Novell To Open Source SUSE 316
jambarama writes "Newsforge reports Novell will be open sourcing SUSE professional under the name OpenSUSE. Is Novell following in the footsteps of Red Hat Inc., with its Fedora Core Linux distribution, or continuing its own open source policy as it has in the past as with YAST?" Note that it looks like the opensuse.org site is not yet up.
A feasible business model (Score:5, Insightful)
interest gone? (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe they're opening it up to compete with Ubuntu?
This sounds like a good step but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Crappy software never dies... (Score:4, Insightful)
Known, Successful Business Model (Score:4, Insightful)
It's difficult to see how this makes them an actual meaningful competitor to RH though.
It will be interesting to see if they drop java in the forthcoming project. In 9.3 they distribute it on the cd. They pay Sun for this priviledge, so I find it hard to believe they would be so charitable in the future.
It's sad (predictable though) that Linux is going this way. The open project portion is essentially free development and testing for the corporate parent. The "open" portions of the distros are becoming the red-headed stepchild to the supported version.
Please, no comments about how CentOS is "the same" as whatever RH product they got it from. Service, service, service is what makes it different.
Charge a fortune for something that's free and the world will beat a path to your door.
Re:A feasible business model (Score:4, Insightful)
I couldn't agree more. I was a longtime RedHat customer/user. I liked that, at my option, I could download and use RH Linux for free or, if I needed support or felt like supporting RH I could buy the boxed version. As a matter of fact I had a RH Network subscription (bought by me personally as a show of support) that, when RH changed all their versioning around, I got stiffed on about 6 months worth of. As a result, and after bad experiences with Fedora core on my servers (least of which is no upgrade path) I have had no qualms about using CentOS in production. With SuSE basically going back to the licensing model that RH had in the past, and being a former SuSE user, I am inclined to look at SuSE again.
Re:interest gone? (Score:3, Insightful)
iso (Score:2, Insightful)
Huh. The ISO images are available now. When did that happen ?
ftp://mirrors.kernel.org/suse/i386/9.3/iso/ [kernel.org]
Now I CAN tell people to use something better than Fedora Core.
Re:The real question: binary compatibility (Score:5, Insightful)
Novell has made a good move (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A feasible business model (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Binary compatibility. It seems likely to me that they would make the two versions incompatible. They need to have a clear distinction between the two versions. Binary INcompatibility is that distinction.
2. Novell makes the right product. They could screw up a great distro by having a license/revenue/feature package that the market doesn't like. It's easier to screw this up than you think.
3. Novell actually offers something that will drive enterprise consumers over to their product from RH. So far, they are a me-too product with lots of potential given their back-end stuff.
4. The battle for systems management tools is on and Novell's a likely loser. MS and RH don't want them in their market. They'll likely get screwed by both firms when they buddy-up somehow. Sun will probably throw a couple of punches in as well.
Now,... um... even MORE open source! (Score:2, Insightful)
Novell's announcement was not that they're open sourcing SUSE. SUSE is already GPL. Novell is essentially announcing this [eweek.com]:
The goal of OpenSUSE is to create a community-supported distribution similar to Fedora. Also, like Fedora, this becomes a code base that the developers of the commercially-supported distributions can pull from.
Re:Is it just me? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:switch to suse (Score:2, Insightful)
infringing the copyright of a linux distribution is awfully naughty.
Re:switch to suse (Score:2, Insightful)
And just felt stupid trying to get a pirated version of a linux distro. if this pans out I will definitely give it a chance.
Well you should feel even stupider, SUSE Professional is already free. It's Enterprise which costs money.
Re:You are forgetting something... (Score:2, Insightful)
The average user does indeed install a lot of applications on his own. He installs Firefox. He installs Zone Alarm. He installs Office. He installs anti-virus software. he installs games and filesharing programs and iTunes and a ton of other things.
He installs them because they're easy to install.
Unless you're talking about Linux. Then, may God bless his poor little soul, because if he doesn't have synaptic or smart set up properly, he's going to be SOL.
Re:The real question: binary compatibility (Score:3, Insightful)
As a self proclaimed Linux Expert, I'm really not sure what you're getting at.
In my usage, 98% of the time when I want a package it's in the package repositiory of the distro I'm using, installs without a hitch, and works perfectly.
The remaining 2% breaks down like this:
Pretty simply, the package + repository system is way cleaner than anything Windows has, and any claims of "nightmare dependancy situations" are probably the result of users intentionally doing things the hard way rather than using offical packages from their distributor.
It's like if a Windows user copied a friend's "C:\Program Files\Front Page" directory to their computer and complained it didn't work rather than using an installer - possible, but I'm sure as hell not going to give you any sympathy if you don't get it to work.
Re:Flunks the real world test (Score:3, Insightful)
But woe to you when the open source component doesn't have an easy installer.
On Linux, the easy things are easy. The moderatly difficult things are reasonably simple. The hard things are hard, but possible.
On Windows, the easy things are easy. Some of the moderatly difficult things are also easy. If it's not easy, it's a horrible nightmare.