SUSE's announcement around choice this morning

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Gerald Pfeifer

11 Jul 2023 11 Jul '23

08:44

Hi folks, SUSE just issued a press release on an exciting development around Linux which Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen (or simply DP, CEO of SUSE) complemented with a blog: https://www.suse.com/news/SUSE-Preserves-Choice-in-Enterprise-Linux/ https://www.suse.com/c/at-suse-we-make-choice-happen/ DP and Thomas (Di Giacomo, who many of you know) are in Asia right now engaging with customers, yet offered to respond to questions you may have. So, any questions of yours related to this announcement, simply drop me a note, indicate whether you want to remain anonymous or not, and I'll compile a list and share it with them my Friday night (CEST). As always I am available, too, directly and here. Gerald -- Dr. Gerald Pfeifer <gp@suse.com>, CTO @SUSE + chair @openSUSE

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Vojtěch Zeisek

11 Jul 11 Jul

10:20

Hi Dne úterý 11. července 2023 10:44:39 CEST, Gerald Pfeifer napsal(a):

...

Hi folks, SUSE just issued a press release on an exciting development around Linux which Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen (or simply DP, CEO of SUSE) complemented with a blog: https://www.suse.com/news/SUSE-Preserves-Choice-in-Enterprise-Linux/ https://www.suse.com/c/at-suse-we-make-choice-happen/

Dumb questions. What does it mean in practice that SUSE will maintain fork of RHEL? And why does SUSE wish to do so?

...

DP and Thomas (Di Giacomo, who many of you know) are in Asia right now engaging with customers, yet offered to respond to questions you may have. So, any questions of yours related to this announcement, simply drop me a note, indicate whether you want to remain anonymous or not, and I'll compile a list and share it with them my Friday night (CEST). As always I am available, too, directly and here. Gerald -- Vojtěch Zeisek https://trapa.cz/

Komunita openSUSE GNU/Linuxu Community of the openSUSE GNU/Linux https://www.opensuse.org/

ddemaio openSUSE

11:14

On 2023-07-11 12:20, Vojtěch Zeisek wrote:

...

Hi

Dne úterý 11. července 2023 10:44:39 CEST, Gerald Pfeifer napsal(a):

...
Hi folks, SUSE just issued a press release on an exciting development around Linux which Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen (or simply DP, CEO of SUSE) complemented with a blog: https://www.suse.com/news/SUSE-Preserves-Choice-in-Enterprise-Linux/ https://www.suse.com/c/at-suse-we-make-choice-happen/

Dumb questions. What does it mean in practice that SUSE will maintain fork of RHEL? And why does SUSE wish to do so?

It is mentioned in the announcement. SUSE has a distribution product called Liberty that's just like Alma and Rocky. It goes long with Red Hats announcement a couple weeks ago that effected them as well as a few others - https://www.infoworld.com/article/3700651/red-hat-ends-the-rhel-clones-free-... v/r Doug

ish＠sysadmin-journal.com

12:27

Hi Doug,

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On 11 Jul 2023, at 15:14, ddemaio openSUSE <ddemaio@opensuse.org> wrote:

It is mentioned in the announcement. SUSE has a distribution product called Liberty that's just like Alma and Rocky. It goes long with Red Hats announcement a couple weeks ago that effected them as well as a few others - https://www.infoworld.com/article/3700651/red-hat-ends-the-rhel-clones-free-...

I thought SUSE Liberty only provides security patches and maintenance updates for RHEL, which makes it a RHEL-compatible repo instead of a RHEL-compatible "distribution". Regards, Ish Sookun

ddemaio openSUSE

16:15

Hi Ish, On 2023-07-11 14:27, ish@sysadmin-journal.com wrote:

...

Hi Doug,

...
On 11 Jul 2023, at 15:14, ddemaio openSUSE <ddemaio@opensuse.org> wrote:

It is mentioned in the announcement. SUSE has a distribution product called Liberty that's just like Alma and Rocky. It goes long with Red Hats announcement a couple weeks ago that effected them as well as a few others - https://www.infoworld.com/article/3700651/red-hat-ends-the-rhel-clones-free-...

I thought SUSE Liberty only provides security patches and maintenance updates for RHEL, which makes it a RHEL-compatible repo instead of a RHEL-compatible "distribution".

Regards,

Ish Sookun

It's support, but better explained here - https://www.suse.com/c/suse-liberty-linux/ v/r Doug

Gerald Pfeifer

12 Jul 12 Jul

09:06

On Tue 2023-07-11, ish@sysadmin-journal.com wrote:

...

I thought SUSE Liberty only provides security patches and maintenance updates for RHEL, which makes it a RHEL-compatible repo instead of a RHEL-compatible "distribution".

Creating such updates requires a (pretty) full distribution. Think build dependencies, which often are entire chains of dependencies. And there are use cases that require the ability to install from scratch. Say a customer's server literally goes up in flames or a less dramatic variation thereof and the customer needs to provision new hardware (possibly a different model requiring different configurations) to keep running a certain application. Gerald

Attila Pinter

03:45

------- Original Message ------- On Tuesday, July 11th, 2023 at 3:44 PM, Gerald Pfeifer <gp@suse.com> wrote:

...

Hi folks,

SUSE just issued a press release on an exciting development around Linux which Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen (or simply DP, CEO of SUSE) complemented with a blog:

https://www.suse.com/news/SUSE-Preserves-Choice-in-Enterprise-Linux/ https://www.suse.com/c/at-suse-we-make-choice-happen/

DP and Thomas (Di Giacomo, who many of you know) are in Asia right now engaging with customers, yet offered to respond to questions you may have.

So, any questions of yours related to this announcement, simply drop me a note, indicate whether you want to remain anonymous or not, and I'll compile a list and share it with them my Friday night (CEST).

As always I am available, too, directly and here.

Gerald -- Dr. Gerald Pfeifer gp@suse.com, CTO @SUSE + chair @openSUSE

The narrative feels weird... quoting Gregory Kurtzer feels even weirder. This is the same guy who started CentOS, sold it to RH, then started Rocky (bug-to-bug clone of RHEL, literally zero changes or custom tooling to make RHEL better), and just undercuts RH on the support fee. Not exactly a future proof business model as time has proved it. RH is doing with RHEL the same thing it does to most of it's products for a looooong time now (like AAP, or Web Console, will these tools be forked too?), and doesn't leave open access to it once it is forked from upstream, but one can always figure when did the fork happen since the upstream is very much open-source - that RH heavily contributes to - for all of their tools, non of it is "proprietary". Idk, the wording just feels weird. Would understand if it was only packaging for Liberty, but by the sound of it SUSE will package for all the clone distros (assumption). "CIQ is thrilled to collaborate with SUSE on advancing an open enterprise Linux standard." Sure they do, they can continue to do virtually nothing. Anywho, making a business decision that makes SUSE more attractive, and profitable is great, however, throwing shade on one of the largest FOSS contributor in the world leaves a bittersweet taste in my mouth. IMO it could've been worded better. I get it, it is a business opportunity, but it's just weird to see a message like this from SUSE that suggests that RH is going towards the more proprietary path. My 2C. -- Br, A.