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Turbolinux Layoffs
Newsforge [?] has a story about Turbolinux laying off a substantial portion of its staff in preparation for its planned merger with Linuxcare. We've gotten a few anonymous submissions about this as well; perhaps some Turbolinux staff - or former Turbolinux staff - who know what's going on can comment.
Except that IBM is commiting itself to Linux. The ex-evil empire turning to open source, that isn't exactly where it started.
Hear that speech at LinuxWorld?
Also, there are currently many giant and exciting Linux and Open-Source projects these days but the mood is bad in the Linux newssites - especially here - and I don't understand why. Maybe it is just the psychological consequences of the Nasdaq fall.
Anyway, wait and see. "Qui vivra verra" in French.
(disclaimer: I'm not posting that to bash or start a troll - I'm just getting repetitive strange feelings with those kind of news)
That they expected business to materialize that would cover the cost of the salaries of the people and it didn't happen that way.
It's not a personal thing. It's not the demise of Linux. Linux existed before any Linux-related companies. If they all died off today, Linux would still grow, albeit a bit more slowly.
No one knows the future; companies have to make guesses about future business and how to prepare for it and those guesses may be wrong.
Consider the alternative many of these companies faced: at the time, putting Linux on your resume in Silicon Valley virtually guaranteed a job. What would happen if they *hadn't* expanded and the business came rolling in? They'd have found they couln't deliver the service and they couldn't hire it at a price where they could make a profit. So they went with the plan of hiring the talent early, which sounds prudent to me.
There's also the part that no one really wants to admit: a good part of the increase in demand for Linux was the dot com boom. The side effect to this is that the market for Linux services was largely in the dot com sector, the exact sector that Linuxcare wasn't trying to go after in the first place. Everyone (with any sense) knew that bubble would burst, they just didn't know when. Well, I think the dot com craze can now be officially declared as dead as disco.
The reality is that the dot com sag hit every Linux company hard. It also hit a lot of other sectors of the economy hard.
After all, people in those companies that didn't IPO won't be buying those fully-loaded limited edition PT Cruisers, now will they?
C'mon guys, no one's saying that it's the end of *cars* because DaimlerChrysler is laying off more people than there are in the entire Linux sector.
All it means is that the Linux bubble is over. This is a good thing.
_Deirdre
========================== pipe(13) -- can you figure it out?
I think, and this is only my opinion, that the problem with trying to make money off Open Source is that the people who actually use it know how and don't need to pay the money for the support that RedHat, TurboLinux, and others are trying to sell. If you can't figure it out, post it on a local LUG and someone can walk you through it. They need to find a better scheme, similar to Cobalt. Just my opinion you understand...
Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
I consider myself typically pro-union, and I have to agree with you here 100%. There are definitely cases where unions are very valuable and some cases where they simply don't belong.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
Hail Microsoft, once, and unfortunately now future, king.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
>> I'm all for choice, but a selection between a few strong distros that have what we want vs. a plethora of distros that each have a little bit of what we want is a good thing
Why is this a good thing? What really make a distro strong? Is it a big company backing it like RedHat, or a big developer community like Debian, or something else? What is a weak distro, one only a few people use or something else? There are *many* Linux distributors who are completely non profit but who target a very specific market niche. Would you have people who fit that niche be forced to custom tailor their RedHat for each machine they need to load? I say that as long any distribution has something in it that provides a useful distinction from others, it should be kept for those who get some use out of it. Of course if you want to make money distributing Linux you better have some pretty strong differentiations that give you some kind of market advantage or you are screwed.
TurboLinux has for years targeted the Asian market - when I interviewed there about a year ago they were the market leader in Asia with no challengers on the horizon. Would you have them shut down just because no one you know in the US runs their distro?
I would bet layoffs just get rid of duplication - you can lay off a bunch of HR people, managers and so on because there is now only one position in the merged company.
By not overboating a company to distribute an open-sourced OS, and by keeping a tight, compentent team of core developers and business partners, Slackware will be around for a while.
========================== pipe(13) -- can you figure it out?
Then there was the guy doing system maintenance on my girlfriend's Sun a few weeks ago. I walked into her office to hear the supervisor explaining to him how to find the ID number of a process...
it's always nice to read about your pending demise on slashdot. i work at turbolinux, and as far as i know, no one yet knows who is being laid off. we just found out about it this morning, and notice of who's being cut is coming later today.
even worse, the coke machine is empty, and we're all really pissed about that. no job and no coke. that's gonna suck.
