R.I.P. SuSE GMBH [LWN.net]

R.I.P. SuSE GMBH

Posted Nov 6, 2004 23:57 UTC (Sat) by stock (subscriber, #5849)
In reply to: What else would Novell do? by einstein
Parent article: Top Linux exec departs from Novell (News.com)

Here's my take on the successive SuSE 9.x failures :

R.I.P SuSE GMBH
---------------

Down in the early days of Linux, when all was fine, a couple students
in Erlangen created a download service at their UNI , to download linux
floppy images and dd/rawrite them to a set of floppies. I believe they
started with the SLS or MCC Interim distro's. The Students sold the
floppy sets to anyone who wanted one for a small margin.

Later on they rolled into the creating and rolling, even programming
your own Distro, and a firm called SuSE Engineerung GMBH was started in
Erlangen, south Germany. Soon the SuSE linux Distro was also available
on CD and with the most due respect, these same students started a fine
Open Source Software company based on Linux. Well not all was open
source in the beginning, SuSE created its own management tool, called
YaST (Yet Another Setup Tool).

Years past by and SuSE grow-ed steadily and then suddenly the big boost
was started and launched : The software developers from Troll-tech in
Norway had created a _real_ killer GUI developer platform for Linux
called KDE/QT. Right from the head start, the SuSE developers team were
into this Troll-tech/QT GUI Desktop Gig, and South Germany was the
center of the Open Source KDE Desktop Project in Europe and even maybe
globally.

From that day on, things seemed to go even smoother for SuSE GMBH, as
the Linux KDE desktop was a brilliant eye catcher for people who even
didn't even know what Linux was. Sales went up and all was fine.

But then the spin-doctor press, you know the dudes who drip blood from
their pens, launched a FUD campaign. "Ohh please don't use the KDE as
it makes use of the Evil Widgets from QT Troll-tech in Norway!" Who
were launching this campaign? As i watch back i think it basicly were
the founders of the GNOME Project, Michael de Icaza , Nat Friedman and
others. Michael de Icaza was previously discarded from a career at
Redmond Campus and was at the time rather interested in the QT
programming stuff.

Icaza and a couple other developers found out though, that when using
the QT widget for programming QT KDE Applications which were meant for
commercial sale, one should buy a License first from Troll-tech to be
allowed to-do so. This pissed these guys really off, and in a reaction
to that the GNOME Project was started.
Since that day the Open Source Community was confronted not only with
FUD story's from the commercial software vendors , but also from inside
their own community. I describe it as a pitch black day in Open Source
history.

One could see several things happening. A Linux Distro could not be
sold anymore if it didn't have _BOTH_ KDE and GNOME on board. Also
Distro Vendors, due to the increased costs of maintaining both
Desktops, had to choose which one was the preferred desktop of choice.
SuSE of course sticked to KDE, and people running Linux could blindly
select the latest SuSE if they wanted to run a polished, smooth and
kick-ass KDE Desktop.

RedHat on the other side selected GNOME as their preferred Desktop but
kept a possibility open to install/use KDE instead. RedHat had always
been the largest Distro vendor, which it became by their originating
launch and invention of the RPM package management system. This was a
slam dunk and soon all respected Distro's out there, had to have a
package management system too. SuSE decided to also start using RPM as
did and still do many other distro's. This gave RedHat the best boost
ever.

Apart from the occasional rows between the KDE and GNOME camps, all
seem to be going pretty OK. But then a weird thing happened. RedHat was
at its peak of Global Linux Market exposure (at that time RedHat 7.3
was installed at almost any Fortune-500 Corporation) when a new
management team was starting to run RedHat. After the RedHat IPO, lotsa
RedHat oldies and founders cashed in and went away, which started bad
times for RedHat.

This was immediately reflected in their products and behavior. RedHat
8.0 was launched and while everyone was waiting for 8.1 to arrive, they
released RedHat 9, which turned out to be catastrophic mistake. RedHat
8.0 contained a broken set of KDE RPMS which made most people who ran
KDE puke on RedHat. Lotsa people decided to leave RedHat for what it
was, and went to, or tried to start of with Debian. A large crowd went
to SuSE and Mandrake, just because they were fed-up with RedHats proven
tactics of KDE Mutilation.

