of open Sousa as it exists at the moment can basically stay as
09:41
It is and will continue to be as it is but we now have a legal entity behind us to support that which is Whereas if you go for an Eevee, there is rules about how the board is made how the members Made up and that's not necessarily what we're doing at the moment, which would be a big change
10:02
Yeah in terms of running both organizations and Eevee as well as a foundation they have similar Taxation and accounting rules, so we are not gaining a benefit from one or the other In terms of set up the foundation is slightly more effort But we can also take advantage there from the experiences that for example
10:20
The document a foundation has already made so they have already been preparing the ground with German legal authorities to set up a foundation for a free software project Right So my proposal is before we describe the potential next steps, what are your questions or remarks?
10:44
anybody Just to add to this discussion I have As you're probably aware. I've set up several foundations and Eevees in the cultural
11:00
sector in the Netherlands and My experience is also that if you indeed have a very singular focus in mind you want to do long term and especially also in keeping contractual relationship with upstream partners that a foundation is much more stable, but you see in the cultural sector is that
11:22
the Association model works for individual artists working together collaborating on certain projects But you very rarely see it for things like festival organizations or whatnot so I'm absolutely Convinced for you that you've chosen the right
11:41
Type of entity I also think that if you look at associations as they are called in the like the Drupal Association Which is a governing board for the Drupal community They are not actually an association in the rights in the legal sense They're a foundation and because they're a foundation they can actually organize and become receive sponsorships
12:05
And whatnot so just my two cents. I think you're doing the right thing and on a personal note I'm very happy to finally see this Materialized because I've tried to sponsor open to the conference before in 2013 I've managed to sponsor it don't ask me how it works and then in 2015 I organized open to the conference
12:27
So don't ask me how it works But it's it's awesome to see you and pushing this forward so compliments to the board. Yeah. Thanks hunt other questions Anna
12:44
You have said that at the moment is not possible that we donate money to other organizations, and that is not true I mean we are sponsoring at the moment many many many organizations many Conferences and we are doing it at the moment with success money, and we are speaking about quite a lot of money And then my question is in the moment we have the foundation
13:02
We will you say open SUSE will be able to these donations. I wonder with with money I mean is SUSE going to give us some or give open SUSE some budget, or how is it going to happen? What's happening with travel support for example? so I guess the
13:20
I guess the open SUSE being able to give to other people we already do but potential but that always goes through SUSE, so This would give the board the opportunity to go under these exceptional circumstances We want to give money to someone else where we haven't Without going through SUSE, which we haven't done in the past, but that's probably of all the reasons
13:45
We've given that being able to give money to other people is the far lesser Reason than being able to receive money So I'll speak in with two hats on first is current OMS is a treasurer we
14:01
Don't do a huge amount of Sponsorships of other projects We regularly sponsor gnome and KDE We have an arrangement with fedora where we sponsor each other
14:21
But it's not if we want to sponsor a project we still have to go through SUSE Get the approvals and there are times where we would like to sponsor a project or a community or an event etc that may be close to conflicting with
14:40
SUSE for whatever reason being a company with commercial requirements, etc. They have Much stricter sensibilities about some of these things whereas as a community We are much more relaxed about those Concerns so that that's one aspect. Yes, we do do sponsorship, but we could be better with the sponsorship that we're doing
15:07
my other hat on is as a sponsor of The OMS is a conference It's really complicated to get the money to sponsor the conference
15:21
Okay, so I've got budget I Want to provide that budget to open SUSE for the conference. It's really complicated because if We just give it directly to SUSE. It has to go through SUSE's accounting etc. Whatnot and then It could quite easily and has them
15:46
Long ago in the past got lost in Somebody's call center, etc. We have an arrangement at the moment for some Affiliates of open SUSE to be able to receive the money for us who can then
16:02
Do something in return? But That's not necessarily the best way of handling that money if we could provide that money directly to the answers a project The project can then go okay This part was very generous in their sponsorship donation
16:23
We only need to use X amount for the conference. We then have additional sponsorship Funding that we can then procure Either hardware or we can put additional funds towards TSP etc By doing a foundation
16:40
