Summary: Microsoft's Linux ally, SUSE, is losing major talent, getting increasingly involved in the leading Free/libre office suite, and does nothing but offer a Microsoft-taxed distribution of GNU/Linux

IT DOES NOT take much to see that SUSE is a wreck of its former self, still looking for identity and finding new sugar daddies to give orders to it (scarily enough, a couple dozen LibreOffice developers are now indirectly funded by Microsoft, through SUSE).

While SUSE has some general news (not much of it) and updates about Factory, which comes from the OpenSUSE Web site (they also announced a coming event), the project in general seems to have little purpose other than offer a GNU/Linux distribution Microsoft will make money from and also use to validate its patent extortion.

Noyes is quoting some Microsoft proponents and talking points in her coverage of the SUSE-Microsoft deal, which helps not at all.

Meanwhile, having surveyed the location of some notable SUSE staff, it turns out that James Bottomley is now at Parallels and Bruce Lowry, Novell's former head of PR, is still in Skoll Global Threats Fund. Markus Rex, who left and became Member of the Board at the Open Source Business Foundation, practically left the company in the hands of a gold-certified Microsoft partner, which soon thereafter gave Microsoft more control over SUSE. The old SUSE (S.u.S.E.) is very different from today's SUSE. They just share the same name/brand. ⬆