On Wednesday 02 May 2007 03:39, Jordi Massaguer wrote:
I think we are not talking about what Novell has done for the community or what Ubuntu has done, but the fact that there are two communitites, the open one (openSuSE) and the "consortium one" (SLED/S).
The first is open to everyone, but has no commercial support, no security certification (I am talking about EAL), no certification of professionals or companies. The second one has all that but it is not open to everyone. Only the ones that have paid would have the updates and the code of them, so it is something like a consortium.
In the other hand, Ubuntu has only one community, one distribution, and everyone gets the updates. But it is not EAL4+ certified (that takes time, so money, to do it).
Then, we have two communities, two distributions, two bug trackers,.... and also we have to pay a license for using each SLED or SLES (so it is not really free). SLES and SLED are products based on free (as in speech) code but are not free ( the updates can not be redistributed).
In my opinion, it would be better to have only one big and strong open community around SLED and SLES and not base the business on the licenses, but on hours of support (for example you could pay x€ a year for having Yhours of support), and on certify partners, certify hardware, certify software and develop custom solutions based on SLES and SLED (Point of Sale for example). However, this is more difficult than selling licenses (and less scalable) but you may have a better product.
Having one community does not mean having only one distribution. Well done, we could have multiple ones (Desktop Professional, Server Professional, POS, Education, Home Desktop, ....) build using the OpenBuildService, but have some common code (code10, code11, ....) and some especific one (for example the Home Desktop could have some stuff that is not EAL4+ certified (OpenSuSE right now?)).
Teorically, it should be more productive to have one community based on the same code and multiple products than having multiple communities, right?
Just my 5c. From an outsiders perspective this looks like what is emerging from the happenings of late , ie the gnome team coming out to work with opensuse. I see opensuse\SLED as being a cumulative work. The code starts with the really innovative and hard working opensuse community and moves inward toward stability and certification with the dedicated professionals at SUSE\Novell. Yes, there is a blur of those lines because there are SUSE\Novell members working with the community. I think it is a misinterpretation of what the cost of SLED is to call it licensing. I think it has been and be should be marketed as long term support. If you purchase a "subscription" to SLED you get a year of patches\updates and online support for the worlds most stable, innovative, enterprise ready desktop, all of 50 $ US. Still sounds like the best OS deal going to me, even though my personal HD is loaded with 10.2. ;) -- James Tremblay Director of Technology Newmarket School District Novell CNE 3\4\5 CLE \ NCE in training. http://en.opensuse.org/education
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