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List:       kde-promo
Subject:    Re: [kde-promo] Novell comments on the future of KDE in SuSE
From:       Scott Wheeler <wheeler () kde ! org>
Date:       2003-11-05 13:29:36
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Quoting Philippe Fremy <phil@freehackers.org>: 
 
> 
> > If I read this correctly, they intend to phase out KDE support on SuSE, 
> > or make it an option/add-on.  I guess some people have to result to 
> > sucker punches when they can't win the fight any other way. 
> 
> This is very very bad news. How many KDE developers does Suse support ? 
> 
> And if I understood correctly, Novell has strong patnerships with IBM. I am  
> afraid that we are witnessing the beginning of a push aside of KDE in the  
> enterprise world. 
 
Well, here's my impression of things all of one day after the news -- meaning 
that this all may be wrong, but here's my feelings (in a rather lenghty 
format): 
 
Novell bought SuSE to have a platform to leverage Ximian Desktop on -- as a 
competitor to Redhat in the American market.  Despite Ximian's lackluster 
financial performance they got a *lot* of press attention in the US, but 
unless Redhat was shipping them in their enterprise desktop product, their 
chances of market penetration in the US were somewhat limited. 
 
With the acquisition of SuSE and the last couple of years of SuSE's growing 
reputation as "the other enterprise Linux" in the US market there's now a 
complete product to leverage against Redhat's market dominance. 
 
Were this all taking place in the US market and the rest of the world was 
completely isolated it wouldn't be nice, but it wouldn't be a new story.  
Despite KDE's level of acceptance in the North American "enthusiast" crowd -- 
traditional Linux home and work users, the way that things have unfolded in 
the last couple of years have given Gnome and Ximian a PR edge and Ximian a 
"brand name recognition" in the North American "enterprise" market that KDE 
currently doesn't compete with. 
 
Now the kicker comes in -- this of course affects KDE's "home turf" as well.  
SuSE is the recognized dominant player in European enterprises.  And this 
especially hurts in this case since Europe has been ahead of the North 
American market in Linux desktop adoption.  It's something of an odd reversal 
now that likely the part of the world that's furthest in adoption of Linux 
desktops will be making its choice of solution from a list of solutions 
tailored for the American market.  With this move it brings into question a 
lot of "givens" that KDE promotors have been assuming -- it's no longer clear 
that the European government deals that have selected SuSE as their 
distribution will be defaulting to KDE desktops by the time that those systems 
are rolled out 1-2+ years from now. 
 
A few things could happen at this point -- SuSE could maintain its commitment 
to KDE at the level that it has previously been and recognize the different 
market expectations on the two continents that it will now be focused.  I am 
dubious, but hopeful for this. 
 
Another gap that is being left will be for a truly "European" Linux.  
Obviously SuSE's staff will continue to be European and presumably much of its 
target audience as well, but the argument for using SuSE as a "home grown 
solution" fall apart since it has now entered the ranks of being a subsidary 
of a large American corporation.  This is an especially important criteria in 
government back contracts since now rather than putting money into SuSE being 
something that goes directly back into the European economy, the capital will 
be elsewhere.  It will be interesting to see if any of the previously not very 
significant European Linux distributions make a play for this gap. 
 
In some ways it should be a good kick in the pants for us PR wise.  We no 
longer can say, "Well, at least we have Europe."  KDE is still very strong, 
well, everywhere that Linux is being used.  It's the dominant desktops with 
enthusiasts all over the world and it's well positioned for the enterprise 
market in Latin America, Europe and parts of Asia (notably Korea, Japan and 
China).  We just have to be careful about that Europe part now.  ;-) 
 
-Scott 
 
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