There's always been the risk of confusion and openSUSE project seemed to have understood that SUSE could disallow the name at any moment. A name change does make sense for both. Especially now that even Leap might be distancing itself from SLE and whatnot.

To be fair, OpenSUSE is the only project with a name like that, so it makes some sense that they'd want it changed.
There's no OpenRedHat, no OpenNovell, no OpenLinspire, etc.

No because the caption under the first image says that SUSE's mascot is a 'gecko named Geeko' -- which cannot be farther from the truth, for it is a Chameleon named Geeko, that is the mascot of SUSE. Aye.

And, unlike CentOS, it can't be legally taken over by a corporate entity and changed into something entirely different. Debian is owned by Debian.

Maybe just not for corporate enterprise that wants phone and tech support? unless Debian has an Enterprise vendor? The PLM systems and other enterprise level software are certified on SUSE and RHEL, personally I haven't seen Debian listed anywhere.

Yep. I've seen nothing of the sort in the wild. Still Ubuntu and RHEL/Centos/Rocky/AMZ2 in the DC almost exclusively. The only things I've seen making a few inroads for practical applications are CachyOS and Clear Linux.

Didn't SUSE just ask openSUSE to change its name?

Mmm, maybe. "Joining the dots" also can be read as "taking a lot of bad feeling about X, and some good activity about Y and exaggerating both"

EL is pretty dominant still, although much of that seems to be Rocky/Alma rather than RHEL, but there's no way to get real numbers.

What I have seen is a lot of uptick in Debian and Ubuntu servers. We are moving away from EL towards Debian now because of what we perceive as ongoing instability in the EL ecosystem caused by Redhat. Our business depends on a reliable Linux OS so we're doing the maths.

I actually use a decade old version of this to control a very expensive machine at work which is simultaneously surreal and validating of all the time I ~~wasted~~ spent learning linux from my teens onward

their demand that OpenSUSE rebrand

Slight changing of the tone, there. They have formally requested the change, not demanded.

Maybe that will follow, I can't read the future, but it's not the case today.

I disagree with you. You seem keen to insult people who might hold an alternative opinion, so no doubt you'll attack me as well.

Redhat did far more than just stymie Oracle. That you're saying that suggests you're either deliberately ignoring the facts (Ending CentOS 8 7 years early with no prior announcement, being massively disrespectful to the volunteer CentOS maintainers and support staff), deliberately paywalling source deliberately to target all rebuilders, not just Oracle, generally being amateurish and entitled dicks to the community through their official communications and so on) - or you simply don't know.

About the only thing you say that is correct, is that Redhat do contribute a lot to FOSS, even now. That deserves respect, but it gets harder to do that at a personal level each time they do something simultaneously dumb and selfishly corporate. A lot of people have given Redhat a lot of space and stayed quiet out of respect of their history. Maybe they are right to, but the direction they're heading doesn't look healthy to me.

Redhat have done a lot for Linux in the past. And that will likely continue for some time yet. But they have done some seriously questionable things ever since IBM bought them out. I don't like the direction they seem to be heading in as withmany of IBM products.

Why PCLinuxOS?

I'm genuinely curious.

Nobody gets fired for buying IBM.

OpenTofu is the replacement for everyone else. Them too?