On Wednesday, 5 June 2019 14:36:19 CEST Stasiek Michalski wrote:
On śro, Jun 5, 2019 at 2:18 PM, Robert Schweikert
wrote:
On 6/5/19 5:45 AM, Pierre Böckmann wrote:
On Wednesday, 5 June 2019 11:18:26 CEST Mathias Homann wrote:
Am 2019-06-03 08:01, schrieb Stasiek Michalski:
Hi,
Here's just one little bit of food for thought.
I was just chitchatting with a coworker about this, and he said:
"If opensuse changes their name whey will be just one of many unknown / new linux distributions, while right now they are one of the market leaders"
Do we really WANT to be "just some small new distro" instead one of the big five?
Cheers MH
Hi Mathias,
I don't think that we are becoming "just some small new distro". The Community stays the same, only with a strong supporting foundation behind it. Neither are we cutting the ties to SUSE, nor do we rebase the distro on any other technological basis. Leap will continue to be Leap, and same applies to Tumbleweed and the openSUSE project.
I am sure that a name change and the new build foundation will get some media buzz around the globe. So we probably might even get much more attention than we got in the last few years and we might profit from that attention, too.
Sorry but that is all speculation, we might get media attention we might ..... and flies in the face of historical evidence
Mandrake -> Mandriva -> what is it now? Does anyone care?
This is actually a very powerful example, Mandrake had to change the name, because of copyright issues, to Mandriva which went under a few years later, without any agreements with community to continue using the name in case this happens. Then Mageia and a few other projects formed out of this. This exact thing is why we need to discuss if we want this to repeat if SUSE goes under.
I'm not saying it will, but all of the discussion is based on the history of other open source corporations. :P
LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world
That's exactly the point and why I wrote: " Keeping the name openSUSE would be a legal issue because the logo and name include those of SUSE. This simply leads to copyright and trademark issues. A potential foundation - which is a very good idea to have btw - would in it's pure existence be dependent on SUSE granting the right to use the name and branding / trademarks etc." And I would rather prefer not to be dependent on SUSE, their willingness to grant us the right to use their name, brand and logo and their ability to stay a healthy company. I am sure they will, and most likely they will always stay supportive and willing to grant us the necessary rights. But that are no less "mights" and "coulds" than those mentioned before. There is still a realistic possibility that for instance some corporation acquires SUSE and decides that SUSE has to save money and stop supporting the openSUSE project or the new owners decide that they don't want to continue to share copyrights and trademarks with the community and the openSUSE project and there are so many other scenarios possible which are problematic. I believe that we can master the challenges of re-branding and even benefit from it. We can and will continue to cooperate with SUSE but we gain independence and empowering the community for the time being. Additionally I don't think that our situation is comparable with Mandrake / Mandriva / Mageia. We have the chance to make the transition as smooth as possible because we are not forced to change name. But some day we might be if we don't go this way with will of our own. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org