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SuSE Lays Off (Most) U.S. Staff (Updated)
Posted by
Hemos
on Wed Feb 07, 2001 06:45 PM
from the bad-times-a-comin'? dept.
from the bad-times-a-comin'? dept.
assbarn writes: "The title pretty much says it all, but LWN daily is reporting that SuSE is laying off almost all of its US staff. What does this mean for their English distribution? The details are short (and sketchy), but the link is at LWN. " I've tried reaching both the U.S. and German branches: SuSE has yet to return a call placed to the U.S. office, and at the German branch it won't be business hours for a while. I've left that message at the SuSE American office, though, and will update with any confirmation/denial. Update: 02/08 12:03 AM by H :A couple people have sent in the LinuxToday piece. SuSE's PR agency has denied it, but LWN is standing by it, and several other readers have substantiated it to LinuxToday and LWN, including the original source on LWN. As well, SuSE did say that a number of positions were being relocated. We'll keep the story updated. Update: 02/08 04:38 AM by T : LinuxGram has some great information -- with real details! Skeleton crew of 12 to remain in the U.S. What's also interesting is that it confirms that the PR agency had "bad communication," which is an interesting statement to say the least.
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Open Source is Fool's Gold (Score:2)
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Re:SuSE forever! (Score:2)
All you have to do is go buy one copy and redistribute it as many times as you like with no charge.
Seems like for the price of mailing you a pricelist they could just send you that CD instead.
djb software is not open source! (Score:2)
Actually, djb's software is not open source, because it does not come with permission to distribute modified packages.
djb's qmail license [cr.yp.to] is very famous in distributor circles. Its restrictiveness is the primary reason why qmail is not included in most major linux distributions.
As for djbdns, as near as I can tell the djbdns package comes with NO license at all (please someone correct me if I'm wrong), which means that with regards to djbdns you and I have only the rights allowed under fair use, and nothing more. (Interestingly, djb has written an entire page [cr.yp.to] addressing this very point.)
I agree that open source software offers business opportunities, but djb's software sadly is not open source.
Re:Layoffs yes, is the end near? - hardly! (Score:2)
Er, sorry, but you got that mixed up.
Europe=continent.
US=country.
:-)
But I do agree with you that US companies have done better at expanding internationally. However, there are some very notable exceptions. Just looking at Scandinavia, I can think of Ericsson, Nokia, IKEA, Electrolux, Volvo, Saab, Bang & Olufsen. And as the European markets have become more competetive I think the number will increase a lot in the next couple of years.
************************************************ ** *
Re:Expect to see more of this in the future. (Score:2)
I personally look at all the major industrial-grade Internet applications running out there on the major shopping web sites and most of them are running on Sun Solaris, not exactly an Open Source operating system.
The Linux crowd sometimes also forget that the big Internet sites run OpenBSD, NOT Linux (a good example is Yahoo!). Let's see how long before Linux 2.4.x's I/O throughput improvements will allow it to run high-volume Internet sites on a large scale.
Re:Expect to see more of this in the future. (Score:2)
I carefully read over the post you pointed at, and all the reply threads. You are being premature, and are most likely wrong.
As far as I know, RedHat made a profit before they went IPO. SuSe makes a lot of money doing support and special customizations. Cygnus made money that same way.
Open Source has also been the host to many interesting innovations. DNS, for example, is a widely distributed database designed to handle a certain kind of hierarchical searching. Quite innovative for its time. D. J. Bernstein [slashdot.org]'s software is Open Source, and is quite innovative in its approach to security issues.
I think Open Source represents a viable business model. If I can find a job doing Open Source, I'll take it. I currently do write stuff that's not yet very popular [omnifarious.org].
Some Linux companies have overextended themselves during the past few years of IPO madness. Some haven't bothered to figure out how to make money yet because of the aforementioned IPO madness. It doesn't mean they won't. No Linux company I know of has gone bankrupt yet.
As I said, I think your assessment is premature, and partially already disproven. You're letting your biases overly affect your perception.
