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Novell To Open Source SUSE

Posted by timothy on from the depends-on-your-definition dept.

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.

9 of 316 comments (clear)

  1. The real question: binary compatibility by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 5, Informative

    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?

    While I'd much prefer the latter, I'm betting that the former possibility is much more probable. However, either option would be just fine, provided that the new OpenSuSE is binary-compatible with SuSE Professional.

    From TFA:
    Lowry did not confirm it, but sources say that Novell will also make the multi-platform software build system freely available to the community, so developers can build versions of packages for any hardware they support. Novell will still sell boxed versions of SUSE with tech support, but everyone will have access to updates and developmental code.
    From this excerpt, it seems that Novell doesn't intend to make the two binary-incompatible, as Red Hat did with Fedora and RHEL. I certainly hope they don't change their minds on this.
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    1. Re:The real question: binary compatibility by Rashkae · · Score: 3, Informative

      It is... Linux on the same platform is almost always binary compatible. Certainly all the big distros are! I think what the parent poster meant was RPM compatible. It's the package dependency management that breaks.

    2. Re:The real question: binary compatibility by Azul · · Score: 3, Informative

      The only reason I can think for them not to be entirely compatible is that SuSE Professional is released much more frequently than SLES. SLES 9 Sp2, for example, comes with a kernel based on 2.6.5 (with lots of fixes by Novell) and this will continue for the entire lifespan of SLES 9. This doesn't happen with SuSE Professional, which has an entirely different focus and is based on the latest available versions of all packages.

      In order for them to be compatible, you'd need to drop the stability of SLES, which would be a stupid move, or stabilize SuSE Professional (rather than build it using the latest available versions of software), which would be a stupid move as well.

      Providers of propietary software do certify it against specific distributions (and even versions). This is a process that takes time and money from them, so its a smarter move to certify against the stable distribution, not the constantly moving one, specially since their creator does not offer support for the latter.

      And, anyway, you can legally run SLES for as long as you want without paying Novell (see this post in my weblog for more information)

      So no, there are real reasons why they are not compatible and they are not your simplistic "they don't want them to be" ideas.

    3. Re:The real question: binary compatibility by Azul · · Score: 3, Informative

      Before continuing to recommend Autopackage, you might want to read this post by Joey Hess from the Debian Project, where he calls it "Worst. Package. Format. Ever" and ponders if it was designed by monkeys (and he, the maintainer of Alien, does know a bit about package formats).

      If you're interested, you might also want to read this post and the comments there.

  2. Re:switch to suse by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 4, Informative


    SuSE is currently available for free via FTP download. It takes a while to get a system installed and up nd running, but IMHO, SuSE 9.3 is definitely worth it.

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  3. Planet SuSE by riggwelter · · Score: 3, Informative

    As this develops, news on the announcement as well as blogs from the SuSE community (and staffers) discussing it will be on Planet SuSE.

    --
    Listening for the sound of the coming rain...
  4. Re:switch to suse by vivek7006 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Or you can download the ISO image of SUSE 9.3 from torrents

    DVD
    http://isohunt.com/download.php?mode=bt&id=4142556
    5 CD Set
    http://isohunt.com/download.php?mode=bt&id=3965870

  5. Re:switch to suse by seguso · · Score: 3, Informative
    SuSE is currently available for free via FTP download. It takes a while to get a system installed and up nd running, but IMHO, SuSE 9.3 is definitely worth it.

    I downloaded the DVD image here: ftp://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/ftp.su se.com/pub/suse/i386/9.3/iso/SUSE-9.3-Eval-DVD.iso

    BTW, the "eval" in the filename is misleading, because this is not a crippled version of the commercial release: it contains the non-free software (acrobat reader, realplayer, etc.).

    I was a former ubuntu hoary user but I switched to SUSE as the free dvd came out. To me, SUSE is one year ahead of the other distros, due to YAST.

  6. Re:Breach of GPL? by Shimbo · · Score: 3, Informative

    How on Earth is it possible that SUSE Pro has NOT been open source so far? It's based on GPLd software and therefore all changes to the code and 3rd party additions should be free too.

    They used to licence their installer, Yast2, under what the FSF would call a non-free licence (basically, no commercial redistribution). It was their own code, so they could licence it how they liked. There's nothing to stop you putting free and non-free stuff in the same distro: "mere aggregation" as the GPL has it.

    They haven't done that since SuSE 9.1, so it's a non-issue now.