Etc. It's actually beneficial for SUSE from a financial perspective Being a non-profit etc. There are tax benefits, obviously so We're not saying that we don't want SUSE's money And we don't want SUSE to participate in any aspect of the project. We most certainly want them to participate
17:03
and it's not about independence This is more about less dependence and Somewhat more autonomy to make our own decisions to do things But still being able to keep that connection close
17:25
So I understand that it is it will be easy to operate but it's still any of what you say answer my question Where is the money coming from? Because if we have no money, then we cannot donate anything So, I mean have we already spoken something with SUSE? Will they give us some money? I mean nothing is set in stone with any of this because you know, it needs the agreement of the community
17:44
It needs the agreement of SUSE So, you know, we're at the stage now where we can talk about this and we've had discussions with SUSE kind of at this level the general ideas are Along the lines of at least some of the budget that SUSE currently has
18:01
For sponsoring OpenSUSE and the other stuff, you know around that Would almost certainly be, you know a regular donation to this foundation We don't have the numbers, you know, that's to be discussed and negotiated and figured out and given this model of Doing everything we're currently doing plus the new stuff
18:23
We don't necessarily need the numbers in the sense of you know, we do okay now we do sponsor stuff We make it work somehow So even if the foundation starts, you know with pretty much zero You know, we learn our lessons that way we develop it over time, you know, and then you know
18:40
SUSE could end up finding okay, well this now we can stop worrying about all the conference nonsense and make it the foundations problem So, you know the nice thing with this model is we can kind of organically grow it as we figure out how it works from from all sides Sorry So I'm kind of excited to see how this is going to play out, but there's a there's a couple of things that
19:02
I'm a little unclear about so the first one is Currently today with like for example, the OpenSUSE build service There is this list in the top right corner of all the sponsors and stuff I don't know exactly how that kind of arrangement thing is going but like Have you guys thought about like how we could either a make that a process that is a little bit more clear obvious or like
19:24
how to How to preserve that relationship because from what I understand SUSE provides the overwhelming majority of those resources there and how would we Make sure that we don't accidentally get into a situation where we're suddenly starved of all the things and you know
19:41
That's the those are the kinds of unpleasant things that nobody likes to think about but it's like you don't want to be put into that situation and yeah, so Okay, I'll take it Yeah with that kind of thing of sort of the concerns of you know stuff that SUSE is currently providing like the build service You know, is this gonna scare them away and whatever this is
20:03
You know, we've already started these discussions, you know, we had Thomas Ojakomo here on the first day of the conference You know, he came out with the dinner with the board for a dinner the night before the conference We basically gave him this presentation. We basically had this discussion, you know From SUSE's side, you know SUSE is committed to keep you know
20:21
Keeping OpenSUSE on this footing it is right now and helping it to expand So, you know these discussions are not scaring anybody at SUSE You know and you know, it's we're gonna that's why we're doing them this way to make sure that doesn't happen And with regards to The build service as somebody that has arranged donations to the build service
20:47
It's complicated having to go through the corporate structures, etc Because the legalese and all that sort of stuff having an independent having a less dependent entity Makes things much much easier and we can actually grow that sponsorship
21:05
There are companies and willing sponsors who want to sponsor the project But refuse to deal with going through a corporate entity because they don't Not that they don't trust SUSE
21:22
They just want to make sure that 110% of that goes to the intended recipient, which is OpenSUSE Yeah, and for example, we have one sponsor I can't remember exactly which one You know where that was the case So, you know You had all the usual negotiations about sponsorship and hardware transfer and then because they wanted to be absolutely sure
21:42
That that hardware is being used by OpenSUSE Additional contracts had to be signed up This hardware is being transferred to SUSE Linux GmbH for the sole purposes of being used by OpenSUSE And that gets complicated after all This really hopefully knocks some of that stuff down So that stuff becomes easier for all of us on SUSE's side and on OpenSUSE's side
22:04
Next question Yeah, first of all, I think this is a good idea because I was asking for it the last three years already You can help anytime The thing is that actually I guess I don't worry a lot about money and a lot about the donation thingy because
22:23
This unleashes a lot of potential, I guess The only thing I worry about or the only thing I would ask about is what will be the actually continuity in working thing So how will the board be set up in future? Will there be Some legal thing of the foundation or not?
