How Many SUSE Subscriptions Can You Get For $240M?

itwbennett writes "According to an SD Times article, Microsoft is almost through passing out the infamous subscription certificates for SUSE Enterprise Linux that it purchased for $240 million as part of its investment in Novell. According to the article, Microsoft says that 'a total of 475 customers have used an unspecified number of coupons.' Blogger Brian Proffitt calculates that 'if indeed just 475 customers have received these coupons, then Microsoft has essentially subsidized SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) deployments to an average tune of US$505,263.16 per customer.'"

Re:Free?

[RobertLTux]

What is not "free" is support above web forums and such and "Enterprise" level distros tend to include programs that run on but are by no means Open Source. In fact even individual level distros have things like DVD players and other commercial programs that run on Linux.

Keep in mind the extras

[filesiteguy]

I wouldn't be suprised if - included with the dollar figure - they are adding in Windows 2008, SQL 2008 and other back office products they sell. Keep in mind, that Microsoft even has Novell at their launch and TechNet events showing off SLES on a server with Win2008 instances (each of which require a license) running in XEN virtual machines.

The numbers are there

[jpobst]

If you click the links in the slashdot summary, you'll end up at the original announcement, which told you roughly how many subscriptions the deal was for: 70,000.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116249026689311557-helTbrheLKgbaJ5iO5z40ZFCiOs_20061109.html?mod=blogs [wsj.com]

I guess that's not as much fun as wild speculation though.

Re:Free?

[TangoMargarine]

Seems like it would be an apt label, as Novell apparently has some patent agreement [wikipedia.org] with Microsoft. And SCO, which did that whole "Linux is infringing patents" thing, bought DR-DOS from Novell and is working with SUSE (Novell) on some standardization of Linux [wikipedia.org], which sounds like a terrific proprietary-profit-bastard idea.

Re:Value of Software

[Gr8Apes]

In any case saying that customers have a choice is bollocks. They had a choice ten years ago, and hopefully will again after five or ten years... Let's hope so.

Customers do have choices. The integration/cross-system compatibility has been significantly enhanced for both Linux/BSD and Macs with Windows office formats recently (so they don't speak fluent docx, neither does several 100 million earlier copies of Office).

As for the IE trap - when you take a shortcut you can get burned. Rather than develop to webstandards, they drank the MS coolaid, took the shortcut, and are now hosed.

As for MS's "sparkling" Q4, the initial reports I've seen indicate that W7 sales are coming at the expense of XP and earlier installations. In other words, they're replacements, not growth, in a growing market.