[LUGSB] Novell+IBM buys SUSE

Tue Nov 4 16:36:02 EST 2003

Interesting shakeup in Linux Land:

	http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5101680.html?tag=nefd_lede

I'm actually happy.  Red Hat needs a swift kick in the pants.

Just yesterday I got an email from Red Hat, sent to all of their registered
customers (including those who register freely available red hat copies),
informing them of the end-of-life plans for Red Hat Linux.  Basically,
they're dropping support for all Red Hat Linux products by April 2004.
Thereafter, you'd have to BUY one of their Red Hat Workstation or Red Hat
Enterprise products.  No more freebees.

It's rumored that there might be a freely-available release from Red Hat
called "Fedora Linux" (http://fedora.redhat.com/) but that will not be
maintained by the company, but by the developers, whenever they feel like it
or have time: this essentially means that freely-available Red Hat Linux may
not be well maintained (think esp. about security fixes) unless you pay for
it.

This Red Hat move was bound to happen.  A lot of companies who started by
giving out freebees became successfull and grew large enough to a point
where they felt they didn't need the "free advertizing."  But, Red Hat is
neglecting an important lesson: don't ignore the grass roots academic users;
it's well worth giving free licenses to academic users, many of whom
graduate, go to work, and then... recommend and buy the real thing!

In the 70s, IBM stopped giving freebees to universities.  IBM survived.

In the 80s, DEC stopped giving freebees to universities.  DEC did not
survive, not before making several terrible commercial decisions which could
have been avoided had their listened to university researchers (e.g., the
Mach-based OSF/1 was a flop).

In the 90s, Sun stopped giving freebees to universities.  Sun is doing very
poorly and has been a company in decline for more than 5-6 years.  Their
stocks are in shambles.  And the company has no direction or vision.  Sun
will not survive this decade.  Mark my words.

And now, in the 00s (pronounced "naughties" :-), Red Hat is following suit.
Red Hat's whole profit base is not terribly strong to begin with.  There are
many competitions just looking to be the new University Champions instead of
Redhat; SuSE may very well fulfill that role.  By dropping the freebees,
SuSE are seriously jeopardizing their user base, not to mention alienating
many of their long time supporters (like me).

For now, SUSE does provide freely available releases.  They are just not as
good as red hat's.  If Novell+IBM will make SuSE drop their freely available
releases (at least to universities), someone will come forward, perhaps a
true freely-available release with a good user base, and will offer a well
maintained freely-available distribution (the way Slackware used to be way
back then).

Watch this saga.  It'll be an interesting one.

BTW, this purchase is also a slap in the face of SCO in their attempt to
squeeze some dollars out of the Linux world.  It essentially says that
Novell and IBM do not believe that SCO's suit has any merit.

Erez.
>From ezk at fsl.cs.sunysb.edu Tue Nov  4 17:15:59 2003
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From: Erez Zadok <ezk at cs.sunysb.edu>
To: Ion Badulescu <ionut at badula.org>
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Subject: [LUGSB] Re: Novell+IBM buys SUSE 
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In message <Pine.LNX.4.44.0311041653440.32175-100000 at guppy.limebrokerage.com>, Ion Badulescu writes:
> On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, Erez Zadok wrote:

> Did somebody say "Debian" :-)

No kidding.

There will have to be some totally freely available distro that people will
like.  Heck, I'll put in time and effort to maintain stuff that goes into it
(am-utils, fist, etc.) and help the whole community.  Maybe li.org will step
up to the plate?

> Ion

Erez.
>From markdrago at mail.com Tue Nov  4 18:06:00 2003
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Subject: [LUGSB] Movie Thursday, other good news
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Hey Everyone,

This will likely be the last reminder about the Revolution OS screening
that is this Thursday, November 6th @ 6:30pm in the SAC Ballroom B.  I'm
sure we'll get a great turnout and have a great time, so be sure to come
down.  I also have some very good news to share.  We've been allotted
office space in the SAC room 229F.  I'm really psyched about this.  Now,
how this works is, they take fairly small rooms and share them among 6
clubs.  So, we don't have all that much space, but the space that we do
have is ours.  We get a desk, a chair, and maybe a filing cabinet.  Of
course, I'm very curious to know if we get an internet connection
(unlikely), but I haven't been able to get into the room yet.  So, we'll
now have a place to keep club-owned material and club paperwork besides
in a bin under my bed.  :o)  Funding will also likely come through, I
just have to set up a meeting with someone in the SAC and tell him to
give us money.

So, once again - this Thursday, November 6th @ 6:30pm in the SAC
Ballroom B for Revolution OS.  Be there or be square.

Later,
Mark.