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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."
works for Intel. They use a lot of Linux there. ~%90 of his work is done on a Linux box. They really like the idea of not being tied to microsoft in the server room. I just really wish that we had an Exchange Killer then I could start converting my clients to pure Linux environments. That would be cool.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
i suspected that SuSE was in trouble, glad that the are saved.
...
i'm using SuSE for a very long time and i like the distribution.
the future of SuSE seems to be good:
look here
and here
SuSE has put much effort into supporting development of open source projects like, kde, alsa, reiserfs,
hopefully the future will be better for SuSE, if they go, it will be a lost for the open source community.
...for all you longtime SUSE freeloaders to buy copies of their CDs. (Yes, I know it's free-as-in-beer to download, but do you want a new distro next year or not?)
Faster than you can mod this down.
Look, Stormix and Corel are already history.
Linuxcare has had all sorts of managment problems.
Mandrake and Suse both had layoffs not too long ago. The Suse prez just walked out. VA linux recently got rid of there hardware and dumped some people including Samba hacker Jeremy Allison. Now Suse is out of cash. It seems like every major Linux company is in the toilet now.
Well for one thing, maybe they are hoping that the market of oracle on linux grows. Since its only "tested" on SuSE running it on other distro's can be a real hassle.
I got it working on slack8 but only after a hassle of upgrading and downgrading some things.
I can only imagine that this market will continue to grow as companies look for alternate solutions. Oracle databases are still around 85% on Unix last time I heard.
I hate to tell you this, but Microsoft makes a killing for support of their product. Technet, for an average Joe? 475/yr. Fixing aol on a out of warranty system (2 service calls) 35 dollars an incident. Professional support for NT/2000 255-1000. Enterprise support? 10-10000 to A cool million. You can't make money off support? Cisco charges millions of dollars for premium support for it's products. That's just the service agreement, not including the products. The ONLY way to make money off of software is service and support.
http://cincyboys.blogspot.com/ Everything Cincinnati. Including the word 'Finnih'
Why? Because like a lot of greedy people around here that dont understand 'what' SuSe is and is about, they have shaped and forged linux in new directions that wouldn't have been possible before. They hire full time programmers that contribute to big projects that benefit all of us on a daily basis. Ontop of that, they are the most popular distro in Europe. Marketing a product does cost money, and if we ever want to win, were not going to do it for free, forever.
:)
If anybody in Europe wants to help the Linux cause in a positive way, I would suggest buying a copy of SuSe. Buying SuSe doesn't just get you a CD with a nice book, consider it an investment in the success of Linux. Without your support, You can kiss Linux goodbye.. (could I get any of you to buy a Loki game as well? they really need the help now..)
This is much like American Public Television/Radio (PBS) and the fundraisers they have each year.. They need that money to pay the electric bills, studio personnel, managers, executives, etc, this doesn't come cheap. They also need that money to invest in NEW programming. The Linux model resembles this in many respects (except we get to keep the programming in Linux forever
Public Television in america gets 50% of its funding from the government (or some figure like that.) Unfortunately Linux doesn't quite have this guarantee...
Rob A.S.
Suse is the only distro that will support
1) IBM Products
2) Oracle Products
3) Commercial Software.
Suse knows linux is an operating system. Suse is very stable yet ahead of the game compared to US based distros.
If i use Suse linux i can replace expensive NT and Solaris servers running Oracle 9iAS and Databases. Redhat, many times over has told me to buy there 2,500.00 Redhat for Oracle (which is 6.0 based and pretty crappy) and do all sorts of hacks to get any recent rdbms working.
On the other hand, sude made sure that 7.0, 7.1 and 7.2 works with these commercials apps because that is where they get the demand for the OS.
Believe me, free software doesn't demand anything, but business requirments do. Redhat database doesn't cut it for anything other then a website and frankly, its very microsoft of Redhat to try and produce everything under the sun for there os.
So yeah, under suse you can run Domino, DB2, Oracle 9ias, Oracle 9i, Oracle8, oracle forms and reports, oracle forms developer and all the crap every other distro supports.
And usually people pay for OS support when business software relies on it.
It's interesting that you point out SuSE was "in trouble" for the CEO leaving - 2 days before this announcement was made. My brother manages a tech fund, and he has stated that a common thing he (and others managing such investments) expects is the ability to shake out management as a contigency to investing (also like requesting a board seat or three). My bet is the CEO's leaving was directly tied to SuSE getting $$$.
But then again, maybe not...
This is a very partisan approach to the issue. Success for Linux in the market place is not tied to the financial success of it's most well-known distro. It may not even be linked to RedHat's success.
I also believe you have mis-understood the fundamental premise on which one company may choose to support another.
I don't think the original poster's argument had anything at all to do with RedHat. He mentioned RedHat and Mandrake as examples, but there's no argument at all for "One True Distro" in the original post. The original post also didn't say anything about why one company (IBM) would support another (SUSE).
The point of the original poster's argument is simply the old argument in favor of consolidation - fewer players means that each individual player will be more successful. Of SUSE's business is spread among the remaining Linux distros, then that's good for the remaining distros.
I think the counter-argument you're looking for should be an elaboration on this statement: "SUSE is stronger in particular (European) markets because it's well-suited to those markets and those markets may not want to switch to another Linux provider." If you're trying to argue that only SUSE, and not Mandrake, Caldera or any other distro can continue to penetrate European markets, then say that. It's a good argument. But you seem to have gone off track which this whole line of argument against a "One True Distro" style of thinking which simply wasn't present in the original post. And if you do make that argument, expect counter-arguments. I could see how Mandrake (a French distro) might want to see SUSE die so that it could expand its European presence, for example.
Regarding XFS - I'm sure that LinuxCare did the port and SuSE was participating after it started. I don't think it's the other way around....
Hetz
nah, no sig... move on..
At the LWCE I picked up a LinuxPPC dated December 2000. So that's about 9 months since an official stable release.
From what I understand, LPPC does not have a current maintainer. BFD. That doesn't mean people aren't using it, or that it won't have a maintainter in the very near future.
Just what makes a distribution "dead"? The fact that they haven't released anything in over two weeks? Two months? Six months? I remember the days when everyone said Slackware was dead because they hadn't released anything in a year. Then boom! Then they said it was dead because Windriver laid them off, then boom!
The viability of a Free Software project is not predicated upon the sales figures, or the market share, or how many people are using it. I strongly suspect that Yggdrasil is dead, but if they came out with a new release tomorrow, it wouldn't surprise me.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I have actually paid for three different copies myself (6.1, 6.3, 7.1) and felt like I got a good deal just due to the convenience of getting all the cdroms and books.