6 ms·

Melissa Di Donato Appointed CEO of SUSE

55 points by vedses 7y ago

craigsmansion 7y ago
From the end of the press release: ``About SUSE SUSE, the world’s largest independent open source company'' "Wait, isn't RedHat the lar... oooh, someone at SuSE marketing is on the ball."
- buster 7y ago
  It's right in the beginning of the press release and i find this marketing BS so unbearable that i didn't read any further. It's the typical BS i come to expect from venture capital owned companies (i've heard that all the time when i was working for one). And how is Suse "independent" when it's owned by some swedish private equity group? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EQT_Partners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EQT_Partners And, interestingly, see the german wikipedia entry for much more companies owned by EQT. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/EQT_(Unternehmen) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/EQT_(Unternehmen) How is Suse independent, again?
  - houseofzeus 7y ago
    My interpretation is that they and Red Hat are just as "independent" as each other. That is they can do whatever they want as long as they keep making money...but if they don't then they can and will be course corrected by their respective owners.
    - buster 7y ago
      So, how is that independent? And i guess, that if both are equally "independent" then RedHat would be larger one, wouldn't it? And what does "largest open source" mean, anyway? More employees? More customers? More revenue? More contributions to open source?
      - mugsie 7y ago
        Biggest in terms of market cap afaik.
  - mugsie 7y ago
    WHat was communicated at the time was that EQT was going to be "hands off", and allow the current management to continue operating SUSE as is. Even under Microfocus they enjoyed a level of freedom usually associated with independent companies. If the board was left as is, and EQT is just a shareholder, that could be considered independent - more so than RH + IBM where there was some integration, and RH was becoming a wing of IBM. But this is all speculation on my part, so YMMV
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- isquared23 7y ago
  Redhat has been bought by IBM?
- tempodox 7y ago
  Te operative word being independent. RH may be bigger, but it's not independent any more.
mugsie 7y ago
It will be interesting to see how things change now - both SUSE and RedHat have gone from engineering leadership to business based leadership. While there was a lot inside of SUSE that could have used more business focus, the ethos of the company is what made it so successful.
- rurban 7y ago
  I don't believe that it will be interesting. It will be a catastrophe. For SUSE much worse than for RedHat. Hopefully this UK lead will be over soon.
W-Stool 7y ago
Who are SUSE's main customers these days? Self hosted SAP shops?
- robmusial 7y ago
  Anecdotally, you're correct SAP shops and I have seen a lot of Linux on z Systems running SLES.
ggm 7y ago
I came late to linux in heavy use, being a BSD person of old. Commercialized BSD exists but the foundation(s) behind the major flavours are clearly NFP models. So as a late linux adopter, in Debian, I am wondering why people see value in SUSE and RedHat since all my experience has been the SLA value is .. dreck. No problem we had with a RH kernel or OS behaviour was fixed inside our $SLA$ in the EL release we had. All problems were either WONTFIX or re-install later EL. Debian update/upgrade appears to work. Fixes get applied. What am I missing? If they want to own SAP-ON-LINUX or ORACLE-ON-LINUX why should I worry? I am more concerned about GPL and ZFS these days, than commercial backing: I dont think it actually adds value to me. (20+ nodes in a research cluster, cloud)
- alxlaz 7y ago
  I can't comment on the value of SLAs, as I was never directly involved (but what I heard is pretty much what you mention). What I can tell you, however, is that there are companies where higher-ups won't agree to an IT proposal if it doesn't include commercial support, whether useful or not. Company policy mandates it so it gets done.
  - ggm 7y ago
    Yea. Probably thats how we wound up there. We bought off risk, by spending money that it turned out didn't resolve the risk when it hit, but because we TRIED we got to shift blame, by not owning "you broke it you fix it" to the management view.
    - mitchty 7y ago
      I know people that work at SuSE, in a nutshell, they are like Redhat in that they don't really provide linux only, they provide ways of integrating it into your business. That is where Debian just isn't going to compete. And that is why SuSE exists, they're selling much more than linux.
      - ggm 7y ago
        That integration can be super-useful. If you "get" SAP or "get" salesforce or whatever, having a vendor who can talk vertically integrated helps. But right now, I think we're all staring at alpine in kubernetes asking if the old giant unix model is the one we want.
drfuchs 7y ago
There's a lot of misunderstanding here about what "Independent Company" means. In the business world, it's understood as "not having shares that are traded on the stock market". So, SUSE is "independent" since it has never IPO'd; while RedHat isn't "independent" as you and I can buy shares in it. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_business https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_business for confirmation: "An independent business is a business that is free from outside control. It usually means a privately owned establishment, as opposed to a public limited company, the latter of which is owned by investment shares traded in the stock market."
codegeek 7y ago
My first introduction to self installable Linux OS was with SUSE Linux. I still remember my summer break of 2001 when I spent most of the time installing and configuring SUSE Linux on my laptop. At the time, finding certain drives/applications to run few things were really hard compared to Windows but man that was fun. I remember being able to install sound driver and do some cool things. Nowadays, everything is pre-packaged and no fun :)

