Bonum Certa Men Certa

OpenSUSE's Future is Doubted Even by OpenSUSE Sympathisers

Stars and Christmas tree



Summary: OpenSUSE critics from the project's own base of supporters are coming out voicing their discomforting opinions

SUSE means a lot to me historically. It has always been one of the leading distributions, but when Novell liaised with Microsoft its reputation took a tumble. There is not so much news about OpenSUSE anymore. Sure, there is still the occasional security alert, the Weekly News (in need of writers), and an attempt to fill up the vacuum left by departing members. Many people seem to be leaving the core of the project, not just as users.



Groklaw worries about Novell's betrayal and worries for OpenSUSE's future [1, 2, 3]; it's about user confidence, which is being lost in this Novell aftermath. Today Groklaw warns about OpenSUSE's foundation and to quote some portions from a very long post:

Wikipedia's page on the OpenSUSE Project says it's sponsored by Novell, AMD and IP Exchange, not just Novell, and OpenSUSE's sponsor page confirms those three and adds B1 Systems GmbH as another. Then there's the community of programmers that develop and maintain the project, judging by this OpenSUSE development page, which says "the openSUSE distribution ... consists of around 3500 applications, libraries and utilities. All of them are cared-for by openSUSE Package Maintainers who integrate, polish, update and maintain them. Maintaining packages is the bread and butter development task that is done in the openSUSE project."

So why is the trademark Novell's alone?

It doesn't feel right, does it, when you look at it like that? My point is, there's more than one stakeholder in the OpenSUSE foundation being set up, and you'll see that discussed in the log. Trademarks have economic value, and if the community is helping in building that value, I think it's logical that they should gain a share of ownership rights so as to get some share in that value and some say in what happens with the trademark.

[...]

Don't be fooled by who from the community signs up with the foundation or think you can rely on them to play fair with you. No matter who the foundation hires or puts on a committee, nothing changes with regard to developers. You have to look out for your own interests. Microsoft has buckets of money. The staff are paid. You are not, so your interests and the corporate and hired interests are not identical, even if they are really nice guys. So keep your guard up, read the bylaws, and notice the licenses that a foundation is using too. If the license allows for taking the code proprietary, as per the Apache License (they call it "keeping your modifications secret", which is allowed by the license), then it's maybe Open Source but not Free Software in the sense that the GPL guarantees. It means there is no guarantee that modifications to the code will remain free. That's why Oracle turns red at the thought of the Apache License on Java, I would imagine.


About a month ago there were signs of progress amid release delays (affecting the milestones even after Novell had slowed down release pace):

openSUSE 11.4 has feature freeze with Milestone 5 to be published on December 16th. So, it’s too late for a full review of all 11.4 features in time – and thus the team will only a review and push a few features.


Novell is reaching out to the community with a new survey. While some users like Dedoimedo and Andy still write about OpenSUSE, it sure seems like the community once fostered by Novell keeps slipping away and a longtime supporter of OpenSUSE makes predictions for 2011, claiming that "OpenSUSE will die":

openSUSE will die. Or at least as we know it. Attachmate is still beholden to Microsoft for helping them come up with cash to purchase Novell. MS did not do this so that Attachmate could continue developing openSUSE. So what I see is openSUSE being put to rest by Attachmate and a spin off will be created by freelance open source developers.


Another person who supported OpenSUSE (Brian Proffitt) is as sceptical as us about AttachMSFT's poor assurance. In his summary he claims: "One-on-one interview confirms fates of SUSE Linux, openSUSE tied together."

Yes, it seems like AttachMSFT might do with OpenSUSE what Xandros did with Linspire and Freespire, in due course.