I agree it is simply a case of "Market Darwinism". The strong survive and the weak either evolve or are eliminated. I hope this is simply a case of evolution.
As for the layoffs, they are a rough thing to go through, fortunately the labor market is still in pretty good shape. Hopefully, these people will find work elsewhere without too much disruption in their lives.
Good luck to all involved.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
You can read about the speech here.
And you can even see a video (via the link on the page) with some very interesting comments.
One thing that is mentioned is that IBM spends about 5 billion us dollars a year on R&D, and that money is *dwarfed* by all of the man-hours open source developers put into linux. IBM cannot compete. period.
listen to the video and hear them say in in plain english.
I wonder what that means for Microsoft?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Daimler Chrysler is supposedly laying off 26,000 workers, so don't start thinking that it's a problem with solely the Linux Industry. Almost verybody is hurting somewhat.
I think we're going to see a lot more layoffs across the industry. We're watching the industry, and the underlying technology, mature. A lot of the boom in the 90's was due to people experimenting with the next new thing. Now we have a better idea of what the strengths and weaknesses of Internet tech are. The people who take advantage of the strengths of the technology are settling back to regular if not so spectacular revenue. The ones who discovered the weaknesses are failing or getting bought up. As for the ones who simply didn't understand, they disappeared last year.
Then there's also a certain level of saturation. We've probably gotten everybody hooked up to the Internet that wants to be hooked up and has the means to be hooked up. So, there's simply not a demand for new installations. That means less of a demand for infrastructure and so on down the food chain. I think this holds true for the rest of the economy as well. Everyone who wanted a new car and fancy house has pretty much gotten them. What happens to an economy when its succeeded in delivering all the goods and services to the people? I don't know if there is a precedent for the kind of economic slowing we're seeing now. Given that, I don't know how much tax relief will help. If Americans use the extra cash to save or pay back their own personal debt, then there can be some long term good out of that, but if we are in a crisis of supply, then don't expect too much. Of course, this also means we can expect another up cycle in a few years as durable things begin to wear out, and as the tech sector comes up with the next big thing. I dunno. I'm just using the downturn to pick up stocks and other equity at bargain rates before we get another boom.
Except that IBM is commiting itself to Linux.
Yeah, "IBM is committing 1 Billion to Linux". Ask yourself what percentage is Marketing dollars, and what percentage is R&D dollars. Then, of the R&D dollars, what percentage is non-Free application development, and what percentage is for Free Software (kernel development?). LVG (Lou V. Gerstner) has already said IBM will not do a Linux distro (which is good). But how about a breakdown of what that $ is going to?
And while we're at it, how about opening some of those specs that no longer make any money, e.g. the MCA spec, the RS-485 spec, etc? What possible reason is there for keeping these outdated specs closed? It would be a good PR move for IBM, and help developers who might work on old IBM hardware.
With VA Linux stock going from 138 to 8 in a year, is Andover (sorry, OSDN) next? Will Slashdot survive the popping of the Linux market bubble?
Actually, the capitalist market economy is working just as intended, siphoning money away from poor investors who base their decisions on "smoke and mirrors" and funnelling it to intelligent investors who choose companies with a "legitimate, profit-making business model."
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
Isn't it a mortal sin to personally profit from open-source software? I gotta find that link somewhere...
As much as we hate them, and people lose their jobs, and we all hate that too, mergers can be a sign for a good change.
AOL/Time Warner-Merged (Huge Company)
Ok, so mabye that wasn't the best example.
But when you look at it, mergers only mean that the companys are goiing somewhere in the right direction.
And please, put the flames on the boards, not in my e-mail!
"I have not slept a wink"
01101001 01100001 01101101 01101110 01101111 01110100 01100001 01101100 01100001 01110111 01111001 01100101 01110010
May I have your attention please,
.....we're gonna have a problem here.........
...........
may I have your attention please,
will the real First Poster please stand up,
I repeat will the real First Poster please stand up
Ya'll act like you never seen a first poster before
mouse all on the floor
like mom and daddy just burst in the door
and started whoopin yer ass worse than before
they first had endorsed
buyin' ya a crappy computer (aaaaaah)
It's the return of the...
