Remarkable Year 2018 for openSUSE Indonesia Community

Year 2018 is a remarkable year for the Indonesian openSUSE community. There are quite a lot of our achievements as a community that make us proud. As a long time person in this community, I feel that there are quite a lot of young people who can be role models for future generations. Even though the dominance of "you again" cannot be denied, because the same people are also activists in BlankON, LibreOfficeID, Glib, and other communities, it does not reduce my admiration for their militancy towards the spread of FOSS use in Indonesia.

One of openSUSE community friend once said to me, the first step is the most difficult. When I started using Linux in 1997 no one used it at my workplace. I have been using Unix for about 2 years and it happens that many GNU software is also used on both operating systems so the commands are not so weird for me. But it is very difficult to find people to have direct discussion at that time. At present the obstacles that I felt before seemed to be gone. There are many places for people to ask as long as there is intention.

It is also quite encouraging about the openSUSE translation. Unlike some other language versions, which are some of it translated by SUSE, the translation into Indonesian language is purely community work. Many thanks to the translation team, I have to name a few here, Arif Budiman, Kukuh Syafaat, and "primbon ijo" (green sacred book) bot manager, Yan Arief. Of course thank you also for all members of the translation team, there are 30 people. I don't mention them one by one, nevertheless you are all great 🙂.

There are some people who were accepted as openSUSE members in 2018, which I remember were Kukuh Syafaat, Dhenandi, Estu Fardani, Yan Arief. Some more people have applied for membership registration applications, I am sure they are eligible, and just a matter of time to be approved. If you are interested, please submit by following the instructions on the wiki page.

The saddest day for the community in 2018 is when we lose Muhammad Rafi in February 2018. I do not know him closely, but I've met him a couple of times, on the August 2017 Bekraf Habibie Festival, openSUSE 42.3 release party and some other events. On that occasions I knew him as a passionate and very humble young man. All our prayers for the late Rafi.

On March 23-25, ​​2018 Indonesia openSUSE Comunity / openSUSE received an invitation to open a booth at the Indonesian LibreOffice Conference. Thank you to the LibreOffice Indonesia Community for giving us the opportunity to participate in the event. openSUSE has always supported LibreOffice since the start of the project. Furthermore, please read how go-oo has been stopped and integrated into LibreOffice.

On May 21, 2018, we made a ticket in openSUSE progress to improve the status of community-managed repos to become openSUSE official mirror repository. On May 22, 2018, Per Jessen, one of the openSUSE Heroes Team members replied and said our repo officially entered the official openSUSE mirror repo. Hopefully this can help provide a fast and up-to-date update for the Indonesian openSUSE community.

openSUSE Leap 15.0 was released on May 25, 2018 during openSUSE Conference 2018 in Prague. KLAS Surabaya was the first to hold a Leap 15.0 release party in Indonesia on June 2, 2018. Thank you Darian Rizaluddin and friends for the initiative. We can count on you 🙂. In collaboration with Glib, openSUSE Indonesia also held a release party in Bogor on July 1, 2018. You are all cool!

openSUSE.Asia Summit 2018 was held in conjunction with GNOME.Asia Summit 2018 and COSCUP in Taipei 11-12 August 2018. In 2018 there were quite a number of colleagues from openSUSE Indonesia Community who attended the event both as speakers and participants. Good to you all. If you want to go abroad and to be paid up to 80% of your travel cost, don't hesitate to join the community and submit a proposal, who knows if you are selected 🙂.

During openSUSE.Asia Summit 2018, registration for Call for Host for a similar event in 2019 also opened. India and Indonesia volunteered to become candidates for the host. Finally, after the voting was held, on October 5, 2018 Bali, Indonesia was appointed as host of the openSUSE.Asia 2019 Summit.

The core committee for openSUSE. Asia Summit 2019 has already started the preparation work, there are Kukuh, Dhenandi, Ary, Yan Arief, Estu, Rania, Rifki. They have conducted a survey in Bali and the plan is openSUSE.Asia Summit 2019 will take place in the Information Technology Department, Faculty of Engineering, Udayana University in October 2019. Thank you for Putu Shinoda, our community member who also a lecturer in Udayana University who has been willing to become the host. The committee will definitely need a lot of help and support, and awaited the participation of all the Indonesian openSUSE community members.

The Indonesian openSUSE community contributes to the design of mugs for openSUSE GSoC mentors. There are 3 people who submitted the designs, Ahmad Romadhon (Rania), Pramasta, Tamara. Pramasta's design was finally chosen. Aris Winardi also made a poster for the openSUSE Board Elections that will be held in February 2019. Thank you all.

There is one thing in 2018 that Indonesian openSUSE community cannot fulfill, namely participation as student for Google Summer of Code under the openSUSE organization. I and Ana (openSUSE Board member) since 2017 have planned to promote GSoC to attract more students from Indonesia to this event. Unfortunately, from 3 people who expressed their interest in 2018 they could not go further. I noticed the weakness of our young people was not to start by doing research on the project in the first place, even though the openSUSE project that is included is very open, it can be seen on github! Also they're waiting until the last seconds to submit the proposal. You should prepare as early as possible, do PR if you see an opportunity for improvement, make it as exercise and warm up while showing your abilities to the mentor, and at the same time preparing your proposal. Well, some of them did a good job but the selection process sometimes is way too hard.

For GSoC in 2019, let's try again, there's still a chance, although from what I heard it is not sure yet that openSUSE will participate in GSoC in 2019. There are already 2 students who expressed their desire to participate. Prepare yourself from now on. For others if you are interested, stay tuned!

Thank you openSUSE Indonesia community for remarkably year 2018. Hopefully in 2019 many new young people will come and join to contribute to openSUSE, disseminate the use of FOSS and spread goodness to others.

Have a lot of fun!