What's left of SuSE? [LWN.net]

What's left of SuSE?

Posted May 16, 2025 6:28 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
In reply to: What's left of SuSE? by rahulsundaram
Parent article: The last of YaST?

> If it is, why hasn't anyone stepped up to help maintain it?

Because users aren't programmers? That is the fundamental problem with Open Source - the assumption that users can fix their own problems. When users and programmers were the same people, when the tools/problems were stuff programmers used in their daily life, that was true.

Now that linux has spread far and wide (and some of us want to spread it even wider), the idea that users have the skills and/or desire to fix their own problems is laughable. If YaST broke for me, I wouldn't have a clue where to start, and I've been a DP guy my entire career ...

I use YaST because it's easy to use, I'm familiar with it, and if there were any problems I wouldn't have a clue how to fix it ...

I use gentoo because it forces me to learn things I wouldn't have a clue about.

If SuSE drops YaST, I don't know what I'd replace (SUSE) with. I don't like RH, I don't like Debian-based systems, gentoo is too complicated to support for other people - what else is there?

Cheers,
Wol

What's left of SuSE?

Posted May 26, 2025 0:37 UTC (Mon) by jjs (guest, #10315) [Link]

Users can either fix & improve things themselves, or PAY SOMEONE to make changes they desire (not necessarily the main developer). Due to the freedoms granted by F/LOSS licenses, you're not limited to maintenance & improvement by the developer (like in closed source - only Microsoft can work on Microsoft proprietary apps, only IBM can work on IBM Proprietary apps, etc.).

In fact, back when I was more involved in the advocacy side of things, I recommended that companies using F/LOSS set aside 10-50% of what they were spending on licensing to spend on desired bug fixes & improvements of the software. If the main developers weren't interested, or too overloaded with other work (sorry, your bug is #2,000 on our priority list, we're still working on the first 50 bugs), they could pay someone else to make the changes. They could then donate that back to the project to get it incorporated & not have to maintain out of tree changes.