LinuxExpo 2002: SuSE speaks out

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 14 Oct 2002 at 17:41

Time for the chameleon to turn on its business colours and become a man.

At a round table discussion we caught up with SuSE VP Gregory Blepp.

This expo, of all years, appears to mark a sea change for the Linux community. With UnitedLinux all geared up to make a big corporate splash next month, while Red Hat keeps its own counsel, and Sun releasing its own Sun Linux, the various distros are set to take on businesses not just by being cheap and stable, thinks Blepp, but by giving them what they want.

He believes that the days of Linux being offered as a free technology that comes with paid-for support are over - that the business model must change for Linux to move forward - both as a business and a technology.

Says Blepp: 'We need to overcome this. It doesn't mean we need to break the GPL, but there needs to be room for us and other vendors to make some money.

'I think at one moment we have to talk to whichever [business] has a different type of interest if the thing will survive, if we want to get out of the kindergarten. We have to do something, otherwise... Can the best technology in the world only be driven by technologists? It will not fly, in my opinion it will not fly.'

In short, this is what UnitedLinux is about: listening to the business world. To this end, the product comes ready-certified to work with a wide range of hardware. Additionally, by teaming up with the three other distributors, UnitedLinux means that corporates can sign a single support contract that covers all the territories in which it will be used. Previously, they would have had to sign different contracts with the different vendors operating in the different territories.

Even so, the quid pro quo of catering for business needs is creating an open-source product that caters for software that is not open-source. Blepp quotes an example of having to support a security product used by the German government, where the producer of the software would not allow the diclosure of the encryption algorithm used.

On the subject of conflicts with the GPL (General Public Licence), Blepp told us separately: Breaking the GPL would make no sense today. We need to build products on top of this part (GPL) and charge for those components. As of today I prefer to have the applications to come strictly from dedicated software vendors. Linux companies can and should work with these and assure certification. We believe their are still various ways for SuSE to make money not breaking the GPL at all.'

However, for the future, he is hoping for a more flexible approach to adhering to GPLs to enable Linux to serve businesses better. 'For the mid term I would like to see the GPL organizations to also constantly look into the changing environment and stay open for conversations how to best serve customers... beyond the pure licensing talks,' he says.

In short, the future of Linux remains with pushing at the corporate world. Blepp states a desire to concentrate less on the mainframes and more on servers, where there is more money to be made, simply because there are more of them. Breaking into a mainstream will be due to a trickle effect.

'My view is that the Corporate and Federal involvement will set a strong signal.' He says: 'More people using [Linux] and get used to it will transfer this level to outside of the "Corporate world".'

However he remains realisitic about the real problems, such as convincing corporates that the cost of retraining its staff is one worth making: 'I'm not there one hour a day for [my secretary] to train or play with [Linux] until she feels comfortable. Her productivity measurement is different. So if I put down Linux on the desktop I need to have at least a clear strategy of how to train all these secretaries, administrators and finance users who are not necessarily technically interested.'