Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-project (145 mails)

[Boyd Lynn Gerber <gerberb@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 7 Sep 2009, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 5:32 PM, Andrew Joakimsen<joakimsen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Is Novell really against an free (as in beer) clone of SLES, and would
> > they do anything to stop us? What are the legal considerations,
> > namely: what parts of SLES are not distributed under the GPL or other
> > open licenses? How much work would it take to build such a
> > distribution?
>
> Novell understands open source licensing and participates willingly in 
> the Linux and open source community, and contributes to the same. That 
> means accepting the responsibilities and rights that come with the FOSS 
> licenses, as well as getting the benefit of those licenses.

+1

> Is Novell against a clone of SLES? So long as the licensing (copyright & 
> trademark) is respected and the downstream project that produces said 
> clone follows its obligations, why would it be? I think there are a 
> variety of opinions within Novell as to whether a CentOS-like 
> distribution would be good, bad, or indifferent for Novell and SUSE. 
> There are possible benefits and drawbacks, and I'm not sure anyone can 
> point to reliable data about the effects of CentOS on Red Hat, much less 
> on the effects of a clone on Novell's SUSE business. (If you can, please 
> let me know...) I can say Novell is unlikely to focus any significant 
> resources to a clone at this time.

I would totally agree.  I know it takes time and resources.  We are 
developing the plan and looking for resources.  From what I gather CentOS 
has a team of about 12 members.

> I think pretty much all of SLES fits under one of the OSI-approved licenses.
>
> How much work would it take? There's the real question that this group 
> should be asking itself before dreaming up names and taking votes, etc.

We have looked at it.  It was strongly suggested that we come up with a 
new name for the initiative and use it.  By using it we can/are able to 
work within the guidelines that will avoid potential problems as we get 
more and more trackion for the initiative.

> If you look at CentOS, not to mention all the now-defunct projects
> that have tried to do rebuild RHEL or provide longer-term support for
> Fedora, it's a fair amount of work to build and keep current a
> distribution even when someone else is creating all the SRPMs.

Thanks I understand and am very grateful for your opinions.  I know many 
OSS projects fail.  That is why we are making sure we have the ground work 
done.  I know I have wanted an openSLES since the first openSUSE 10.0 
release and the coresponding SLES release.  I hate moving people from 
openSUSE to CentOS then RHEL when the organization needs it.  I really 
want to move them to XXX then SLES as needed.

--
Boyd Gerber <gerberb@xxxxxxxxx> 801 849-0213
ZENEZ   1042 East Fort Union #135, Midvale Utah  84047
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