Just for the record: the SLES 9 eval version available at http://download.novell.com/ contains the full set of 6 CDs, two of which contain the src rpms. To say SLES is not open source is a bit far-fetched - but it is aimed at earning money with it, that's true.
I don't say that SLES is not open source! I've already downloaded the evaluation CDs. I think i know sles well. I've worked with it since SLES7. Are there srpms for the updates, too?
If you are a paying maintenance customer, yes.
What you pay for in SLES is exactly what you propose: additional testing and bugfixing and several years of maintenance. If you can find a group of people who can offer you this level of maintenance, who can guarantee you that they won't disappear when they find greener pastures, and are willing to do this on a volunteer, unpaid basis, just do it. And if you find them on this list, start a sub-project as has already been proposed.
That's the point. As i've already written, i don't think that's possible for a group of volunteers. Even Debian, one of the biggest linux distribution has problems with it.
As i've also already written, I think if there are more SLES there will be much more people/business which are intererested in and will buy additional services from Novell. And there is more benefit for Novell. But that's only my opinion.
I don't want to criticise Novell. I think Suse has done a good job at their Enterprise Distribution. That's one point why i use it. Please go on with your good work!
Paying for the quality of SLES and its maintenance is part of Novells business model. As one of the guys almost exclusively working on this (for the security updates part) I (and several dozen other people working in engineering and support) really would like to continue to get paid and I definitely think you get enough value for your money. Ciao, Marcus