openSUSE.Asia conference Taipei, Aug 11 th 2018 Ralf Flaxa President of Global Engineering Ralf.Flaxa@suse.com

1. The bright future
of SUSE and openSUSE
openSUSE.Asia conference Taipei, Aug 11th
2018
Ralf Flaxa
President of Global Engineering
Ralf.Flaxa@suse.com

2. 2
Personal Background

3. 3
Personal Background
President of Global Engineering
• Leading worldwide team of 600+ engineers
• Responsible for all SUSE products
• Joined SUSE in 2002

4. 4
Personal Background
President of Global Engineering
• Leading worldwide team of 600+ engineers
• Responsible for all SUSE products
• Joined SUSE in 2002
openSUSE
• Community member
• Contributor
• Sponsor

5. 5
Personal Background
President of Global Engineering
• Leading worldwide team of 600+ engineers
• Responsible for all SUSE products
• Joined SUSE in 2002
openSUSE
• Community member
• Contributor
• Sponsor
Open Source
• Experience with development and business models
• 1st contact during my computer science studies
• Joined Linux community in 1991

6. 6
1st
Linux Kongress 1994 in Heidelberg, Germany

7. 7
Free and Open Source Software

8. 8
Free and Open

9. 9
Free and Open = Passion & Culture

10. 10
Free and Open = Passion & Culture
Some are passionate against
something ...

11. 11
Free and Open = Passion & Culture
Some are passionate against
something ...
… or passionate for something

12. 12
Free and Open = Passion & Culture
Turn Passion into

13. 13
Free and Open = Passion & Culture
Turn Passion into
• Positive Energy
• Contributions
• Collaboration

14. 14
Free and Open = Passion & Culture
Turn Passion into
• Positive Energy
• Contributions
• Collaboration
and Culture into

15. 15
Free and Open = Passion & Culture
Turn Passion into
• Positive Energy
• Contributions
• Collaboration
and Culture into
• Positive Values
• Projects
• The right Rules

16. 16
Free and Open = Passion & Culture
Turn Passion into
• Positive Energy
• Contributions
• Collaboration
and Culture into
• Positive Values
• Projects
• The right Rules
… and you will get a happy community

17. 17
Free and Open = Values & Rules

18. 18
Free and Open = Values & Rules
What does really matter?
Let’s look at each of them

19. 19
Free

20. 20
Freedom

21. 21
Freedom
As in “Free Software”
is really about
“Freedom of choice”

22. 22
Freedom
As in “Free Software”
is really about
“Freedom of choice”
versus the dangerous
and sometimes hidden
“Vendor-Lockin”

23. 23
Open

24. 24
Open
“Really open” means “open” in multiple ways

25. 25
Open
“Really open” means “open” in multiple ways
• Open Source
• Open License
• Open Development Model
• Open Community
• Open Design Process
• Open Standards
• Open APIs
• Ultimately being open to “give up control”
• Open to the competition and to allow differentiation

26. 26
Contribution and Governance
Grant influence only via contribution, not name/power
• Those who “do the work” also “decide”
Welcome contributions in any form
• Code, Expertise, Workforce, Money, Doc, Testing …
• Encourage beginners, nobody starts as an expert
Remember to give credit
Strive for best possible code base
Allow for differentiation
KISS : Keep It Simple & Stupid!
Break big tasks into digestible pieces
Accept only clean, reusable code – avoid one-offs!

27. 27
SUSE

28. 28
SUSE
We are the “Open” Open Source company
Open Source pioneer with more than 25 years of experience
Profitable, fast growing Open Source vendor for many years
Our products include
• Enterprise Linux Platform (Server, Desktop, SAP, Realtime, HA, Life Patching)
• Patch Management and Delivery (SUSE Manager, SUSE Customer Center)
• Software Defined Infrastructure (Cloud with OpenStack, Storage with Ceph)
• Container Platform with Kubernetes
• Application Platform with Cloud Foundry
We strongly believe in working with partners and communities
We share our Source Code and our Tools with everybody
We contribute to and are a key sponsor of the openSUSE project

29. 29
Working Together With Partners and Community

30. 30
Process Automation Tools

31. 31
Process Automation Tools
We strive for repeatable, high quality for our enterprise customers
We do this by engineering excellence in process automation
We make those tools available to partners and communities
Examples of SUSE developed tools:
Open Build Service (OBS)
Open Test Framework (openQA)
Distribution creation and deployment (KIWI)

32. 32
openSUSE and SUSE
openSUSE
• Independent Open Source Project
• Focus on Developers
• Community Orientation
– Voluntary Support by Community
– Best Effort Reponse Times
– Normal Lifecycle
– Upstream Hardware Enablement
– Upstream Software Innovation
SUSE
• Enterprise Open Source Vendor
• Focus on Enterprise
• Commercial Orientation
– 24x7 Support
– Guaranteed Response Times
– Extended Lifycycle
– Hardware Certifications
– Software Certifications

