5 ms·

Who Will Buy Canonical and SUSE?

57 points by mikece 7y ago

rglullis 7y ago
Stranger things have happened, but https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1 makes me believe there is ~somewhat~ of a conflict between Canonical and Microsoft.
- jasonjayr 7y ago
  If the acquisition goes through they can just close that as WONTFIX.
  - cbmuser 7y ago
    It might be changed to "IN_PROGRESS" with Microsoft Edge being released for Linux next year :).
  - basch 7y ago
    it was already closed in the wake of rising ios and android marketshare. linux/unix devices have measurable consumer marketshare they didnt 20 years ago.
- coldtea 7y ago
  Well, if they're bought, then that will have to change designation as a "feature".
Santosh83 7y ago
Bad trend for user freedom when the industry keeps acquiring and consolidating and further fattening the already fat giants.
- rwmj 7y ago
  Not really. The barrier to entry in Linux distributions is pretty low. Everything that Red Hat does is open source so can be forked.
  - tw04 7y ago
    Forking Red Hat doesn't get you ANYWHERE close to having a replacment. What Red Hat got right was all the enterprise support contracts they were able to negotiate. You want to buy adapter X? Well if you have an issue with it, you need to reproduce it on Red Hat because the guys at Company X can work with the guys at Red Hat on a bugfix. Company X isn't really interested in having their highly paid developers sitting on mailing lists trying to negotiate a patch for the issue. The source code is the easy part.
    - rwmj 7y ago
      I know, I work for Red Hat ... I was addressing the original point that the poster made by pointing out that IBM buying Red Hat or SAP maybe buying SUSE in no way is a "bad trend for user freedom" because you can simply download and use CentOS or OpenSUSE at any time without paying the "fat giants" a penny and even fork them to make your own distro. Of course it won't be certified but that's not a free software problem.
      - ferzul 7y ago
        the major linux distributions could all get acquired by microsoft, google and ibm, but they have to give out they're kernel changes for free. thing is, increasing portions of our stack are bsd/mit/etc. those licences could go anywhere. “amazon postgres” could be funded well enough to hollow out the market. “we're already using 10 aws only api's, we're paying for support, and it's got these great features, and i can run it in virtual box/docker/whatever for porsonal and development use.” next thing you know, you wonder why independent cloud providers are dead. consumer computing will struggle, even worse than it does in these days of android-vs-ios that made the old (windows vs will this be the year of linux on the desktop) days look like a free software hayday. the cloudification of computing has destroyed any dreams of free software stacks - nowadays people call us thieves for not running other people's code on our own computer. but those problems aren't caused by microsoft buying canonical. but embrace, extend, extinguish. it's a known game, and we're the losers, even when we feel like the winners. who cares what licence the kernel and ls are distributed under, that's not what anyon's buying.
- a3n 7y ago
  It's the same for the internet in general, which has been turned into TV, and whose main purpose is to serve ads.
  - coleifer 7y ago
    It's worse: it's reality TV.
pjmlp 7y ago
I pretty much see that happening I will be gone by then, however in a couple of decades anything substantial based on GPL will be gone, and it will business as usual regarding UNIX wars.
- frou_dh 7y ago
  You can never leave the industry. Who else will post the daily reminders that AOT compilers exist for Java?
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Someone else. :)
bonsai80 7y ago
Canonical is working towards an IPO.... so I will! :)
- ianai 7y ago
  Wow, I wonder how far away that is. I also hope they get enough money to make some strong market share with new products.
jasoneckert 7y ago
I actually made the same gut speculations in common conversation earlier when IBM bought Red Hat (SAP buying SuSE, Microsoft buying Canonical). It was nice to see this post that flushed out the rationale in more detail.
- ianai 7y ago
  There will be several bidders, I expect. IBM would have a reason to buy SuSE as would Microsoft. Nothing grows your market power by buying a competitor - no matter how small or technologically different.
curt15 7y ago
Canonical is already moving to a Microsoft-style update model for some of its software. https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for-snap-from-store/707 https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for...
- dorfsmay 7y ago
