Novell sees lower profit and revenue

[Roger Oberholtzer]

On Mon, 2005-08-29 at 09:07 -0500, Lonni J Friedman wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Aug 2005, Collins Richey wrote:
> > On 8/28/05, Net Llama! <netllama at linux-sxs.org> wrote:
> > > On 08/28/2005 10:57 AM, Bill Campbell wrote:
> > > > Novell also appears to be making serious efforts to encourage ISVs,
> > > > appliance systems developers, etc. to work with SuSE Linux.  A significant
> > > > aspect of this is aggressive pricing for SLES (Suse Linux Enterprise
> > > > System) which has much longer support cycles than the standard SuSE Linux
> > > > retail packages.  The longer support period makes it feasible to install
> > > > commercial systems without having to deal with the Release-of-the-Month
> > > > issues.

A very good thing, that.

> > > Sure, as long as you're not using reasonably recent hardware.  Then
> > > $DEITY help you as you hit every bug that's been fixed in Linus's tree
> > > for the past 6+ months.
> > >
> >
> > Longer support cycles does not mean that the vendor does not provide
> > critical fixes from Linus' tree. At least that's the way it works in
> > RH land. Reasonably recent but not still smoking new hardware should
> > be quite well supported.
> 
> Exactly.  SuSE seems to be clueless in this regard.

I had a discussion here and with SUSE a while back on this. For SUSE,
long term support means that the product is available for purchase for a
long time. The desktop products from ALL Linux vendors are blips on the
radar. Gone almost before you see them. SLES (SUSE's long-support
offering) is availabe for purchase a longer time as well as supported
for fixes, like most Linux releases, but also available as a product for
a long time. SUSE just now announced no more security fixes for SUSE 8.2
(8.4?). That is not considered long term support. That is only long term
fixes. The availability of 8.2, 9.0, 9,3 or whatever is far shorter.

Why does this availability matter? If I go through all the trouble of
certifying a Linux release, and then my customers cannot buy it, well, I
look quite the prat. 


>