Re:Is this a suprise? (Score:2)
Also the linux/390 stuff is probably not going to encourage many people to go out and buy an s/390 (or a z/390) but those who already have one are jumping into this quickly. Several are already using it in a production enviornment.
Finkployd
Wholy cow, a distro that supports applications! (Score:2)
Alternate Headline (Score:2)
Re:SuSE forever! (Score:2)
Maybe this has more to do with the US than SuSE...
big deal. In Europe (all of Europe, not just Germany and german-speaking countries) SuSE rules!!
For quite a while the population of the EU has been rather higher than the US. The population of the whole of Europe considerably excedes that.
Programming *what*, exactly? (Score:2)
<BEGIN Inconsistent rant>
What platform do you want to develop for? Embedded systems? Big databases (which means Oracle or DB/2)? Mainframes (love that COBOL...)? Macintrash?
Or do you mean Microsoft Windows? The joys of developing for at least ten different operating systems, which have *huge* inconsistencies in APIs. Gods, even the NT4 API has glaring, terrifying inconsintency in *it's own API*.
Or, maybe, you think that MFC/ATL/.NET is a nice place to work. Perhaps it is. If so, may I direct you to a supplier of antipsychotic drugs?
The Internet runs Unix. The *real* money is in Unix. Unless you are familiar with the POSIX standards and have a good knowledge of several implementations, you are doomed to a lifetime of unemployment, recriminations and boring stories about "when I was a fuckwit, Visual Basic programmers used to get *paid*".
It's not about operating systems. It's not even about platforms. It's about information. If you aren't adding value to data, you're going the way of the dotcoms.
</END Inconsistent rant>
Re:Is the US Economy Falling Off A Cliff? (Score:2)
Nope, but we have a number of administration officials, including Bush, who are doomsaying and doing their best to push us over it. Me, I love it - makes it cheap to buy good stocks.
I would expect S.u.S.e. cutbacks have more to do with two things:
1. sales in the US/Canada of their distro must not be high enough.
2. it's easier and cheaper to lay off US workers than German or European workers (trust me on this one)
The only "Rubbish" is all these stupid comments. (Score:2)
I'm a little biased towards SuSE. It's a nice distro and I'm impressed with what they have done and are doing for the Linux community. However, my preference of SuSE has nothing to do with what I'm going to say now. Shut up and get a clue! Sweet Lord, I can't believe all the mindless drivel flowing on this discussion. SuSE is not going tits-up. So what if they trim some fat in the states. Just because they aren't strong here, doesn't mean they are dead. My friend and co-worker (who has used SuSE for a long time) used to be classified as a distributor a few years back. He receieved free updates from SuSE in the mail because they had no distribution here. Even if they closed up all offices, and did business from Germany only, I'm sure they'll keep an English distro going.
Just pan and scan this forum to see what I'm talking about. People assuming this means that the 7.1 release isn't coming (which ships 2/12). Going tits-up. Proves they weren't a player or shit like that. Blah Blah! I think most people here post for the thrill of it. Karma whoring? I don't give a fuck about /. karma. I'd rather not have posted this at all, but it's just so damned pathetic.
So, rather than just being another post that says "Oh, so sorry" to SuSE. Let me say, congratulations on their upcoming release with the new 2.4 kernel. Let me also thank them for their development work on the ATA-100 development for UDMA EIDE hard drives. A tip of the hat should go to them for being IBMs distro of choice on the S/390s. And finally, it's good to see AMD working with SuSE on porting Linux to Sledgehammer [slashdot.org].
Businesses buy Linux services. (Score:2)
One of the mistakes you make in the post you reference is to assume that people like IBM are funding Linux development for charity. Public companies are not *allowed* to do that - everything they do has to be designed to maximise the return for their shareholders. The only reason IBM funds Linux development is because they think it will profit their shareholders in some way - whether that's by bashing Microsoft, or by creating open standards, or by helping IBM to make a profit selling Linux services.
