James links to this story about the possibility that SUSE Professional (the box) will be dropped and replaced by a Fedora-style community distribution.

I've predicted since the takeover that this would happen eventually, but there are some reasons to be sceptical about this story. "The box" still makes a significant amount of money for Novell/SUSE. Also the fact that it's there in retail has a useful shop window effect: I know from experience that people quite often go to PC World, buy a copy of Professional, test something out, and then decide to deploy SLES. But in the story Ted Haeger doesn't seem to be speaking officially, and may be voicing what he personally would like to happen rather than what he knows will happen. (There is a much less compelling argument for using a maintained version for desktop use.)

I wonder if any insiders have got anything they can share with us?