Hello, Many of us have been thinking about this for years... openFATE #306982: Create an open SLES https://features.opensuse.org/306982 really started the ball rolling on this idea and gave it life. I am reporting back the significant points from the new ML created. To sum things up... We need a set of guidelines that must be followed. These should include... URL's for the Guidelines we should/must reference are as follows.. openSUSE http://en.opensuse.org/Packaging Fedora https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines We need to define a set of guidelines for either project we choose. These guidelines with be used and need to be reveiwed by someone with legal knowledge. Once we define these guidelines we will post them as an RFC to the opensuse-project ML. So to sum things up. 1. I see us creating a server OS with long lifetime. 2. Packages have to be 100 % binary compatible with our defined target. Only aberrations with removal of trademarks and or legal reasons are allowed. 3. Every change has to be reproducable and tracked via an available SCM. I personally prefer GIT. We need to make sure we keep in mind using an OBS as the prefered method of doing the task of building and releasing, and other things it provides. This can be local BS or on the OBS. The GIT GSOC project bsgit(*) provided a great front end to the OBS. may assist us in this task. The code finish code has to be made publically available. 4. Every code change to the project has to have a SR and the 3 positive votes accepting it before it is published. (Model after openSUSE Factory). 5. We need legal advice on the setup of the packaging guidelines. (What we have to remove to stay legal, and ... (Not much in the way of legal would be needed for openSUSE LTS) 6. The guidelines should be written down and rpmlint checks made where possible to insure we abide by the guidelines and avoid legal issues. There are basically two choices as the subject reports. 1. openSUSE LTS A longer life spam of openSUSE releases. 2. openSLE(S,D) A binary compatible with SLES/SLED
From all the information gathered from the various contacts openSLED is really not an option. openSUSE and SLED fill this requirement. So there is not need for it.
So the group must decide on which of the openSUSE LTS or openSLES they
want to do. This is what I have so far on pros and cons for each.
openSLE
Pro
1. security fixes are already done for the lifetime of the release.
2. Smaller number of rpm's
3. Server oriented without a lot of clutter.
4. All that would be needed is to remove the branding and rebrand it for
openSLE. A much smaller task.
5. Binary compatible for SLES.
Cons
1. Possiblity of antagonizing the Novell upper management.(Probable)
2. Not the most politically acceptable solution
3. Needs legal advice to conform to legal requirements.
4. Needs a legal entity to control the SLES subscription and have the
ability to get the patches to SLES. (Might be considered a pro)
5. May need community provided local BS.
openSUSE LTS
Pros
1. No real legal issues.
2. The ability to choose just the OSS easily.
3. Large base of openSUSE users.
4. Definitely able to use the OBS.
5. Community driven in all ways.
Cons
1. More packages that have to be paired down to a workable number.
2. Community driven in all ways.
3. Do we have enough people we trust to do back ports over the lifetime?
4. Need highly driven members as everything will be on their sholders.
5. I feel there will be more work with openSUSE LTS than with openSLE.
It had said time and time again that the openSUSE community is free to
create a community supported LTS and Novell will assist and provide the
necessary infrastructure but will not help by maintaining any packages.
Personally I really doubt there are enough willing and able people in the
current community to properly backport e.g. security fixes, drivers for
the kernel, and so on. This is why I think the idea of a "cummunity
supported LTS" won't work. (or at least will not produce anything "One
would want to run on a publice server").
Therefore I fee the right option is the do an openSLES, but this as of yet
has not been decided.
* bsgit http://gitorious.org/opensuse/bsgit
--
Boyd Gerber