IMHO this is the worst proposal since it sounds like some ThisUbuntu, ThatUbuntu, ThereUbuntu, HereUbuntu, YouProllyGetItByNowUbuntu. There certainly are some great respins, e.g. the Education one, and it totally should be mandatory to be able to easily create one but this shouldn't be the main "strategy" in any way. On Thursday June 24 2010 13:58:35 Pavol Rusnak wrote:
Hello again!
As we promised earlier[1] starting today we'll be discussing the second of strategies: Base for derivatives[2].
[1] http://news.opensuse.org/2010/06/17/a-strategy-for- the-opensuse-project-proposals-and-discussions/ [2] http://en.opensuse.org/Documents/Strategy/Derivatives
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openSUSE - Base for derivatives ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1.) Statement:
We are a diverse active and inviting community delivering the best foundation for Linux derivatives by providing a high quality, long-term supported core distribution, with tools and infrastructure to easily build on top of it. We encourage projects and developers to create additional building blocks and specialized spin-offs and provide a platform to make them visible and appreciated.
The center of this strategy is a high quality and long-term supported core distribution surrounded by tools to build derivatives which includes remote system administration. Behind that we will have a marketing team spreading the word about our Project and the derivatives made with it. Additionally, we will provide derivatives for desktops, server usage, software and web development. To be successful we see the collaboration with upstream and other Linux distributions as a key factor in providing quality derivatives.
2.) Key ideas:
* reduce the number of packages in Factory - provide smaller, stable, high quality core distro
If you don't have the man power to maintain the current amount of factory packages there is no way around dropping some.
- provide Long Term Support (LTS) for this reduced set - core suitable for servers
I refuse to comment on that part besides that we already have something that can be used for servers quite easily.
- available for more platforms (including ARM, PowerPC, etc.)
ARM builds would be great for coming tablets but it already has been proven that no one (iirc ~ 0.3%) is interested in PowerPC builds so why start wasting resources on it again (also the amount of ppl trying to fix powerpc for 11.3 / factory is pretty small either)?
* provide platform for building derivatives around core distro (onion model) - building blocks - software grouped by theme (Build Service - repositories) - infrastructure for building spinoffs (Build Service - kiwi image build / SUSE Studio) - spin-offs promotion ("gallery" for spin-offs with ratings, download links, etc.) * support diversity - openSUSE as a base for MeeGo, OpenWRT and other projects - desktop spin-offs for users (KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Xfce) - specialized spin-offs like Education, Photo edition
We have all that already and until you try to sell the same stuff under different names like Ubuntu and KUbuntu (I prolly don't need to tell you what I think about that way) I see no benefits from it compared to simply adding the needed repos. Also, thanks to the branding packages, it is already easy to create a different branded respin.
3.) Activities:
3.a.) We need to be excellent in the following:
* provide stable core packages with LTS (Factory) * openSUSE Build Service * provide tools for remote system administration
Like e.g. "web yast"? Please just stop wasting resources on such stuff since there is more important stuff lacking.
* process/mechanism to qualify those custom distribution for usage of openSUSE name/trademark * large testing of various OBS repositories combinations
No offense, but first open up the testing team like it is planned for quite some months now and then those prolly still will be swamped with testing the current set of packages (and the current 2 repos) so I fail to see how that should effectively work. Also it should be the task of the derivative creators to ensure that the repos they use work.
3.b.) We will try to do the following effectively:
* provide the openSUSE distro as it is today (no long term support)
Makes me wonder where that LTS part from above went then?
* provide environment for web development (webserver/database stack) * provide development tools for C/C++, Java, C#, J, Python, Ruby, ... * collaboration with upstream * collaboration with other Linux distros
That's like the bare minimum which every distribution should do but nothing worth explicitly targeting as "strategy".
3.c.) As project, we will not focus on the following anymore:
* There are many packages that exist in Factory and we don't know if they are used or needed. We'll have them in major OBS projects only.
As said, if you don't have the man power to support the current amount of packages there is no way around dropping some. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org