Long-time openSUSE contributor Richard Brown is stepping down from his role as chairperson of openSUSE board, a position he had been holding for the last five years. He will be replaced by Gerald Pfeifer, SUSE’s CTO for EMEA. Gerald himself is a developer who has contributed to projects like like GCC and Wine.

In a blog post, Brown said, “Some of the key factors that led me to make this step include the time required to do the job properly and the length of time I’ve served. Five years is more than twice as long as any of my predecessors. The time required to do the role properly has increased, and I now find it impossible to balance the demands of the role with the requirements of my primary role as a developer in SUSE, and with what I wish to achieve outside of work and community.”

Brown will focus on his work at SUSE’s Future Technology Team that works on emerging technologies.

"I could not be more excited and humbled to participate in the openSUSE Project as board chair," Pfeifer said. "Collaboration in the openSUSE community has contributed to remarkable Linux distributions, and I'm looking forward to ongoing growth in both the community and the openSUSE distributions – Linux and beyond – and tools. openSUSE is at the leading edge of a historic shift, as open source software is now a critical part of any thriving enterprise's core business strategy. This is an exciting time for the openSUSE community, as well as for open source at large."

The openSUSE project is funded by SUSE, but it is a community driven project where decisions are made by the community. The openSUSE distros are also upstream to many SUSE products, such as SUSE Linux Enterprise and SUSE CaaSP.