Novell To Open Source SUSE

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.

Comments

A feasible business model

[guaigean]

This is probably one of the best moves Novell can make for both themselves and the OSS community. As Linux gains popularity, corporations are wanting to move to open source apps, but want corporate backing and support. This gives Novell the flexibility of both tracks, and offers another stable solution for enterprise level business.

Re:A feasible business model

[Karzz1]

This is probably one of the best moves Novell can make for both themselves and the OSS community.

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:Crappy software never dies...

[Zweideutig]

Just because you are using Gentoo now and you think Suse is too "n00b" for you, it doesn't mean it is "crappy." You and me like *BSD or Solaris instead of Linux altogether, or Debian, Gentoo, or Slackware, that is great for us and serves us well. But Suse is still good for person across the street that just sends e-mail and reads online news, and wants something relatively easy to use, but without the hassle of spyware. You don't want to teach them how to use something like Gentoo do you?

Known, Successful Business Model

[mpapet]

They will do exactly like RH because it appears to be profitable.

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:The real question: binary compatibility

[CdBee]

Technical binary compatibility is an irrelevance if Mr.Average User can't get his application to install. Maybe it is possible to convert an RPM to a DEB and install it with Apt-get or one of its front-ends but again that's further than most users want to go just to get a pre-compiled app running.