Keep the existing customer base too...

Keep the existing customer base too...

It is interesting to see the official reason for continuing with SuSE and KDE. The official line is one we need to hear:

"We're about empowering choice, not eliminating it...it's something that we will be looking at, but our DNA would say that we want to continue to support choice. Both are great desktop solutions. We'll just have to evaluate how we want to proceed in the coming months."

There is another issue here, and that is holding onto the base market which SuSE has cultivated. SuSE has historically been considered an European distro, along with Mandrake, and both are KDE-centric. In spite of being bought by Novell, a North American company, SuSE has the one-time opportunity to either keep or drop its base market. Novell has to think long and hard about this matter, as departure from what brought SuSE this far will potentially burn the bridges with many current users.

So Novell's decision not to be hasty in this matter is a valid one. Not everyone agrees that the "single desktop must prevail" model is the best one for free software, and the Gnome-centric position seems to be well-established with other distros. If Novell can keep both Gnome and KDE sides happy, they can easily inherit some of the market which has been burned by the "we don't want or need KDE since the Qt library upon which it is based is GPLed" crowd.

(As you can see, I disagree with Bruce Perens on this one specific matter.)