$6 Billion Linux Deal? SUSE IPO Rumored (zdnet.com) 28
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: According to Bloomberg, EQT is planning an IPO for German Linux and enterprise software company SUSE. EQT is a Swedish-based private equity firm with 50 billion euros in raised capital. SUSE is the leading European Union (EU) Linux distributor. Over the years, SUSE has changed owners several times. First, it was acquired by Novell in 2004. Then, Attachmate, with some Microsoft funding, bought Novell and SUSE in 2010. This was followed in 2014 when Micro Focus purchased Attachmate and SUSE was spun off as an independent division. Then, EQT purchased SUSE from Micro Focus for $2.5 billion in March 2019. With an IPO of approximately $6 billion, EQT would do very well for itself in very little time.
Bloomberg states that the IPO talks are in a very preliminary stage. Nothing may yet come of these conversations. As for SUSE, a company representative said, "As a company, we are constantly exploring ways to grow. But as a matter of corporate policy, we do not comment on rumor or speculation in the market."
Bloomberg states that the IPO talks are in a very preliminary stage. Nothing may yet come of these conversations. As for SUSE, a company representative said, "As a company, we are constantly exploring ways to grow. But as a matter of corporate policy, we do not comment on rumor or speculation in the market."
There's gold in those hills (Score:1)
Why doesn't IBM/REDHAT just but SuSE & Ubuntu? (Score:1)
Re:Why doesn't IBM/REDHAT just but SuSE & Ubun (Score:5, Informative)
Simply put, no. Too many contributors to the Linux kernel published their work under the Gnu Public License, including Linus torvalds. Much of the rest of the operating system, including critical features like the gcc compiler and the core glibc system libraries and the build tools like GNU make and common shells like bash are all under the Gnu Public License.
This is part of the power of the GPL, it's prevented abusive business models from proprietizing these core tools.
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... many contributors to the Linux kernel published their work under the Gnu Public License, including Linus torvalds...
ALL contributions to the kernel are published under the GPL, version 2.0. See Linux kernel licensing rules
I'm interested in whether contributors have the option of retain personal copyright on their contributions, just so long as they are published under the GPL, and can't find that in the rules.
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I agree that everything in the primary Linux kernel repository is under GPLv2. Some companies, such as Nvidia, have published proprietary extensions to the kernel with different licenses, They're not in the primary published source trees.
* https://download.nvidia.com/XF... [nvidia.com]
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The GPL works similar. It licenses only four types of utilization: running the software, copy, modify and distr
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I'm interested in whether contributors have the option of retain personal copyright on their contributions, just so long as they are published under the GPL, and can't find that in the rules.
Depends on the jurisdiction. In Europe you never "lose" or "give" up your personal copy rights. However the concept is different, and is called "moral rights".
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I recall Linus stated they never have done copyright assignment so code generally belongs to people who wrote it. In Linux kernel there are possibly thousands of copyrights. This comes with safety and prevents relicensing (too many copyright holders to get consent) so is the right way to go.
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Thankyou for the answers to my question, Antique Geekmeister, Sique, angel'o'sphere, Eravnrekaree.
Very helpful, and the question has been comprehensively answered.
Individual contributors retain the copyright to their code, as assigned by default in the relevant jurisdiction, and also possibly with their own copyright notice. In the Linux source tree they published under GPL 2.0, as required by Linux kernel licensing rules [kernel.org]
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GPL is just as guilty for proprietarizing code too. GPL takes lots of BSD code and refuses to give back, because once the code is GPL, it cannot be un-GPL'd. So the upstream BSD project sees their code locked up by GPL projects and they can't get patches back because they would be GPL patches.
Thus, the GPL benefits by locking up code. Sure, the BSD folks are fine with it, since the code was BSD l
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"GPL" doesn't take code. Developers or authors _may_ take code. Can you name a single instance where a GPL publisher or contributor violated a BSD license? Or the reverse? There are many "fair use" replications. Do you know of any significant violations?
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GPL code is not locked up. Thats BS. GPL is designed to stop large companies from taking and improving code and then not giving back the improvements. This is why Apple uses BSD, it can just grab the code , profit from it, and does not have to give anything back. If you use other peoples code, you should contribute back.
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SO what you are saying is to the Linux market is too un-monopolistic to be able to charge massive profits on shite work, like the M$ Windows market. You do understand that is the whole idea, that is not a bug, that is a feature, you should remember that from the M$ Windows worlds you know all those 'bugs' which impacted users but turned out to be designed features of a POS operating system.
What the extra value in Linux companies mean, is M$ after Windows anal probe 10 is staring at the Grim Reaper and Trum
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Because people that don't want that kind of corporate ownership will fork it, or be smart and go to Debian.
Actually I am not sure why Ubuntu even exists.
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Ubuntu has keading edge software support, especially for laptops. It also provides a large and organized distribution of test software without having to juggle your own personal selection of unstable, individually maintained apt repositories, half of them at least 5 years old and incompatible with the other apt repositories like the last time I touched Debian.
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Too fractured? Have you ever looked at what Linux use generally means in the enterprise? In case you haven't, I will explain: it's 90%+ RedHat/CentOS, 5% Ubuntu, and 5% every other distro combined.
The GNU/Linux world has different "values". (Score:2)
Those wanting vendor lock should not defile Linux with their involvement and stick to AAPL instead.
Linux is for humanity and incidentally useful to corporate borgs. Code diversity is its strength, not a weakness.
Were they still around? (Score:2)
Long time since I heard that name.
I thought everyone moved on to Ubuntu/CentOS or stuck with Slackware.
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SuSE, and KDE, remain much more popular in Europe.
Now I feel old. (Score:2)
I haven't used Suse since Novell bought them out.
Christopher Barnatt Explaining Computers (Score:3)
Barnatt gave SUSE a nice review recently.
https://youtu.be/yf3b6b1iHIA [youtu.be]
RPM, please die. (Score:3, Insightful)
I would like all rpm based distributions to just die and leave us in peace. Thanks.
(otherwise I love Suse, great people involved, great contributions. But just say no to RPM)
Re: RPM, please die. (Score:2)
Why?
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It sucks beyond belief. Ever tried rpmbuild? As slovenly a cesspool of grade school script hacks as ever disgraced a hard disk. Google it. Just the tip of the rotten iceberg.
Re: RPM, please die. (Score:2)
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> It sucks beyond belief... Google it.
I tried to Google it. The first link is https://en.opensuse.org/openSU... [opensuse.org] It is indeed very informative.