Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-project (422 mails)

[Thomas Hertweck <Thomas.Hertweck@xxxxxx>]

On 09/12/10 09:57, Wolfgang Rosenauer wrote:
> in that post I'm picking up different points from the whole thread so
> don't be confused about where it ends up in the thread view ;-)
>
> So please let me summarize some of the important information.
>
> I (and others) feel there is a gap between openSUSE and Novell's SLE
> which needs to be filled somehow. My example was that I obviously won't
> buy SLES to run it on my hosted server for my personal non-commercial
> use but running openSUSE is also not really an option there because its
> very short lifetime. In some cases it's just not possible to update w/o
> too much risk and downtime. And a short excursion to Tumbleweed: I think
> this is pretty interesting and is what I'll probably run on my desktop
> at home and some other machines but it's still not something I would
> roll out on some systems. So this is not the solution I am looking for.
>
> Now coming back to the two options we discussed to fill the gap.
> I actually would prefer to have CentOS like thing because it can be
> maintained for a longer time as an LTS version is likely to be
> maintained. It's (mostly) binary compatible and therefore would probably
> be more attracting to business users.
> It was also said it would be less work what I do believe as well but
> it's not that cheap as some people may think. From some comments on the
> thread it's pretty clear that the "CentOS" thing currently could not use
> most of the openSUSE infrastructure and no protected trademarks. The
> work of rebranding and maintaining/paying the needed infrastructure is
> not to neglect.

I more or less agree entirely with Wolfgang's summary. A clone of SLES
would still be a lot of work, but the same holds for an LTS version. The
effort required to maintain any such project should not be underestimated.
It will be hard work and requires a solid team effort.

> For the above reasons I don't want/cannot drive an effort to create an
> SLE clone. If someone wants to do it now it's time to step up as I don't
> think it makes sense to do both. (Feel free to send me a mail ;-))

I have very little spare time due to my job but I would be happy to help
in one way or another.

Having said that, doesn't it at the end of the day come down to a
"political" question: Are we willing to proceed with a clone of SLES
(provided it's 100% legal to do so) even when Novell is strictly against
this idea? Maybe they couldn't do anything about it directly, but working
against your main sponsor might create a somewhat strange impression, and
a lot of infrastructure and support for openSUSE is coming from that one
sponsor in the first place... Have the openSUSE board members an opinion
on that issue?

Cheers,
Thomas
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