Yes you read that right, RedHat Mutilated KDE on purpose inside its
latest Linux Distributions. Why ? Thats a very good question. And I
think today i have the answer. Not only was this tactic used to have
most RedHat users convert to GNOME, at the same time a total idiotic
"Republican Media Doctrine" styled campaign was started, in which all
GNOME users were shouting to everyone who said the word KDE, that KDE
was total ugly, weird and most important highly dangerous due to the
Evil Troll-tech License. They even had Richard M. Stallman publish a
story to confirm this.

The next question you may ask now, is , who are "They" ? Also a very
good question. But thats not so quite evident to answer.

Some people, fiend or foe have asked me, and i in turn heard this from
other long-timers inside the software industry, that there is only one
thing for certain with the OSS and Linux software : If it is still
around in 10 years to come, it sure won't be coming for free by then.
This is a very important remark which gives dramatic insight into what
has happened and is happening right now.

So how will the desktop in 10 years to come look like ? Will it be
GNOME alike and based on GNOME technology, or will it be based on
KDE/QT development technology? For simplicity i will not speak of
Microsoft here, because Microsoft today, besides their massive market
share and massive amount of cash, is on a dead-end with their software
technology.

The future Desktop will either be GNOME or QT/KDE based technology.
Guess what people! What a immensive huge question this is! If QT/KDE
would win, it would mean that the center of the software industry would
move from America to Europe, mainly inside Germany (SuSE) and France
(Mandrake). A couple of seasoned Software Corporations inside USA have
seen it coming also. First RedHat was transformed into the evil style
Corporation which it is today. Next the European Linux distro's were
and still are targeted for hostile take-overs by the big US software
Corporations.

We were confronted with the software patents campaign inside the EU
parliament, which is still unresolved today. The City of Munich wants
to be a kind and good Municipal Government and decides to support their
local Linux Distro vendor SuSE. A very brilliant move by the City of
Munich, until a couple of weeks later the news get out that Novell just
bought SuSE GMBH for a stinking $300 million. A Total disaster, not
only for SuSE itself but for the whole of Germany as now Yet Another
native German Software Company with full innovative potential becomes a
lame puppy in the hands of a US Software Corporation. A pitch black day
in the Open Source world of Germany.

Not only was SuSE bought by Novell, it was bought for a reason. 1st
Novell will use the SuSE Engineerung power to have their Novell Server
Software upgraded with new fresh Linux power. Another landmark event in
the track record of Novell is that a couple of months before buying out
SuSE, it bought up Ximian/Gnome, which previously also was known as
Ximian Red-Carpet. Ximian , founded by Michael de Icaza, was firmly
supported by Sun Microsystems from the start, because Sun of course
knew that running a overhauled CDE won't do the trick. Again Sun
selected to support GNOME and not KDE/QT.

And thats the 2nd reason. Novell and Sun and any other American
Software Corporation won't select QT Troll-tech, simply because
troll-tech is a Norwegian company and may become the largest software
corporation in Europe. The Americans didn't want that to happen, i
guess.

Novell already decided long time ago to to go for Ximian as their new
Desktop. The fact that Novell specifically "needed" SuSE, for me still
today, was a total bogus idea from the start. This is what will happen
i fear. Novell will allow SuSE to run bleeding to death. They soup up a
couple a nice tech things which are useful, and next Novell will launch
their closed source new Novell Server based on Linux technology and new
closed source Novell Desktop based on GNOME/Ximian technology.

SuSE currently is being "over-ruled" every day by day by a U.S.
Software Corporation. Even if SuSE wants and is able to make a clean
SuSE server and desktop Distro, Novell will never allow them to do
that. SuSE will be left at the garbage. When that happens , Novell will
have achieved its most important task for itself and its U.S. friends :

1. The former European center of Desktop development, SuSE GMBH will
have died.
2. QT/KDE, despite being the better technology, will not be used by
major Linux Software Vendors. Which effectively means that KDE as a
business Desktop is killed off.
3. The City of Munich will be left with a non-existing Software Support
partner, which is what a certain Redmond Software Corporation will see
with a huge smile on its face.

Robert M. Stockmann

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R.I.P. SuSE GMBH

Posted Nov 7, 2004 0:49 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Nice conspiracy story. In the world (for ones without a clue - not it's not our world) where MySQL (with Sweden company as "sole owner of source code") is shunned by "big boys" from U.S. and PostgreSQL (without clear owner of development team at all just like GNOME) is exalted by the same "big boys" this story will even look plausible.

