Hi,
If you _really_ want to do it, you should first open a concept. You´re interested in doing it, I also would like to see such a system, and I think there also other people who wants to get into this.
In fact: I'm working on a concept already. Good to know that it is not only my point of view that this is something people would like to see.
But we all know, /how/ difficuilt it is to create an enterprise system, even if you just "branch" an existing one. Remember that you have to remove all brandings because this might could hurt SUSE and they will hurt you, if you do it :-)
Full ACK. It is a hard job. I've seen the guys at CentOS doing this, and I've seen also the typical ressources (such as buildsystems) as one bottleneck. The branding issue is in fact one very important (if not _the_ most important ;)) thing. One of the first things I am up to is to check the license on all packages within SLES, since there will be some packages which can not be included out of the box.
On the other hand, what is your motivation to create such a project? You don´t seem to want money, so, just for fun? Then I really would suggest you to join the evergreen project, even if it isn´t 100% the same as SLES. You have the force to change it, by supporting the project.
If even Wolfgang (as maintainer for Evergreen) is interested on this one I really think I'm moving a good direction. He himself stated, that he originally wanted to make a SLES clone. Really: It's a hard job, and you bet this will not be done within weeks or even months. Such a process is something you could rather calculate in quarters (if you really are into on this one). About my motivation: It's a mixture between fun and "business", but more for fun. Business is not what you may think from my side - It's about the motivation to get SUSE respinable also for complete different distro rebuilds, etc. There are companies out there which would love to use a SUSE-based distro, and in fact I want to rebuild a rock-solid SLES with no regulations, obligations or anything else on it. I mean, isn't this is what OSS is all about? As I said, all of this should not do any harm to SUSE at all. I love SUSE, probably will always do - I also have good contacts to SUSE employees and really admire all work they do and would never risk to get into a bad situation with them. For the fun side: Hey, how often do you have the chance to really something cool and have people asking for it? ;) Additionally: SUSE Studio (or kiwi in specific) is one hell of a nice piece of software. But what are the problems people will be facing with it: Yes, you can build with openSUSE, customize down like whatever you like, but sooner or later you will get into that specific update-problem (repos, etc. what I've mentioned earlier) - If you take SLES and you want updates: Go and get a subscription. About the pricing: SUSE in my opinion is cheap, really cheap (maybe even too cheap - my honest opinion) - But it is just too expensive if you might want to respin something with a rock solid basis (!and!) want to redistribute it. I know this fairly well, since about 4 years ago I've been in development with an asterisk-based appliance. Realistic I had 2 choices: CentOS and openSUSE, guess what I've taken. I bet you took CentOS - nope. I took openSUSE however this was really a pain in the a**. There have been updates which simply caused major changes and therefore we had to work around it in numerous ways. With SLES (or a clone of it) you might also have issues, but by far not at a comparable frequency.
Also, I guess that there dozens of people who would like such a project, but who haven´t the time or who don´t want to support it, because they have enough to do with openSUSE or/and they are working for SUSE.
I've taken this into account. I have no idea on how SUSE would handle this. Really, no idea. But I also have to make clear: My business day is >12 hours mostly, but my decision to do this is something I really have been thinking about. I had about 3 drafts already done to send to this list (the first time over a year ago) - Now I regret I hadn't done it before. As I said: This all should be about community - The same way with openSUSE, if people are dedicated and like what they see, they might go for it and help. So nothing really new here. I have no idea how much this might attract people, however: CentOS proves it _can_ work. What I offer to do is providing infrastructure, taking a look on legal issues, building a base system and providing the community with everything with as much time and ressources I can. As this might grow this concept might be something you have to think about after some time of course (since nobody can spend endless ressources for nothing), but there must be some way to start - And correct me if I'm wrong, but you have to start somewhere - and if this works out well it'll just be another community OS with maybe some companies backing infrastructure, etc.
I would suggest you to wait what open-slx is doing *or* to use SUSE Studio (____but____ you have to remove ***all*** branding and other non-free things. This will really be something I don´t wanna do, because it´s so f..... difficiult to do.)
No. As I said before, open-slx is not an option for me. And why should we wait? Is there any reason? I know, we IT guys can be called lazy at some point, but at least I'm not too lazy to wait for somebody else doing the job. Who knows: Maybe they'll branch off from us at some point. That in fact would be funny - just kidding.... ;)
hope this helps,
It does, really - The title "RFC" was screaming for valuable input such as yours. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org