[Board] OpenSUSE Board Meeting - anti-patterns abound

[maplabs at light42.com]

Hi All - 

  Our prfoundly conscientious and skillful 'Live' Build Master Angelos / kalxas is at an OpenSUSE conf in Greece. 
I noticed they were having an OpenSUSE Board Meeting..  so I am watching now..  (I know very little about SUSE)

  To get background, I am reading the wikipedia pages on openSUSE and SUSE and lastly Novell.. 
  leading to an ominous mention of CPTN Holdings, and the responses from Stallman et al

  The whole history, and current situation, is full of painful chapters, and anti-patterns. It is just chilling

  
  Collatoral damage at OpenSUSE included atrophy of systems admin, breakup of communication channels, and 
whole abandonment of Marketing efforts; a wholesale forking of the main compnents by the for-profit corporation, 
and no further communication from them.. and more.. 

  Perhaps none of these things will ever happen at OSGeo, but if you want a litany of possible bad things to happen,
here they are front and center.. 

  OSGeo currently does not have the patent litigation problems that Novell was thrust into after being "crushed"
by Microsoft. It seems Novell bought SUSE and then folded its tech into it for customers, so SUSE had to bear the full
weight of Novell's patent and financial problems after Microsoft. 

  I trust that full force patent problems never cross *any* OSGeo projects..and these financial pressures.. 
 its just grisly to see ... 

  Anyway, sorry for the unhappy email, I try to be upbeat when I can.. I just had to tell someone ... 

--
Brian M Hamlin
OSGeo California Chapter