As the company that holds number two rank among open source outfits, SUSE Linux isn't normally the kind of entity that tends to indulge in name calling.
But chief executive Nils Brauckmann admits that he calls his company an open open-source company – as opposed to those who are merely open source.
The comment was made during a press briefing on Monday morning ahead of the fifth SUSECon, the company's annual conference that this year is being held in Washington DC.
The obvious inference is that Red Hat's offerings tend to be those where a customer has to use every bit of technology from the same company. Else, things will not work as expected.
{loadposition sam08}Brauckmann said, by contrast, SUSE's solutions were of the type where one could combine them with other open source offerings from multiple vendors, giving the customer more choice.
His strategic alliances marketing manager Michael Miller pointed out that SUSE had now moved on from being a Linux company to one that was providing open-source defined infrastructure.
Miller said the term open open-source was not new and the company had begun using it three years ago.
"Our identity is evolving, who we are and what we do has changed," he said.
Brauckmann gave the assembled media — a fair few as compared to the first SUSECon when there were just three — a rundown of what the company had been doing over the past year.
He said the revenue was continuing to grow with fiscal year growth for 2016 being around 18%. SUSE is now in the middle of fiscal 2017.
Billing had also been in the same range and the profitability of the company was about 30%m, he added.
"Our strategy is to have a sustainable, profitable open-source company that grows at above the market rate," Brauckmann said.
The writer is attending SUSECon as a guest of the company.