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I'm very glad that SUSE bought it and not Red Hat (or Microsoft). This might give SUSE more inroads to the North American market, considering it's largely a Eu

I'm very glad that SUSE bought it and not Red Hat (or Microsoft). This might give SUSE more inroads to the North American market, considering it's largely a European player at this point.

candiddevmike 6y ago
Why would Red Hat (who created OpenShift) want to buy an inferior competitor?
- lproven 6y ago
  You may well ask, but you are far, far too late. Red Hat already bought CoreOS in January 2018, some 18 months before IBM bought Red Hat. The question would have been more relevant to either of those.
  - wwright 6y ago
    CoreOS was not a direct competitor to RHEL, it was intended to be a "next-gen" rearchitecture of the OS. No one was going to seriously consider using one in place of the other; if you were considering CoreOS, then RHEL was already off the table.
    - type0 6y ago
      It replaced Project Atomic for them, some parts from atomic ended up in core os though.
- peterwwillis 6y ago
  You can buy an "inferior competitor" and integrate their feature set into your own products, and end up with a much better integrated solution for your customers, which will strengthen your business. But switch "inferior" to "superior" and your question makes sense. Red Hat's products mostly suck balls. I can't think of a single one which has been an enjoyable experience to use. People paid for them because they were the IBM of the Linux world.... And now they're the Linux of the IBM world.
  - bluesman84 6y ago
    Or people just trust Red Hat for being always "heart, mind and soul" of the community of contributors that makes open source great. And keep doing the same thing, that inspired many others such as SUSE, Rancher, etc.. and IBM :)
    - mugsie 6y ago
      Red Hat is great - they have done some great things, however - Heart, Mind and Soul of the Open Source community is possibly a bit of hyperbole. and - SUSE is (slightly) older than RedHat, so I am not sure you can say RedHat inspired them :) IBM was inspired by RedHat's earnings (pre acquisition, open source in IBM was .... interesting ... ) and their ability to have a relevant product in the cloud space.
- shagie 6y ago
  It wouldn't be Red Hat as such... it would have been IBM. And the same question can be asked there with IBM Cloud Private and the UbranCode suite. Look at it from IBM's perspective - battling business units are good and one of them will certainly be the best.
  - johannes1234321 6y ago
    ... and a potential competitor is no more
- acdha 6y ago
  OpenShift is expensive and requires a significant O&M investment. If you want to use standard tools it’d be nice to have a managed standard Kubernetes option without paying for a lot of complexity your teams don’t want.
  - candiddevmike 6y ago
    OpenShift Container Platform removes the need to build your own platform around Kubernetes, which would also require a significant O&M investment. If you don't want that, there's OpenShift Kubernetes Engine: https://www.openshift.com/products/kubernetes-engine https://www.openshift.com/products/kubernetes-engine
  - JeremyNT 6y ago
    > OpenShift is expensive and requires a significant O&M investment. If you want to use standard tools it’d be nice to have a managed standard Kubernetes option without paying for a lot of complexity your teams don’t want. The parent's point though is that this isn't the space IBM wants to be in. They're in the business of selling high margin, enterprise-y stuff that includes all the bells and whistles, so there's no reason for them to gobble up something like Rancher (RHAT's OpenShift solution is what they want to be selling already).
  - BossingAround 6y ago
    > If you want to use standard tools it’d be nice to have a managed standard Kubernetes option What standard tool doesn't work on OpenShift? It's certified to have 100% compatibility with Kubernetes, it just adds stuff, doesn't it?
    - ofrzeta 6y ago
      It takes away privileges which arguably is a good thing but some things that require root containers wont't run. They pass the Kubernetes conformance suite only by removing those constraints.
      - BossingAround 6y ago
necovek 6y ago
I was actually a bit behind on the current SUSE ownership: last I remember was it getting acquired by Novell and entering into an agreement with Microsoft. I was thus confused by your comment. For those like me, SUSE was sold off again in 2018 after like 5 acquisitions, and has been an "independent business unit" for a while now.
- aplanas 6y ago
  TL;DR: https://www.eqtgroup.com/Investments/Current-Portfolio/suse/ https://www.eqtgroup.com/Investments/Current-Portfolio/suse/ But we are mostly independent now. I.e we choose the directions.
  - BossingAround 6y ago
    > mostly independent Sounds like something Red Hat could say too...
    - Vogtinator 6y ago
      SUSE's owner (EQT) is not doing anything in the IT sector themselves, unlike RedHat's owner (IBM).
    - johannes1234321 6y ago
      With RH/IBM IBM certainly wants to leverage the RH brand and separate it a bit from the IBM brand, while leveraging customers and technologies across the company. Suse's current owner won't have much synergies between Suse and their real estate business (except that Suse probably rents office space there) You don't do deals like "rent an apartment, get a Suse license for free" Thus Suse, under obersight can likely set their business strategy and objectives more freely.
      - yellowapple 6y ago
        > You don't do deals like "rent an apartment, get a Suse license for free" Well maybe they should? That'd certainly sweeten the deal for me.

