Hi everyone,today I have some exciting news and a proposal to relay: SUSE wants togo another step in openness towards the openSUSE community and suggeststo bring the relationship of openSUSE Leap and SUSE Linux Enterprise toa new level.Internally this idea is called "Closing the Leap Gap" and proposes tostrengthen and bring more closely together:* developer communities, by focusing on openSUSE Leap as adevelopment platform for communities and industry partners;* user communities, by leveraging the benefits of both a stableEnterprise code base and the speed of community contributions;* the code bases of openSUSE Leap and SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE),by not only sharing sources, but also offering the SUSE LinuxEnterprise binaries for inclusion in openSUSE Leap.The proposal includes a three step approach:1. Merge the code bases for the intersection of openSUSE Leap 15.2and SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 SP2 as much as possible without lossof functionality or stability. (SUSE has started a cleanup processon the SUSE Linux Enterprise side already.)2. In parallel to classic openSUSE Leap 15.2 create a flavor leveragingSLE binaries, leading to an intermediate release in the October 2020time frame.3. Build openSUSE Leap 15.3 with SLE binaries included by default(assuming community agreement).As you can imagine, a number of people have been involved with thisso far, and I'd like to pull some of them in front of the curtain ina little interview.Q: Thomas, all of engineering at SUSE reports to you, and I knowopenSUSE is something you care about quite a bit. What is SUSEputting on the table here?Thomas Di Giacomo: Let me step back, and give you a perspective as I seeit. SUSE for 27+ years has been a part of global open source ecosystemthat includes a vast number of developers, end users, communities,and organizations of all sizes working together and benefiting fromthe collective work. Most of our engineers are involved as well withsome open source communities that they feel passionate about.Open source communities are an integral part of who we are and theecosystem we serve. Naturally, we feel responsible to support thecommunities and the work done by them. openSUSE is no different andis actually even more special and very dear to SUSE. So, it shouldcome as no surprise that we are fully committed towards the openSUSEproject(s) and its community. It makes us all feel proud to see Leapand Tumbleweed grow and evolve, together with SUSE Linux Enterprise.This effort of our engineers working together with others in theopenSUSE community will benefit everyone involved for many yearsto come.Q: And why are you doing this?Thomas: We want open source to succeed for everyone – developers,contributors to end users and everyone in between. The benefits ofopen source are tremendous when the ecosystem grows as a result ofthe positive virtuous cycle of – contributing more, supporting thecontributions, benefiting from contributions, which inspires morepeople contributing, and it goes on to grow as an upward virtuous spiral.We feel fortunate to be in the position of seeing the openSUSE communitygrow in tandem with the success of SUSE Linux Enterprise, and bothfeeding off each other to grow even more. This idea definitely goes inthat direction. Now, let me defer to Matthias who came up with this idea.Q: Okay, so, Matthias, first of all: what is your role at SUSE?Matthias Eckermann: I am leading the Product Management team forLinux platforms, covering SUSE Linux Enterprise, Edge, and Security.Q: And what made you propose this?Matthias: My team and I realized that the engagement of our SLEbusiness with the openSUSE community does not fully fit our viewon openness, and that mutual benefits are not leveraged sufficiently.We discussed what it would take to bridge the gap and bring therelationship to the next level. Beyond a common ground on thetechnical side, the code streams, this requires learning from eachother; for example, we need to re-establish an open feature processbetween community, SUSE, and our industry partners.Thus we developed "Closing the Leap Gap", and - to test whether itmight have a chance to fly - we outlined the initial idea with theopenSUSE Board before going for approvals by SUSE management.Q: You mention the board, so let me ask. What is your take?What opportunities, benefits do you see? What risks?Dr. Axel Braun: With this change, we can make better use of ourresources, as two code bases converge - so one build target less toconsider. Everyone who packages for Leap and for Package Hub willimmediately benefit from this.Marina Latini: It's really exciting to see how SUSE is trying to increaseits support for Leap, reducing the existing differences between ouropenSUSE Leap and SLE. I