22:43
Like will there be some written thing how the board will be set up? Is there already a draft or not that we can read? What will be the role of the chairman in this? Will this be still elected by SUSE or not? Will we all become members of the OpenSUSE Foundation or not? Are there rules? Yeah, yeah, yeah and so on
23:00
This is the important thing for me Yeah, you can trust me there will not be only one page of Britain Probably 110 or something like that At the moment, if you look at the wiki page for OpenSUSE there is the existing rules that we define how the board is elected There is the existing rules for how members or who can be a member that Richard needs to put back there
23:26
But basically the idea is without having gone through a lawyer yet, fundamentally we don't want that structure to change The chairman will still be appointed by SUSE I didn't ask for that by the way No, the board will still be voted by the members in the same way it is now
23:46
Those rules have a current clause that we can have a vote and half the members can change those rules So if it comes to a point in the future where we think the members think that should be changed They'll be free to vote on that and change that structure
24:01
But we're not planning on changing that in a drastic way To give you an idea about the next steps that we currently foresee, probably not complete First of all, this discussion will start it again or continue on the OpenSUSE project mailing list At a certain point in time then we will have a vote of the members whether they agree to go to a foundation structure
24:29
And then if we have a qualified majority then we will kick off the next step That means for example that we sit together with lawyers, with experts to discuss how the charter of the foundation should look like
24:44
And this charter will be phrased in that way that our position as NGO for free software will be more or less carved in stone As Simon already said, we will try to keep the rest as it is And as soon as we then have the foundation set up, the current members of the OpenSUSE project can opt in to go into this foundation
25:11
For legal reasons we cannot force you to go over there But you receive a mail and says yeah I want to go for the OpenSUSE foundation And then your membership is transferred one by one into the OpenSUSE foundation
25:26
And in parallel to that on the mailing list, I will be talking to SUSE about getting their support for helping logistically Things like assigning budgets to help us, for example maybe fund a lawyer so we have legal advice for this
25:43
Separate from SUSE's lawyers so there is no conflict of interest there After the charter of course, almost certainly we will have a second membership vote of actually accepting the charter So the community is going to be deciding the absolute fate on this But that's the covenant where we are today
26:04
Next question So you've explained why a foundation rather than an EV and that all makes total sense What about an umbrella organisation like LF or SPI, is that any So for the vast majority of them, we are too big and we'll create too much work so they don't want to
26:25
They all charge around a 10% fee and so we can probably, with the amount of money coming through We would instead be able to use that money to fund someone Or ask Susan Nicely to fund someone to do the management for us
26:41
So the board doesn't expect to have to sit down and run the foundation doing all the explicit work And to kind of give a personal add-on, I was personally quite fond of, even with those things Quite fond of looking at SPI, because that's what the Debian are using for example, and Arch
27:02
And SPI is a 503C charity in the States And in Europe, because lots of us are in Europe here, they have a chapter, a friendly association of ffii.ev Who basically do the same things, take money and they work together
27:20
Looking at this recently, we've suddenly realised that SPI and ffii aren't really talking to each other anymore And that kind of thing makes you realise that jumping from a situation of a good working relationship with one To then being totally dependent on another which you don't have as good a relationship with Let's push this a little bit towards the foundation idea
27:40
We can build something here that's rock solid on every side of the aspect So I also applaud this decision, I think foundation is a good way to go However there is some caveat, I was on a board of an organisation which used to be a foundation
28:01
Lots more than OpenSUSE of course, it was the ex-ORG foundation Which eventually ended up under the umbrella of SPI for a very simple reason The board was constantly struggling because we didn't have access to legal counsel
28:21
Unless we of course paid a lawyer, we didn't have access to accounting So it was always a struggle to file taxes International money transfer was really difficult, sometimes we didn't know how to do this And all of these things got resolved by going under an umbrella because they had all these services
28:45
And knew how to do all these things So maybe this is not an issue here And I certainly think that it's a better solution than an umbrella as well So one of the conditions that the board has put fairly firmly on going forward in this way
29:03
Is to partner with SUSE for them to provide us with someone who can help us do the accounting side Do the legal side, we haven't obviously looked at the specifics of what that will look like yet But one of the key points is we would like someone, we would like either SUSE to fund
29:22
Open SUSE to the level that Open SUSE can employ someone to do that Or SUSE employs someone on Open SUSE's behalf to take care of those things So that it is not something that the project has to worry about SUSE has quite a commitment to providing Open SUSE with everything they need