"awww..wait, no wait, you're kidding,
he didn't just say what I think he did,
did he?"
and Mr. Cray said...
nothing you idiots, Mr Cray's dead
he's locked in my bassment
microsoft women love Sig '11
chicka chicka chicka First Poster,
"I'm sick of him, lookit him
walkin around, grabbin his GNU know what
flippin' to GNU know who"
"yeah, but he's so smart though"
yeah, I probably got a couple of screws up in my head loose
but no worse than what's goin on in your sister's webcam (eheheheh)
sometimes, I wanna get on ZD and just let loose
but cant, but it's cool for RMS to hump a dead GNU
My mouse is on your link, My mouse is on your link
and if you're lucky, I might just give it a little click
and that's the message that we deliver to little kids
and expect them not to know what a free software is
of course they're gonna know what Microsoft is
by the time they hit 4th grade
they got MS-NBC, dont they?
we ain't nothing but omnivores
well, some of us carnivores
who read other people's mail like crackwhores
but if we can read your e-mail like it's available
then there's no reason that a man can't forge spam from your account
but if you feel like I feel, I got the antedote
trolls wave your penis birds, sing the chorus and it goes........
I'm First Poster, yes, I'm the real First
all you other First Poster's are just imitating
so won't the real First Poster please stand up,
please stand up, please stand up
cause I'm First Poster, yes, I'm the real First
all you other First Poster's are just imitating
so wont the real First Poster please stand up,
please stand up, please stand up
Sig 11 don't got to cuss in his posts to get Karma
well I do, so fuck him and fuck you too
you think I give a damn about my Karma
half of you trolls can't even stomach me, let alone stand me
"but first, what if you win, wouldn't it be weird"
why? so you guys can just lie to get me here
so you can sit me here next to Natalie here
shit, Enoch Root's momma better switch me chairs
so I can sit next to trollmastah and Post First
and hear em argue over who modded it down first
little troll, flamed me back on IRC
"yeah, he's fast, but I think he types one-handed, hee hee"
I should download some audio on MP3
and show the world how you released it BSD (aaaaaah)
I'm sick of you little troll and l33t groups
all you do is annoy me
so I have been sent here to destroy you
and there's a million of us just like me
who post like me, who just don't give a fuck like me
who code like me, walk, talk and act like me
and just might be the next best thing, but not quite me......
I'm First Poster, yes, I'm the real First
all you other First Poster's are just imitating
so won't the real First Poster please stand up,
please stand up, please stand up
cause I'm First Poster, yes, I'm the real First
all you other First Poster's are just imitating
so wont the real First Poster please stand up,
please stand up, please stand up
I'm like a head trip to listen to
cause I'm only givin you things
you troll about with your friends inside you rabbit hole
the only difference is I got the balls to say it
in front of ya'll and I aint gotta be false or sugar coated at all
I just get on the web and spit it
and whether you like to admit it (riiip)
I just shit it better than 90% you trollers out can
then you wonder how can
kids eat up these posts like gospel verse
it's funny,cause at the rate I'm going when I'm thirty
I'll be the only person in the chat rooms flirting
cyberin with nurses when I'm jackin off to porno's
and I'm jerkin' but this whole bag of viagra isn't working
in every single person there's a First Poster lurkin
he could be workin at Micron Inc., spittin on your SDRAM
or in the printer queue, flooding, writin I dont give a fuck
with his windows down and his system up
so will the First Poster please stand up
and click 1 of those fingers till you drag up
and be proud to be outta your mind and outta control
and 1 more time, loud as you can, how does it go?
I'm First Poster, yes, I'm the real First
all you other First Poster's are just imitating
so wont the real First Poster please stand up,
please stand up, please stand up
cause I'm First Poster, yes, I'm the real First
all you other First Poster's are just imitating
so wont the real First Poster please stand up,
please stand up, please stand up
I'm First Poster, yes, I'm the real First
all you other First Poster's are just imitating
so wont the real First Poster please stand up,
please stand up, please stand up
cause I'm First Poster, yes, I'm the real First
all you other First Poster's are just imitating
so wont the real First Poster please stand up,
please stand up, please stand up
haha guess it's a First Poster in all of us........
fuck it let's all stand up
hmmm... this isn't an example of that as Linuxcare don't produce a Linux distribution.
