Breaking: The openSUSE Board discusses SUSE's request to stop using its brand, highlighting the need for cooperation and goodwill.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/37281970

Believe it or not, an unexpected conflict has arisen in the openSUSE community with its long-time supporter and namesake, the SUSE company.

At the heart of this tension lies a quiet request that has stirred not-so-quiet ripples across the open source landscape: SUSE has formally asked openSUSE to discontinue using its brand name.

Richard Brown, a key figure within the openSUSE project, shared insights into the discussions that have unfolded behind closed doors.

Despite SUSE’s request’s calm and respectful tone, the implications of not meeting it could be far-reaching, threatening the symbiotic relationship that has benefited both entities over the years.

  • fr0gEnglish
    21•4 months ago

    And you really think, people who are willing and able to buy enterprise support for their Linux distro get confused by the naming?

    No, I don’t think that. I *know* that because I’m active in the community.

    OpenSuse is essentially free marketing for SUSE, nobody would know them otherwise.

    That is absolute nonsense. SUSE mostly serves large enterprise customers. That’s an entirely different demographic from people who care about Desktop Linux or setting up a home server.

    Edit:

    its market share is relatively small compared to Red Hat or Canonical.

    I’m pretty sure SUSE is bigger than Canonical.

    Editedit: According to wikipedia SUSE’s revenue is about twice as high as Canonical’s

    • AggressivelyPassive
      4•4 months ago

      That is absolute nonsense. SUSE mostly serves large enterprise customers.

      And where do you think the people deciding what to buy get their information? Mind share is important.

      I’m pretty sure SUSE is bigger than Canonical.

      That’s actually surprising to me, but I’d argue that Suse offers more products, it seems like Rancher, Longhorn, etc. have no canonical equivalent.

    • @panicnow
      3•4 months ago

      I’m surprised and happy that SUSE is still doing well. I have fond memories of using SUSE in the enterprise especially around their “perfect guest” campaign for using it in virtualized environments. I thought they had very well-baked integration with large Windows networks—things just worked out of the box that didn’t with RHEL. I’m sure a lot has changed in the last decade but I appreciated their cooperative stance in the enterprise.