On Thu, 22 Feb 2018 21:35:12 +0100
Richard Brown
+0.5 you're not wrong..but; Rawhide and Sid are not really tested before releasing packages to users. By design and intent they can very often by broken. The design and intent of Tumbleweed is to never knowingly allow the shipping of anything broken.
OK. Worth clarifying but not directly germane to the question I am trying to resolve.
openSUSE Leap ~= CentOS (fixed release cycle, stable-ish, no commercial support)
+0.5 you're not wrong..but; openSUSE Leap contains a lot of additional packages, features, and functionality which is not available (or suitable) for SUSE Linux Enterprise.
OK. So, then, compare it to Tumbleweed instead.
So what _is_ relationship of SUSE to openSUSE?
SUSE is the founding sponsor of openSUSE. openSUSE is SUSE's closest open source community. SUSE engage with openSUSE as partners & peers.
That's not really the sort of direct, plain answer I am looking for.
Cui bono -- who benefits?
openSUSE provides open source software. Anyone who wishes to benefit from what we do is welcome to do so.
Oh come _on_.
Who does most of the development?
100% of our development is done by our contributors ;)
That is a non-answer!
Yes, I know, a cheesy answer,
It's more than that, it's obfuscatory!
but if you want to understand, you NEED to start thinking along these lines.
Come on, Richard, dude, when we talked, you agreed that a better explanation and a clear statement were needed. This isn't helping!
What's the ratio of SUSE to non-SUSE contributors? Is that tracked? Is it public info?
It's public - all of our commits, like all of our code, can be seen in their associated OBS or GitHub projects.
Augh...
But that's a lot of data, and we do not actively track it.
(!)
Speaking from the Board's perspective, when we last discussed parsing that data, we felt we didn't really see a benefit.
:-o
if the Project is getting most of the things done that it wants to do (and generally speaking, it is), then why does it matter who any of our contributors employers are or their motivations are?
What matters is that you and others got very cross with me for my comments about the nature of what openSUSE is and what the relationship of openSUSE and SUSE is. And yet when I seek clarification, you are, with all due respect, giving me the run-around and apparently trying to _avoid_ giving clear answers! I fully appreciate that this may not be your intent, but it is how it appears. This is _important_. If you wish, as you told me you do, to be clear about what openSUSE is _and is not_ then this is _precisely_ the sort of information that is _needed_ to answer that question. If it matters to you and to the openSUSE organisation that openSUSE is not just the free version of SUSE Linux, then _this is the answer to that question_ and as such it is _very_ important. If it doesn't matter to you, if you are happy with a statement such as "openSUSE is the free-of-charge version of SUSE Linux", then sure, it's not important and don't bother tracking and analysing it.
That said, it was analysed way back in 2012. At that time SUSE employees were responsible for ~35% of Submit Requests to openSUSE Factory, with the community responsible for 65%.
Historically, obviously SUSE started as the vast majority when openSUSE began. The SUSE/non-SUSE ratio reached about 50/50 in 2010. By 2011 the community was clearly doing more of the work.
So this is big news and stuff that should be being shouted from the rooftops. A daily contributor-balance count should be at the top of the front page of www.opensuse.org. It means you were _way_ ahead of RH in achieving this, which is something to be proud of and record and promote, not conceal behind evasive-looking answers and "we don't record that" and "we haven't looked in years".
It's important to note that SUSE has never reduced it's contributions to openSUSE, but the growth in our non-SUSE contributions has clearly grown at a higher rate over time, leading to that trend.
For a modern picture, there is an easy metric which might give you some indication
SUSE Linux Enterprise has a codebase across it's products that equate to about 3000 rpm source packages openSUSE's distributions are both over 12000 rpm source packages
We could assume that all 3000 of SLE's packages in Tumbleweed & Leap are 100% owned and maintained by SUSE employees in their work time; This is most certainly not the case, SUSE employees are encouraged to collaborate share maintainership with community volunteers, but it might just work to illustrate the point. That leaves 9000 source packages which are only in openSUSE because of volunteer work, either from non-SUSE employees, or SUSE employees contributing in their spare time. They're certainly packages SUSE do not actively care for (otherwise they'd be in the SLE products).
These package numbers have grown pretty rapidly over the last few years (Leap 42.1 was ~10000), suggesting both an increase in contribution from SUSE contributors and our non-SUSE contributors. From SUSE's side that makes sense given the companies recent growth.
I'd say it's a reasonable guestimate that the SUSE/non-SUSE ratio is still around 33/66
However I look at what goes on in openQA, there is no way in a million years I could suggest that SUSE do the majority of the work in openSUSE (though obviously, the work they do is wonderful and openSUSE wouldn't want to live without it).
So this is good info, but may I suggest that it's more important than you seem to regard it? That this is a prime differentiator, and good marketing info as well as a mere tech statistic?
That would be an over simplification
A more accurate description would be
Tumbleweed → SLE → Leap ← Tumbleweed
You could simply this as
Tumbleweed → SLE + Leap
but it would miss the important detail that SUSE do test, harden, polish and SLE-ify that which they adopt from Tumbleweed before openSUSE takes those polished SLE sources and use them for the basis of Leap, which is then augmented with additional packages, often originating from Tumbleweed.
I guess you could say Tumbleweed is both the Alpha and the Omega, but that sounds a little grandiose.
Like I said: tweet-length. A sentence or two should be enough. As, allegedly, Einstein said: if you can't explain it to your grandmother, you don't really understand it yourself. -- Liam Proven - Technical Writer, SUSE Linux s.r.o. Corso II, Křižíkova 148/34, 186-00 Praha 8 - Karlín, Czechia Email: lproven@suse.com - Office telephone: +420 284 241 084 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org