Re:Support Your Distro! (Score:2)
Red Hat and others look at sales of box sets as a metric for how well a platform distribution is doing. I suspect that many of the folks just download the ISO from a mirror. The distributions look and see that the box sets aren't selling. They then ask "Why should we do anything further on the
? It's only sold xxxx boxes!"
Folks, if you are at a big site and use a particular distro on a particular platform, even if you download the ISO, spend the $79 or so and order the box. Even if you never open it, the distro will know it's important to you!
Disclaimer: The platform I use is Alpha. I work at API NetWorks.
Re:Is this a suprise? (Score:2)
How many companies selling the same thing can exist in a given market anyway? Redhat got a big chunk of US market by being early and decent. Mandrake is doing well because it's quality is/was perceived to be better.
This is just consolidation and retrenching. Nothing bad about it, it's quite normal.
Re:I hate to say this, but... (Score:2)
Also, while you can download a functional SuSE iso, you're missing a lot. The "evaluation version" doesn't come with anywhere near what the full version does -- 6 CDs worth. Sure, you can download it all, but it's a pain.
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Re:Linuxtoday says this is "Total Rubbish" (Score:2)
This is humor, folks. Lighten up.
Re:Open Source is Fool's Gold (Score:2)
They try to save $$ on salaries all over the world (Score:2)
From what I know, SuSE used to pay really good salaries here to quality guys (some of them long time kernel contributors). But at some point there came a change. I've heard some rumors about exchange in management.
Since then the recruiters complain all the time that SuSE wants Linux professionals for below average salaries. This would not be that bad as that they are (since what kind of people they employed earlier) incredible picky about the people. Its hell to find someone who would work for SuSE here, since these guys would get anywhere 2 times more.
So it seems to me like SuSE management come to conclusion that their expenses are too high and that its mostly in the HR, paying people too much. And you can imagine that in US are salaries WAY TOO HIGH when German manager consider them. So they just decided to shut US branch and for every US guy they get easy several russians with good english skills :)
Wow, investigative reporting! (Score:2)
Re:Expect to see more of this in the future. (Score:2)
Re:On linux today (Score:2)
Re:Is this a suprise? (Score:2)
Or maybe I'm just gullible
Does this mean... (Score:2)
Microsoft softie (Score:2)
Hemos said: I've tried reaching both the U.S. and German branches: SuSE has yet to return a call placed to the U.S. office, and at the German branch it won't be business hours for a while. I've left that message at the SuSE American office, though, and will update with any confirmation/denial.
In other news, a water cooler replacement boy was laid off at Microsoft's headquaters in Redmond, WA.
Fervent had this to say: "I've tried reaching both Microsoft's main number and my personal red hot private line to Bill Gates. I've also tried to call his mother, but nap time at her nursing home won't be over for a while. I've left the message at Bill Gates's personal spa number, though, and will update with any confirmation/denial. This, of course, is a serious issue. Try to stay calm, people".
Linux Today Just Caught One (Score:2)
Is Microsoft Astro-Turfing Linux Today? [linuxtoday.com]
Would you expect any less from Microsoft
Huh? (Score:2)
Has anyone checked their homepage? [www.suse.de]
Not only are they shipping 7.1 [with da 2.4 kernel] on the 12th - they are also hiring... [www.suse.de]
What's going on?
Re:Suse/Red Hat (Score:2)
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Re:Layoffs yes, is the end near? - hardly! (Score:2)
European companies here have always the difficulty to understand what it means to distribute something in a _continent_ like the US. US companies are masters in going from zero to covering each corner in the US in a few months to a few years (look at Starbucks) and they are miserable in detail oriented, local services.
Germans are good at servicing their customers "neatly". If something is a bit sloppy, the quick fix and throw out uncooked versions, would never work with most of Germany's clients.
Germans are not that fanatic and don't expect from companies to give something away at no cost. (Ironically, SuSE's box is much cheaper than RedHat's and I have no idea, why they didn't raise their prices in the US, as the box has definitely an advantage in their documentation). So, I think SuSE will do very fine in Europe and Germany and should stick to that first.
