Novell has recently “opened” their development of SUSE Linux, creating a project called Open SUSE
To clarify what Novell means when it says it is “opening” SUSE, Mancusi-Ungaro says “SUSE Linux is already open from a code perspective. [It] has not been open from a development perspective. Development was closed, beta was closed, and there was little opportunity for users and external developers to help us shape the product. Now there will be, through the OpenSUSE project.”
The project has an interesting roadmap:
Phase One: (August 2005)
- Establish the openSUSE community
- Deliver the essential community infrastructure: website, downloadable builds, and source. Open Bugzilla, IRC, and channels.
- Accept patches for SUSE Linux 10.0 beta through bugzilla
- Open beta testing of SUSE Linux 10.0.
Phase Two: (targeted spring 2006)
- Simplify the patch submission process and establish a formal code checkout/checkin system
- Personalized developer accounts to allow easier participation in the openSUSE development process
Phase Three: (targeted summer 2006)
- Introduce a complete community infrastructure – with the publicly accessible build server, packagers can quickly create packages and incorporate them into test versions of the entire distribution.