I would guess Suse is trying to do the harder one. I could be wrong, but I think the intended audience is people that want to drop RedHat and the associated cost, but with minimal changes to everything in their ecosystem other than the OS itself.
If Suse thinks they are going to make money in this space via support contracts rather than licensing, it's sort of a "commoditize your complements" thing...commoditizing the paid license subscription part. That's a guess though. It's not clear to me how they plan to make money with this move.
- damage and embarrass Red Hat, their direct competitor
- enhance their own brand, brand awareness, and reputation with customers of their competitor. Sell more of their own existing enterprise offerings as a result.
- create an alternative distribution that they can monetize if it turns out to be more popular than their own offerings ( even if only in one geography )
If Suse thinks they are going to make money in this space via support contracts rather than licensing, it's sort of a "commoditize your complements" thing...commoditizing the paid license subscription part. That's a guess though. It's not clear to me how they plan to make money with this move.