RedHat should become more detail oriented, if it wants to compete in Germany and tone down their rethoric. Who cares about all your "freedom" discussions. In the end, we want something what works and we want to make a living. Nothing wrong with that. What gets thoroughly on my nerves is that the "real Unix hacker style consultant" would tell any youngster, who wants to get help: "There is no free lunch, RTFM", but when it comes to admit that open source code can't survive, if it doesn't get a price tag from somewhere, the logic goes belly down. All of the sudden there is a free lunch possible.
SusE is just plain better in servicing most of Germany's ISDN customers. It took RedHat too long to come up with an easy and reliable, usable ISDN support. At leasts that it what it looked like to an outsider and "Null acht fuenfzehn" customer.
Some people just don't get it... (Score:2)
If you buy commercial software, you pay a lot more for each release than the incremental enhancements that actually occurred. You do this because it would be too costly to switch. To add insult to injury, many of the enhancements in commercial software come from the customers in the first place.
SuSE is "fallen angel", not Linux (Score:2)
There is nothing wrong with Linux. There is plenty wrong with companies that think they can build huge business empires on repackaged free software. Packaging distributions will at best be a small margin business. Actually, it will probably turn into a loss leader for other services. With better package systems and Internet upgrade support, "distributions" themselves may become an anachronism.
SuSE, of course, seems to be trying particularly hard to turn Linux into something commercial. The demo disks I have gotten from them have not been all that useful, and unlike many other vendors, they do not seem to provide ISO images of their distribution on-line.
Let's hope that all this greed from VCs and business people won't end up giving Linux and free software a bad name. Those people placed poor bets, and they only have themselves to blame.
Re:Expect to see more of this in the future. (Score:2)
Open source is not, and has never been a revolution. Open source development techniques existed long before commercial ones. Indeed, most modern operating systems have their roots in an open source project.
Every day it seems that another Linux-centric organisation gets sued or goes out of business
Name three.
Sure, RMS claims that you can sell support - but if the product is good then any required support will be minimal, or nil. Idealistic dreaming, or idiocy?
My company's product is good, and it requires a large amount of support. Also, my previous company's product was good. It too required a lot of support. I think your claim that good products require minimal support is false.
I'm astonished that such a (generally) intelligent selection of people as the Slashdot community buy into RMS's rabid bumblings wholesale. I understand the desire to remain open-minded, to at least consider what he has to say - I'm not suggesting that everything he says is bullshit by any means - but, please, people WAKE UP!
I was committed to open source development and use and integration of open source products before I even knew who Richard Stallman was.
You are being brainwashed by Stallman, who is (gasp!) the ONLY person who makes money from Free Software. Your figurehead is fleecing you. Every time you assign copyright to the FSF Stallman's pockets bulge a little more. Every donation buys him more twinkies and tea-bags. Every time you release your hard work under the GPL parasite you are bringing the GNUworld closer. Every GPL release decreases the 'freedom entropy level'.
I make money as a direct result of the existence of free software. Also, I am payed for writing free software.
I don't care if my contributions to the free software community make Richard Stallman, you, Bill Gates, or Commander Taco more rich. In fact, I hope they do. Consider it a gift, not a tribute.
My hope is that my job, and the jobs of my peers is made easier by my contributions. I hope my code is used to educate people. I hope it's used to entertain people. Kinda like Music, I guess.
Once everything is GPL there can be no going back. RMS knows this, and he knows that in a 'brave GNU world' he would be God!
Meh. Whatever. Whether he's god, I'm god, or you're god, it doesn't make much of a difference to me. What's god anyway?
As long as my code is used and enjoyed, I don't mind submitting it. That's my stance.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
Re:Taking a page from Daimler's playbook? (Score:2)
Re:Is the US Economy Falling Off A Cliff? (Score:2)
You're joking right? You do know that one of the main reasons most of the world hoped Gore would win the US presidential elections (in most European countries, something like 75% of those polled hoped Gore would win) was that people hoping to the last minute that George "I'm not quite sure where Europe is, but I'm sure it's nice" Bush wouldn't win.
