Bonum Certa Men Certa

OpenSUSE's Future Still Debated, Not Seen Clearly

Christmas



Summary: OpenSUSE's route after an AttachMSFT takeover is still not defined clearly enough, which puts it at risk and also a good position to fork

AS LONGTIME readers may know, as a former SUSE user my views on the subject are mixed. On the one hand I think that OpenSUSE is a solid distribution with a decent reputation, but on the other hand, OpenSUSE is owned by Novell, which promotes Microsoft agenda (more on that later). Had the OpenSUSE community decided to fork (thus departing from Novell), a lot would change. The OpenSUSE Board, which comprises both Novell employees and outsiders (elections imminent and candidates step forward, in addition to ambassadors), has greetings for this season and there are claims that "Collaboration thrives!"



“Had the OpenSUSE community decided to fork (thus departing from Novell), a lot would change.”"Meanwhile," says this post, "Linux Journal is noticing the spirit of openSUSE – mentioning the Collaboration days in the linked article! The team feels full of energy and is looking forward to the next two Collaboration Days scheduled for this month. On Monday, 13 December, we’ll have the Marketing Materials Review Day and on Tuesday, 21 December, we’ll have the PR and Social Media Review Day."

This was written in reference to Susan Linton's writings about OpenSUSE, which she has been following and using for quite some time (for as long as I've read her excellent Web site, TuxMachines). One post asks: "Has the Novell Deal Hampered openSUSE?"

Soon after the reworked openFATE was announced, a rolling release option was introduced by Greg Kroah-Hartman, a kernel developer employed by Novell. This was something he'd been wanting to do for a while, and he said the time was right to start it now. Work will start soon on the 11.3 branch and users with 11.3 or new 11.4 installs should be able to start rolling on the openSUSE river pretty soon, should they choose to do so. This will be accomplished through a separate repository, so users can still enjoy the traditional periodic install or upgrade with important and security fixes as usual if they wish.

The openSUSE Board elections were announced on December 1. The openSUSE board consists of five members to oversee the project. The board helps resolve conflicts, communicate with Novell, facilitate communication with the community, and assist with the decision making processes. There are two seats to fill and only one can be a Novell employee. The election is taking place from January 12 to January 26. Results will be announced January 26. Only openSUSE members are eligible to vote, but becoming a member isn't difficult. To become a member you will have to have contributed to openSUSE in some manner. All this is just another way one can be involved in the direction of openSUSE.


"The openSUSE and Ubuntu Rollercoasters" is another Linton post on the subject of OpenSUSE, but all the other posts from the past two weeks are either purely technical or about Tumbleweed, which is basically the possibility that OpenSUSE will become a rolling release [1, 2, 3]. Here is one person's opinion on OpenSUSE Long-Term Support (LTS) release:



1. I have a feeling the two being analogised to CentOS is a bit unfair. openSUSE's relation with SLE has always been more the Fedora to RHEL kind. We, as a project, form a base, not a copy of SUSE's enterprise offerings, if typically more conservatively than competition.

2. openSUSE has the direct primary sponsorship of Novell. CentOS has no official affiliation with RH. An openSLES may antagonise Novell/SUSE/Attachmate's friendly approach.

3. Offering of an LTS version alternately with a couple of normal versions has not been discussed. I wonder why. Ubuntu does that quite appreciably, (though I have never personally encountered an Ubuntu-powered server). From Wikipedia, "To date every fourth release, in the second quarter of even-numbered years, has been designated as a Long Term Support (LTS) release, indicating that it has updates for three years for desktop use and five years for server"


Over at Ostatic, Susan Linton wrote about this potentially major news (similar rumours were made about Ubuntu recently, but they turned out to be false). She also ponders "The (open)Fate of openSUSE". We wrote about OpenSUSE in a dedicated fashion only a couple of times since the AttachMSFT [sic] news [1, 2] and the general feeling is that AttachMSFT would not be sufficiently committed. Think of what Xandros did with Linspire and Freespire if that helps. One of the "OpenSUSE lizards" is "[a]nnouncing factory-tested" while the more major release is OpenSUSE 11.4-milestone4 (screenshots here or here), which brings new manuals. Assuming that OpenSUSE 11.4 is released and marketed by AttachMSFT, is there any guarantee that OpenSUSE 11.5 will ever come out? AttachMSFT is not legally obliged. In general, AttachMSFT needn't even carry on contributing to Linux at all. Just watch what happened to Caldera/SCO after Kevin McBride came in.

Here is what the 451 Group has to say on the subject:

In conclusion, Linux fans should be encouraged by the quality, diversity and new directions of the Linux kernel development community. While there is cause for some concern regarding Novell’s contribution, overall, Linux development seems to be charging ahead.


"Intel has managed to surpass Novell and IBM" says another source and since AttachMSFT's promise to OpenSUSE is not a legal commitment even the former community manager of the project is not too optimistic (further discussion in LWN). To quote some of Zonker's good piece:

Now we know who’s buying Novell, but now what? The Attachmate deal, if it goes through, has some serious implications for the rest of the tech industry in 2011 and beyond.

First, a quick disclaimer: I’m a former Novell employee, and worked for the company for two years, ending in January 2010. I don’t have any stock or financial interest in the company.

Now onto the news. I’ve written a bit about this on NetworkWorld when the deal was announced on Monday, November 22. To say the least, I was surprised that the deal went down like this. I was fairly sure, and was hopeful, that Novell would go to VMware. The, as they say, “synergy” between the SUSE part of Novell’s business and VMware is pretty strong. Novell has been focusing a lot on SUSE Studio and virtualization through its “perfect guest,” virtualization strategy. The company hasn’t been focusing very hard on being a host platform for virtualization. That’s not to say you can’t use SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as a host platform — you can, but the focus has been on being a good guest.


