If they're public, they have huge pressure. If not, they can play their own game with a specific strategy that a shareholder might not like. So this could well be a good thing. Public trading usually leads to enshitification.
Marcel LUX III SARL
Company wholly owned by the EQT group, a publicly traded global investment organization. This is just going to lead to more enshittification.
If they own 79%, Marcel can already make it do what they want.
But you are still obligated to always act in the best interest of the shareholders. Private means you don't answer to anyone outside the company and are not forced to do everything to pump the stock price every quarter.
For all practical purposes Marcel was the only shareholder anyway.
I wonder what would that mean for openSUSE, given that, apparently, an equity firm is making decisions on behalf of the SUSE board 😞
I know nothing about this firm and the suse board (that seems to agree with the plan) but normally is great for companies to not be listed in stock market, usually the market put much pressure in short term profit and does not care about long term sustainability.
It's private equity. Assume it's going to involve bending over with no lube and a lot of lawyers.
Username checks out
Choo choooo all aboard the Enshittification Express
A bit of a shame because i've been eyeing a few Rolling Release distros to move to.
Edit: typo
There's really no reason not to check out OpenSUSE, if you wanted to. If it does go down the enshittification path, it'll no doubt be forked, given how relatively popular it is.
This move isn't anything new by the way - SUSE was only public for two years, and was a private entity prior to that. If you're worried about enshittification, you should've worried about it back when it was acquired by Novell, in 2003. Everyone said SUSE was doomed, but it continued on without any issues. SUSE changed ownership thrice since then, and yet it still stands strong, even two decades after Novell's acquisition. So I expect this move won't change anything, at least in the short term.
That's reassuring, never knew about OpenSUSE's aquisition history. Thanks for the info 👌
I checked out Leap a while back and was really impressed with how well thought out everything is, especially the control panel (I think it was called Yast?)
Of course they weren't doomed during the Novell era, when they helped MS screw over the entire Linux community, and they sold Linux licences to MS that MS would sell to their customers as security that they won't sue them for using Linux and therefore infringing on MS's patents.
Debian calmly sipping tea in the corner
That’s a good question, and who is the mysterious 3rd party SUSE is going to be merged with?
Debian is looking better and better everyday.
I wonder what would that mean for openSUSE
Nothing. The oS maintainers put safeguards in place. At worst they would need to come up with a new name because of trademarks. openSUSE is sponsored by other companies than just SUSE. That doesn't go just away.
Hopefully nothing too drastic, but also according to the article they were only publicly traded from 2021 to now, so for most of their existence they were in private hands anyway, albeit being passed around a fair bit.
I missed the point wrt 2021. That's somehow comforting/reassuring. Thanks.
SUSE was already private under an equity firm until 2021 (EQT). Probably fine.
From what I've read this Marcel LUX III SARL company is also just a holding company under EQT. So nothing major has changed there.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The SUSE organization has changed hands many times over the years... From being its own independent company to the notable acquisition by Novell two decades ago.
Over the past decade SUSE has changed hands between Attachmate, Micro Focus, EQT Partners, and then went public back in 2021 on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
Marcel LUX III SARL (Marcel) as the largest shareholder in SUSE is planning to take the company private and delist it from the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
In taking SUSE private, the EQT Private Equity / Marcel is offering a ~16 EUR per share price, around a 67% premium over today's share price.
"SUSE’s Management Board and Supervisory Board support the strategic opportunity from delisting of the company as it will allow SUSE to focus fully on its operational priorities and execution of its long-term strategy.
The interim dividend will be paid to all shareholders prior to the settlement of the Offer and will allow Marcel to finance its purchase of SUSE shares under the Offer and certain transaction costs incurred by it."
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Good bot!
Also, I'd argue this is a good step forward for Suse, as it will take a lot of shareholder pressure off of them.
It doesn’t make automatically a good news, for example there's a billionaire who took private ownership of an once famous social network and ran it to the ground completely annihilating its purpose
X-Bird: Nazi Chirpin'
Huh, this could be a good thing, stop them from being a target for shorts and free them from the typical pattern. But now it totally depends on whether the private owners suck or not. Let's hope for the best!
Coincidentally I looked up whether they were private 30 minutes ago. Being a publicly traded company puts the focus on short term profit, the same issues Redhat is having with IBM. It might not help if the equity still wants that, but I’m hoping they won’t.
Thankfully as only 30% of the other investors have that option, it appears the controlling entity can let them sell their shares if they want out in the direction the company is going
I can't decide if this will be a good idea or not
I would be cautiously optimistic. If they are public, the the top tier entity is the shareholders which usually don’t look further then their dividends and so public company usually focuses on short term growth. Public company doesn’t need to bend backwards towards committee of millions of shareholders and can focus on long term as it wants and deems fit, usually preferring long term investment. Of course it can go the other way too. When they are not responsible to shareholders, theres a possibility that the it gets squeezed end enshitified waaaay faster.
I mean I don’t think it’s the same as red hat at all because they are not making it closed source.
This is good news 😀. It's always better to have a privately owned firm where there is no pressure to contrastingly make more money every year. They'll be able to focus on providing the best systems and support rather than how much money they can make for the shareholders. 👍
The Grim Distro Reaper has been busy this year.
Debian for the win, baby! It's been standing for 30 years and still kicking! Back, Grim Distro Realer!
I view the Grim Distro Reaper as someone trying to fight a hydra. If you don't cut off all the heads/forks/derivatives at once, you truly haven't killed it.
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Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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