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SUSE to go private

suse.com

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Re: SUSE to go private

#71

Post by FirmwareBurner »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #70
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?

Tumbleweed, the only "pro" rolling distro that gets proper testing. And other stuff like Rancher but I never used it, and I'm sure there's more.

Re: SUSE to go private

#72

Post by rbera »

tristor wrote: post #67

Start of the end, private equity ruins everything it touches. RIP SUSE

SUSE was private just a few years ago, owned by the same firm that IPOed them and is now taking them private again. If there were any truth to your statement, it would’ve happened a while ago.

Re: SUSE to go private

#73

Post by kergonath »

I don’t know how to feel about this. I want to be optimistic, because in my view OpenSuSE is one of the best distribution for the general public, and has the right balance of bleeding edge and stability for my use case. Hopefully this will mean that they’ll be able to support the community with fewer incentives to extract money for shareholders or distractions with the share price. Otherwise I’ll be in a pickle to find another distribution for daily use.

Re: SUSE to go private

#76

Post by deaddodo »

wlesieutre wrote: post #69
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."

Many could argue that Dell improved substantially after its 2013 transition to private ownership. At least, from the consumer perspective, things improved drastically. Linux support, a wider variety of competitive lines with much needed improvements to legacy lines, adoption of AMD for CPUs/GPUs, etc.

I can't speak of their server/enterprise business, however.

Re: SUSE to go private

#77

Post by TylerE »

wlesieutre wrote: post #69
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."

When Warren Buffet bought Berkshire Hathaway in 1962, he rapidly turned it from a failing textile company into a monster.

Not private equity exactly, but he personally bought up 51% of the shares.

Re: SUSE to go private

#78

Post by est31 »

wlesieutre wrote: post #69
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."

It's the same PE firm which owned SUSE before, orchestrated the IPO, and now, still a majority shareholder, buys the minority shares back.

If you bought in at any time between the IPO and May of this year, you'd be in for losses, so it's certainly not been an unprofitable move for them. But it's not the classical "foreign vulture PE comes in and destroys everything" situation here that people seem to be afraid of.

Re: SUSE to go private

#79

Post by rvz »

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…

> Lets hope their incentives more strongly align with their customers, now.

Private equity is incompatible with "optimism" and "hope".

Even worse when it is the same company that got them listed in the first place, implying that going public was a mistake.

Re: SUSE to go private

#80

Post by kergonath »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #70
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?

Rock-solid distros with packages that keep with the times and that are as user-friendly as it gets for Linux installs. Both Tumbleweed and Leap are great.

We have far fewer issues in my lab since we replace CentOS with Leap (our experiments with Ubuntu were dreadful and we cannot babysit the computers so anything with complex maintenance is right out).

Going all rolling release was a step too far, too much of a culture shock, but we might switch to Tumbleweed in a couple of years if the stability remains as it is now.

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