From: "Fred A. Miller" <fmiller@lightlink.com> Reply-To: <fmiller@lightlink.com> Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2005 18:50:23 -0400 To: <suse-linux-e@suse.com> Subject: [SLE] NOVELL MISSTEPS NOT AFFECTING SUSE
NOVELL MISSTEPS NOT AFFECTING SUSE
As rumors fly that Novell may be tightening its budgetary belt, analysts and users seek to diagnose what a weakened SuSE could mean to the Linux community.
http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid39_gci113... 71,00.html?track=NL-301&ad=531892USCA
I agree with the general theory -- that a problem within Novell isn't going to sink SuSE. But on the other hand: where does the revenue come from? Let me give you a quick corporate profile: 80 people, at a profitable web-based business. For the most part, servers (50+ of them) are SuSE Pro (not enterprise) 9.3, with a couple of Windows servers scattered. File sharing, etc, is done via Samba. DNS is done by Bind. Most desktop clients, though, run Windows XP. Even if we move everything, but everything, to SuSE, total revenue for Novell/SuSE is about $59. Profit is about $8 or something -- same as they make selling a SuSE boxed set to any desktop user in the world. That's not enough to pay Andreas for his work, nor the other folks who work at SuSE. Speaking for my company, we do what we can to contribute back with list posts, packages, RPMs, and whatever else we can. But we're not making SuSE any money. So where does the money come from? Maybe what I'm seeing is the distinction between a company that chooses to trust it's systems engineers to do what's right, and one that needs a manager to decide whether they are doing what's right. But I think what I'm seeing is evidence that an OS business model may not quite work the way SuSE thinks it should. Anyway: I'm hoping that someone out there can show me why I'm being a little too pessimistic. And Andreas J. et al, we love you, and thank you. - I