WHat was communicated at the time was that EQT was going to be "hands off", and allow the current management to continue operating SUSE as is.
Even under Microfocus they enjoyed a level of freedom usually associated with independent companies.
If the board was left as is, and EQT is just a shareholder, that could be considered independent - more so than RH + IBM where there was some integration, and RH was becoming a wing of IBM.
But this is all speculation on my part, so YMMV
Re:Melissa Di Donato Appointed CEO of SUSE
by houseofzeus on Tuesday July 23, 2019 @09:22AM
(#20506497)
My interpretation is that they and Red Hat are just as "independent" as each other. That is they can do whatever they want as long as they keep making money...but if they don't then they can and will be course corrected by their respective owners.
So, how is that independent? And i guess, that if both are equally "independent" then RedHat would be larger one, wouldn't it?
And what does "largest open source" mean, anyway? More employees? More customers? More revenue? More contributions to open source?
And how is Suse "independent" when it's owned by some swedish private equity group? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EQT_Partners And, interestingly, see the german wikipedia entry for much more companies owned by EQT. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/EQT_(Unternehmen)
How is Suse independent, again?