[LMStone]

Hi John,

Thanks for asking the PM team to take a fresh look at supporting OpenSUSE. Almost all of the Zimbra installs we have done, NE and OSS, have been on SLES or OpenSUSE. We generally prefer SLES because of the longer life cycle. For some of our clients, the Microsoft-Novell patent protection deal is also perceived as a benefit from using SLES.

I confess while I understood your initial reasoning for dropping OpenSUSE as a supported platform (low download numbers as I recall), it did make me nervous that this might be the start of a slippery slope to dropping support for SLES eventually.

I would also like to point out that SUSE has a larger market share relative to RH in EMEA than here in the US, so I would expect it might be a little easier for Zimbra to make inroads faster in EMEA by supporting both SLES and OpenSUSE platforms in that market.

Thanks again, and best regards,
Mark