It's not a secret GNOME was started back then when KDE status was "in the air" and we only had "free Qt" which was not free at all. Later Qt adopted GPL, but... dies were cast: it was "too little, too late" type of deal. Hate of U.S. corporations has nothing to do with it. Qt is actually has more users then GTK - only KDE is having problems.

R.I.P. SuSE GMBH

Posted Nov 7, 2004 4:06 UTC (Sun) by scripter (subscriber, #2654) [Link]

What a negative pile of complete rubbish. If you feel like that, then I can only guess that the rest of the world has wronged you too. I've had a far better experience with Gnome, KDE, and the various Linux distributions than you've suggested. Things are getting better, as far as I'm concerned.

By the way, I've used RedHat 8 and 9. Neither was a disaster, although 9 was much better than 8. I've always been more of a gnome user though. KDE has seemed pretty nice in the Fedora releases.

R.I.P. SuSE GMBH

Posted Nov 7, 2004 6:36 UTC (Sun) by einstein (subscriber, #2052) [Link]

Let's hope that the outcome is not as bleak as your scenario.

Suse has always been the premier distro for the kde experience. Those who have used only the watered-down redhat kde and don't understand why we call it crippled would get an eye opener if they spent some time with kde in the suse environment.

The fact is, a top redhat kde developer resigned because he could not bear to participate in the "crippling" of kde to make it fit into the redhat scheme.

I find it quite telling that kde was voted the most popular desktop environment again this year in the linux journal poll, garnering twice as many votes as gnome!

I think the Novell management have recently realized just how good kde is, and have reconsidered the whole idea of throwing away such a gem. There may well have been some words exchanged over the company direction, what with the purchase of ximian and the whole gnome trend. They also backtracked on the idea of a single unified desktop, and for now are supporting both gnome and kde. It will be interesting to watch, but I for one love what I see in sles 9 and suse pro 9.2

R.I.P. SuSE GMBH

Posted Nov 7, 2004 21:47 UTC (Sun) by darthmdh (guest, #8032) [Link]

1) It's Miguel de Icaza
2) Redhat was a catastrophic failure at 6.0, not 8.0 or 9.0
3) WWII was over 59 years ago. Get over it.

R.I.P. SuSE GMBH

Posted Nov 7, 2004 23:23 UTC (Sun) by Solkaris (guest, #25904) [Link]

First some links to the real history of the situation. More are easy to find if you simply use Google.

SUSE Founding
http://lwn.net/1998/0205/suse.html
Look its an actual email of someone that worked at SUSE explaining the start of S.u.S.E. As you will note in that post S.u.S.E. started as a repackage of Slackware (a distro based in the Evil USA) When they decided to go their own and start a distro they didn't pull a LFS roll, they grabbed another distro and worked from that point. The other distro was jurix
http://www.softaplic.com.br/pub/jurix/docs/history.html for the history of that.

So right off the bat we can see your facts arent totally inline with reality.

KDE/QT and Gnome/GTK
Original KDE Announcement http://www.kde.org/announcements/announcement.php
But please make note of the fact that QT by TrollTech wasn't about Linux, it was about a cross platfrom widget set.

And heres a quick run down on the reason Gnome was started
http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/gnome-history.html

If you bother to check the links you will find that Miguel actually looked at getting behind KDE/QT, but at THAT time licensing was an issue. You might not see it but the developers did. Those issues have now been resolved but by the time they were Gnome DE was already off and running.

Linux distro's can and are sold without support for both DE's. This was especially true of the early versions of said products. Currently there are a lot of distro's our there, and most of them support one or the other DE as their default. As you yourself point out, SuSE stuck with KDE. And more to the point Mandrake got its start as a RedHat with KDE instead of Gnome.

I leave the rest of the rant to those that want to do the research with the amazingly difficult process of using Google.

The reality of using a Linux distro on the desktop is that you the user get to make a choice. YOU get to decide which Desktop you want to use. But if you want to use Distro X, and they don't support that Desktop then either look for another one that does, or live with the problems that come with using unsupported software. If you live in Windows you can change your graphic shell, but its unsupported and mileage may vary. This is the same thing as installing KDE or Gnome on a Distro that doesnt support that DE.