can see this proposal as a way to be moreinclusive, giving to the community the opportunity to contribute inan easier way to Leap and giving the chance to bring the openSUSEspirit also in an Enterprise product like SLE.On the other hand, every new move is a change and we need to be surethat the changes won't limit our community freedom to submit packagesto Leap or won't slow down Leap for following the internal SUSEdevelopment model.Q: Matthias, that sounds like some extra effort required.How is SUSE contributing, what is SUSE committing to?Matthias: Indeed, there is quite some one-time effort needed to get(back) to the common ground; this is covered by SUSE engineering teams;two groups are heavily involved: The Open Build Service experts aredesigning a workflow for a smooth integration of the binaries, andfor reducing the long term maintenance efforts for our communitycontributors. SUSE release managers and packagers are working hardto synchronize the code bases without losing functionality or quality.Hundreds of change requests have been filed already, and to get thisdone properly, we are delaying the release of SUSE Linux Enterprise15 SP2 to July.And we are willing to invest more, to drive the idea to successquickly: we would take the burden, to create an intermediate openSUSELeap release in October 2020 which then would incorporate SUSE LinuxEnterprise binaries into Leap the first time.Probably, Adrian can comment on the Build Service aspects, and Luboswhat it means to developers within SUSE and to the community releaseprocess?Q: So, Lubos, as release manager for Leap, what have you been doingso far, and what is the impact you see?Lubos Kocman: I spent most of the time on collecting data regarding SLEand Leap differences and having follow-up discussions and transformingfeedback into action items. Max and the rest of the openSUSE releaseengineering team meanwhile did an excellent job of keeping Leap releaseactivities going forward.The idea of re-using should generally lower the effort on the Leap side.However, it comes with the price of increased complexity to bring allpieces together. A new process will allow external contributors to filefeature or update requests directly to SLE. This will already help a lot.Q: Is this an outcome bound effort, or time bound? I know the SLErelease schedule is a bit like a 300m tanker.Lubos: It's both. I see this as a balance between what can we deliver,how, and to what date. It took quite some effort to create a planacceptable by all involved teams. Splitting the work across theupcoming two releases seemed to be accepted well at least byinvolved parties so far.Q: So, that is SLE 15 SP2. How about Leap 15.2?Lubos: openSUSE Leap 15.2 will have to slip by about 8 weeks to incorporateall changes from the SLE and align with its new schedule. I believe thatthe release will find a great use for extra time since we're stillfinishing the refresh of packages from Factory. The prototype willbe meanwhile available in parallel to the openSUSE Leap 15.2.Q: How is that research proceeding, Adrian?Adrian Schröter: We have an idea about the setup in build.opensuse.org.I anticipate to have a first prototype of the build setup in next threeweeks. And more important is how to develop the workflows to allow amore collaborative joint effort between SLE and openSUSE development.However, we must keep in mind that this is really an entire new way todevelop a distribution. On one hand it makes a lot of sense to integratefor example the SUSE Backports (aka Package Hub) people directly in ourdevelopment process. This will make our distribution development stronger.On the other hand, we also must find ways how to solve new problems.For example how to keep our builds for architectures not covered bySLES like Arm 32bit and RISC-V. Also the turn around times of submissionsand build results will be a challenge in the initial setup. And last butnot least, the installed systems and users may need to deal with morerepositories.But we have one year to work on these problems in parallel to ourstable distribution. And we are indeed looking forward to makeopenSUSE and SLE development more beneficial than ever.Gerald: Thanks everyone for your input. I'll be sharing all this withopenSUSE mailing lists, and am sure there will be further questions,offers to help, and other input, so please chime in there. https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Leap/FAQ/ClosingTheLeapGap has an FAQ withmore details.Lubos is going to send a proposal with more details on the implementationside to opensuse-factory@.I suggest we focus technical discussions of this offer and proposalsthere (opensuse-factory@) and general discussions on opensuse-project@.So, what do you think?Gerald--Dr. Gerald Pfeifer , CTO @SUSE + chair @openSUSE