To be honest, I’ve always really not liked the name “openSUSE.”<p>This might be because I got into computers young, or it might just be neurological differences, but I often got in the habit of (mis)pronouncing abbreviations with syllables.<p>So, maybe it’s just me, but for half a decade it was in my mind as “open-Suzy”. This combined with YaST being rhymed with “kick ass” in one of their videos once created an immature perception. Stupid, shallow, but perceptions matter.<p>And, for anyone who remembers, SUSE Studio <i>could have been</i> a killer feature. For those who needed it, it <i>was</i> awesome. The commercially driven and highly technical replacement is no substitute and the shutdown is still a shame.
I hear a little fantasy conversation in my head:<p>ooenSUSE responding to SUSE: "You know you're right, people shouldn't be capitalizing on other people's stuff. We should make up our own name instead of using SUSE's and SUSE should write their own software to sell instead of using all the gpl software developed and maintained by openSUSE contributors."<p>Ok not really. That is my gut reaction because I'm just like that, but in reality it seems pretty simple and reasonable to me. It's not really SUSE demanding anything.<p>If openSUSE want to change from being a SUSE project to having ultimate ownership of themselves, then they can't still have some other entities name, SUSE's or anyone else's.<p>I don't know what else anyone could ever expect. Stay under SUSEs umbrella, or don't.
It's not clear to me who is instigating this seperation, and that changes who or what should be considered reasonable.<p>Is it openSUSE wanting to own themselves? Or is it SUSE wanting to divest themselves of their openSUSE project?<p>Is it even a divorce at all or just a legal technicality or formality thing?<p>In either case, as a former but 20 year user at work, as in, I was cto and decided that all our machines ran openSUSE, I was always under the impression that openSUSE was the upstream source for SUSE. I got this impression because I maintained a few packages myself even though I didn't work for SUSE. They get maintained in various repos in OBS (opensuse build service), and get forked from there into repos for the various distros. Kind of like big project githubs pulling from and tracking personal or smaller project githubs.<p>Anyway, if openSUSE is the upstream source for SUSE, then what does it mean to seperate them? Will SUSE still track not-open-SUSE to get the bulk of it's own product? Which remember they sell? If so will SUSE continue to support them with for example the infra to run OBS? And if all of that then what is the big problem with the name?<p>Or will the upstream/downstream direction reverse? That seems unlikely. I would work on packages for free in opensuse, I would never do that in sles. I can't be the only one.<p>Or will they just be 2 unrelated distros? Would not-open-suse still be a free work-alike of suse? If not, then what would it's purpose even be if not specifically to be a free version of suse?<p>Is it just a legal technicality or formality thing with the name but they both plan to stay in essentially the same relationship, or is SUSE really looking to shed openSUSE, or is openSUSE looking to diverge and become it's own thing that isn't just a version of SUSE? Not merely under it's own governance, but start to differ from SUSE?
OpenSUSE must needle them as a name, since that makes them the provider of "closed" SUSE. Had the open project been named "Community SUSE", I doubt it would have come to this. RedHat made their community project take a different name too, "Fedora". It makes a lot of sense.
So, what went on in the background leading up to this? Folks at SuSE generally aren't stupid, they wouldn't want them to drop the name without good reason.
> Oh, they would also be used by those mentally retarded zoomers who really can use GNOME without cursing every five seconds and without feeling they have zero productivity. One should be born into macOS to like GNOME, and even then.<p>Stopped reading after this.