For some more news about OpenSUSE see the official project Web site [1, 2]. There is some better news [1, 2], but none which is Earth-shattering. Techrights is genuinely worried about OpenSUSE, thinking that AttachMSFT will do to it what SCOracle [sic] did to OpenSolaris. OpenSUSE is where improvements to GNU/Linux are pushed upstream.

Recent Techrights' Posts

[Meme] 9AM Meeting at Brett Wilson LLP
Brett Wilson LLP in space
 
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 18, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, July 18, 2025
Links 18/07/2025: Peace With PKK and Connie Francis Dies
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/07/2025: Alhena 5.1.8 and Bornhack 2025
Links for the day
How to Top Up a "Limited Liability" With Even More Limitations (Dodging Accountability in the UK)
Some people call it a "shell game". Sometimes it's done for tax evasion purposes.
Free Software Foundation, Inc. (FSF) Inches Towards 75% of Fund-Raising Target
Will the cutoff date be extended again?
Gemini Space (or Geminispace) Grows, But Usage of Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Drops Further
Ideally, all Gemini capsules should use self-signed certificates
Links 18/07/2025: More Microsoft Layoffs in Activision, The New Stack (Sponsored by Microsoft) Complains About Openwashing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/07/2025: OCC25 Gnus for Reading Usenet and RSS Feeds, Small Web Updates
Links for the day
Listing as Staff People Who Left the Company More Than Six Years Earlier
There are apparently no laws against that
Brian Fagioli Shovels Up LLM Slop (Plagiarism) Onto Slashdot, Then Uses Slashdot for Affirmation or as Badge of Honour
Notice how some of his latest slop is presented ("as featured on Slashdot")
Social Control Media Productivity
Snapping photos of the bone
The Law Firm SLAPPing Us For the Microsofters Lost 72% of Its Tangible Assets in the Past Year, According to Its Own Reports
That might help explain why they're willing to tolerate serial stranglers from Microsoft as clients
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity.com Slopfarm and Slopfarms Propped Up by Google News
"As LLM slop is foisted onto the WWW in place of knowledge and real content, it now gets ingested and processed by other LLMs, creating a sort of ouroboros of crap."
Links 18/07/2025: Weather Events and Health Hazards
Links for the day
Microsoft's All-Time Low in Finland
Microsoft is in a freefall
Security: Shane Wegner & Debian statement of incompetence
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 17, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, July 17, 2025
Gemini Links 17/07/2025: "Goodreads for Gemini" and Defence of "The Small Web"
Links for the day
Links 17/07/2025: Anger and Morale Issues at Microsoft, Wars and Conflicts Get Digital
Links for the day
CALEA / CALEA2 is the Real Problem, Not Chinese Operatives Exploiting CALEA / CALEA2 (as Any Other Nation Can)
CALEA / CALEA2 is more of a front door than a back door
99.99% Uptime in First Half of 2025
Since January there was only one noticeable outage
Nils Torvalds and Anna "Mikke" Torvalds (née Törnqvis) Hopefully Use GNU/Linux by Now
"Torvalds Family Uses Windows, Not Linus’ Linux"
Attack of the Slopfarms
FUD-amplifying bots with slop images, slop text (LLM slop)
When People Call a Best/Close Friend of Bill Gates a "Serial Rapist"
Good thing that the Linux Foundation keeps the "Linux" trademark ("Linux Mark") clean
Not My Problem, I Don't Care
Context/inspiration: Martin Niemöller
Honest Journalism About the European Patent Office Ceased to Exist After SLAPPs and Bribes to the Media
The EPO is basically a Mafia
Microsoft Bankruptcy in Russia, Shutdown in Pakistan, What Next?
It seems possible that in 2025 alone Microsoft will have laid off over 50,000 workers
Life Became Simpler When I Stopped Driving and I Don't Miss Driving When I See "Modern" Cars
Gee, wonder why car sales have plummeted...
Why I Believe Brett Wilson LLP and Its Microsoft Clients Are All Toast
So far our legal strategy has worked perfectly
EPO Jobs Are Very Toxic and Bad for One's Health
Health first, not monopolies
Response to Ryo Suwito Regarding the Four Freedoms
the point of life isn't to make more money
Microsoft's Morale Circling Down the Drain
Or gutter, toilet etc.
What Matters More Than "Market Share"
The goal is freedom, not "market share"
Tech Used to be Fun. To Many of Us It's Still Fun.
You can just watch it from afar and make fun of it all
Links 17/07/2025: "Blog Identity Crisis" and Openwashing by Nvidia
Links for the day
Greffiers and the US Attorney of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft
The lawsuit can help expose extensive corruption in the American court system as well
Credit Suisse collapse obfuscated Parreaux, Thiébaud & Partners scandal
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The People Who Promoted systemd in Debian Also Promote Wayland
This is not politics
UK Media Under Threat: Cannot Report on Data Breach, Cannot Report on Microsoft Staff Strangling Women
The story of super injunction (in the British media this week, years late)
Victims of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft, Alex Balabhadra Graveley, Wanted to Sue Him But Lacked the Funds (He Attacked Their Finances)
Having spoken to victims of the Serial Strangler From Microsoft
Links 17/07/2025: Science, Hardware, and Censorship
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/07/2025: Staying in the "Small Web" and Back on ICQ
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 16, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, July 16, 2025