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SuSE Lays Off (Most) U.S. Staff (Updated)
assbarn writes: "The title pretty much says it all, but LWN daily is reporting that SuSE is laying off almost all of its US staff. What does this mean for their English distribution? The details are short (and sketchy), but the link is at LWN. " I've tried reaching both the U.S. and German branches: SuSE has yet to return a call placed to the U.S. office, and at the German branch it won't be business hours for a while. I've left that message at the SuSE American office, though, and will update with any confirmation/denial. Update: 02/08 12:03 AM by H :A couple people have sent in the LinuxToday piece. SuSE's PR agency has denied it, but LWN is standing by it, and several other readers have substantiated it to LinuxToday and LWN, including the original source on LWN. As well, SuSE did say that a number of positions were being relocated. We'll keep the story updated. Update: 02/08 04:38 AM by T : LinuxGram has some great information -- with real details! Skeleton crew of 12 to remain in the U.S. What's also interesting is that it confirms that the PR agency had "bad communication," which is an interesting statement to say the least.
Linuxtoday contacted SuSE. They said, this is a total rumour. They've only let ONE person go.
Sigh.
This is just another example of how sensitive the community has become. Whenever someonse says "job cuts" or "stock plumbers" regarding Linux companies, people start jumping conclusions. I work at a VAR which uses exclusively the SuSE distro, mainly because they have a version for our language (Portuguese, if you must know), and I can install a server from scratch using ReiserFS in under an hour. Just yesterday we received info from SuSE stating prices for the 7.1 release, together with lots of other bits and pieces. Conclusion: so the US market didn't respond the way SuSE expected... big deal. In Europe (all of Europe, not just Germany and german-speaking countries) SuSE rules!!
"Some people see things as they are, and ask why. I dream things that never were, and ask why not."
Aaargh! This makes me want to scream...
SuSE is a GERMAN company!
SuSE, Inc. in USA goes down does NOT mean SuSE GmbH in Germany is going down! You savvy?
Contrary to popular belief(mostly in the US), the USA is only a small part of this planet.
People living elsewhere on this ball actually don't allways give a damn about the US.
All this means is that the US sales were dissapointing, (due to an over-loaded distro market in the US anyway) and SuSE will merely return their focus outside the USA.
SuSE have, and will still Rock!
Country today, World tomorrow, Universe for desert.
Coincidence? I don't think so.
... maybe all the techies are just being a teensy bit paranoid about downsizing nowadays, since so many firms have unsustainable business models and the VC equity holders and IPO institutional holders are pulling the plug.
... imagine if it were a closed source OS/Apps company ... what would you do?
Or
I'd be more concerned with news like Attachmate downsizing due to the low volume of Win2K Data Server sales, especially with Active Directory almost nonexistent than I would be about S.u.S.e. problems.
At least you've got the source code
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Linux is splitting into different Distro's for different cultural areas of the world. The German speaking world has SuSE. The English speaking world Red Hat. The French speaking world goes with Mandrake, and the Japanese with turbo Linux.
Now, this shouldn't affect Linux at all, but I fear it will, and indeed I fear it already is. We are seeing the germination of different developer communities based on language, and not on a shared enthusiasm for Linux. For example, the german speaking world moves with KDE, and the Enflish with Gnome, and each have their own respective developer communities with their own cultural values. The recent establishment of a European branch of the FSF can only worsen this, IMO. The European Linux community is expediant - witness KDE liscensing issues - while the American is idealistic, and not really practical, as can be seen with its adherence to the values of the FSF.
I think this is bad news for Linux. We need to see more cross cultural integration, like we used to have in the early days of Linux.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
I think of little else but you.
Is very little. After all given that the business model of selling Linux distributions means that companies operate on razor-thin profit margins at best (without other value added services anyway) it's not suprising that several, or perhaps most, of these companies will experiance the financial pinch and be forced to lay off staff to cut costs.
