09.16.11

SAP Offers Lip Service to Red Hat But Continues to Pay Microsoft for GNU/Linux, Thanks to SUSE

Posted in GNU/Linux, Red Hat, SLES/SLED at 11:58 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: The role of SUSE, its “community”, and a new case study of SLES “Linux tax” at SAP

“MICROSOFT Linux” (also known as SUSE, which is partly funded by Microsoft by the way) is one of the biggest problems GNU/Linux has got on the server side at the moment. It’s mostly about SLES, as SLED is hardly relevant anymore. Microsoft basically takes part of the revenue made by putting SLES in the datacentre, which is exactly why Microsoft backs SUSE financially. It’s about combating distributions that do not pay Microsoft a penny, notably Red Hat/CentOS and Debian GNU/Linux.

SUSE organises an event for employees and volunteers, hoping to attract the latter using the “OpenSUSE” alter ego. To quote the latter article: “At the openSUSE Conference, we talked to the makers of openSUSE about the new developments for SUSE and for the community distribution.”

“Community” is code word for unpaid staff in this case. Microsoft is among those who profit from the work of this “community”.

The more major news this week is the announcement from SAP that it will carry on paying Microsoft a tax for using GNU/Linux. There is even a press release about it and this spin says:

“Our partnerships with SAP and IBM have enabled thousands of customers to gain from the exciting benefits SUSE Linux has to offer, including decreased operating costs and improved performance,” said Michael Miller, vice president of global marketing and alliances…

Shame on IBM for still allowing Microsoft to make money from GNU/Linux. Then again, IBM is not against software patents and it helped SUSE be acquired by Novell almost a decade ago. This whole thing is worth mentioning especially because only days earlier it was stressed that SAP supports Red Hat. When will SAP actually make Red Hat its platform of choice and stop choosing to pay Microsoft for something which is free? Some Microsoft allies like SAP actually want to do this. That’s where SUSE comes in. █

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A Single Comment

  1. Michael said,

    September 16, 2011 at 2:01 pm

    Gravatar

    Open source thrives on non-paid communities.

    Or are you suggesting the open source community pays you to maintain this site? If so, that might explain some of your extreme bias.

    Oh, and nothing about “free” software says people cannot make a profit from it. You are using the wrong definition of “free”.

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