On 2011-04-27 Alberto wrote:
Hi,
2011/4/27 Koushik Kumar Nundy <kknundy@gmail.com>:
It appears that the openSUSE project has no official stance for or against Balsam, and I personally feel it shouldn't have one either, so there really isn't much we can do about it. Another company, another product. Apparently end of story. Let us worry about the openSUSE project. Let openSLX worry about Balsam.
It actually is another company, same product. And it seems largely at the expenses of the openSUSE project, which does most of the job without getting anything back. Someone claims openSLX contributes to openSUSE, but how? Splitting the community with the creation of their support site and redirecting users there? Taking advantage of two projects from Novell without benefits for our community? Because the benefits of Balsam Enterprise will only be for them it seems.
Not having a position on that does not seem a good idea to me, especially when the position was very clear when the internal community to the openSUSE project tried to do something similar. It frankly seems that community members have to pay a price others do not have to pay, and it comes natural to ask what is the advantage of contributing to a project that works this way.
openSUSE didn't do it out of concern for Novell's opinion. openSLX decided otherwise - which is entirely their right. Novell has not said anything about this whole thing as: 1. it is vaporware right now (SLE 12? Anyone has any idea when that'll be released? Probably won't be anytime soon...) 2. just gives attention to something which shouldn't get any Now about the questions on openSLX contributions to openSUSE: they do contribute but have a tendency to do it in a hidden fashion. The reason for that is unclear to me. I do know it's how they've worked with Novell in the past so I have a strong suspicion it's not just their choice but was actually requested by Novell from them. Not sure why. Whatever the reasons for doing it quietly or methods of contribution, yes, they contribute. They contributed to our wiki, sponsored our conference and have people working on and within openSUSE (like Sebas, Rupert and others). Of course they don't contribute as much as Novell but they're a small company so it's not a fair comparison imho... And JDD has a very good point:
If any company use openSUSE as base, his vey interest is to help openSUSE
anyway we should more focus on making openSUSE better than looking at the other people's dishes
This is exactly how I feel. If openSLX wants to do this - fine. It is a bit sad they decided to rename their openSUSE box to Balsam Professional but that's their choice too. They still build on openSUSE technology and work within our community - so that's all we need to cooperate, a common interest. And honestly I think the Plasma Active and Tablet stuff is really cool and I wish we would get over this and all work on that so we can talk about it as an openSUSE project... Let's skip the politics and get back to work please! :D
Best, A
Hugs, Jos