Shall we play a game?
"If Josiah owned Suse"
1. Fire anyone above Supervisor that was present for the last Suse sale. If you were in management the last time Suse sold, you are clearly making low quality decisions and need to be cut.
2. Post job offerings for senior Linux developers (kernel and application) with no mention of AI. If you use AI as part of your job, fine. But, I'm not hiring AI prompt kiddies.
3. Director positions and above will not be hired from within. Lunduke, my dad, Cory Doctorow. No Linux or programming experience required. I want people who are focused on accomplishing work and driving vision. I'm not interested in yes men or corporate shills or desk jockey's.
4. Bring back the lizard. Make the chameleon the mascot of all products. Embrace the lizard.
5. Rebrand SUSE Linux based on role and support model. open up SUSE Linux to a freemium model with paid support. You want to setup a SUSE powered domain on your own? Go for it. You need support? That requires a subscription. No longer will it be called SUSE Linux Enterprise. It will just be SUSE Linux. The last word will depict support model or image roll. SUSE Linux Enterprise denotes an Enterprise support contract. SUSE Linux Community, SUSE Linux Rolling, SUSE Linux Workstation, you get the idea. Needs some spit and polish, but I'm dreaming here.
6. Cut the openSUSE line. Hold on, hear me out. Focus development around businesses, they make money. Individuals don't make money. Cut openSUSE, BUT bring those products into the SUSE fold. No longer have openSUSE Tumbleweed, replace it with SUSE Linux Rolling. You want to download SUSE Linux Rolling, or SUSE Linux Workstation, or SUSE Linux Server, go for it. Knock yourself out. Full featured and access to all repositories. Use the forums and community support and official SUSE documentation for absolutely free. Need support? That'll cost you.
7. Offer support at a per hourly rate for one offs. Offer support by annual contract for larger organizations. Submit a ticket, get helped, get billed $50. Or, sign a support contract that is per device based and billed annually. $25 per workstation, $200 per server. I'm negotiable on price, just spit balling for effect.
8. Restructure SUSE around new model. Support and Development. Both sides get a dedicated Sales team. Support gets a development team to handle bug reports. Feature requests go to Development team. Development team handles ONLY distro level development. Drop all community development and replace it with a grant program. If an app (Like, I don't know, the desktop environment) is being used by the distro, it gets a grant relative to SUSE's reliance on it's success (kind of a squishy standard I know). This lets projects develop themselves and more critical projects get more funding. Also, free's up the SUSE developers to focus on SUSE, instead of chasing features or bugs in projects outside of SUSE's differential and control.
9. Focus Development on Linux applications. Implement 2 development principles: "Simple and Intuitive by default. Powerful when necessary." (stolen right from KDE). Ensure all offerings are as easy to setup and manage as possible. But, provide all features required for enterprise grade offerings in advanced menu's. Try to get to "one-click deployment" with "best defaults".
10. Foundational principle: If you make good products, and market those products well, people will pay for them.
This has been "pipe dream's with Josiah". Tune in next time to hear what happens after I buy GNOME.