  For a desktop on the other hand, this is great. People are used to having their phone constantly upgrading automatically, which make it hard to explain to non-technical users why they need to `apt upgrade` regularly.
mikece 7y ago
“Canonical has, historically, had a number of products (and attempted product initiatives) that didn't quite work out (including Ubuntu Phone, Ubuntu for Android, Ubuntu for TV, and several software initiatives)...” Anyone else reminded of Microsoft when you read that? Windows Phone, Zune, MSN TV, and “several other software initiatives” (Bing, Bob, Clippy, etc)...
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Actually I was thinking about Google's products
- Avamander 7y ago
  I think Ubuntu for Phone was just too soon, had they taken it slower the project would have probably been ready now and usable on phones such as the PinePhone and similar.
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  Not really. None of Canonical products reached the general consumer market in any significant ways while the Windows Phone and the Zune have good reputation (and have been actually sold to consumers). I hear Bing is doing okay and Clippy is from a different millennium. Surface, Xbox and azure are doing great.
digi59404 7y ago
Microsoft won’t buy Canonical. Folks are making these predictions without a root cause analysis as to what the companies do well. IBM bought Red Hat because IBM bet wrong in the cloud race and is/was way behind. Red Hat consolidated companies beneath them and worked hard to expand their cloud offerings. Right now on OpenShift along the US Gov pays them $100MM a year. Just OpenShift. Add to this banks, grocery stores, and airlines are moving off mainframes and to the cloud - and choosing OpenShift. IBM was starting to get eaten by Red Hat. Not to mention IBM is on the cusp of a major leadership change, and needs fresh cloud leaders to lead IBM into the next decades. These are the reasons IBM bought Red Hat. Because IBM has lost its way. Red Hat had the most to offer. Canonical doesn’t have much to offer. Few people are paying for Ubuntu. Yeah yeah it’s popular in Docker images, yeah yeah it’s a popular desktop distro. But so what? OpenStack is shrinking (SUSE abandoned it for Kubernetes) and Ubuntu has bet their farm on OpenStack. They don’t have much in the way of Kubernetes. On OpenStack Red Hat has most of the customers. Canonical has almost nothing to offer in terms of being bought out. They have very few items that produce profit. They made a huge (and flawed) bet on mobile and failed. Ubuntu doesn’t have strong leadership and doesn’t have strong clients - In fact I’ve been a consultant for 5 years now bouncing between companies every few weeks. I have YET to run into a Canonical client. This is why no one will buy Canonical. SUSE? Well we’ll see.
- cbmuser 7y ago
  IBM still earns a lot of money with their mainframe and AIX business.
  - digi59404 7y ago
    Yes, But shrinking. The concern is not necessarily now - But in a decade.
- dorfsmay 7y ago
  "Few people are paying for Ubuntu" I have never understood their paid support tier pricing model. They should have offered a low cost email only support, say with a 24 or 48 hour turn around policy and could have gain many enthusiasts and small companies some of which would have transfered to bigger contract.
ausjke 7y ago
Anyone but Microsoft please. I can never trust Microsoft for the rest of my life. If that occurs I will use Debian 100%. On Canonical side, I read somewhere complaining they suck at marketing, they could have done much better otherwise.
- chirau 7y ago
  Never is a strong word
itomato 7y ago
I prefer to look at the other side. Why the focus on acquisition with vague synergy? HANA drives SUSE adoption, but the Linux piece is relatively static compared to the tooling required to scale and manage these big stacks? I like to think HashiCorp or another software vendor sees the appeal of building their components into a sturdy Linux product like SUSE. I might have speculated the same about Docker or Ansible, but they have already been similarly absorbed. Rather than the consolidation in favor of existing and entrenched tech like SAP, it's inspiring to think a new IBM or Microsoft is being built and could benefit from a Telco-grade OS.
- nieve 7y ago
  I may be misunderstanding you, but I find it difficult to believe Hashicorp could put together a big enough set of investors to drop a couple of billion on SUSE. You occasionally see smaller companies buy bigger, more established ones with higher revenues and such, but it's pretty rare.
mongol 7y ago
We can see governments in Europe making moves to encourage European vendors to build clouds that are unreachable by US legislation. i think SUSE can come into play here, one way or another. I think EQT will try to position SUSE in this area.
- dorfsmay 7y ago
  OVH?
  - sam_lowry_ 7y ago
    Rimes with crap and gamers and filesharing.