It is sad to see all of this. Important projects suffer, whereas unwanted projects like Mono and Moonlight are still around. Here we have a new post about a Mono program from Novell and an overly optimistic roundup of 2010 from the OpenSUSE Web site. "Integration with Banshee" (Novell projects that's a no-no) is shown as something positive there. If OpenSUSE considers .NET to be a selling point, then maybe the demise of OpenSUSE won't be all that terrible after all.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Free University of Bozen-Bolzano Proud to Host Free Software Talk by Richard Stallman
ahead of Monday's talk
Slopwatch: Anti-Linux Machine-Generated FUD (LLM Slop) From GBHackers, CybersecurityNews, and Guardian Digital, Inc (Google News Promotes Slop Plagiarism, Misinformation)
Companies that lie try to drown out the signal with falsehoods
 
Microsoft's Market Share in Cameroon Falls to New Lows
This means a lot of Android users (iOS is about 4 times smaller), but Android does not mean freedom
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 21, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, February 21, 2025
The Streisand Effect is Real
So don't be evil. Also, don't strangle women.
Links 21/02/2025: Linux Foundation Openwashing, Microsoft Copilot Goes Down
Links for the day
Links 21/02/2025: Doomscrolling and European Ham Radio Show
Links for the day
Links 21/02/2025: TikTok Layoffs, WebOS Software Patents in Bad Hands
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/02/2025: Web Browsers, Mechanical Shortcuts, and Internet Hygiene
Links for the day
Richard Stallman 'Only' Founded the FSF
there's no reason to be upset at the FSF for keeping their founder in the Board
Techrights Disconnected From the United States Two Years Ago
Did people really need to wait for the US government to become this hostile towards the media before recognising the threat?
Before Trying Censorship by Extortion the Serial Strangler From Microsoft Literally Begged Us to Delete Pages
This is very clearly just a broad campaign of intimidation
Hype Watch: Weeks After Microsoft Disappointed Investors With "Hey Hi" It's Trying Some "Quantum" Hype (Adding Impractical Vapourware to Accompany This Hype and Even LLM Slop in 'News' Clothing)
Remember "metaverse"? What happened to media hype about "blockchain" and "IoT"?
Report About February Mass Layoffs at Microsoft (Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in 2025) Comes Back From the Dead
Yesterday we wrote about an article in CRN (reporting Microsoft layoffs) being removed without any reasons specified
Links 21/02/2025: Myanmar Scam Centre and Disruptions at USPTO
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, February 20, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, February 20, 2025
gbhackers.com is Not Hackers, It's LLM Slop Outputs (Fake 'Articles') That Attack 'True Hackers'
A site called linuxsecurity.com keeps doing this and now we see the slopfarm gbhackers.com doing the same
Gemini Links 20/02/2025: Law of Warming and Cooling, Health, and Devlog
Links for the day
linuxsecurity.com Continues to Spread Lies or Machine-Generated FUD (Microsoft LLMs Likely the Source) About OpenSSH and Linux
this LLM problem is global
Links 20/02/2025: Microsoft Infosys Layoffs and IRS Layoffs (Good News for Rich Tax Evaders)
Links for the day
IBM Layoffs in Europe Already Happening or Underway (UK and Spain). They Try Not to Call These "Layoffs".
"CIO" in particular was repeatedly mentioned lately, as was Consulting
People Who Came From Microsoft Demanding Removal of Articles About Them, About Microsoft, and About Microsoft GitHub is "Generous" (According to Them)
Imagine choosing a law firm that borrows money in the same year just to avoid overdraft in the bank!
Possibly a Third Round of Mass Layoffs at Microsoft in 2025 ("Cloud Solution Architects, Customer Roles"), Report Removed or Censored
This is literally the top story for "microsoft layoffs" right now
Instead of 'DoS Protection' Cloudflare is Allegedly Conducting 'DoS Attacks' on Users of Browsers Other Than Firefox and GAFAM's DRM Sandboxes (Chrome, Safari and Others)
If you value the Web, you will avoid Cloudflare
Mixing Real With Fake in One 'Article' (by "Director of Content, Help Net Security")
From what we can gather, he got machines to generate some slop for him
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, February 19, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, February 19, 2025