But it doesn't really mean all that much for SuSe as a whole, just for their promotion and distribution teams in America I'd assume. You'll still be able to get it over the net I'm sure, you just might have to miss out on a fancy box :)
Just to keep things in perspective, SuSE lost about 30 out of more than 600 employees. It's a very big issue for those leaving, and - I wouldn't have thought it would be that big - also for those staying who see those guys leave.
However, from the companies perspective:
- No development for SuSE Linux took place here at all, so nothing will happen to the product.
- We had hired a lot of people in expectation of things to come in the US - and then the box sales (for ALL Linux boxes) didn't really jump up a lot, and the little was absorbed by much increased competition. That left a lot more people than needed.
I would also like to point out the difference between Europe and the US for SuSE. In Europe we have used the revenue from the box sales in a not nearly as competitive, but equally big or even larger market, to grow into the service business. T-Online, Europes largest ISP, for example, is a SuSE reference customer. And the great thing is they don't just use the distribution - damn, that's next to free! - they actually used and use our _services_ and give us real $$$.
Different in the US, here we only sold the boxed product (and started building Services only recently, which will continue!), and for that the workforce was way too big for that in the current market. If people bought as many packages as they download from the ftp-server, and that's true for all distros,...
So, basically, we got rid of a lot of functions needed for expected strong box sales which now will be done by the already established bigger organisation in Europe. you don't need two call centers for installation support if in the territory that the US one was to cover you sell much less than in the over one's territory (so that one is a big call center already anyway). So people here weren't as busy as expected.
The problems together: ...but competition in this area rose a lot
Which basically means for the boxes alone we wouldn't have needed nearly as many additional people as we had hired.
- market situation now lets investors demand IMMEDIATE profitibility
- box sales were the largest contributor for SuSE Inc. revenue
- box sales for Linux in general didn't rise too much...
-
The good news is that SuSE in general doesn't depend on this. Sales in Europe has risen much more, and service revenue of our consulting company - which was founded only in 1999 and is about to become bigger than the "original" SuSE - has reached levels where the box sales have a hard time following, and it's increasing much faster than those as well. Yes, there are a lot more RedHat boxes out there - but unlike for SuSE Linux where we get money for every single one they don't get any money for by far most of it. Of course, now some people might call this bad because Linux is supposed to be free - and I respond yes, "Linux" is supposed to be free, and we still pay the most Linux developers and their stuff goes back to Linux, but "SuSE Linux" is not free. (Well, the ftp version even is, plus the usual stuff, i.e. buy on epackage, install a million times, etc.; we just don't want anyone else to take our final product and sell it filling _their_ own pockets.)
Michael Hasenstein
BEST Oracle on Linux support in town: http://www.suse.com/en/support/oracle/
...and our engineering presence at Oracle HQ will _increase_, not decrease. Yeah, I'm one of the Oracle guys around here ;-)
--
Michael Hasenstein
http://www.suse.de/~mha/
Interestingly, SuSE is the ONLY good, up to date (imho) distro for the s/390, which is a pretty emerging market that will have plenty to spend on support contracts. IBM does not have a distro.
Finkployd
Part of the great thing about Linux is that your can download it for free - which is definately a good thing. But, if you can afford it, please support your distro of choice, else - you may not have too much choice left. Think about how much that distro has been worth to you, how much it would have cost in MS software to replace what you setup with a Linux based box. I am not saying buy a copy for every computer you put it on, or anything silly like that. But if you use it day in and day out - go get the pro version from (Insert local store that carries distros here), and give back a little to the people that work so hard producing that distro for you. -- MetaCosm
The only people getting rich off of the current "open-source wannabe UNIX" trend are CheapBytes.com and others who sell $.99 CD-Rs of the same product which Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE et al expect you to pay upwards of $40 for. Yeah, right.
The moral of that story is, NO FUCKING SHIT!! SuSE and Red Hat are fools if they envision themselves as anything other than charities. At least when I give money to the FSF (which I do regularly), I know that they aren't kidding themselves.
It's been said countless times in the past. I'll certainly be glad when this little fad is over so we ("we" of course being professional developers) can go back to programming as usual.
--
I like to watch.