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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you revise your statement when you read the second paragraph of the press release?
Did SuSE bother to read the GPL license before they made their statements about RHEL?
HN SmartFriends™, what does this mean? What's the risk for companies which are highly invested in SUSE?
1)Expedited vendor lock-in: Figure out who is locked into the software, make the software maximally shitty/maximally costly so that these people would still not switch and then make money off the cost savings/higher prices and hope to make up investment.
2)Off market prep for trade sale: SUSE could be interesting for someone to acquire but a competitor/strategic buyer can't afford to buy the company and do the reorgs needed itself as it would tank the share price too much. The PE firm buys it, does the reorg off market and then does a trade sale of a reorged company to the buyer, but only now SUSE is way better as an acquisition target.
What are the success stories of private equity firms taking over a corporation? (Where success is the products are still made, quality and staffing is maintained at previous levels)
Safeway seems to be run pretty well, after being taken private by PE in the 80s. Warren Buffet runs Berkshire Hathaway which is acts as a PE firm. Here's a list of everything they own and have owned for decades: https://finmasters.com/berkshire-hathaway-subsidiaries/#cons... There are plenty of other examples. PE is just "ownership not through the public stock markets" which is like...the default, actually.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/safeway-theranos-split-after-350...
Albertsons (including Safeway) was IPO’d in Jun 2020, and now is set to be bought by Kroger.
What are the success stories of private equity firms taking over a corporation? (Where success is the products are still made, quality and staffing is maintained at previous levels)
None. Private equity's entire business model is to suck the quality and staffing out of the product and make money off the gap between the product getting cheaper and people moving to a viable alternative.
So...uh...after all that drama from SuSE about how 'IBM' destroyed RHEL after acquiring Red Hat, they turn around and get acquired by the nearest bidder. That's hilarious. Nowadays I often compare this kind of hypocrisy to the 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' scene where Strucker shouts 'No surrender!' and riles up his henchmen, then immediately turns to his second-in-command and says, 'I am going to surrender'.
Yet another reason to move to Debian. While in many ways not comparable to what's happened with Redhat, with Suse turning to the dark side one wonders how much longer Canonical will last before doing something similar. Make no doubt about it, private equity is all about short term shareholder returns. That's not a bad things in principle but if you don't want to wake up yet again with your distro having the rug pulle…
SUSE S.A. has been owned by this very same private equity company since 2018. In 2021 one fifth of the outstanding shares were offered to investors at the Frankfurt Stock exchange.Now that fifth is being acquired by the same private equity company. If there was any turn "to the dark side", surely it must have happened 5 years ago, not today, right? Edit: Apparently time flies faster when you're bad at math.
Recently I’ve been getting more and more into the Rancher ecosystem as they always have some offering that meets my needs and I can trust it will interop well enough. I really hope that this does not affect the future of Rancher.
RKE is Apache licensed, I think it has a long future.
What are the success stories of private equity firms taking over a corporation? (Where success is the products are still made, quality and staffing is maintained at previous levels)
Think about it - you're having beers with a friend and he goes "so the company got bought out and then nothing changed". blank stares as everyone waits for the point / rest of story
You hear only of the dramatic ones. Bit like news is nearly entirely bad - bad news sells.
People forget that PE firms are buying equity. If the company prospers they get the upside. Contrary to popular hn belief destroying the thing you just paid a lot of money for is not standard game plan.
>Where success is the products are still made, quality and staffing is maintained
The world you describe is not the world we live in. Shareholder objectives - PE or otherwise - is to maximize value. It's not an artisanal hobby where highest possible quality product is the end goal.
What are the success stories of private equity firms taking over a corporation? (Where success is the products are still made, quality and staffing is maintained at previous levels)
None. Private equity's entire business model is to suck the quality and staffing out of the product and make money off the gap between the product getting cheaper and people moving to a viable alternative.