Your attack on Gnome users is pretty much something that can be said about KDE users also. Just look at your whole pro KDE anti Gnome rant right here, who threw the first stone? You didn't talk about technical merits or drawbacks, or licensing history and changes, instead you start looking for conspiracy.

The reality is that most Gnome users don't like KDE. I'm a Gnome user and I can't stand the look and feel of KDE. Thats why I don't use it. I like the way that Gnome FEELS. No amount of screaming by zealots on either side is going to make that change. The real fact is that most of the zealot screaming on either side seems to be from fanboys that think everyone needs to see the world the same way they do.

Welcome to Linux. Get over it, we all get to chose how we use our systems. Nitice that the developers aren't in screaming wars or yelling about conspiracy. They are working together through groups such as fd.o to make Desktop Linux happen, regardless the the desktop enviroment the user decides fits their use.

Microsoft is not even close to a dead end with their tech, but if it makes you feel better to think that then feel free. But again reality is that MS actually has think tanks of very smart people whose job it is to come up with new stuff. As long as MS has money they arent out of the game. Last look is they had more money than most so its going to be a long wait if you think they are going to just disappear anytime soon.

Novell,SUSE and Ximian will be what they will be. In the past Novell has dropped the ball. I hope they do better this time and hope them all the best, even though I personally will not use their distro. In the long run we don't need Novell to survive. Linux and OSS will live on with or without them, Novell bought 2 companies. that doesn't mean they own Linux or any OSS.

And if you look at the current DE default offering on most versions of Linux, you will notice its a Sea of KDE with Islands of Gnome. Really sit down and write down a list of distro's that come default with a Gnome DE installed and then do the same for KDE. KDE is currently has alot more distro's that ship with it as default. So please stop your ranting, take off the tin foil hat and go outside and breath some fresh air.

R.I.P. SuSE GMBH

Posted Dec 10, 2004 8:45 UTC (Fri) by stock (subscriber, #5849) [Link]

Well i guess the public truth is not what i was told. For your
information i visited S.U.S.E. Gmbh together with Fred N. van Kempen
during the summer of 1997 in south-germany. I talked to a couple of SUSE
employees, amongst which was also Bodo Bauer <bb@suse.de>. The story
above is what he told me about the beginning of SUSE.

Robert

R.I.P. SuSE GMBH

Posted Nov 8, 2004 17:33 UTC (Mon) by minichaz (guest, #630) [Link]

My god man take your blinkers off.

KDE was not created by Trolltech. The QT libraries were and then a group of open source coders based KDE on these libraries.

It was the pressure created by the formation of Gnome that eventually lead Trolltech to dual license the QT libraries so they could properly be used in Free software. The fact that there are two competing desktops is down to Trolltech taking so long to do this.

Frankly I think having the two dominant desktops competing with each other is better than having just the one.

Thanks.

R.I.P. SuSE GMBH

Posted Nov 14, 2004 0:03 UTC (Sun) by pimlott (subscriber, #1535) [Link]

With respect, please post this polemic on your web site, and leave LWN for reasoned discussion.

R.I.P. SuSE GMBH

Posted Dec 10, 2004 8:49 UTC (Fri) by stock (subscriber, #5849) [Link]

polemic ? Just mention the polemic parts, and you will see they are
actually very few, compared to the rest of the facts in my story.

R.I.P. SuSE GMBH

Posted Dec 28, 2004 7:32 UTC (Tue) by pimlott (subscriber, #1535) [Link]

Well, I am not going to go through the whole long post again, but if you
want to understand why I characterized it as polimic, here is a start.

- para 5 ("But then ...") uses name-calling and ad hominem, and
mischaracterizes entirely legitimate concerns as "FUD".

- para 6 ("Icaza ...") continues, implying that GNOME was founded out of
spite rather than for any valid reasons. It makes the galling suggestion
that non-free licences should be accepted by the "Open Source Community"
without concern.

- para 11 ("Yes you read ...") makes unfounded charges some bizarre
conspiracy I'm not even going to try to understand. (Even though RedHat's
mistakes with KDE, whatever they were, could have been explained by the
incompetence you charged earlier.)

- para 13 ("Some people ..."): FUD.

- para 15 ("The future ...") inflates this to an international conspiracy
and indulges in more RedHat bashing.

Everything after here is so far over the top, I'm not going to continue.
All wild, unsupported speculations, uncritical glorification of SuSE, and
bashing of RedHat and Novell.