On Mon, 7 Sep 2009, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier wrote:
On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 5:32 PM, Andrew Joakimsen
wrote: Is Novell really against an free (as in beer) clone of SLES, and would they do anything to stop us? What are the legal considerations, namely: what parts of SLES are not distributed under the GPL or other open licenses? How much work would it take to build such a distribution?
Novell understands open source licensing and participates willingly in the Linux and open source community, and contributes to the same. That means accepting the responsibilities and rights that come with the FOSS licenses, as well as getting the benefit of those licenses.
+1
Is Novell against a clone of SLES? So long as the licensing (copyright & trademark) is respected and the downstream project that produces said clone follows its obligations, why would it be? I think there are a variety of opinions within Novell as to whether a CentOS-like distribution would be good, bad, or indifferent for Novell and SUSE. There are possible benefits and drawbacks, and I'm not sure anyone can point to reliable data about the effects of CentOS on Red Hat, much less on the effects of a clone on Novell's SUSE business. (If you can, please let me know...) I can say Novell is unlikely to focus any significant resources to a clone at this time.
I would totally agree. I know it takes time and resources. We are developing the plan and looking for resources. From what I gather CentOS has a team of about 12 members.
I think pretty much all of SLES fits under one of the OSI-approved licenses.
How much work would it take? There's the real question that this group should be asking itself before dreaming up names and taking votes, etc.
We have looked at it. It was strongly suggested that we come up with a new name for the initiative and use it. By using it we can/are able to work within the guidelines that will avoid potential problems as we get more and more trackion for the initiative.
If you look at CentOS, not to mention all the now-defunct projects that have tried to do rebuild RHEL or provide longer-term support for Fedora, it's a fair amount of work to build and keep current a distribution even when someone else is creating all the SRPMs.
Thanks I understand and am very grateful for your opinions. I know many
OSS projects fail. That is why we are making sure we have the ground work
done. I know I have wanted an openSLES since the first openSUSE 10.0
release and the coresponding SLES release. I hate moving people from
openSUSE to CentOS then RHEL when the organization needs it. I really
want to move them to XXX then SLES as needed.
--
Boyd Gerber