OpenELA Current Status and What's Coming Next

Published on: September 7, 2023
Author: Alan Clark

Author: Alan Clark (CTO Office, SUSE)
Date: September 7th, 2023

TL;DR

  • OpenELA is still developing and moving quickly
  • We are working on technical organization, documentation, tooling, and automation
  • Come and join us!

On August 10th, CIQ, Oracle and SUSE announced their intent to launch the Open Enterprise Linux Association (OpenELA). That announcement contained several key goals, mission statements and operating principles the effort will be based upon to best achieve those goals.

The primary focus of the mission is to “make accessible the sources, tooling, and assets to all members, collaborators, and the open source Enterprise Linux distribution developers to create and maintain 1:1 downstream derivatives.” We stated this clearly in the OpenELA mission as we recognize the whole effort is built on this clear focus being successful.

When CIQ, Oracle and SUSE started this effort we knew the mission importance and goals to be achieved. We are attacking those goals with full confidence. We also recognized that all the implementation details haven’t been worked out – all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed. With a clear mission and goals, there’s simply a lot of fun work ahead to put the tools in place and bring the community together. We felt it was important to launch the intent as early as possible, as the power of open source is in creating an inclusive community. It wouldn’t be in the spirit of open source to invite others only when everything was complete.

To that end, we would love for others to get involved, no matter who you work for. All individuals and organizations are welcome. If you want to get involved, you may be thinking: what is next?

We’ve been busy the last couple weeks writing down the basics for organizing the source code, and defining the tools needed that will enable us to automate processes and achieve the continued compatibility paramount to this project.

Soon we’ll post the draft technical documents outlining these concepts for review. The documents will contain enough context so that together we can set up the code and get it operational to the point that it’s beneficial to our community members. Once we get these documents fleshed out, the tools in place and the repositories completed, the project will be active and aligned with the principal OpenELA mission.

How to get involved:

We look forward to working with the community as we focus to achieve this goal. We are excited about the prospects this mission brings.