The openSUSE community is considering an independent company out from SUSE, openSUSE main focus of the project is to obtain greater autonomy in terms of its governance interaction with the broader community.
The issue has been discussed in openSUSE more than two months, and intensified, whether or SUSE openSUSE community, has its own views on the independent openSUSE problems. openSUSE Board Chairman Richard Brown pointed out that independent means that openSUSE provides more legal autonomy and independent form of a variety of models available, one is like The Document Foundation, it supports the LibreOffice suite, the other is Opt public interest like software ( software at the public interest in such an organization), the organization includes a number of open source projects, including Debian umbrella sponsor (umbrella sponsor), Richard also said the combination of the two models is also possible.
Why independent voice it? According to the LWN article describes, there are many factors, but the most fundamental reason is considered to SUSE sum up the company's current "unstable" state.
Indeed, SUSE ten years has changed hands many times:
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In 2004, SUSE was acquired by Novell Inc.
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In 2010, Attachmate acquisition of Novell
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2014, Micro Focus acquisition of Attachmate Group
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2018, Attachmate's Suse Linux business will be sold to EQT, approved by Micro Focus shareholders and regulators, the transaction has been completed in March this year
So frequent change of ownership, making the community more worried about, although SUSE has publicly affirmed its commitment to openSUSE, and said they would continue to support the operation, but this is very likely to change. "Taking into EQT's business model is almost certain that at some point in the future, SUSE will be sold or go public again, and in view of the good working relationship between the SUSE and openSUSE present, may now be easier for such discussions the future should someone buy SUSE and as now, the management of openSUSE do not pay attention ", openSUSE board member Simon Lees representation.
More in-depth look, OpenSUSE there are multiple stakeholders, but it does not currently own independent legal entities, which makes some practical cases with multiple sponsors rather complicated, Richard explained that under current arrangements, openSUSE deal directly with the financial capacity to contribute is a key challenge, in some cases, the sponsors just do things to help openSUSE, with little or no formal signing of the agreement.
Another point, when it comes to the contribution of hardware and services, even if an organization wants to donate to the openSUSE infrastructure, but because of openSUSE no legal entity to acquire ownership of the hardware infrastructure, so it becomes very complicated. Contribution can point to SUSE, but it has its own complexity, Richard said:. "I believe that many companies donated to an independent charity sign their hardware or service than this to the SUSE business entity is much easier."
Another key issue is related to the product level, Richard pointed out that between the community and the company on SUSE SUSE products are not always effective collaboration, in which there is some inconsistent pace of the problem, which makes it able to shake the SUSE always do the right thing faith.
Currently on the governance model of the independent openSUSE, Richard did not agree as Fedora and Red Hat's model, Fedora is Red Hat's community Linux distribution support, which has limited autonomy. Richard said: "The current relationship between SUSE and openSUSE is unique and special, I think these discussions reinforced this point, and not necessarily to follow anyone else's way."
openSUSE governance and business model will be further discussed at the annual meeting of the Board on openSUSE.