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Given my experience, RHEL is a favorite among enterprise environments. As such IBM will continue to pursue a strategy that forces people into that business funn

Given my experience, RHEL is a favorite among enterprise environments. As such IBM will continue to pursue a strategy that forces people into that business funnel. They do not care who falls out of it, the ecosystem will only become more closed. I think we need to be more realistic about where things are headed. SUSE? Market cap of 2.2 Billion, IBM paid 34 for RH. Ubuntu? Still not profitable. As we continue to see the tech sector cool and become more mature belts will tighten and things will consolidate.

jzb 3y ago
SUSE is tenacious AF, you have to give 'em that. This could be an opportunity for them to grab some market share. I'd love to see it. I don't wish ill on Red Hat, either, but I'd love to see SUSE grow and be a stronger player here. It'd be good for the larger ecosystem.
aeyes 3y ago
About 15 years ago the (German) company I worked at had a lot of their customers from different industries run on SLES. But over time many customers just weren't willing to sign up for OS support contracts anymore (and also switched from Oracle to MySQL). SLES/openSUSE never managed to get the same support from third parties and communities as CentOS/Fedora. With RHEL 6 we migrated all customers from SLES to CentOS/RHEL. This allowed to have a homogenous environment with and without enterprise support contracts. We'll have to see where this is going. Certain enterprise software (like Oracle) requires the use of certified operating systems or you lose support. Oracle Linux looks like the more natural choice.
pcthrowaway 3y ago
Can you elaborate why a market cap of 2.2 billion makes SUSE not a viable alternative? If anything, this makes me feel like they're undervalued, especially now that they're the only company shipping an enterprise linux with an open source and privacy respecting (looking at you Canonical) base distro.
- johnvanommen 3y ago
  > Can you elaborate why a market cap of 2.2 billion makes SUSE not a viable alternative? I'd always assumed the MicroFocus acquisition of SuSE had something to do with OpenStack, and when OpenStack stopped being The Big New Thing, that impacted SuSE. Basically: * I was on the HP OpenStack team * HP burned through over a billion on that, and sold the product off to SuSE * Somewhere in the mix there, MicroFocus was divested from HP. Even working there, it was hard to follow, because HP also split into HP and HPE * As various vendors lost interest in OpenStack (Cisco, EMC, VMWare, etc), SuSE replaced their CEO who was behind the acquisition in the first place I talked to some SuSE folks about OpenStack at one of the VMWare conferences, and they seemed confident in it's future, and then just weeks later I read that they'd discontinued the product in it's current state The entire thing is incredibly confusing because HPE also had two versions of OpenStack. "Helion Open Stack" and "Carrier Grade OpenStack" and they were two different teams.
  - pcthrowaway 3y ago
    I didn't think they really had to pay for the openstack assets, I didn't think they did anything with those. IIRC they had their own managed openstack contracts with their SLES customers before the acquisition, and were working on getting kube/paas offerings on top of that which they then scrapped for Rancher. So I know they burned a bunch of money too, but I don't think it was on the HPC or other openstack assets (HPC was the public cloud openstack offering that I think got shutdown sometime around the HPE split)
- wronglebowski 3y ago
  What I meant is what would prevent IBM or other large corporation from acquiring them as well?
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    They already have been, multiple times, nowadays they belong to Micro Focus.
    - 3y ago
pjmlp 3y ago
I bet Microsoft will eventually buy Ubuntu, given their relationship on WSL and key distribution for Azure.
- fariszr 3y ago
  But why? What would they gain? You think Microsoft is interested in Linux enterprise support?
  - kjs3 3y ago
    Microsoft is very interested in any enterprise support it can monetize. Ignoring WSL (you shouldn't), you'd be surprised how much Linux runs in Azure. Buying Ubuntu lets M$ say "sure you can run Linux in our cloud. We have one right here, one we support, for a modest fee".
    - fariszr 3y ago
      Yeah, but we all know Ubuntu is used because its beginner-friendly and free. Once it becomes paid, poof everyone switches to Debian.
      - mardifoufs 3y ago
        Ubuntu is massive on cloud platforms. I'd bet bigger than even Debian. And IIRC even AKS runs on Ubuntu. At least last time I used it.
        fariszr 3y ago
        Because for many people, Ubuntu is the linux distro. Why? Because it's free, and very simple to use, but if it becomes paid, no matter how good it is, devs will switch to something else, and the market will follow them, gradually.
      - kjs3 3y ago
        That's an extremely reductionist/simplistic view of why people pick, use and/or discard an operating system. And, FWIW, Ubuntu isn't my primary cloud Linux.
rektide 3y ago
Most of the threads here - where people describe the corporately driven business wants/desires - seem to recognize though that this is killing the holden goose. Enterprises want RHEL because the staff know & use RHEL and the enterprise can get a support package for RHEL. If Red Hat no longer is in the public eye, if it's only a paid for Linux, the demand is going to dry up, vanish. There's only one way to retain mindshare & market share & that's to keep RHEL in front of people. This current course of action almost guarantees that RHEL fades into irrelevance.
- johnvanommen 3y ago
  AIX would like to have a word...
  - thesuperbigfrog 3y ago
    Exactly. They will likely reduce costs and milk it as long as possible: https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/12/ibm_aix_developer_jobs/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/12/ibm_aix_developer_job...
jacobsenscott 3y ago
If you are using RH, or SUSE, it is because pointy hairs forced you to use RH or SUSE. So you are kind of trapped in that funnel.

