Who the hell is buying SUSE Linux?

English Open Chat
#1

I’ve been waiting to hear some kind of official announcement regarding the sale of Novell and specifically the SUSE Linux division; however, all I hear are more rumors and repetitive speculation. I don’t really expect anyone here to have an answer for me, I’m just growing impatient. I really love openSUSE, and I would love to switch back permanently, but personally I need some reassurance that SUSE will continue to serve the community as well as the enterprise. There are certain companies being discussed as possible suitors for the SUSE business who make me question the future of openSUSE and SLES as we know it.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I for one would really like to see IBM buy the SUSE brand. I admire IBM as a company and it would be like a dream come true if they were to buy my favorite Linux distro.

The VMWare purchase seems to be falling apart, so it’s hard to say who the hell will end up with SUSE. I hope it’s not VMWare, as that is pretty much like Microsoft buying SUSE.

Anyway, what is the latest news? Anyone hearing anything new? Who would you like to see purchase SUSE Linux, and how do you feel about the VMWare deal?

#2

There are no latest news. You’ll have to wait the end of the 3rd financial quarter of Novell to have an answer (ie, ~2months).
Nobody at SUSE know anything yet either.

#3

Markets will show first activity before we hear a word. Right now Novel isn’t showing signs of any drastic movement like would be normal if something is pending. Lots of rumors flow that never amount to a hill of beans.

#4

What would concern me in the event of an IBM takeover is that they have plans to drasticly cut their work force in the next few years. Their payroll will be a fraction of what it is today, and the community development team might very likely be among the first to go.

IBM crowd sourcing could see employed workforce shrink by three quarters

#5

On Wed, 27 Oct 2010 09:36:02 +0000, Spyhawk wrote:

> You’ll have to wait the end of the 3rd financial quarter of Novell to
> have an answer

FYI Novell’s Q4 ends on October 31. :slight_smile:

To the OP: Nobody at Novell can say anything until there’s an
announcement. Even if we knew something (which most of us don’t), we
couldn’t say anything: SEC rules prohibit it and anyone who says
anything about any proposed acquisition or merger would be personally
liable for such a pre-announcement and could go to jail for saying so.

Is it frustrating? You bet. You think it’s tough on the outside, try
being an employee with no insight into your financial future. :-/

Jim

Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

#6

> I don’t know about the rest of you, but I for one would really like to
> see IBM buy the SUSE brand.

You really don’t want this…

Any software IBM touches dies a horrible death.
They do hardware quite well…but it would be like wanting
Intel to buy SuSE. You’d also have to get a doctorate on how
to navigate IBM’s website.

What is scary is Ellison detests Red Hat, and he’s been on a buying binge.

#7

GofBorg wrote:

>> I don’t know about the rest of you, but I for one would really like to
>> see IBM buy the SUSE brand.
>
> You really don’t want this…
>
> Any software IBM touches dies a horrible death.

Really? It might change a bit… but “dies a horrible death”? No…

Whether right or wrong, I think Lotus Notes and Symphony survive BECAUSE of
IBM.

And WebSphere, Tivoli and Rational lines are doing fine. SWG (IBM’s
software group) is growing (doing well).

> They do hardware quite well…but it would be like wanting
> Intel to buy SuSE. You’d also have to get a doctorate on how
> to navigate IBM’s website.

Well… I’ll have to agree with the website comment. It’s a mess… I vote
for a redo :slight_smile: But Novell’s has been pretty bad at times as well.

>
> What is scary is Ellison detests Red Hat, and he’s been on a buying binge.

Actually, Oracle LOVES Red Hat, which is why it’s the base of their
Unbreakable Linux. I don’t see Oracle wanting to buy SUSE. Right now, as
we can see, nobody is wanting to buy them… but as we have also seen, we
are probably just between offers. Oracle does what it wants to do…
doesn’t have to make sense… they view themselves as omnipotent (in other
words invulnerable to even the nastiest of business mistakes).

IBM is also in love with Red Hat… I think if they purchased a Linux,
they’d purchase that one. It’s sort of sad in a way, because at one time, I
think Novell SUSE had the upper hand inside at IBM (preferred)… but NOT
anymore (hint to anyone at Novell). Not sure what happened to the
relationship… but Red Hat is in the driver’s seat at IBM right now…
with Fedora and Ubuntu running 2nd and 3rd (obviously, IBM supports both
RHEL and SLES… just saying that internally, SUSE has LOST favor). It
MIGHT be because Novell software offerings do overlap some key IBM offerings
(not talking about Linux). Inside of IBM, you’ll trip over a plethora of
RHEL, Ubuntu and Fedora hosts as you cross any given floor… you’ll have to
HUNT (and I mean HUNT!) to find any SLES or openSUSE.

If I were Novell… I’d work the IBM relationship some… something’s not
working well there. SLES is still (barely) king on the mainframe… Novell
does realize that a relationship requires WORK right? If they’re not
careful, they’ll lose their mainframe majority this year (IMHO).

#8

> IBM is also in love with Red Hat…

Neither IBM or Oracle are in love with RedHat.
They both covet Red Hat’s market share. Oracle made a power
grab to provide support for RedHat, not sure how much success they had.
IBM plays the role of the good steward, but secretly they would rather
people run AIXL. Again IBM is foremost a hardware company which is why
the are fairly agnostic in the OS wars.

Ironically, I suspect MS would be an excellent home for SuSE, but it would
have to be an altogether different MS to succeed. Nobody is falling for
their antics in the Linux space.