December 2020 - openSUSE Marketing - openSUSE Mailing Lists

What is going on with openSUSE Twitter and Mastodon?!
by Neal Gompa 05 Jan '21

05 Jan '21

Hey all, I have been seeing a disturbing trend in the openSUSE Twitter[1] and Mastodon[2] accounts, where we are sending messages tearing down the CentOS Project[3][4][5][6]. As an openSUSE contributor who spends *a lot* of time trying to use and promote openSUSE sensibly, I was disheartened by the lack of professionalism and support to our fellow project trying to develop a contributor-oriented community like we have for openSUSE Leap. The worst part about it is that the attacks are a "stone and glass house" kind of affair. openSUSE Leap has roughly the same lifespan as CentOS Stream, and contributions to CentOS Stream effectively work the same way as contributions to openSUSE Leap does. If people start teasing apart what we actually *offer* compared to CentOS Stream, they will be disappointed to find that we're not that much different from them. And the truth is, I couldn't be happier! If anything, we should be supporting that project, and drawing parallels to openSUSE Leap as a *model* of how CentOS Stream can be done. We've successfully integrated the enterprise and the community together in a stable, reliable, rock-solid platform. When openSUSE made the change to openSUSE Leap, nobody from Red Hat or Fedora said bad things about us. In fact, they've been generally supportive of our efforts. I have personally had conversations with a number of folks at Red Hat talking about the model of excellence that is openSUSE Leap. And now, Red Hat is taking a "Leap" of faith with CentOS and RHEL, and we're tearing them down for trying to be more open? That's utterly hypocritical and I'm disgusted. As a member of the openSUSE community, I'm disappointed and saddened by how we're not trying to support each other. Our friends at Red Hat and Fedora have supported us, this is our turn to support them. That doesn't mean we can't take the opportunity to talk about openSUSE Leap. There is plenty to love about openSUSE Leap for folks everywhere. But tearing down CentOS to promote openSUSE Leap is not the right way. Regards, Neal [1]: https://twitter.com/openSUSE [2]: https://fosstodon.org/@opensuse [3]: https://twitter.com/openSUSE/status/1339648215713509377 [4]: https://twitter.com/openSUSE/status/1339956419462918147 [5]: https://fosstodon.org/@opensuse/105389999148802875 [6]: https://fosstodon.org/@opensuse/105390670556405421 -- Neal Gompa (ID: Pharaoh_Atem)

6 5

mailto:marketing@lists.opensuse.org?Subject=Re: What is going on with openSUSE Twitter and Mastodon?!
by milanverbrugge＠pm.me 19 Dec '20

19 Dec '20

mailto:marketing@lists.opensuse.org?Subject=Re: What is going on with openSUSE Twitter and Mastodon?!&In-Reply-To=<466d1ec5-3c19-4540-a12c-de3f489558f(a)suse.com> Dear all, I completely agree with everything said so far in this thread. This type of publicity will not do us any good. And that is not only because they 'attack' a fellow project. Two other things went wrong: 1. The posts do not adequately address the target audience: CentOS is used as a professional product, so if we want to communicate to users leaving the project, we should remain professional. Memes are not the way to go in that sense, upgrading and sharing our documentation *is*, however. We should keep that up. :) 2. Good marketing should always take a brand's strength as a point of departure. When addressing new users we should explain what Leap is *doing right*, not what other distributions are doing wrong. Looking forward: perhaps we can use the upcoming holidays to repair the hopefully minimal damage? For example by wishing everyone (in the FOSS/Linux community) happy holidays and a happy new year with a nice post. These are my two cents. I am relatively new to the openSUSE community, so please let me know if I forgot to take something in account. Best wishes, Milan