55 points by vedses 7y ago

From the end of the press release: ``About SUSE SUSE, the world’s largest independent open source company'' "Wait, isn't RedHat the lar... oooh, someone at SuSE marketing is on the ball."

buster 7y ago
It's right in the beginning of the press release and i find this marketing BS so unbearable that i didn't read any further. It's the typical BS i come to expect from venture capital owned companies (i've heard that all the time when i was working for one). And how is Suse "independent" when it's owned by some swedish private equity group? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EQT_Partners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EQT_Partners And, interestingly, see the german wikipedia entry for much more companies owned by EQT. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/EQT_(Unternehmen) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/EQT_(Unternehmen) How is Suse independent, again?
- houseofzeus 7y ago
  My interpretation is that they and Red Hat are just as "independent" as each other. That is they can do whatever they want as long as they keep making money...but if they don't then they can and will be course corrected by their respective owners.
  - buster 7y ago
    So, how is that independent? And i guess, that if both are equally "independent" then RedHat would be larger one, wouldn't it? And what does "largest open source" mean, anyway? More employees? More customers? More revenue? More contributions to open source?
    - mugsie 7y ago
      Biggest in terms of market cap afaik.
- mugsie 7y ago
  WHat was communicated at the time was that EQT was going to be "hands off", and allow the current management to continue operating SUSE as is. Even under Microfocus they enjoyed a level of freedom usually associated with independent companies. If the board was left as is, and EQT is just a shareholder, that could be considered independent - more so than RH + IBM where there was some integration, and RH was becoming a wing of IBM. But this is all speculation on my part, so YMMV
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
isquared23 7y ago
Redhat has been bought by IBM?
tempodox 7y ago
Te operative word being independent. RH may be bigger, but it's not independent any more.

mugsie 7y ago

It will be interesting to see how things change now - both SUSE and RedHat have gone from engineering leadership to business based leadership. While there was a lot inside of SUSE that could have used more business focus, the ethos of the company is what made it so successful.

rurban 7y ago
I don't believe that it will be interesting. It will be a catastrophe. For SUSE much worse than for RedHat. Hopefully this UK lead will be over soon.

W-Stool 7y ago

Who are SUSE's main customers these days? Self hosted SAP shops?

robmusial 7y ago
Anecdotally, you're correct SAP shops and I have seen a lot of Linux on z Systems running SLES.

ggm 7y ago

I came late to linux in heavy use, being a BSD person of old. Commercialized BSD exists but the foundation(s) behind the major flavours are clearly NFP models. So as a late linux adopter, in Debian, I am wondering why people see value in SUSE and RedHat since all my experience has been the SLA value is .. dreck. No problem we had with a RH kernel or OS behaviour was fixed inside our $SLA$ in the EL release we had. All problems were either WONTFIX or re-install later EL. Debian update/upgrade appears to work. Fixes get applied. What am I missing? If they want to own SAP-ON-LINUX or ORACLE-ON-LINUX why should I worry? I am more concerned about GPL and ZFS these days, than commercial backing: I dont think it actually adds value to me. (20+ nodes in a research cluster, cloud)

alxlaz 7y ago
I can't comment on the value of SLAs, as I was never directly involved (but what I heard is pretty much what you mention). What I can tell you, however, is that there are companies where higher-ups won't agree to an IT proposal if it doesn't include commercial support, whether useful or not. Company policy mandates it so it gets done.
- ggm 7y ago
  Yea. Probably thats how we wound up there. We bought off risk, by spending money that it turned out didn't resolve the risk when it hit, but because we TRIED we got to shift blame, by not owning "you broke it you fix it" to the management view.
  - mitchty 7y ago
    I know people that work at SuSE, in a nutshell, they are like Redhat in that they don't really provide linux only, they provide ways of integrating it into your business. That is where Debian just isn't going to compete. And that is why SuSE exists, they're selling much more than linux.
    - ggm 7y ago
      That integration can be super-useful. If you "get" SAP or "get" salesforce or whatever, having a vendor who can talk vertically integrated helps. But right now, I think we're all staring at alpine in kubernetes asking if the old giant unix model is the one we want.

drfuchs 7y ago

There's a lot of misunderstanding here about what "Independent Company" means. In the business world, it's understood as "not having shares that are traded on the stock market". So, SUSE is "independent" since it has never IPO'd; while RedHat isn't "independent" as you and I can buy shares in it. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_business https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_business for confirmation: "An independent business is a business that is free from outside control. It usually means a privately owned establishment, as opposed to a public limited company, the latter of which is owned by investment shares traded in the stock market."

codegeek 7y ago

My first introduction to self installable Linux OS was with SUSE Linux. I still remember my summer break of 2001 when I spent most of the time installing and configuring SUSE Linux on my laptop. At the time, finding certain drives/applications to run few things were really hard compared to Windows but man that was fun. I remember being able to install sound driver and do some cool things. Nowadays, everything is pre-packaged and no fun :)