Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (3785 mails)

[David Krider <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I like to talk about SuSE's marketing, product strategy, competitive
position, and the like. To be specific, I _like_ comparing SuSE to Red
Hat, Gentoo, Debian, Slackware, and whatever else is out there. I like
to do it from a SuSE point of view, because that's what I've settled on.
But I realize that the Linux market changes rapidly and significantly.
(Witness Red Hat in the last 7 months.) I don't take for granted that
I'll be running SuSE forever, and I want to be able to hear about other
people's experiences with other software that SuSE doesn't include, AND
other distros.

Whenever these sorts of threads rear their heads on this list, people
get apoplectic, and tell the posters to go to the OT list. Well, I did,
for several months, and I found the list to be tiresomely immature. The
list is made up of all the hard-core pro-SuSE folks that got told to
take it elsewhere, and they wind up talking about... ANYthing. I guess
some people will interpret "OT" that way, but I just expected "suse-ot"
to still at least be *tangentially* related to... SuSE! What a concept!

It seems that there is NO place for the discussions I want to have, and
I think this is a disservice to the SuSE community. The Red Hat lists
were fantastic. Many Red Hat people were active, and many more trolled.
I see ckm all the time here, but he's apparently the SuSE liason for the
list, because he's the only one (who at least posts from a suse.com
account). The Red Hat folks weren't afraid of an honest look at the
issues, and I think that's what made the list more effective. It kept
the veterans around because they weren't getting bored with just a list
of problems.

I wish this list would grow up. It's a high-volume list. What's the harm
in having a few more messages if someone wants to talk about Red Hat or
Microsoft? But, no. Within a few posts, everyone is told to take it to
the OT list. Unfortunately, the discussions of these sorts of topics on
that list were of little value because no one espoused a different point
of view. It was just cheering for the home team. There's also an
inordinate amount of chatter that boils down to reposts of Slashdot and
memepool. Unfortunately, my request to keep *that* list at least related
to Linux, if not SuSE, was met with flames.

So what's the bottom line here? Are the self-appointed moderators on
this list telling me to talk about SuSE's strategy and positioning over
on the Debian and Red Hat lists? Because there sure doesn't seem to be a
worthwhile venue being offered by suse.com. Either some people need to
"get over it" on this list, or we need, simply, ot@xxxxxxxx, and to
split non-Linux traffic from the suse-ot list.

Regards all,
dk