1 0

Re: "CentOS is dead, long live CentOS Stream"
by Douglas DeMaio 10 Dec '20

10 Dec '20

Hi all, I want to bring your attention about the topic to the openSUSE mailing list that is discussing this a coming up with a strategy for this topic. https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/project@lists.opensuse.org/thread/… We have a dedicated etherpad to centralize some of the efforts https://etherpad.opensuse.org/p/migratefromcentos about this topic. Anything you're will to contribute is appreciated. If you could link any content you produce under one of the months listed on the etherpad, it would be helpful. Also emailing any content you produce to opensuse-marketing(a)opensuse.org<mailto:opensuse-marketing@opensuse.org> will help us to expand the reach of the content. v/r Doug ________________________________ From: Linux <linux-bounces+ddemaio=suse.com(a)lists.suse.com> on behalf of Kai Liu <kai.liu(a)suse.com> Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2020 4:38 AM To: Alejandro Bonilla <abonilla(a)suse.com> Cc: Linux List <linux(a)lists.suse.com>; Peter Lees <peter.lees(a)suse.com> Subject: Re: "CentOS is dead, long live CentOS Stream" On 2020/12/09 Wed 22:48, Alejandro Bonilla wrote: > > >> On Dec 9, 2020, at 5:38 PM, Peter Lees <peter.lees(a)suse.com> wrote: >> >> Does anyone have a procedure for using machinery to migrate from CentOS to openSUSE ? > >I think you misspelled SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with Expanded Support. > >There is no money moving anyone to openSUSE - we do have a continuation option for those users that NEED the same codebase as RHEL8, and that is with Expanded Support. NO. We should get people to use openSUSE, or else they will use CentOS or Ubuntu. People who use openSUSE might consider buying SLES, people who use CentOS or Ubuntu most probably would not buy SLES. Rancher has a large user base running their products for free because there is no liability to pay. But many of Rancher's payed customers are from their free users, when they are happy with the product and need support. Similarly we need more free openSUSE users, they will come to pay SLES when they really need. Regards, Kai

1 0

Re: Thoughts on capturing the CentOS marketshare...
by ddemaio 10 Dec '20

10 Dec '20

Hi all, On 12/9/20 11:46 PM, Mark Stopka wrote: > Sorry for "top-posting"... > > As you may know, CentOS (free clone of RHEL) is changing it's > direction from being a RHEL clone to being a test-bed for RHEL N+1 > version, the new product is called CentOS Stream, big part of CentOS > community is rightfully upset about it and they are looking for > alternatives, I was thinking we could capture a significant part of > that market if we approach the issue with the right strategy and > united, we certainly do have a lot to offer, starting with openSUSE > Leap, going thru OBS (which is in my opinion sort of a killer app), > all the way to all other more use-case specific "micro projects"... > > I would like to see if we can put together a team of 5 - 10 people > with skills cited below by Stasiek from my original post to project@ > only, now let me see how many bounce messages I get from CCing the > specific mailing lists :-) > > Further citing from my original post, I believe this may actually > work, I was already spreading the word on Reddit all day today.... > >> I am wondering if someone here is committed to trying to come up with >> the strategy on how to go about that, I think it will be essential to >> produce easy to understand migration guides from CentOS -> openSUSE >> Leap and stress that CentOS is moving in the exact opposite >> direction as we are moving with openSUSE Leap and SUSE Linux >> Enterprise... I've been giving it some thought. I have come up with a little of a strategy for this, which I started on https://etherpad.opensuse.org/p/migratefromcentos <https://etherpad.opensuse.org/p/migratefromcentos> It still needs some refinement and community input, but for the most part it addresses an immediate vision. > If we get some small group of committed people together, it makes > sense then to have an alignment call and discuss specifics, and manage > it as a sort of a project just to evaluate results and perhaps > implement some continuous improvements, the whole process of "killing > original CentOS" is planned for about a year, but there will be a big > spike in next few weeks I believe, followed by a long tail... > > On Wed, Dec 9, 2020 at 11:33 PM Stasiek Michalski <hellcp(a)opensuse.org> wrote: >> Am Mi, 9. Dez, 2020 um 11:29 P. M. schrieb Mark Stopka >> <mstopka(a)opensuse.org>: >>> If this gains traction here and interest of perhaps 5 - 10 people with >>> right skillset: >>> - technical writer >>> - graphics designer (who does not like pretty graphics) >>> - geeks (so we can translate and test CentOS guides for openSUSE) As for the PPC, I didn't mention that in the etherpad. I'll have to look at the overall budget to see what we can afford per month/quarter, which I can chat with the board about it. I would prefer that in doing a PPC, we only do it for certain content. Maybe marketing has a meeting for each proposed PPC item per month or quarter to make a determination. I could see a PPC being very useful in this situation for something like "migration guides from CentOS to openSUSE Leap" or videos showing something similar. v/r Doug

1 0