I'm very glad that SUSE bought it and not Red Hat (or Microsoft). This might give SUSE more inroads to the North American market, considering it's largely a European player at this point.

candiddevmike 6y ago

Why would Red Hat (who created OpenShift) want to buy an inferior competitor?

lproven 6y ago
You may well ask, but you are far, far too late. Red Hat already bought CoreOS in January 2018, some 18 months before IBM bought Red Hat. The question would have been more relevant to either of those.
- wwright 6y ago
  CoreOS was not a direct competitor to RHEL, it was intended to be a "next-gen" rearchitecture of the OS. No one was going to seriously consider using one in place of the other; if you were considering CoreOS, then RHEL was already off the table.
  - type0 6y ago
    It replaced Project Atomic for them, some parts from atomic ended up in core os though.
peterwwillis 6y ago
You can buy an "inferior competitor" and integrate their feature set into your own products, and end up with a much better integrated solution for your customers, which will strengthen your business. But switch "inferior" to "superior" and your question makes sense. Red Hat's products mostly suck balls. I can't think of a single one which has been an enjoyable experience to use. People paid for them because they were the IBM of the Linux world.... And now they're the Linux of the IBM world.
- bluesman84 6y ago
  Or people just trust Red Hat for being always "heart, mind and soul" of the community of contributors that makes open source great. And keep doing the same thing, that inspired many others such as SUSE, Rancher, etc.. and IBM :)
  - mugsie 6y ago
    Red Hat is great - they have done some great things, however - Heart, Mind and Soul of the Open Source community is possibly a bit of hyperbole. and - SUSE is (slightly) older than RedHat, so I am not sure you can say RedHat inspired them :) IBM was inspired by RedHat's earnings (pre acquisition, open source in IBM was .... interesting ... ) and their ability to have a relevant product in the cloud space.
shagie 6y ago
It wouldn't be Red Hat as such... it would have been IBM. And the same question can be asked there with IBM Cloud Private and the UbranCode suite. Look at it from IBM's perspective - battling business units are good and one of them will certainly be the best.
- johannes1234321 6y ago
  ... and a potential competitor is no more
acdha 6y ago
OpenShift is expensive and requires a significant O&M investment. If you want to use standard tools it’d be nice to have a managed standard Kubernetes option without paying for a lot of complexity your teams don’t want.
- candiddevmike 6y ago
  OpenShift Container Platform removes the need to build your own platform around Kubernetes, which would also require a significant O&M investment. If you don't want that, there's OpenShift Kubernetes Engine: https://www.openshift.com/products/kubernetes-engine https://www.openshift.com/products/kubernetes-engine
- JeremyNT 6y ago
  > OpenShift is expensive and requires a significant O&M investment. If you want to use standard tools it’d be nice to have a managed standard Kubernetes option without paying for a lot of complexity your teams don’t want. The parent's point though is that this isn't the space IBM wants to be in. They're in the business of selling high margin, enterprise-y stuff that includes all the bells and whistles, so there's no reason for them to gobble up something like Rancher (RHAT's OpenShift solution is what they want to be selling already).
- BossingAround 6y ago
  > If you want to use standard tools it’d be nice to have a managed standard Kubernetes option What standard tool doesn't work on OpenShift? It's certified to have 100% compatibility with Kubernetes, it just adds stuff, doesn't it?
  - ofrzeta 6y ago
    It takes away privileges which arguably is a good thing but some things that require root containers wont't run. They pass the Kubernetes conformance suite only by removing those constraints.
    - BossingAround 6y ago

necovek 6y ago

I was actually a bit behind on the current SUSE ownership: last I remember was it getting acquired by Novell and entering into an agreement with Microsoft. I was thus confused by your comment. For those like me, SUSE was sold off again in 2018 after like 5 acquisitions, and has been an "independent business unit" for a while now.

aplanas 6y ago
TL;DR: https://www.eqtgroup.com/Investments/Current-Portfolio/suse/ https://www.eqtgroup.com/Investments/Current-Portfolio/suse/ But we are mostly independent now. I.e we choose the directions.
- BossingAround 6y ago
  > mostly independent Sounds like something Red Hat could say too...
  - Vogtinator 6y ago
    SUSE's owner (EQT) is not doing anything in the IT sector themselves, unlike RedHat's owner (IBM).
  - johannes1234321 6y ago
    With RH/IBM IBM certainly wants to leverage the RH brand and separate it a bit from the IBM brand, while leveraging customers and technologies across the company. Suse's current owner won't have much synergies between Suse and their real estate business (except that Suse probably rents office space there) You don't do deals like "rent an apartment, get a Suse license for free" Thus Suse, under obersight can likely set their business strategy and objectives more freely.
    - yellowapple 6y ago
      > You don't do deals like "rent an apartment, get a Suse license for free" Well maybe they should? That'd certainly sweeten the deal for me.