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IBM And Intel Help Rescue SuSE From Insolvency
mutantcamel writes: "A report on NetworkFusion states that SuSE has avoided insolvency thanks to a fresh round of investment that raised $45.5 million for the ailing company. IBM and Intel
are among the players that have announced their support for the company. The rescue package comes after quite a turbulent time at SuSE HQ, but the company seems optimistic about the future."
SuSe is a major player for IBM in Europe. It is one of the more popular distros there.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Here's why...... SusE runs on zSeries machines: Linux for zSeries Don't let the UFOs abduct you.
1. SuSE is big in Europe (posted above).
2. SuSE actually bundles Lotus Domino server (IBM owns Lotus), if you want it, for Linux. see http://www.suse.com/us/products/index.html
3. It also support DB2, and comes bundled (but RedHat does that, too).
4. Oh, and you can buy an S/390 version.
5. They contributed a lot to various Linux projects, especially Matrox video drivers (but that's my personal bias).
I tried RedHat in the beginning, and then I tried SuSE. I found SuSE to be better, smoother implimentation of Linux, and I found the YAST sysadmin tool to be great at reminding me where to find things (transitioning from OSF/1 and AIX). Plus my hardware was never fully supported in RedHat, but it was in SuSE (which never made sense to me).
Plus, I find it easier to rally behind the bad rendering of a cartoonish gecko than to rally behind a hat. (I mean, if we're talking kewl logos....)
Slackware never wanted to be a multi-million dollar commercial firm, so of course they're not. You measure success by the attainment of your goals, not by the attainment of someone else's goals.
(oh, and LinuxPPC and Turbolinux aren't dead either)
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
No, IBM has stated numerous times (sorry, no links) that they don't want an "IBM Linux" of any sort.
However they do have strategic partnerships with 4 different distributions -- Red Hat, SuSE, TurboLinux, and Caldera. These partnerships basically state that IBM and the distro company will ensure that IBM server software (DB2, Lotus Domino, WebSphere, MQSeries, etc) runs and is packaged properly for these distros. The partnerships have been in place for a year or two at least but were originally chosen to get a very wide coverage throughout the world (RedHat in US, SuSE in Europe, TurboLinux in Asia, and Caldera in Antartica(?)).
Since SuSE and RedHat are probably the main 2 left of the original 4 (yes, TurboLinux and Caldera are still kicking -- some less than others) there is good reason that IBM make sure SuSE stay afloat.
Run Lotus Domino on a SuSE Linux box. That's what I've been evaluating for the past month.... about to roll it into production for 250+ Lotus Notes client workstations.
How does a company like this have such a high cash burn rate when they are essentially just
enhancing free software?
Well SuSE has employees (not volunteers) that enhance, package, test, market and sell the complete end product; distribution consisting of (mostly) free software. In some cases employees also are the actual developers too. These people don't work for bananas (AFAIK), and you need a few of them. That's where the money goes. In addition SuSE has been sponsoring some outside development efforts, but most likely these are much smaller investments than the actual running costs of the company.
A quick calculation: let's say an average employee earns 50000$ a year. In Germany additional costs for employees (employee has to pay some soc. sec. costs, insurances etc) might bem say, 50%.
There are other indirect 'per employee' costs; PCs, facilities etc., so let's say each employee costs 100k$ a year (may be higher, but not much lower). So, for 1M$ you get 100 SuSE employees for one year. I'm not sure how many people SuSE employs; with 1000 employees 45 millions would be enough for 4 and 1/2 years. But that would be just for paying for people; there are other operational costs. So, even though it looks like buckets of money, it's not all that huge for medium-sized company?
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
This is great news. I only hope that they haven't signed some silly NDA's with IBM intel etc. I also wonder why they got in financial trouble at the first place. They were always popular here in Europe but maybe they were reluctant to explore new markets?
SuSE "aims at FHS conformity" and is actively participating in the LSB project.
So they are getting there...
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