29:44
They haven't changed that commitment, that commitment's still ongoing And as we've discussed this with SUSE we've seen this is just an extension That sort of role is an extension of that commitment to provide Open SUSE with everything it needs
30:01
I have a question that's logistic of the money is understandable But what about the people, I mean that's the people that's working in SUSE supporting the project etc Is there any case that Open SUSE then will start to hire the people to work on their priorities Because they think that this or that project should go this way and SUSE think differently
30:27
Will there be some separation in this manner or not? That's a good question I'll let Andrew answer it
30:41
So there's an example of where Open SUSE has gone in a different direction to where SUSE's going And that's Cubic So you've got Casp from SUSE Open SUSE went down the Cubic route SUSE went down the Casp route And they're quite divergent
31:05
And that's a healthy competition if you will It's just like if you're two siblings, two brothers, two sisters, whatever There's always an element of competition trying to be better than the other one
31:23
But at the end of the day you're still part of a family And you come to an agreement ultimately at the end of the day in one shape or another I think for me this approach isn't, as I mentioned, it's not about independence
31:46
It's about enhancing the existing relationship Giving us a little bit more flexibility As an example in the past when the Document Foundation was founded SUSE were a founding member But due to commercial requirements and reasons they had to withdraw their seat
32:07
Now we wanted to ensure that we kept that relationship with the TDF Because it's close to everyone's hearts, etc So we had to work on getting somebody from the Open SUSE community
32:25
To stand in and replace the SUSE seat That's an example of where we have different views But we actually work together well And so even though we're doing something differently to what SUSE is doing
32:43
It actually benefits both of us And so I think it's not something that the board has actively discussed Being able to employ people to do certain things If we ever got to the position where we had enough money though And a future board wanted to look at it
33:00
I think it's important that the structure we set up Will therefore allow that And that's actually another reason why some of the umbrella organisations don't work Because they make it very hard to employ people But putting my SUSE chairman hat on now One of the first concerns raised by senior management at SUSE
33:23
As we discussed this This all sounds really good But SUSE wants to make sure that whatever Open SUSE creates there It's always going to be open for SUSE to be able to contribute to And that's going to be one of the things that we've already agreed We all want that So we don't necessarily know how we're going to reflect that into the chart
33:42
Of the foundation But that's definitely something that we aim to have reflected in the chart of the foundation So whatever happens The Open SUSE project is always there for SUSE to contribute to and be part of And there will always be a healthy working relationship with that
34:04
I would like to ask about what for me is the most important aspect Of the foundation that I haven't heard yet What happened with transparency It's going Open SUSE to make public what we are spending the money On if we have a foundation And when I say make public
34:21
I mean publishing who we are giving money to The amount, the date So completely public Without having the legal advice What I would say is that the intention certainly is to be completely transparent
34:44
There may be areas where some funding Or some line items can't be reported for legal issues But as an example we could show what's being spent on staffing
35:06
So if we have to employ a secretary or something like that for those things Then yes that would be shown in the accounting We can show like I say this is all without legal verification
35:22
I don't see an issue with showing how much is being spent on TSP How much is being spent on sponsorships But it's still needing to be discussed and verified But I'm going to give my personal view anyway One of the things I'm really excited with this is the ability to make a lot of this stuff
35:41
Which we just can't make transparent now way more transparent If you look at the examples out there with things like how KDEEV do it Which is kind of somewhat narrow You see the big bins of what KDEEV is spending But not more compared to like the TDF where it's a little bit more extensive I would personally want us to lead to more sort of the TDF's example
36:03
Of really pushing the transparency as far as we can legal advice permitted Yeah so not exactly legal advice here But in the Netherlands we have a special tax exemption status for foundations
36:21
It's a foundation for doing let's say useful projects in communities And they have very clear rules and regulations About what you must report on in your annual papers And that's pretty much as transparent as you can get it
36:41
So if the foundation OpenSUSE is aspiring for once to have that kind of tax breaks Then you automatically end up being quite transparent in basically anything There are certain areas at least in the Netherlands in which you can Avoid having to like name sponsors by name if a sponsor doesn't want that
37:04
But then you have to address this to the tax service directly Then you don't have to publish the name of the sponsor in your annual reports But you have to inform the tax authorities on that procedure So by definition this will be much more transparent
