Usage Guidelines

This is your community…treat it as yours, but remember that you share it with others.

Why are there Usage Guidelines?

We are providing this online community to you, our customers and members of our business network. We are passionate about the goal of this community – to build a thriving repository of best practices information that will help SUSE’s customers and partners get the most value out of SUSE technologies.

As with any cooperative association, network, or community, there are legal policies and codes of conduct put in place to provide benefits to community members.

Our Usage Guidelines:

Be a Valued Member of Your Community:

• We should strive together to be helpful to one another and discuss information which would be beneficial to other members of the community and provide relevant insight on topics.
• Just as in real life, you want to build a trustworthy reputation of professional excellence. SUSE may at its option provide a community rating system that may evolve and allow others to identify you as a valued contributor.
• We should strive together to practice positive teamwork – treat others with respect and professional courtesy in an honest and open manner. Even SUSE employees may have differing views about a business approach or technical issue, and the dialogue around opposing or alternate options are what should make the community more valuable.
• SUSE in its sole discretion may remove any members or messages which are unethical, demeaning, insulting, abusive, offensive, attacking, threatening, harrassing, or acting in any similar manner including illegal activities or disregarding community policies and codes of conduct. In addition, posting unsolicited advertisements is NOT allowed by community members.

Manage Private Information Appropriately:

• You should remember that, as an individual, you are responsible for your actions and the information you share.
• You should not discuss confidential information about your employer, about SUSE, or about any third-party. For example:
  • Please do not use the online community to discuss agreements, such as non-disclosure agreements, software licenses, and services agreements, proprietary information that SUSE would deem confidential, product keys, stock tipping, insider trading, patents, trade secrets, actual company data from databases, and other secure data which is confidential in nature.
  • Similarly, you should not post credit card numbers, drivers’ license numbers, account numbers, passwords, addresses, and similar information which is personal and should remain secure.
• It is against community policy to share your username and password so that others can log on with your identity.

Practice Good Decision-Making:

• While everyone invited to this community has experience with customer-facing business processes and information, it is possible that the information you find here could be out of context, incorrect, misleading, or unclear.
• Keep in mind that other community members have varying levels of experience, different perspectives, and unique constraints surrounding their decisions and advice.
• We recommend that members “triangulate” information by comparing advice from the community to at least two other sources before making key decisions. For example, if you find an answer to a question here, you might also validate your answer by looking at a third-party website, or check with consultants who have subject matter expertise. When you’ve found this triangulated information, and if it is permissible to communicate to others in the community, please share this information with the community.
• SUSE employees may read and add comments to discussions, but these are not officially representative of SUSE.