Bonum Certa Men Certa

Phasing Out OpenSUSE

Co-authored with G. Forbes

Moon



Summary: OpenSUSE is fading away as AttachMSFT is phased in

THE formerly vibrant Planet SUSE is usually very quiet these days, save for a few fun events here and there. Recently though, there have been a large amount of blurbs from Greece that have suddenly rushed in, such as this one. Thomas Thym has attempted to reassure everyone that "Strategy is alive". There are even some releases of OpenSUSE flavours/derivatives, such as a medical one. There is also an announcement for SUSE appliances for Fog Computing. This, however, does not relate directly to OpenSUSE per se.



As we have explained in recent posts, OpenSUSE has not received much assurance of a continued existence, unlike SUSE [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]. Jos Poortvliet, who has headed the project's community following the departure of Zonker, carries on the cheerleading. Nevertheless, his attempts at morale boosting can only go so far. Based on this announcement from Jos, "OpenSUSE Build Service" is no more because the Linux Foundation has taken charge; the "OpenSUSE" part (Novell/AttachMSFT trademark) will be dropped:

"The openSUSE Build Service Team has decided to rename its cutting-edge packaging- and distribution build technology to Open Build Service," Poortvliet explains. "The new name, while maintaining the well-known OBS acronym, signals its open and cross-distribution nature."


It is a good time to review what OpenSUSE actually is anymore. The basic recipe is YaST from SUSE and all sorts of customisations applied to default desktop environments. Outside of that, there is also some kernel development from Greg Kroah-Hartman (who had an important role in OpenSUSE), but this portion of Novell is pretty much irrelevant to SUSE itself. Kroah-Hartman himself acts as mentor for Linux projects rather than a SUSE developer:

I'm a Google Summer of Code mentor for a project to port Linux to a specific system on a chip that happens to be in a number of older game platforms. Here's one of these devices. I'm going to be in Taipei and Tokyo over the next few weeks, and it would be great if I could pick up one of these myself to help in the debugging effort of this project. Does anyone know of anywhere in either of those cities I might be able to get this device?


Incidentally, Sean Kerner has this new article titled "New Linux Kernel, New RHEL and New Boss for SUSE Linux". Kroah-Hartman's work will get applied to RHEL, among many other distributions, as well. Sean suggests some scepticism towards SUSE's future in Free software:

The new SUSE Linux business also apparently remains fully committed to open source as well as the continuity of its existing projects.


This is not true based on the actions and inactions taken by AttachMSFT thus far. No commitment was expressed by laying off the Mono developers, and AttachMSFT has not proclaimed any commitment to "OpenSUSE" as a project. AttachMSFT is determined to remain a proprietary software company by all indications.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Extortion is a Crime, Even If You're Based in Another Continent and Work for Microsoft
reported to British authorities
 
Links 06/06/2025: Microsoft XBox Bracing For More Mass Layoffs, Climate Disaster, Fake 'Money' Tokens From US President
Links for the day
Gemini Links 06/06/2025: Vanishing Cultures and MElon Implosion
Links for the day
We're in 6/6 Now, Almost Halfway in 2025
2025 was probably the best year for us
South Americans Are Saying Goodbye to Microsoft
We're hardly even "Cherry-Picking" or conveniently singling out one South American nation
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part III: Data Protection Failures, Just Like at the European Patent Office (EPO)
Just less than a decade ago we showed that the EPO had illegally shared staff data with third parties
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 05, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, June 05, 2025
Pushing Microsoft's Proprietary Trash/Trap as "Open" and "Linux" (Windows is 'Linux' Now?)
Maybe it's time to just stop saying "FOSS". The people who use that term are promoting Microsoft.
Slopwatch: Comparing Linux to Vermin, Attacking BSD With LLM Slop, and Helping Microsoft Demonise Linux/OpenBSD/SSH Over Weak User Passwords
Microsoft must be laughing its arse off, seeing how a bunch of Serial Sloppers (no skills, no comprehension, no integrity, no creativity) and slopfarms use Microsoft LLM to flood the Web with anti-Linux FUD
Links 05/06/2025: US Poised for Another $2.4 Trillion to Debt, Cops Want GAFAM Kill Switches
Links for the day
Links 05/06/2025: First US Spacewalk 60 Years Ago, GNU Octave 10.2.0 is Out
Links for the day
Scandinavia Saying Goodbye to Microsoft
The Danes have had enough of Microsoft
GNU/Linux Measured at 6% in Bangladesh, According to statCounter
Windows isn't growing, it's going away
Nat Friedman Had Left Microsoft GitHub Exactly One Week Before Matthew Garrett Sent His First SLAPP (Which Was an Empty Threat, He Was Abusing the Legal System of Another Continent to Terrorise Critics Who Had Just Unearthed Major Microsoft Scandals)
And it was likely talked about by his lawyers around the exact same time Nat Friedman was packing up
Gemini Links 05/06/2025: Loop Earplugs Review and ANS Forth
Links for the day
Armenian Adoption of GNU/Linux
Russian influence in Armenian must be worrying to Microsoft
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part II: Turning a Once-Respected Patent Office Into a Circus and Laughing Stock
It's not legal, but administrators who don't care about the law and don't fear the law would just go ahead and turn things to junk
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, June 04, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, June 04, 2025
Slopwatch: Mindless Slop Pieces, Fake Images and Text, Linux FUD on the Cheap
spewed out by Microsoft-controlled LLMs
Links 04/06/2025: Workers' Strikes, Sudan Exodus
Links for the day
Links 04/06/2025: Linux Foundation PR Spam and Lee Jae-myung Wins Election
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/06/2025: Future Leaders of the World and Platforming Jordan Peterson
Links for the day
Links 04/06/2025: WSL Backfiring on Microsoft and "Disney, Microsoft Announce Massive Layoffs"
Links for the day
Our Case is a Very Easy Win, the SLAPPs From Microsofters Were a Grave Error, and Censoring Information Won't Work (It'll Only Ever Backfire)
Censoring is what people do when they lose the argument
Say the Truth, the Rest Will Follow
There's no guarantee that writing the truth will result in an audience (or readership), but over time - in the long run - people generally gravitate towards what they know or feel to be crude truth, not just what's comforting (albeit false or self-deluding, usually groupthink dictated from above)
How to Expose High-Level Corruption Without Getting in (Too Much) Trouble
Democracy depends on free press and freedom of the press depends on being able to safely publish (and keep available) material that bad people don't want to be known to anybody
In-Depth EPO Coverage at Techrights Turns Eleven
11 years is a very long time
Windows Measured Below 10% in Afghanistan, GNU/Linux Gaining a Lot
about 80% are Android (Linux) users, compared to only about 10% for Windows
Poland's Political Predicament and Social Control Media
Democracy and fake "tech" don't mix well; the latter tends to interfere with the former and that's why we get more "Putins" out there
EPO: Taking Away From the Staff to Give More to the Rich
The Central Staff Committee (CSC) wrote to EPO staff earlier this week
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 03, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, June 03, 2025
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part I: It's a Lot Like the EPO
we can commence a series soon
Gemini Links 04/06/2025: Inescapable Questions and Quitting All "Oligarch Tech"
Links for the day