Hello, on Mittwoch, 7. Januar 2009, Gerald Pfeifer wrote: ...
If the community wants to provide security and whatever updates for that long, that's fine. It is _extremely_ unlikely Novell is going to fund that; already those 24 months are a stretch.
I understand that the security updates need lots of resources, but please keep the 24 months. Otherwise openSUSE will have less chances to be used on servers - I consider 24 months the lowest-possible timeframe. (I know that you recommend SLES for servers ;-) but lots of "root servers" come with openSUSE preinstalled. The "big" providers I know don't offer root servers with SLES preinstalled.) Maybe Novell could even make some money without much additional work ;-) The idea is to offer paid security updates for the X.1 releases (aka those that are the SLES base - the updates are created for the SLES customers anyway) after X.1 goes out of support. This would mean: method a) - a supported way for openSUSE 11.1 -> SLES 11 "migration" when openSUSE 11.1 goes out of support (shouldn't be too hard IMHO since most package versions should be identical) - offer paid security updates for those systems - which are now SLES systems - and a list that shows which packages are supported (aka SLES packages) and which aren't (aka packages not contained in SLES) method b) - don't "migrate" the whole system to SLES 11, just - provide paid securicy updates as needed - this might include version updates to the SLES package version - and also here: a list showing which packages are supported and which aren't Both methods would be OK for customers - I'd say SUSE could just choose the way that is easier to handle internally. This offer might attract people who don't want to upgrade to a newer openSUSE release on their live server. And maybe these people even choose SLES for their next server from the beginning. I don't see a real risk that companies don't buy SLES from the beginning since it has more added value (support etc.) than just security updates. BTW: I already discussed this with some SUSE/Novell people at the last LinuxTag in the hotel, and the feedback was quite positive. However, I didn't hear/read anything about this afterwards, so maybe it got lost. Regards, Christian Boltz -- .: Schneewittchen & die Pfälzer Waldconnection :. Ein polit-kabarettistisches Märchenstück mit viel Musik gesungen & gespielt von Mitgliedern der Landjugend RheinhessenPfalz 18.1.2009 Berlin - 6.2.2009 Neustadt - Infos: www.LJ-RheinhessenPfalz.de -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org