On 09/12/10 09:57, Wolfgang Rosenauer wrote:
in that post I'm picking up different points from the whole thread so don't be confused about where it ends up in the thread view ;-)
So please let me summarize some of the important information.
I (and others) feel there is a gap between openSUSE and Novell's SLE which needs to be filled somehow. My example was that I obviously won't buy SLES to run it on my hosted server for my personal non-commercial use but running openSUSE is also not really an option there because its very short lifetime. In some cases it's just not possible to update w/o too much risk and downtime. And a short excursion to Tumbleweed: I think this is pretty interesting and is what I'll probably run on my desktop at home and some other machines but it's still not something I would roll out on some systems. So this is not the solution I am looking for.
Now coming back to the two options we discussed to fill the gap. I actually would prefer to have CentOS like thing because it can be maintained for a longer time as an LTS version is likely to be maintained. It's (mostly) binary compatible and therefore would probably be more attracting to business users. It was also said it would be less work what I do believe as well but it's not that cheap as some people may think. From some comments on the thread it's pretty clear that the "CentOS" thing currently could not use most of the openSUSE infrastructure and no protected trademarks. The work of rebranding and maintaining/paying the needed infrastructure is not to neglect.
I more or less agree entirely with Wolfgang's summary. A clone of SLES would still be a lot of work, but the same holds for an LTS version. The effort required to maintain any such project should not be underestimated. It will be hard work and requires a solid team effort.
For the above reasons I don't want/cannot drive an effort to create an SLE clone. If someone wants to do it now it's time to step up as I don't think it makes sense to do both. (Feel free to send me a mail ;-))
I have very little spare time due to my job but I would be happy to help in one way or another. Having said that, doesn't it at the end of the day come down to a "political" question: Are we willing to proceed with a clone of SLES (provided it's 100% legal to do so) even when Novell is strictly against this idea? Maybe they couldn't do anything about it directly, but working against your main sponsor might create a somewhat strange impression, and a lot of infrastructure and support for openSUSE is coming from that one sponsor in the first place... Have the openSUSE board members an opinion on that issue? Cheers, Thomas -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org