57 points by mikece 7y ago

Stranger things have happened, but https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1 makes me believe there is ~somewhat~ of a conflict between Canonical and Microsoft.

jasonjayr 7y ago
If the acquisition goes through they can just close that as WONTFIX.
- cbmuser 7y ago
  It might be changed to "IN_PROGRESS" with Microsoft Edge being released for Linux next year :).
- basch 7y ago
  it was already closed in the wake of rising ios and android marketshare. linux/unix devices have measurable consumer marketshare they didnt 20 years ago.
coldtea 7y ago
Well, if they're bought, then that will have to change designation as a "feature".

Santosh83 7y ago

Bad trend for user freedom when the industry keeps acquiring and consolidating and further fattening the already fat giants.

rwmj 7y ago
Not really. The barrier to entry in Linux distributions is pretty low. Everything that Red Hat does is open source so can be forked.
- tw04 7y ago
  Forking Red Hat doesn't get you ANYWHERE close to having a replacment. What Red Hat got right was all the enterprise support contracts they were able to negotiate. You want to buy adapter X? Well if you have an issue with it, you need to reproduce it on Red Hat because the guys at Company X can work with the guys at Red Hat on a bugfix. Company X isn't really interested in having their highly paid developers sitting on mailing lists trying to negotiate a patch for the issue. The source code is the easy part.
  - rwmj 7y ago
    I know, I work for Red Hat ... I was addressing the original point that the poster made by pointing out that IBM buying Red Hat or SAP maybe buying SUSE in no way is a "bad trend for user freedom" because you can simply download and use CentOS or OpenSUSE at any time without paying the "fat giants" a penny and even fork them to make your own distro. Of course it won't be certified but that's not a free software problem.
    - ferzul 7y ago
      the major linux distributions could all get acquired by microsoft, google and ibm, but they have to give out they're kernel changes for free. thing is, increasing portions of our stack are bsd/mit/etc. those licences could go anywhere. “amazon postgres” could be funded well enough to hollow out the market. “we're already using 10 aws only api's, we're paying for support, and it's got these great features, and i can run it in virtual box/docker/whatever for porsonal and development use.” next thing you know, you wonder why independent cloud providers are dead. consumer computing will struggle, even worse than it does in these days of android-vs-ios that made the old (windows vs will this be the year of linux on the desktop) days look like a free software hayday. the cloudification of computing has destroyed any dreams of free software stacks - nowadays people call us thieves for not running other people's code on our own computer. but those problems aren't caused by microsoft buying canonical. but embrace, extend, extinguish. it's a known game, and we're the losers, even when we feel like the winners. who cares what licence the kernel and ls are distributed under, that's not what anyon's buying.
a3n 7y ago
It's the same for the internet in general, which has been turned into TV, and whose main purpose is to serve ads.
- coleifer 7y ago
  It's worse: it's reality TV.

pjmlp 7y ago

I pretty much see that happening I will be gone by then, however in a couple of decades anything substantial based on GPL will be gone, and it will business as usual regarding UNIX wars.

frou_dh 7y ago
You can never leave the industry. Who else will post the daily reminders that AOT compilers exist for Java?
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Someone else. :)

bonsai80 7y ago

Canonical is working towards an IPO.... so I will! :)

ianai 7y ago
Wow, I wonder how far away that is. I also hope they get enough money to make some strong market share with new products.

jasoneckert 7y ago

I actually made the same gut speculations in common conversation earlier when IBM bought Red Hat (SAP buying SuSE, Microsoft buying Canonical). It was nice to see this post that flushed out the rationale in more detail.

ianai 7y ago
There will be several bidders, I expect. IBM would have a reason to buy SuSE as would Microsoft. Nothing grows your market power by buying a competitor - no matter how small or technologically different.

curt15 7y ago

Canonical is already moving to a Microsoft-style update model for some of its software. https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for-snap-from-store/707 https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/disabling-automatic-refresh-for...

dorfsmay 7y ago
For a desktop on the other hand, this is great. People are used to having their phone constantly upgrading automatically, which make it hard to explain to non-technical users why they need to `apt upgrade` regularly.