If anything the Clinton administrations strongest side was it's foreign policy, which it actually cared a lot about. Some say too much - that it actually hurt them in the US, because it took time away from internal matters.
You can say a lot of things about the Clinton administration, and a lot of them bad, but lack of foreign policy is certainly not among them.
Re:Linuxtoday says this is "Total Rubbish" (Score:3)
Update: after several readers commented that the rumors SuSE denied are, indeed true, and LWN asserted that their coverage is accurate, a followup call to both the US offices of SuSE and Ms. Von Wedel revealed that while no one at the company is willing to comment further on whether layoffs are happening or not, some employees are being moved to a different office. Ms. Von Wedel said she could provide no information on layoffs. We'll continue to cover the story as it unfolds. -mph
So I guess we'll see, but I have real trouble believing SuSE's US operations are closing up.
Re:Linux is regionalising. (Score:3)
This may be true to some extent as a general rule about *users*. However, I don't think it's true for the people actually writing the software in the first place. Both GNOME and KDE have developers all over the world and are localised into many different languages. Mozilla too. Wine is headed by someone from Switzerland and has contributors all over the world. Linux is headed by a Finn living in America and has contributors from all over the world. Apache is headed by a group of people from many different places, and has contributors all over the world. Samba, Perl, etc. You get the idea. Smaller projects do not necessarily have developers worldwide, but they still often have developers from more than one continent.
For as long as the developers are not balkanised, the actual potential danger of fragmentation is quite small. There's no reason why developers will balkanise, cos there's no reason to turn away good patches just because the contributor is from Baklaliviatatlaglooshen.
Slashdot doing research?!? (Score:3)
Whoa, doing research twice in a week?!? That has to be a first for Slashdot!
Re:On linux today (Score:3)
Re:Is this a suprise? (Score:3)
It depends on how you look at it. If the big boys (eg IBM) start charging prices for distros that more accurately reflect the costs of the enhancements they contribute, the support, marketing, and distribution aspects, I don't think it would be a bad thing. It would ensure that the bug companies have a revenue stream that justifies their efforts.
If, on the other hand, the big companies simply continue to rebrand their own distros based on the work of others (a la Corel), and don't contribute to the spirit, energy, and development of Linux, then it is certainly a bad thing. The smaller companies like SuSE, Slackware, Debian, etc. bring more than just code to the table. They contribute to the driving force and energy that has really helped to propel Linux.
Linuxtoday says this is "Total Rubbish" (Score:4)
Sigh.
SuSE forever! (Score:4)
Remember: SuSE is a _*German*_ company! (Score:4)
SuSE is a GERMAN company!
SuSE, Inc. in USA goes down does NOT mean SuSE GmbH in Germany is going down! You savvy?
Contrary to popular belief(mostly in the US), the USA is only a small part of this planet.
People living elsewhere on this ball actually don't allways give a damn about the US.
All this means is that the US sales were dissapointing, (due to an over-loaded distro market in the US anyway) and SuSE will merely return their focus outside the USA.
SuSE have, and will still Rock!
Linux Downsizes while MSFT sales are down (Score:4)
Or
I'd be more concerned with news like Attachmate downsizing due to the low volume of Win2K Data Server sales, especially with Active Directory almost nonexistent than I would be about S.u.S.e. problems.
At least you've got the source code
Linux is regionalising. (Score:4)
Linux is splitting into different Distro's for different cultural areas of the world. The German speaking world has SuSE. The English speaking world Red Hat. The French speaking world goes with Mandrake, and the Japanese with turbo Linux.
Now, this shouldn't affect Linux at all, but I fear it will, and indeed I fear it already is. We are seeing the germination of different developer communities based on language, and not on a shared enthusiasm for Linux. For example, the german speaking world moves with KDE, and the Enflish with Gnome, and each have their own respective developer communities with their own cultural values. The recent establishment of a European branch of the FSF can only worsen this, IMO. The European Linux community is expediant - witness KDE liscensing issues - while the American is idealistic, and not really practical, as can be seen with its adherence to the values of the FSF.
