Rumored LinuxCare/TurboLinux Merger

Several people in the last 24 hours have submitted various shreds of evidence that a Letter of Intent has been signed to merge LinuxCare and TurboLinux. Please treat this purely as rumor since the most substantial piece of information we have is a brief email allegedly insiders. I've attached it if you read on. (And speculate on names: TurboCare?)

Subject: [US-staff] Confidential heads up...
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 20:31:26 -0800
From: Paul Thomas

Turbolinux Confidential

Hello everyone,

As i've said many times in the past, one of the jobs of the CEO is to increase shareholder value. One of the ways of doing this, is to find partners for acquisitions or mergers. As part of this, we are constantly in discussions with other companies in our industry. The vast majority of these discussions never result in any substantial relationship or agreement. Our discussions with LinuxCare however have become more serious, and have resulted in the signing of a LOI (letter of intent). A LOI merely states that both companies will make best efforts to reach a definitive agreement.

The boards and management teams of both Turbolinux and LinuxCare believe we have very complimentary strengths, that together make us much stronger as combined companies.

i know you each have lots of questions. Unfortunately because we are still early in the discussions, and don't yet have a final agreement, i don't have all the answers. i will do my best to answer your questions early next week when we have a company meeting. Until then, please stay focused on the business at hand. The one thing i can guarantee is that these things always take longer to complete than staff you think they will (or should).

Thanks in advance for your support and understanding.....paul"

Comments

distro bias in business plan

[jpostel]

LinuxCare has been pretty distro agnostic up to this point because of the service agreements with the likes of Dell. They have to go with what their clients want and be strong in all. My question is, will this make them more of a distro pusher on their clients? Will their staff be able to provide support to RedHat products without mentioning that TurboLinux has "a better way to do this." I think LinuxCare fills am important space in the commercial linux market by giving companies (like dell) someone to outsource linux support services to.

Re:This is bad news!

[garett_spencley]

It's been said before but I will say it again.

The beauty of Linux (and free software) is that as long as there is the desire for something different (more distros) that something different will exist.

You mentioned debian. But the Linux hackers that don't like debian will make their own "not debian" distros.

Just go to linux.org and look at all the millions of different non-commercial distributions.

--
Garett

Re:Key statement

[Anonymous Coward]

And starting rumours about new mergers is another great way of getting the stock up a few points isn't it? And it's pretty easy too, what with places like /. willing to post unsubstantiated stuff...

Shutup.

Neither company is even publically traded.

Names

[perlmunkee]

LinuxLinux...Linux for Linux users.

This is bad news!

[Lover's Arrival, The]

This is the beginning, and this is what I have feared for some time now. From now on, expect the business side of the Linux community to consolidate. The simple fact is that the market, perhaps rightly, sees the existance of a dozen different Linux companies all selling the same thing - Linux distributions - as innefficient, and it is only natural that they will push for these companies to merge and consolidate.

There can be only one. Who will win? Probably the most commercially succesful.

I am willing to take bets that in 5 or 10 years, only 2 distros will exist, and that they will be incompatible - Debian and the commercial one. When there is only one commercial distro, it will be powerful enough to ignore its heritage, and it will be under pressure from the shareholders and market to capitalise on its holdings. This will mean that it will become increasingly dissociated from its heritage and ideals.

The true future of Linux and the Open Source way lies with Debian, IMO. The commercial companies just don't have the commitment, and are under to much marketplace pressure to be expected to confirm to fuzzy-wuzzy 'ideals'.