37:21
Than it ever can be when integrated in a company And there's rules for that too Of course I was not speaking about the things that are illegal I mean if you cannot publish something you cannot But for example publish So saying how much money you spend in conference I mean that you tell me you spend 10 000 euros in conferences Absolutely nothing
37:41
And I don't think it will be illegal to say what conference And how much amount of money we are giving every conference we spend So I think that is the kind of transparency I was speaking about So I mean of course you employ a secretary I don't want that you tell me the name I don't need that But that we are spending that amount of money on personnel
38:03
Let me share the example of the TDF All the letters are published Obviously there are some numbers that are aggregated Because you can't show how much you are paying a particular employer for example But everything is available
38:21
You can go on the website on the foundation section of the website And you can download the lectures And then you can see how much is spent for the conference For the annual conference How many donations the foundation is receiving
38:41
So you can obviously see everything And if you have time you can also do the math And understand where the money is going In any case if you don't want to deal with the spreadsheet Or if you are not an expert in budget
39:00
And it's not something really immediate to understand and to read For example TDF is producing an annual report With all the details about the activities done by the community And there is also the financial part That describes how the donations are spent
39:22
Which are the plans for the next year So you can have everything Obviously we need to discuss the details for the Open Source Foundation But the document foundation is a foundation that is a German one in Berlin So probably will be something similar
39:42
But that it is possible to do I'm pretty sure So my question is, is it going Open Source to go in this direction Or try to make public everything that is possible? Yeah absolutely This one is the idea Obviously I'm not a legal but I'm the chairperson for TDF So I saw the details on that side of the foundation
40:02
And I can answer that it's possible So why not to go on this direction? This one is the idea A related bit of experience I guess I've been involved in running Linux Conf.au in Australia one year
40:21
And that's put on by Linux Australia Which is an incorporated association in Australia Which tries to be as transparent as possible about all things And so LA will publish figures for how much it spends when it runs conferences It gives community grants to people that will say how much we spend on grants and things
40:41
And it will be as transparent as it can be about all those things So all of that gets released somehow But where it gets tricky is money received as sponsorship for conferences that it runs Because if you've got say Red Hat and SUSE and Ubuntu All sponsoring the same conference and all appearing at the same level of sponsor
41:05
They may actually have paid slightly different amounts of money each Depending on exactly what they negotiated with who was running sponsor liaison And so the organisation can't say individually How much each sponsor of a given level contributed Or we would piss off our sponsors
41:22
But we can say as a whole how much was received So I don't know if that's sort of an example of the sort of tricky things you can have With wanting complete transparency but not being able to get as close as you can if you like Next question from anybody? Comments? Feedback? No? Yes? No? Okay
41:51
So what do we have next? One thing I would like to point out is
42:01
That we as a board are presenting this idea but we need all of you I've been around for 15 years in the SUSE and Open SUSE communities And I've seen this discussion before and not just a single time And the last times it didn't work because it was mainly because
42:23
We as a community did not step up and do things It can't be done by the board on its own We need your input, we need your feedback So please help out if this community is dear to your heart
42:44
Yep and yeah that's it so thank you very much Christian always has some more things Someone last thing in the board meeting so I had a bet with the board like Do you manage to send out all the meeting minutes until the conference?
43:02
If I would have managed that then yesterday you would have seen me with a green head So that you have something to laugh about me And then I thought let's turn that bet around And we have exactly one person who has to send out minutes from March Here's your hat Thank you very much
43:24
Thank you Yes Well that's that's now up to you Thanks So all right thanks for being here The next part is a giveaway of a Tuxedo laptop
43:44
So if you could put your hand underneath your chair You might find a 3D printed Kiko Anybody? There might I mean it might be around you you can check
44:18
It's a distraction
44:24
Anybody? Really? I wonder if it dropped 3D? Well I'll just see a mad rush it's somewhere in that area over there
44:43
Kinda Kinda near Taped to the bottom right in the front Look at that There we go Come on up here I don't know anything
45:02
So this lovely gift is sponsored to us from Tuxedo Computers What model is it? Oh okay so yeah but it's a brand spanking new 15-inch laptop from Tuxedo With a customized back monitor full of chameleons apparently
45:21
I haven't actually seen it yet so if you wouldn't mind opening it up Because I'm curious how this looks too Because Tuxedo now is selling Yeah selling OpenSUSE laptops And this is the first one with a nice customized screen that I've seen
45:41
And it's all incredibly well packed Yeah