“Expensive” has to do with size of market - SuSE (and Stackato before it) were pretty inexpensive options but were subsidized by the expensive distros like IBM

“Expensive” has to do with size of market - SuSE (and Stackato before it) were pretty inexpensive options but were subsidized by the expensive distros like IBM Bluemix or PCF. At the same time, it’s not like Pivotal was swimming in piles of cash, it was just getting to profitability when VMware absorbed it. Getting development dialed into Kubernetes usually also often takes several years, and often isn’t quite as productive. More choice, more potential for problems.