OpenSuse's uncertain future

I was "yarning" with a fellow Linux user earlier today and the subject of openSUSE came up. His statement was that pretty soon I'd be looking for a new distribution. SuSE and openSUSE have been my sole distribution for over 8 years and like many others, I am watching the purchase of Novell with considerable dismay, especially since the inference of at last some writers is that Microsoft is behind the entire scenario with both funding and planning. Certainly there were other corporations whose purchase of Novell would not have worried me excessively, but I think this purchase has too many question marks still over both the intent of the buyer and where the money came from.

For the moment, openSUSE will remain my OS, but I am fully prepared to walk away the moment I see any interference with its structures, programmers or code. Like OpenOffice, I suspect the openSUSE software programming team will provide the "canary in the coalmine" test and the moment they begin to leave, the writing is on the wall in my opinion.

I think this is still the aspect that many closed source, proprietary companies as yet do not understand about FOSS: they must provide caring management and good stewardship to the product that is in their care, or they will lose everything. In my opinion, without a happy, constructive and supporting community with a managing company that respects the principles and ethics of FOSS, a distro simply will not survive. Whether openSUSE just continues, ends or forks (and that last may be possible) is now very much a "wait and see".