Quoting Brad Bendily
Suse doesn't make tripwire, they don't maintain tripwire, they don't do anything except add tripwire to their distro. They add, best guess, over 3000 different rpm packages to their distro. I don't find it terrible that each and every one of those aren't fully quality tested and that they don't work the first time. Sure, they shouldn't include it if they didn't test it, but really who is going to sit there and test each and every package. Is there anyone here who test each and every package distributed with Suse? I think not.
So what, a package doesn't work, go get the source and compile/install it yourself. That's what Linux is all about, you don't have to use the proprietary vendors stuff ALL the time.
It doesn't really bother me that a package doesn't work, if I really want that package then I'll find other means to obtain it.
And if I only maintained one system, I'd agree. When you have two dozen and more, with different architectures involved, the "compile it yourself" starts to become less and less feasible. That said, I wasn't too upset when the first version in the distro didn't work. As you say, there are thousands of programs, and things will slip through the cracks. The months it took to get SuSE to notice was annoying, but in the end OK. The thing that took the tripwire issue over the line was the security update that broke it *AGAIN*. They weren't doing a security update on 3000 programs. Just one at a time. That said, I paid for SuSE Professional more than once. I was told they maintain security updates for two years. I consider that part of the warranty. If I wanted a distro where they did updates out of the goodness of their hearts, I'd use Debian (or if I wanted a distro where they didn't do security updates at all, I'd use Fedora :-P ). I'd rather use SuSE. But if these security updates continue to be done in such a slipshod manner, with only market-speak excuses given, I won't be able to justify it to the CEO. I'm not demanding perfection. I'm demanding communication. Linux's power is community. The more SuSE is part of that community, the stronger SuSE will be.