There are parody music videos, and then there are parody music videos made by the talented employees of German open source specialist Suse.
These little jewels celebrate everything that's great about open source – enthusiasm, creativity and the common culture and mythos. They have high production values, and look like they cost a small fortune to make.
Over the past few years, people of Suse have covered everything from their own company history to the importance of uptime, and subverted tunes made famous by Maroon 5, Tegan and Sarah, Justin Timberlake, Rage Against the Machine and The Beatles.
The latest video is a moving tribute to Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, and the quality of the Linux code. It was presented at SUSECON, the annual end-user conference which took place in Prague at the end of September.
However, it looks like the days of mischief might be coming to an end: one Suse staffer involved with these projects told DCD that following the merger of Suse's parent company Micro Focus with HPE's Software Business Segment, the corporate leadership has been stepping up the control of the branding. This means music parodies are now under threat, since they can be seen as immature and detrimental to the interest of the shareholders. Let's hope this will not be the case.