I disagree equally as strongly. I have no problem with SuSE increasing their price, but not if the increase is largely due to the inclusion of a vmware license. We do not use vmware and do not want to pay for it. If I want vmware I will buy it. So this begs the question.. why not have SuSE Professional with no vmware license and a SuSE Profession VM with a higher price and includes a license for vmware. While we are at it.. why not have a SuSE Professional WP with a full license for WordPerfect Office .. and then a SuSE Professional VM WP with both licenses!!! Come'on guys...if you want it, buy the damn thing and don't make the rest of us pay for it.... or you or force SuSE to have 50 different distros.. The other point I would like to make, is that personally I prefer an OS to stay an OS. Remember the old MS DOS 2.x. That was it, it was an OS, a basic OS with fundamental editor (edlin.. very nice after ludwig) and that was it. Then look at MSDOS 6.x.. basically the same OS with every other thing tacked on.. it wanted to be all things to all people.. and basically was reduced to a bugfest. SuSE is a fine Linux distro because it is simple to install, come preconfigured for a range of requirements and is damn stable. Myself and many of my colleagues don't even install X! Are we to pay for VMWare every time we buy SuSE when we never use it? Many of use Buy SuSe to build stable servers for windoze networks... does Netware 5 need VMWare? If we liked Redhat, we'd buy it.. we like SuSE to leave it alone! Chris On Wed, 09 Aug 2000 11:34:48 GMT, Purple Shirt wrote:

First of all I like to congratulate you to your patience as well. I think people always forget to point out that you are not forced to buy SuSE if you don't like the way it is distributed.

I still disagree strongly on your analysis with the VMware license.

Even though I don't think SuSE should come with a full VMware lincense I have to disagree with you on the pricing and reasoning of you.

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 distribution over and over again. This means over time they repurchase the VMware license and therefore over time actually pay the equivalent of 299 for their vmware license.

Is this of advantage to SuSE and vmware? Yes and No. I am not sure if SuSE would sell as many Pro versions or less due to the increased price offering.

VMware definitely will win on this and increase their user base.

It's easy math looking at 3 year time frame.

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

Now I am an economist but of course in my sample the numbers don't sound convincing. You could tweak this though, the same way you can tweak Linux. You can increase the time frame. The larger SuSE+VMware commitment might in detail look also much more complicated. The VMware lincense may be a 3 year license instead of a 30 days one or an til-you-die licence.

I am just saying there is lots of options on deals for SuSE to make here with VMware for SuSE to become a big time reseller and make every SuSE Pro user also a VMware user.

I hope the guys in SuSE marketing are thinking about this. If not you can hire me. =)

mk

PS: Damn, I just got hit in the head it fells. I think if SuSE sold a SuSE version called Expert you be out of this endless discussion. Endless.

I can't believe I am giving all these marketing tips away for free. Here is how it works. SuSE makes big deal with VMware. SuSE combines a 3 year license of VMware with each SuSE Expert version. The SuSE customer buys a software on time package. The SuSE user will receive up to 6 versions of SuSE over the next 3 years with a full VMware license included. Every time the customer receives a version he pays 120 dollars. This is perfect and I tell you why. For one the customer stays up to date with Linux for 3 years. For another the customer also has the updated VMware version. Receives tons of handbooks and CDs and DVDs. Then he got the VMware license. The cost is distributed over 3 years so the customer doesn't recognize the larger cost as in buying a 299 dollar license by itself. I am pretty sure this could work. Basically this would bind users to SuSE ad VMware at the same time. If the users are unsatisfied they don't have to renew their 3 year contracts. Of course the details are difficult and you have to keep track that the users actually get 3 year VMware licenses and cannot extend their use. I believe you can set the price point at 100 dollars. I tell you why. In the end you will gain less money than the 299 dollar price for a single Vmware license but eventually people will like your product for the time frame and the service and I rather pay 100 bucks for SuSE with a Bam than 80 bucks for RedHat Pro with no bam. Users will stick with SuSE and therefore the loss you taking of 20 dollars on each SuSE version can be half way carried by VMware and halfway by SuSE and over time this loss deminishes towards zero the more customers you gain and the longer they stay with SuSE products.

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Hi, On Wed, Aug 09 2000 at 11:34 +0000, Purple Shirt wrote:

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 distribution over and over again. This means over time they repurchase the VMware license and therefore over time actually pay the equivalent of 299 for their vmware license.

Is this of advantage to SuSE and vmware? Yes and No. I am not sure if SuSE would sell as many Pro versions or less due to the increased price offering.

VMware definitely will win on this and increase their user base.

Questionable. You have to keep in mind that for VMware (the company) a customer who pays $299 today is better than one who pays the same amount distributed over a 3 years time period.

It's easy math looking at 3 year time frame.

3 years are an eternity in the software bussiness. What if plex86 is ready in one year? Or everyone starts porting their software to Linux?

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

What would keep me from buying only one SuSE version with VMware? That way I have a 3 years VMware license and can then buy the version without VMware and save $50 per release. Ciao, Stefan -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq