Once again you seem not to understand what the goal was. People on the list suddenly had this HUGE interest in VMware as soon as Michael said, "Professional comes with VMware license". There is also many users on here who buy every single release of SuSE. Add 1 and 1 together and get 2. SuSE users may want a bundled deal. SuSE users still want every SuSE release and stay up to date. They also want VMware. Combine the two and you have what I described as SuSE Expert. Hence, this is why SuSE may want to look into this. Maybe this is a potential product scheme. Is it complicating things? Yes, but I am sure IBM has way more complicated contracts =) And yes you have to keep track but maybe it is worth it. You certainely will raise a lot of eye brows and gain users. I said twice that details have to be worked out to make this financially probable. Maybe the 100 dollar target is way off. Then you made a comment that VMware can just easily sell their licenses themselves. Oh if business was so easy. If that were true we wouldn't have a thread of 200 emails about how SuSE creates now two versions. Apparently software doesn't sell itself so easy. Also I may like to point out that Microsoft didn't get to where they are by selling Windows on the shelves all by itself. They bundled it with everything they could possibly bundle it with. When I explained the SuSE Expert version and put the price target to 100 dollars and said there was a SuSE+VMware deal I meant that SuSE bundles their product and then channels some of the profits back to VMware. Of course they can't sell a VMware license and not pay VMware. I am pretty certain this will sell more licenses of VMware than VMware could possibly ever sell by themselves for the price of 299. America is the land of bundles it seems. You can't walk a block without seeing some bundled deal. McDonalds and Britney Spears, George Foreman and grills, get a hub and two nics, SuSE and VMware, Linux und Musik (remember that one? =), .... And people buy this bundled stuff. Time seems to have proven that. I think the essential question is: Do you want SuSE to remain forever where they are, selling a single Linux product, or go out there enthusiastically and make some serious business with people offering all kinds of product ranges? If it was me I would want to evolve into some strong business machine. I guess I have another fact to prove my theory. SuSE now comes with Reiserfs. There seems to be no money involved?! But people seem to love the opportunity to use this file system and I bet simply by including it it is an advantage point to keep a SuSE user a SuSE user and not have him go to some other distro. hence there is money involved. Every single reason which keep a user a SuSe user means money for SuSE. VMware may be such a reason. Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with VMware in any way and have never used VMware. mk

From: Derek Fountain To: SuSE English Subject: Re: [SLE] SuSE 7 Deluxe now vmware talk Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2000 13:08:51 +0100

...

SuSE could include a 3-year VMware license with their professional distro and sell it at 120 dollars. Reason for this is that people repurchase the

A user buys 6 versions of SuSe pro and one version of vmware. Cost. 6*70+299=720 dollars total

A user buys 6 versions of SuSE pro with full vmware lincense included. Cost. 6*120=720 dollars total

This strikes me as unworkable drivel. You're asking people to sign subscription contracts to tie them to software they might not want to use in 6 months time, let alone 3 years time. You're asking SuSE to put in place some mechanism for keeping track of these contracts, and starting international legal actions when people all over the world start defaulting. If Vmware want to offer their product on a credit basis - !!spread the cost over 3 years with 3 easy payments of just 100 dollars!! - that's their business. Why should SuSE offer it and further complicate their product range?

I can see that there is a business case for selling expensive machines with SuSE preinstalled (SuSE have partnered IBM for this); I can see the business case for selling expensive software with a distro (Redhat have partnered Oracle for this, I don't know what SuSE have got in mind); I can't see a business case for taking one piece of moderately inexpensive software (Vmware is pretty cheap for home users) and working out some tricky scheme for spreading the cost. I also can't see a business case for Vmware to hand over a big chunk of the Vmware licence fee to SuSE when they can just as easily sell the licences themselves.

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