On 25 November 2002, Richard Seibt became CEO. In Hong Kong, SUSE's products are distributed by TriTech Distribution Limited. On 4 November 2003, Novell announced the acquisition of SuSE Linux AG at a price of US$210 million. Novell had been migrating away from the NetWare kernel and used this acquisition as a migration path for its customers.
The acquisition was completed on 13 January 2004, and the name was changed from SuSE Linux AG to a Novell, Inc. subsidiary under the name SuSE Linux GmbH and SUSE Linux Products GmbH. SUSE Linux Products GmbH was entirely responsible for the development of the SUSE Linux distribution and was led by Markus Rex. During the transfer, both the partner and the sales organizations were integrated into Novell. Richard Seibt became CEO of Novell EMEA and left on. In August 2005, the openSUSE community project launched to open up the development of SUSE Linux for external users and developers. SUSE Linux Enterprise has since been developed using the openSUSE community.
