Am Samstag, 10. September 2005 23:13 schrieb Eberhard Moenkeberg:
> Hi,
>
> On Sat, 10 Sep 2005, Marcel Volz wrote:
> > Am Samstag, 10. September 2005 16:37 schrieb Pascal Bleser:
> >> Marcel Volz wrote:
> >>> What about a openSUSE Server Version, just like CentOS or
> >>> Whitebox ? Perhaps with the same core as SLES?
> >>> Is there a chance that Novell or openSUSE release such a
> >>> distribution?
> >>
> >> Novell does, it's called SLES.
> >
> > But it's not OpenSource! I like SLES very much and work with it
> > very often. I would like to see a OpenSource Enterprise Server
> > based on my favourite distribution.
>
> SLES is always based on SUSE-Linux.
> SLES9 is deerived from SUSE-9.1.
> SLES10 will be derived from SUSE-10.x.

The point is that i don't get security updates, bugfixes, maybe 
ServicePacks for SUSE-Linux, but for SLES.

> > I'm not at Novell and i don't know how much Novell earn with
> > each SLES license, but I don't think that this is much. Maybe
> > much more could be earned if there is a open source version and
> > the additional services would be sold. With the Open Source
> > Version there could be a much more widespread. But that's only
> > my opinion.
>
> How would you define "open source maintenance"?
> You can download SLES-9 from novell.com for free (and even get a
> 30-days maintenance), but after evaluation, you have to pay if
> you want to get further maintenance. And: you would have to pay
> just for maintenance, nothing more.
> Totally transparent to me, the maintainers need their payment,
> and Novell lacks the license to print money.

The listprice for a 2 CPU i386 SLES is about 350 € + yearly 
maintanence. The price for a Novell Open Enterprise Server 5 User 
is € 1.120,00 + yearly maintance.
I think if there are more SLES (maybe for free) there will be much 
more people/business which are intererested in and will buy 
OpenEnterprise Servers and additional services. So Novell could pay 
the mantainers (and everybody is happy?!).

> >> But feel free to start a new SUSE variant specialized on
> >> servers and based on SUSE Linux 10.0, just like Andreas
> >> Girardet does with SUPER: http://opensuse.org/SUPER That's
> >> what "openSUSE" is really about ;)
> >
> > Maybe I think about it. But I don't know if it make sense. For
> > a "Enterprise Distribution" you need a long lifecycle, reliable
> > security update and bugfixes, hardware and software
> > certification and much more. I don't think that a community
> > could do this.
>
> The "long lifecycle" is just the point where most competent
> expert work is needed. This has to get payed, or it will
> disappear...

I agree with you. Even the Debian Project with many hundreds of 
developers (with many high skilled) has some problems with their 
security updates. I think that making patches for software that is 
many years old is not very much fun :-)

But if we could have the srpms from SLES we could recompile them, 
use them for a openSUSE Server, similar to CentOS. That would much 
less work. All we need then is a infrastructure for this and some 
people who mantain this. At the CentOS Website there are 10 named 
people which form the CentOS team. (But I think there are more 
behind.)

-- 

Marcel Volz


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