Is OpenSUSE at Crossroads? | Hacker News Reader

Is OpenSUSE at Crossroads?

ludditus.com

39 pointsjandeboevrie20 comments

To be honest, I’ve always really not liked the name “openSUSE.”

This might be because I got into computers young, or it might just be neurological differences, but I often got in the habit of (mis)pronouncing abbreviations with syllables.

So, maybe it’s just me, but for half a decade it was in my mind as “open-Suzy”. This combined with YaST being rhymed with “kick ass” in one of their videos once created an immature perception. Stupid, shallow, but perceptions matter.

And, for anyone who remembers, SUSE Studio could have been a killer feature. For those who needed it, it was awesome. The commercially driven and highly technical replacement is no substitute and the shutdown is still a shame.

I got to use susestudio only for a few months and I was in love. Not sure why they killed it. There is simply nothing like that out there that I know of. Docker et al are great but susestudio did much more. I used it to create an installer for a summer course with the required tool and it just worked.

I never liked it either because to me it's a lie. I'm not getting the open source version of SUSE.

I hear a little fantasy conversation in my head:

ooenSUSE responding to SUSE: "You know you're right, people shouldn't be capitalizing on other people's stuff. We should make up our own name instead of using SUSE's and SUSE should write their own software to sell instead of using all the gpl software developed and maintained by openSUSE contributors."

Ok not really. That is my gut reaction because I'm just like that, but in reality it seems pretty simple and reasonable to me. It's not really SUSE demanding anything.

If openSUSE want to change from being a SUSE project to having ultimate ownership of themselves, then they can't still have some other entities name, SUSE's or anyone else's.

I don't know what else anyone could ever expect. Stay under SUSEs umbrella, or don't.

It's not clear to me who is instigating this seperation, and that changes who or what should be considered reasonable.

Is it openSUSE wanting to own themselves? Or is it SUSE wanting to divest themselves of their openSUSE project?

Is it even a divorce at all or just a legal technicality or formality thing?

In either case, as a former but 20 year user at work, as in, I was cto and decided that all our machines ran openSUSE, I was always under the impression that openSUSE was the upstream source for SUSE. I got this impression because I maintained a few packages myself even though I didn't work for SUSE. They get maintained in various repos in OBS (opensuse build service), and get forked from there into repos for the various distros. Kind of like big project githubs pulling from and tracking personal or smaller project githubs.

Anyway, if openSUSE is the upstream source for SUSE, then what does it mean to seperate them? Will SUSE still track not-open-SUSE to get the bulk of it's own product? Which remember they sell? If so will SUSE continue to support them with for example the infra to run OBS? And if all of that then what is the big problem with the name?

Or will the upstream/downstream direction reverse? That seems unlikely. I would work on packages for free in opensuse, I would never do that in sles. I can't be the only one.

Or will they just be 2 unrelated distros? Would not-open-suse still be a free work-alike of suse? If not, then what would it's purpose even be if not specifically to be a free version of suse?

Is it just a legal technicality or formality thing with the name but they both plan to stay in essentially the same relationship, or is SUSE really looking to shed openSUSE, or is openSUSE looking to diverge and become it's own thing that isn't just a version of SUSE? Not merely under it's own governance, but start to differ from SUSE?

How very odd and unfortunate. Name brand recognition is an invaluable thing which can't simply be replaced on a whim.

That's true but coincidentally I was just in a conversation with someone on Mastodon discussing community vs. commercial distros (in the context of RHEL/CentOS/Fedora) and they made the comment that a lot of people thought OpenSUSE was too closely aligned with the commercial product. Without any inside knowledge, it seems like this might be part of dealing with that.

FWIW, some of the SUSE leadership is ex-Red Hat so that might inform some thinking.

ADDED: I'd also add that this is a longstanding products vs. projects branding issue. There's a huge temptation to lean in on an existing brand--whether a product or project--which leads to pain and suffering as you need to draw lines between the two.

> vs. commercial distros (in the context of RHEL/CentOS/Fedora) and they made the comment that a lot of people thought OpenSUSE was too closely aligned with the commercial product.

That's odd. Compared to Fedora I could see, but CentOS Stream is straight up RHEL beta.

Yeah. I was referring to CentOS pre-Stream and cutoff of updates from Red Hat. Not really comparable though as CentOS was a downstream rebuild. And, as you say, CentOS Stream is roughly the RHEL nightlies. Red Hat (since RHEL) never really had a community distro that was closely aligned with RHEL--at least after Fedora matured as a quasi-independent project.

OpenSUSE is to SUSE more as CentOS was to RHEL, than it is comparable to CentOS Stream.

The community can contribute things to CentOS Stream and, so long as they meet Red Hat's guidelines of what is allowable, it can be merged there and flow downstream into RHEL and RHEL rebuilds. I don't think that's the case with OpenSUSE. But then I'm not that familiar with their ecosystem.

I admit to not understanding the relationship between OpenSUSE and SUSE as well as I understand the relationship between the various Red Hat distributions but my impression is that it's neither a strict downstream rebuild nor a somewhat arms-length upstream--but happy to be educated.

OpenSUSE must needle them as a name, since that makes them the provider of "closed" SUSE. Had the open project been named "Community SUSE", I doubt it would have come to this. RedHat made their community project take a different name too, "Fedora". It makes a lot of sense.

rename it to openSUS and replace the chameleon with an amogus, problem solved

Isn't SUSE basically recognized OpenSUSE? What is SUSE to the vast majority of users if not for OpenSUSE.

In Europe especially, SUSE is a pretty well-recognized commercial Linux distro.

So, what went on in the background leading up to this? Folks at SuSE generally aren't stupid, they wouldn't want them to drop the name without good reason.

> Oh, they would also be used by those mentally retarded zoomers who really can use GNOME without cursing every five seconds and without feeling they have zero productivity. One should be born into macOS to like GNOME, and even then.

Stopped reading after this.

“Linux distros are dying!!!”

“The young people are <slur>!!!”

Literally in the same thought. It’s almost impressive.

Wow, yeah, this level of condescension is truly stunning. Talk about a superiority complex.

Oh, wow, I came here for the same thing. The tone of the post got more and more annoying as it progressed.

Posting quotes from reddit as if they're intellectual discussions was a red flag, but this specific statement was just too much to ignore.

Although I work on Linux almost daily, I'm happy to say it's possible to simply avoid those kinds of people. Fostering a healthy environment where people can discuss and disagree respectfully is incredibly important for volunteer-led projects like Linux distributions.

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