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SUSE to go private

suse.com

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Re: SUSE to go private

#61

Post by xtracto »

greatNespresso wrote: post #34

Ok naive question but SUSE was the first Linux distro I used 15 years ago and never touched it again. For those of HN that use it today, what's their strength compared to RHEL or Ubuntu in the enterprise world?

Just recently I was reading about OpenSuse thimbleweed rolling release. I read a lot of Great things about it, everyone said it was great.

Then I saw a couple of videos and realized its UI (of their control center) is stuck in the 90s and it has several rough edges (like when installing it, I wont show you a list of WiFi access points, but ask you to manually enter the name of your AP and the encryption method... in 2023).

I decided to keep Mint. So far it's been the best distros in terms of "not having to bother" so much. I use it as my daily dev environment.

Re: SUSE to go private

#63

Post by est31 »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #41
subtextminer wrote: post #30

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…

Debian is great indeed (I am a a Debian developer myself although rather inactive) - but today’s news isn’t much of a change in whether SUSE is or isn’t on any definition of the dark side. Why do I say that? Simply, as per the linked announcement itself, this takeover offer is by the current majority shareholder who already owns 79% of the company. They can already win any shareholder vote they want to win. They alre…

> pay the current minority shareholders of SUSE 67% more than their shares are worth on the open market

For anyone who paid the IPO price of 30 EUR (and it went up to 40 in the months after the IPO), it would mean a realization of their losses. You'd be forced out of your position, down 46% compared to the IPO price. The PE firm probably gave a large chunk to banks at discount prices to facilitate the IPO, but still, this was a really good deal for them.

Even if they won't end up delisting, the jump of the stock price caused by their announcement will have done really good things to their balance sheets, and given that they will pay for the buy-out with a dividend, all it took was to move some money around from daughter company to parent company.

Re: SUSE to go private

#66

Post by patmorgan23 »

mkl95 wrote: post #7

> SUSE’s Management Board and Supervisory Board support the strategic opportunity from delisting of the company as it will allow SUSE to focus fully on its operational priorities and execution of its long-term strategy What does this mean? Is their current status adding some significant overhead that would go away by going private?

Public companies have higher reporting and compliance duties than private companies. Also have to deal with the influence of public equity markets.

Re: SUSE to go private

#68

Post by COGlory »

I am cautiously optimistic. From the article:

> Both SUSE’s Management and Supervisory Boards have expressed support for the strategic opportunity presented by this delisting. They believe that it will enable SUSE to concentrate on its operational priorities and the execution of its long-term strategy without the pressure of public markets.

Lets hope their incentives more strongly align with their customers, now. I am a huge SUSE fan, been using their products for 15 years. What they've been doing the last 5 or so has been almost unparalleled in the Linux space.

Re: SUSE to go private

#69

Post by wlesieutre »

COGlory wrote: post #68

I am cautiously optimistic. From the article: > Both SUSE’s Management and Supervisory Boards have expressed support for the strategic opportunity presented by this delisting. They believe that it will enable SUSE to concentrate on its operational priorities and the execution of its long-term strategy without the pressure of public markets. Lets hope their incentives more strongly align with their customers, now. I a…

Don't know that I've ever been optimistic about a company being purchased by private equity.

Anyone have counterexamples where that turned out well for customers?

The justification sounds good, but they'd say something like that even if the plan was "squeeze money out of the company at the expense of users and customers and reputation."

Re: SUSE to go private

#70

Post by rgrieselhuber »

COGlory wrote: post #68

I am cautiously optimistic. From the article: > Both SUSE’s Management and Supervisory Boards have expressed support for the strategic opportunity presented by this delisting. They believe that it will enable SUSE to concentrate on its operational priorities and the execution of its long-term strategy without the pressure of public markets. Lets hope their incentives more strongly align with their customers, now. I a…

I used to run SUSE about 20 years ago and have always thought it was cool but haven't kept up with it much since then. What are some of the things they do that make them unparalleled?
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