[jrjsmrtn]

Correct.

But being open source and distributed under the GPL is not enough.

RedHat or SuSE have a more indeterminate future due to their shareholders control, frequent changes of owners, distro licensing or source code availability.

Debian, the distro, is almost boring but has the largest platform scope and one of the largest package base. Debian, the organisation, with its community, its policies, its social contract, its independence, has proven its resilience over and over again.

In addition to Debian's LTS and ELTS support, the Civil Infrastructure Platform (https://www.cip-project.org) provides Super-Long-Term Stable (SLTS) kernels for ten years. Want paid support ? Look at companies like Freexian. Want reproducible builds? (https://reproducible-builds.org) Look at https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds (And yes, I'm very aware of NixOS/Guix).

Thus, why start a new Linux distribution if we want sovereignty?

Let's support and build on the Debian project and community, the Civil Infrastructure Platform, the Linux Foundation, the reproducible builds projects. Let's support Proxmox, a EU-born VMware alternative based on Debian ! :-)

Developer resources are scarce, maintainers burnout is real. Let's not waste energy on futile projects. Let's build our sovereignty on solid, existing foundations.

[jrjsmrtn]

Oh, and let's move to RISC-V. ;-)