Hi, The current efforts are less than 0.1 persons (FTE) to coordinate openSUSE maintenance. We get a limited amount of submits on the OBS side, almost everything comes from the SLE side. Note that we have setup only maintenance for openSUSE Leap, but not Leap Micro as Leap Micro is pretty much only a SLE export. We can keep it at that level at least for ALP. So from the security side (and so largely the maintenance side), we can can likely cover a similar set of products we current supply 2 products are okay, 3 might be okay, but more will get more an more confusing and more work. And we should be able to reuse as much work as possible between those. From my point the Leap project should really focus on a limited set of products that our users prefer. Ciao, Marcus On Tue, May 02, 2023 at 09:05:37PM +0200, Richard Brown wrote:
Hi all,
Another week, another update mail from me.
As previously discussed [1][2], we are looking into building an openSUSE ALP Product similar in scope to openSUSE Leap.
As in, mutable base OS, multiple desktops, traditional RPM packaging, etc
For this idea to be remotely viable, we need individuals or teams willing to look into/be responsible for packaging and/or integrating at least the following:
- The Desktops (GNOME, KDE, xfce, etc) - The graphical stack (Wayland/Xorg)
As these are not expected to be provided by the SUSE ALP Server Products codebase we're going to have available as our base.
In addition, we will also need volunteers in the areas of
- Maintenance - QA
And of course, as Leap is a very broad distribution, we are also interested in anyone volunteering in any other area
However, despite both of my previous mails [1][2] calling for people to speak up and volunteer, at time of writing we effectively have _no one_ who's volunteered in any of the above areas.
We have Dominique's Team at SUSE (including Lubos, Max, Doug and my future replacement) willing to do the release management for whatever the community builds, but we need volunteers to build it.
We have Simon Lees and his much more narrowly defined 'Grassy Knoll' idea, which would likely offer only a single lightweight desktop and less packages/packages primarily maintained in Tumbleweed, possibly with very different maintenance model than Leap users are familiar with.
I understand that it can be scary to volunteer, and there are plenty of things we don't know for sure yet
- What release cadence will this openSUSE ALP Leap-alike have? - How will we do maintenance updates for the non-SUSE maintained packages? (Conservative like Leap/SLE without version bumps, or more liberal like Tumbleweed?) - How will we test/double-check the packages from SUSE ALP? How will we ensure only good updates of both SUSE and openSUSE built packages are released? - And I'm sure many more questions that I haven't even thought about yet.
The lack of clear answers to such questions cannot be an excuse for not volunteering. We can't even start having the conversations to begin figuring out the answers without having people to talk to.
So please, speak up and volunteer, ideally by openSUSE Conference (June 02) Bonus points if you happen to be going also, but that's not required.
If this silence continues as it has for the past weeks, then I imagine the only viable Plan B's are investigating more narrowly-defined offerings like Simon's and/or encouraging everyone who's going to miss Leap once it reaches its ends of life a few years from now to move towards Tumbleweed or MicroOS Desktop.
Hence the openSUSE Conference being a natural 'deadline' for this call for volunteers - if we need to come up with a Plan B, having a bunch of us all together might be a good catalyst.
Have a lot of fun,
Richard
[1] https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/factory@lists.opensuse.org/thread/G... [2] https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/factory@lists.opensuse.org/thread/C...
-- Richard Brown Distributions Architect SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH, Frankenstraße 146, D-90461 Nuremberg, Germany (HRB 36809, AG Nürnberg) Managing Directors/Geschäftsführer: Ivo Totev, Andrew Myers, Andrew McDonald, Martje Boudien Moerman
-- Marcus Meissner (he/him), Distinguished Engineer / Senior Project Manager Security SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH, Frankenstrasse 146, 90461 Nuernberg, Germany GF: Ivo Totev, Andrew Myers, Andrew McDonald, Martje Boudien Moerman, HRB 36809, AG Nuernberg