I think this is bad news for Linux. We need to see more cross cultural integration, like we used to have in the early days of Linux.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
What it means is very little (Score:4)
Is very little. After all given that the business model of selling Linux distributions means that companies operate on razor-thin profit margins at best (without other value added services anyway) it's not suprising that several, or perhaps most, of these companies will experiance the financial pinch and be forced to lay off staff to cut costs.
But it doesn't really mean all that much for SuSe as a whole, just for their promotion and distribution teams in America I'd assume. You'll still be able to get it over the net I'm sure, you just might have to miss out on a fancy box :)
Layoffs yes, is the end near? - hardly! (Score:5)
Just to keep things in perspective, SuSE lost about 30 out of more than 600 employees. It's a very big issue for those leaving, and - I wouldn't have thought it would be that big - also for those staying who see those guys leave.
However, from the companies perspective:
- No development for SuSE Linux took place here at all, so nothing will happen to the product.
- We had hired a lot of people in expectation of things to come in the US - and then the box sales (for ALL Linux boxes) didn't really jump up a lot, and the little was absorbed by much increased competition. That left a lot more people than needed.
I would also like to point out the difference between Europe and the US for SuSE. In Europe we have used the revenue from the box sales in a not nearly as competitive, but equally big or even larger market, to grow into the service business. T-Online, Europes largest ISP, for example, is a SuSE reference customer. And the great thing is they don't just use the distribution - damn, that's next to free! - they actually used and use our _services_ and give us real $$$.
Different in the US, here we only sold the boxed product (and started building Services only recently, which will continue!), and for that the workforce was way too big for that in the current market. If people bought as many packages as they download from the ftp-server, and that's true for all distros,...
So, basically, we got rid of a lot of functions needed for expected strong box sales which now will be done by the already established bigger organisation in Europe. you don't need two call centers for installation support if in the territory that the US one was to cover you sell much less than in the over one's territory (so that one is a big call center already anyway). So people here weren't as busy as expected.
The problems together: ...but competition in this area rose a lot
Which basically means for the boxes alone we wouldn't have needed nearly as many additional people as we had hired.
- market situation now lets investors demand IMMEDIATE profitibility
- box sales were the largest contributor for SuSE Inc. revenue
- box sales for Linux in general didn't rise too much...
-
The good news is that SuSE in general doesn't depend on this. Sales in Europe has risen much more, and service revenue of our consulting company - which was founded only in 1999 and is about to become bigger than the "original" SuSE - has reached levels where the box sales have a hard time following, and it's increasing much faster than those as well. Yes, there are a lot more RedHat boxes out there - but unlike for SuSE Linux where we get money for every single one they don't get any money for by far most of it. Of course, now some people might call this bad because Linux is supposed to be free - and I respond yes, "Linux" is supposed to be free, and we still pay the most Linux developers and their stuff goes back to Linux, but "SuSE Linux" is not free. (Well, the ftp version even is, plus the usual stuff, i.e. buy on epackage, install a million times, etc.; we just don't want anyone else to take our final product and sell it filling _their_ own pockets.)
Michael Hasenstein
BEST Oracle on Linux support in town: http://www.suse.com/en/support/oracle/ [suse.com]
...and our engineering presence at Oracle HQ will _increase_, not decrease. Yeah, I'm one of the Oracle guys around here ;-)
--
Michael Hasenstein
http://www.suse.de/~mha/
Re:Is this a suprise? (Score:5)
Finkployd
Support Your Distro! (Score:5)
Expect to see more of this in the future. (Score:5)
The only people getting rich off of the current "open-source wannabe UNIX" trend are CheapBytes.com and others who sell $.99 CD-Rs of the same product which Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE et al expect you to pay upwards of $40 for. Yeah, right.
The moral of that story is, NO FUCKING SHIT!! SuSE and Red Hat are fools if they envision themselves as anything other than charities. At least when I give money to the FSF (which I do regularly), I know that they aren't kidding themselves.
It's been said [slashdot.org] countless times in the past. I'll certainly be glad when this little fad is over so we ("we" of course being professional developers) can go back to programming as usual.