mikece 7y ago

“Canonical has, historically, had a number of products (and attempted product initiatives) that didn't quite work out (including Ubuntu Phone, Ubuntu for Android, Ubuntu for TV, and several software initiatives)...” Anyone else reminded of Microsoft when you read that? Windows Phone, Zune, MSN TV, and “several other software initiatives” (Bing, Bob, Clippy, etc)...

pjmlp 7y ago
Actually I was thinking about Google's products
Avamander 7y ago
I think Ubuntu for Phone was just too soon, had they taken it slower the project would have probably been ready now and usable on phones such as the PinePhone and similar.
johnchristopher 7y ago
Not really. None of Canonical products reached the general consumer market in any significant ways while the Windows Phone and the Zune have good reputation (and have been actually sold to consumers). I hear Bing is doing okay and Clippy is from a different millennium. Surface, Xbox and azure are doing great.

digi59404 7y ago

Microsoft won’t buy Canonical. Folks are making these predictions without a root cause analysis as to what the companies do well. IBM bought Red Hat because IBM bet wrong in the cloud race and is/was way behind. Red Hat consolidated companies beneath them and worked hard to expand their cloud offerings. Right now on OpenShift along the US Gov pays them $100MM a year. Just OpenShift. Add to this banks, grocery stores, and airlines are moving off mainframes and to the cloud - and choosing OpenShift. IBM was starting to get eaten by Red Hat. Not to mention IBM is on the cusp of a major leadership change, and needs fresh cloud leaders to lead IBM into the next decades. These are the reasons IBM bought Red Hat. Because IBM has lost its way. Red Hat had the most to offer. Canonical doesn’t have much to offer. Few people are paying for Ubuntu. Yeah yeah it’s popular in Docker images, yeah yeah it’s a popular desktop distro. But so what? OpenStack is shrinking (SUSE abandoned it for Kubernetes) and Ubuntu has bet their farm on OpenStack. They don’t have much in the way of Kubernetes. On OpenStack Red Hat has most of the customers. Canonical has almost nothing to offer in terms of being bought out. They have very few items that produce profit. They made a huge (and flawed) bet on mobile and failed. Ubuntu doesn’t have strong leadership and doesn’t have strong clients - In fact I’ve been a consultant for 5 years now bouncing between companies every few weeks. I have YET to run into a Canonical client. This is why no one will buy Canonical. SUSE? Well we’ll see.

cbmuser 7y ago
IBM still earns a lot of money with their mainframe and AIX business.
- digi59404 7y ago
  Yes, But shrinking. The concern is not necessarily now - But in a decade.
dorfsmay 7y ago
"Few people are paying for Ubuntu" I have never understood their paid support tier pricing model. They should have offered a low cost email only support, say with a 24 or 48 hour turn around policy and could have gain many enthusiasts and small companies some of which would have transfered to bigger contract.

ausjke 7y ago

Anyone but Microsoft please. I can never trust Microsoft for the rest of my life. If that occurs I will use Debian 100%. On Canonical side, I read somewhere complaining they suck at marketing, they could have done much better otherwise.

chirau 7y ago
Never is a strong word

itomato 7y ago

I prefer to look at the other side. Why the focus on acquisition with vague synergy? HANA drives SUSE adoption, but the Linux piece is relatively static compared to the tooling required to scale and manage these big stacks? I like to think HashiCorp or another software vendor sees the appeal of building their components into a sturdy Linux product like SUSE. I might have speculated the same about Docker or Ansible, but they have already been similarly absorbed. Rather than the consolidation in favor of existing and entrenched tech like SAP, it's inspiring to think a new IBM or Microsoft is being built and could benefit from a Telco-grade OS.

nieve 7y ago
I may be misunderstanding you, but I find it difficult to believe Hashicorp could put together a big enough set of investors to drop a couple of billion on SUSE. You occasionally see smaller companies buy bigger, more established ones with higher revenues and such, but it's pretty rare.

mongol 7y ago

We can see governments in Europe making moves to encourage European vendors to build clouds that are unreachable by US legislation. i think SUSE can come into play here, one way or another. I think EQT will try to position SUSE in this area.

dorfsmay 7y ago
OVH?
- sam_lowry_ 7y ago
  Rimes with crap and gamers and filesharing.