Per, On Friday 09 September 2005 06:13, Per Jessen wrote:
Andreas Jaeger wrote:
It's easy to patch it in, we can do this in a couple of minutes. But since we're using the same code for the Retail box and for openSUSE, we do not want to change it.
The whole issue that you arise above is something we have to think about - currently there's no technical solution for this,
Hi Andreas.
Many thanks for your response. So we've hit the crux of the problem - which seems pretty critical. Although openSUSE is an "open" project, what goes and what doesn't is still decided by the commercial needs requirements of Novell/SuSE.
God, I hope so. When an open project becomes a free-for-all, it's already dead. I'm not at all familiar with the Fedora project, but I've heard intimations that its openness was not entirely to the benefit of the resulting distribution and when this project started up there was some concern that it would suffer a similar fate. Presumably Novell is learning from the mistakes that were made in that earlier attempt at something similar.
In many ways also reasonably understandable, but it does beg the question - how open is OpenSUSE really?
I think the question is what you think "open" means in this context. Novell owns the SuSE trademark and the distribution. It's up to them to run the project as they see fit.
From www.opensuse.org/How_to_participate :
"The easiest way to participate in the development of SUSE Linux is to post a patch as a suggested solution to an existing bug in Bugzilla (https://bugzilla.novell.com). Each package has a maintainer, who will contact you to discuss your proposed solution. "
I can't help it - perhaps the paragraph above should be slightly amended then:
"Note - patches and proposals are only accepted provided they coincide with SuSEs commercial plans and requirements."
Why does that need to be said? Why would it be otherwise? Novell is a publicly traded corporation headquartered in the United States. The primary duty of those running such companies is to their shareholders--specifically to maximize the return on their investment. Regardless of whether you or I like that arrangement, it's the law here.
Per
Randall Schulz