this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2024
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It’s become clear to many that Red Hat’s recent missteps with CentOS and the availability of RHEL source code indicate that it’s fallen from its respected place as “the open organization.” SUSE seems to be poised to benefit from Red Hat’s errors. We connect the dots.

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[–] [email protected] 88 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Also SUSE: OpenSUSE needs to change their name because we say so

[–] [email protected] 36 points 4 months ago (2 children)

There's always been the risk of confusion and openSUSE project seemed to have understood that SUSE could disallow the name at any moment. A name change does make sense for both. Especially now that even Leap might be distancing itself from SLE and whatnot.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

A name change does make sense for both. Especially now that even Leap might be distancing itself from SLE and whatnot.

Agreed, but GeekOS or whatever it was they had on that oSC slide ... Cheesus, they can do better than that.

Yeah, I get the mascot's name is Geeko, so maybe that is where they're getting GeekOS. But I think I read that the mascot has to go together with the name anyway.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago

Cheesus, they can do better than that

On recent performance, no they can't. I mean, they had the chance to use Driftwood and went with Slowroll.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

There is no "current proposal" at this point.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

What about the proposal to just drop the name openSUSE with no replacement? And let each distro just be called Tumbleweed, Leap, Aeon, etc.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That could be a branding strategy, I guess, but the community project behind it will still need a name of some kind obviously. Unless they only want to show up at conferences/have a website url etc as "the project whose name shall not be mentioned".

[–] AlligatorBlizzard 3 points 4 months ago

Go the Prince route, "the project formerly known as OpenSUSE".

[–] drasglaf 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

There’s always been the risk of confusion

A name change does make sense for both

Then make SUSE become ClosedSUSE. It couldn't be easier.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (3 children)

To be fair, OpenSUSE is the only project with a name like that, so it makes some sense that they'd want it changed.
There's no OpenRedHat, no OpenNovell, no OpenLinspire, etc.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Maybe they should go with OpenGecko or OpenChameleon

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)
  • OpenLinux

  • OpenUnix

  • OpenJDK

  • OpenWatcom

  • OpenWebOS

  • OpenVMS

  • OpenOffice

  • OpenTF, briefly.

I think OpenNovell was a thing too.

Thing is, 'Open-' was the prefix for a LOT of derivations about 20 years ago. I'm surprised you've never heard of any.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Not at all what my point was. There's indeed plenty of Open-something (or Libre-something) projects under the sun, but no free/open spins of commercial projects named simply "Open<Trademarked company name / commercial offering>".

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Definitely getting into pedantry now, sorry - but OpenSuse isn't strictly a free version of Suse. Like RHEL, there are some proprietary and commercially restricted software in Suse that doesn't reappear - verbatim - in OpenSuse.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

And it's still entirely unrelated to my point, since SUSE will remain the trademark in question regardless of what's actually contained in OpenSUSE.

But yes, the free/open-source spins of things tend to have somewhat differing content compared to the commercial offering, usually for licensing or support reasons.
E.g. CentOS (when it still was a real thing)/AlmaLinux/etc supporting hardware that regular RHEL has dropped support for, while also not distributing core RedHat components like the subscription manager.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago
  • OpenLook
  • OpenMotif
  • OpenTransport on MacOS
  • SCO OpenServer
  • HP OpenMail
  • HP OpenView

You couldn’t throw a ball without hitting something branded as “Open” in that era.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago