SuSe and Compaq

[Sean]

Thanks for writing this, I didnt have the time to write it. 

Two points which I think need emphasizing.

SuSe loses money in part because the shipping cost of sending their
packages from Germany to the U.S. for consumption costs more money than
they sell it for. That to me is a sign of gross mis-management. 

The second point, is RedHat is in the business of selling services not
software. They have (IIRC) a 100 million dollar contract with IBM to
develop GCC for the PPC processors. (IE the Apple processors, Apple is
developing a Altivec for GCC which should be released shortly.)
They have various other large contracts for porting from corporations as
service, and support.  Im not saying they don't make any money on
their distribution, but it is not their main income. It just forms
the basis for their services, and support division. 

Another point, is Linux is not going to _replace_ AIX, TruUnix64, etc. 
anytime soon, frankly it is not good enough at this point and the second
reason is simply accountability it might work fine but if it doesnt
the accountants want to blame someone.

The last point, is simply Linux IS doing really well in the embedded
market. I found one Linux Box I would give my parents, and that is a TiVo
(its even PPC!). The parts the keep Linux off the desktop are still the
lack of good applications for non-programmers and the gui to match it. 
Which isnt helping any commercial dist. 




On Fri, 16 Mar 2001, Don Flynn wrote:

> 
> On Fri, 16 Mar 2001, Marcel Kunath wrote:
> 
> > 
> > I like SuSE's distro but heck its not producing much in revenue. I sure hope
> > for the sake of the main players that all the little ones die out because they
> > are diverting investor money from the ones that have the highest chance to
> > survive. In my mind it is time for IBM to buy RedHat, Compaq to buy SuSE,
> > Caldera to get into bed with Sun or something.
> 
>      The fact that making a distribution isn't like having a liscence to
> print money isn't lost on the "main players".  I don't even think Red Hat
> had sales from their distrition as the main revenue generator when they
> filed for their IPO.  I guess a downturn in the stock market all of a
> sudden registers that as 'news'.  Its tough being a new company, but
> I think they'll all eventually make it on their own.  They'll have some
> growing pains, but better that than have IBM, Compaq, or someone else
> mismanage their product and run it into the ground.
>   
>      One of the main reasons why these distributions have any success
> right now is that they're vendor neutral and not goverened by the politics
> inside these larger companies.  Do you think its a good idea for a RedHat
> division owned and operated by IBM to compete with the OS/400, OS/390, and
> AIX for IBM's resources?  Would you, as an executive, pour more resources
> into something without a truly proven track record and a negative revenue
> or something that has proven itself and making money? Could you justify
> taking resources away from the OS/400 groups while they're doing well and
> have a potential for increased revenue?  Compaq would face a similar
> situation - VMS and Tru64 still make a whole lot of money for Compaq.  No
> Linux distribution would survive long in that kind of situation without
> being marginalized and pushed out of the way.  Redhat, Caldera, and Suse
> all benefit from having a fairly narrow focus for where their limited
> resources go.  I don't think its time for any of them to hit the panic
> button yet.
> 
> > 
> > funding. No funding no distro. I lost a lot of money personally but I am not
>            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> 
>      This is a pretty common fallacy.  This is what is concerning most
> people that are interested in the success of Linux (or even free software)
> as a whole.  I've heard a whole bunch of people say "If
> Redhat/Suse/Caldera/Turbo go down Linux will fail because those
> distributions will disappear!"  True, if one of those companies died, I'd
> have trouble finding a new distro, but I could still easily get the old
> ones.  Would it be that hard for me to continue supporting
> it in the way I do now?  Would it be even harder for me to continue
> development on it? Wasn't that kind of the point of the GPL? Linux ain't
> gonna go away just because some distro maintainer has to close its doors.
> 
>      Maybe misunderstanding the role of commercial distributions is what's
> causing people to really worry about this.  I never saw these vendors as
> the sole proprietors of Linux.  I only saw them as a way to creatively
> fund development and make some cash on the side.  But, that development
> happened before Suse/RedHat/Caldera and believe it or not, it'll happen
> after them too.  There are plenty of free software projects that are
> surviving without a commercial vendor behind them.
>      
> 
> --
> "Is that sound you're hearing the trumpeting of St. Peter's angels
>  or the screams of Memnoch's tortured souls?"
> Don Flynn        djf2@ili.net                   Sayge@IRC 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> linux-user mailing list
> linux-user@egr.msu.edu
> http://www.egr.msu.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-user
>