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A proposed governance structure for openSUSE

2026-01-29 23:44:17

Jeff Mahoney, who holds a vice-president position at SUSE, has posted a detailed proposal for improving the governance of the openSUSE project.

It's meant to be a way to move from governance by volume or persistence toward governance by legitimacy, transparency, and process - so that disagreements can be resolved fairly and the project can keep moving forward. Introducing structure and predictability means it easier for newcomers to the project to participate without needing to understand decades of accumulated history. It potentially could provide a clearer roadmap for developers to find a place to contribute.

The stated purpose is to start a discussion; this is openSUSE, so he is likely to succeed.

[$] Sub-schedulers for sched_ext

2026-01-29 23:36:23

The extensible scheduler class (sched_ext) allows the installation of a custom CPU scheduler built as a set of BPF programs. Its merging for the 6.12 kernel release moved the kernel away from the "one scheduler fits all" approach that had been taken until then; now any system can have its own scheduler optimized for its workloads. Within any given machine, though, it's still "one scheduler fits all"; only one scheduler can be loaded for the system as a whole. The sched_ext sub-scheduler patch series from Tejun Heo aims to change that situation by allowing multiple CPU schedulers to run on a single system.

Security updates for Thursday

2026-01-29 22:33:18

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (java-25-openjdk, openssl, and python3.9), Debian (gimp, libmatio, pyasn1, and python-django), Fedora (perl-HarfBuzz-Shaper, python-tinycss2, and weasyprint), Mageia (glib2.0), Oracle (curl, fence-agents, gcc-toolset-15-binutils, glibc, grafana, java-1.8.0-openjdk, kernel, mariadb, osbuild-composer, perl, php:8.2, python-urllib3, python3.11, python3.11-urllib3, python3.12, and python3.12-urllib3), SUSE (alloy, avahi, bind, buildah, busybox, container-suseconnect, coredns, gdk-pixbuf, gimp, go1.24, go1.24-openssl, go1.25, helm, kernel, kubernetes, libheif, libpcap, libpng16, openjpeg2, openssl-1_0_0, openssl-1_1, openssl-3, php8, python-jaraco.context, python-marshmallow, python-pyasn1, python-urllib3, python-virtualenv, python311, python313, rabbitmq-server, xen, zli, and zot-registry), and Ubuntu (containerd, containerd-app and wlc).

[$] LWN.net Weekly Edition for January 29, 2026

2026-01-29 09:01:12

Inside this week's LWN.net Weekly Edition:

  • Front: PostmarketOS; LKRG 1.0; Fedora elections; EROFS, NTFS, and XFS; Fedora and GPG 2.5; BPF kfuncs.
  • Briefs: curl bounties; GPG security; Guix 1.5.0; ReactOS turns 30; glibc 2.43; Rust 1.93; Xfwl4; Quotes; ...
  • Announcements: Newsletters, conferences, security updates, patches, and more.

Mourning Didier Spaier

2026-01-29 02:41:25

We have received the sad news that Didier Spaier, maintainer of the blind-friendly Slackware-based Slint distribution, has recently passed away. Philippe Delavalade, who posted the announcement to the Slint mailing list, said:

Early 2015, I asked on the slackware list if brltty could be added in the installer; Didier answered promptly that he could do it on slint. Afterwards, he worked hard so that slint became as accessible as possible for visually impaired people.

You all know that all these years, he tried and succeeded to answer as quickly as possible to our issues and questions.

He will be irreplaceable.

OSI pauses 2026 board election cycle

2026-01-29 02:13:39

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) has announced that it will not be holding the 2026 spring board election. Instead, it will be creating a working group to "review and improve OSI's board member selection process" and provide recommendations by September 2026:

The public election process was designed to gather community priorities and improve board member selection, while final appointments remained with the board.

Over time, that nuance has become a source of understandable confusion for community members. Many reasonably expected elections to function as elections normally do, and in fact, the board has generally adopted the electorate's recommendations. When a process feels unclear, trust suffers. When trust suffers, engagement becomes harder. This is especially problematic for an organization whose mission depends on legitimacy and credibility. [...]

OSI tried its experiment for the right reasons, but a variety of factors resulted in "elections" that are performatively democratic while being gameable and representative of only a small group, and we've learned from the results. Now we are making space to align our director selection process with our bylaws, to rebuild trust, and to develop better, more durable and truly representative participation in which the global stakeholder community can be heard.

LWN covered the previous OSI election in March 2025.