33. 33
Two openSUSE distributions
openSUSE Tumbleweed
• Rolling Release
• Continuously Updated & Tested
• Perfect for Developers & Power
Users
openSUSE Leap
• Regular Release
• Shared Core with SUSE Linux Enterprise
• Perfect for SysAdmins, Enterprise
Developers, and Users

34. 34
openSUSE
Credits for some of the following slides
go to Richard Brown,
chairman of the openSUSE board

35. Principles &
Philosophy

36. Freedom Matters
●
All openSUSE Projects are OSI licensed
●
Both openSUSE Distributions are GPLv2+ collective
works
●
Limited “NonFree” Software available in Additional Repo
– Does not include closed source Linux kernel modules
●
No CLA / Copyright Agreement
Your contributions, your copyright

37. “Those who do, decide”
●
Open Source works best when decisions are
made as close as possible to the actual
contribution – ie. the person doing the work
●
Self-organised Teams - People working on
the same thing should work together

38. “Those who do, decide”
●
Quality & Common Standards defned by
consensus, enforced by willing senior
contributors (Release Managers/Engineers)
●
No Steering Committees, Community
Managers, Technical Boards, Benevolent
Dictators or Project Managers

39. “Those who do, decide” - Benefts
Agility – Able to rapidly respond to changes in upstream
projects & adopt new technologies
Flexibility – Every upstream is different, with different release
schedules and support lifecycles, openSUSE contributors can
adapt their way of working for maximum effciency and
comfort
Freedom – No restrictions on fnding innovative solutions. “If it
works, and you’ll support it” is the primary acceptance criteria.

40. openSUSE & SUSE - Working Separately
●
openSUSE is free to set its own direction & all that entails
●
Examples
– Different default desktop (KDE in openSUSE, GNOME in SLE)
– Different product scope (Unifed openSUSE Distros,
SLES/SLED)
– Different installation workfow

41. openSUSE & SUSE - Working Together
Stable code & contributions
Upstream innovations
Mutual collaboration

42. openSUSE & SUSE - Working Together
SUSE® Linux
Enterprise

43. openSUSE & SUSE - Working Together

44. New Factory First Policy and Versioning

45. 45
Outlook into the Future

46. 46
openSUSE Leap to SLES upgrade now supported
openSUSE Leap 15.0 SUSE Linux Enterprise 15

47. 47
SUSE will become an indepenent company
EQT will buy SUSE for 2.535 billion USD from Micro Focus
SUSE will be run as a self-sustained, independent company
Strategy, vision, mission and leadership team will not change
Deal expected to close in early 2019

48. 48
EQT

49. www.eqtpartners.com
• EQT invests into successful, mid market businesses around the globe with a
mission to help them develop into great and sustainable companies.
• During EQT’s ownership, number of employees increased on average by 10%,
sales by 10% and EBITDA by 11% each year.
• Based in Sweden, EQT employs approx. 540 people in 14 countries on three
continents.
• EQT is a short form of ‘equity’, meaning impartial and fair, the basis of EQT’s
culture and values.
• Will support SUSE’s “built & buy” strategy with funding and industrial expertise.

50. Promise #1: Our investment in openSUSE
SUSE's investment will continue and be based on
• Our business success with SUSE’s products
• Our business needs of our enterprise customers
• Our belief in working closely with “upstream”
• Our personal openSUSE community membership
=> SUSE wants and and helps openSUSE to succeed

51. Promise #2: Community controls openSUSE
SUSE's mindset will continue to be
• Run/respect openSUSE as a community/upstream project
– The openSUSE community has influence/control over the project
– While win/win decisions with SUSE and its enterprise view is preferred, the
community can decide to go its own way where needed/appropriate
• Contribute back patches and code from SUSE's products
– OpenSUSE will benefit from developments towards new SLE versions
– OpenSUSE will benefit from bugfixes of SLE products
• Offer/sponsor tools to the community
=> Control by community is wanted/encouraged

52. 52
Thank You !!!
For your contributions to all these Open Source projects
For your contributions to our openSUSE community
For your participation and help to organize openSUSE.Asia summit

53. 53
Want to learn more? Or join openSUSE or SUSE?
Visit many interesting sessions at the openSUSE.Asia summit
Come and talk to us at the openSUSE booth
Find out more via
http://www.suse.com/
http://www.opensuse.org/
http://www.openbuildservice.org/
http://open.qa/
http://opensource.suse.com/kiwi/

55. 55