jzb 3y ago

SUSE is tenacious AF, you have to give 'em that. This could be an opportunity for them to grab some market share. I'd love to see it. I don't wish ill on Red Hat, either, but I'd love to see SUSE grow and be a stronger player here. It'd be good for the larger ecosystem.

aeyes 3y ago

About 15 years ago the (German) company I worked at had a lot of their customers from different industries run on SLES. But over time many customers just weren't willing to sign up for OS support contracts anymore (and also switched from Oracle to MySQL). SLES/openSUSE never managed to get the same support from third parties and communities as CentOS/Fedora. With RHEL 6 we migrated all customers from SLES to CentOS/RHEL. This allowed to have a homogenous environment with and without enterprise support contracts. We'll have to see where this is going. Certain enterprise software (like Oracle) requires the use of certified operating systems or you lose support. Oracle Linux looks like the more natural choice.

pcthrowaway 3y ago

Can you elaborate why a market cap of 2.2 billion makes SUSE not a viable alternative? If anything, this makes me feel like they're undervalued, especially now that they're the only company shipping an enterprise linux with an open source and privacy respecting (looking at you Canonical) base distro.

johnvanommen 3y ago
> Can you elaborate why a market cap of 2.2 billion makes SUSE not a viable alternative? I'd always assumed the MicroFocus acquisition of SuSE had something to do with OpenStack, and when OpenStack stopped being The Big New Thing, that impacted SuSE. Basically: * I was on the HP OpenStack team * HP burned through over a billion on that, and sold the product off to SuSE * Somewhere in the mix there, MicroFocus was divested from HP. Even working there, it was hard to follow, because HP also split into HP and HPE * As various vendors lost interest in OpenStack (Cisco, EMC, VMWare, etc), SuSE replaced their CEO who was behind the acquisition in the first place I talked to some SuSE folks about OpenStack at one of the VMWare conferences, and they seemed confident in it's future, and then just weeks later I read that they'd discontinued the product in it's current state The entire thing is incredibly confusing because HPE also had two versions of OpenStack. "Helion Open Stack" and "Carrier Grade OpenStack" and they were two different teams.
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  I didn't think they really had to pay for the openstack assets, I didn't think they did anything with those. IIRC they had their own managed openstack contracts with their SLES customers before the acquisition, and were working on getting kube/paas offerings on top of that which they then scrapped for Rancher. So I know they burned a bunch of money too, but I don't think it was on the HPC or other openstack assets (HPC was the public cloud openstack offering that I think got shutdown sometime around the HPE split)
wronglebowski 3y ago
What I meant is what would prevent IBM or other large corporation from acquiring them as well?
- pjmlp 3y ago
  They already have been, multiple times, nowadays they belong to Micro Focus.
  - 3y ago

pjmlp 3y ago

I bet Microsoft will eventually buy Ubuntu, given their relationship on WSL and key distribution for Azure.

fariszr 3y ago
But why? What would they gain? You think Microsoft is interested in Linux enterprise support?
- kjs3 3y ago
  Microsoft is very interested in any enterprise support it can monetize. Ignoring WSL (you shouldn't), you'd be surprised how much Linux runs in Azure. Buying Ubuntu lets M$ say "sure you can run Linux in our cloud. We have one right here, one we support, for a modest fee".
  - fariszr 3y ago
    Yeah, but we all know Ubuntu is used because its beginner-friendly and free. Once it becomes paid, poof everyone switches to Debian.
    - mardifoufs 3y ago
      Ubuntu is massive on cloud platforms. I'd bet bigger than even Debian. And IIRC even AKS runs on Ubuntu. At least last time I used it.
      - fariszr 3y ago
        Because for many people, Ubuntu is the linux distro. Why? Because it's free, and very simple to use, but if it becomes paid, no matter how good it is, devs will switch to something else, and the market will follow them, gradually.
    - kjs3 3y ago
      That's an extremely reductionist/simplistic view of why people pick, use and/or discard an operating system. And, FWIW, Ubuntu isn't my primary cloud Linux.

rektide 3y ago

Most of the threads here - where people describe the corporately driven business wants/desires - seem to recognize though that this is killing the holden goose. Enterprises want RHEL because the staff know & use RHEL and the enterprise can get a support package for RHEL. If Red Hat no longer is in the public eye, if it's only a paid for Linux, the demand is going to dry up, vanish. There's only one way to retain mindshare & market share & that's to keep RHEL in front of people. This current course of action almost guarantees that RHEL fades into irrelevance.

johnvanommen 3y ago
AIX would like to have a word...
- thesuperbigfrog 3y ago
  Exactly. They will likely reduce costs and milk it as long as possible: https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/12/ibm_aix_developer_jobs/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/12/ibm_aix_developer_job...

jacobsenscott 3y ago

If you are using RH, or SUSE, it is because pointy hairs forced you to use RH or SUSE. So you are kind of trapped in that funnel.