I agree completely, investors got greedy with their desire for a quick buck. It's sad when you can make millions of dollars jusb by adding a shiny "dotcom" to the end of your company's name. I don't think we're heading into any sort of recession, though. The market is just coming down to more realistic levels. Sad about the layoffs though, but most of these people are highly skilled in their field and shouldn't have too much trouble finding a new job. Best of luck to any of you out there reading.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
You're kidding right? Unions can't solve the economic factors that necessitate mergers and layoffs. I don't have a problem with a union focusing on fairness but if a union is going to stifle necessary changes then inevitably this will hurt both the company and the union workers. Study Bethelam Steel and the United Steel Workers sometime and you'll get a good idea of how collective stupidy will hurt all. Betheleham basically gave up the right to make any technological innovations that would put people out of work. The net effect is that they're no longer competitive and many more jobs were lost to layofss than would have been lost to technology. Yes, I realize this will be perceived as a troll but its merely an opinion.
Just one problem with that, which is that seemingly all of the Linux companies are losing money or firing people. One day people will just have to face that it's a loser of a business model. Until then, I guess the kids here can continue modding up every post that's whistling by the graveyard...
Cheers,
Read my Further to my last post... post on this same thread.
The merger of Linuxcare and TurboLinux create a real business model -- an enterprise network and workstation solution. Most enterprises have at least a passing interest in Linux, but it hasn't been practical in the past. A Linuxcare-TurboLinux packaged solution is a totally different business model to that of a distro. It might cost a medium-sized corporation hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement one of their solutions, and that's a good business model when you consider the advantages of switching to Linux.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Actually, this could be GOOD for Linux. If the strongest variants of the OS buy the weakest, then there's hope we might finally see a unified distobution. I'm all for choice, but a selection between a few strong distros that have what we want vs. a plethora of distros that each have a little bit of what we want is a good thing.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
The great thing about a free market, though, is that the unfit companies cannot squander forever. They run out of money, crash, and burn.
One of the big problems with the economy in Japan is that the big companies have so much influence with the government there; they are not inclined to let market forces punish poor performance, so they do things to prop up poor companies so they can continue to operate poorly.
The "creative destruction" in a free market allows poor companies to fail, and better ones to replace them. It can be painful to watch, and the people often cry out for the government to "do something" but that is always a mistake.
You always see headlines like "lots of workers laid off" but you never see headlines like "new companies hiring lots of laid-off workers".
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Early rumors suggested the layoff would be approximately 15-20 people, but I haven't heard any specifics.
_Deirdre
Mergers and companies going out of business is often a sign of market correction.
Take for instance the recent dot-com troubles. Those aren't quality companies having trouble -- the good ones are still doing quite well. The flooded market assured that many would not make it.
Linux companies merging and going out of business is good because it will ensure that the best and strongest survive. Two weaker companies like TurboLinux and Linuxcare merge so that they will outlive the future Linux market correction. They are now a stronger company and the Linux community can only benefit from that.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Corel ends its Linux operation, Red Hat shuts down in San Francisco, Suse shuts down American operations, TurboLinux fires 1/3 of its staff.
Looks like the commercial experimentation with Linux came and went and now we're getting back to bedrooms and operating systems classes.
I don't think .NET has been released yet, though.
As for the "open source hype", well, I am using open source technology exclusively on our systems at work and it has been an extremely successful venture. To give you some idea, we have up to 5,000 mail accounts running on exim, 3,000 shell accounts, run an industrial strength DNS system, industrial strength, internally developed network management systems running on Zope/Python, and a staunch news server all running off an 8-node MOSIX cluster.
The correct answer is "customers". The Linux companies that are now struggling seem to have not understood this. In the real world, there are few customers who want Linux support. Most Linux-using customers actually want computer systems support. Consider this: if something goes wrong, the customer does not want to call ten different vendors, each of whom points their finger at the others. In fact, most customers don't really care about the OS at all; they only care about the applications software. Of course, the OS affects the applications, but customers just want solutions--period.
IBM is a company that understands all this well. IBM is planning to invest a billion dollars in Linux this year alone. IBM is very astute businesswise, and they obviously expect to get a good return on their investment. Why? Because they are going to give the customer what the customer wants.
IBM (specifically, their General Services Division) will provide a customer with support for the entire computer system. So whenver support is needed, the customer just calls IBM. This is what real customers want.
In many cases, that system will run Linux, because Linux has some technological advantages. You know this; I know this; and IBM's service people know this. The customer needn't know, likely doesn't care, and definitely doesn't want to care. The customer wants solutions that work, and someone else to fix the problems. IBM can make money by providing support and by selling hardware, middleware, and applications software. The customer gets a good well-supported system. Linux use spreads almost incidentally....
CONCLUSION. The demise of Linux support companies just means that those companies did not know the first thing about business (literally). It does not mean anything negative for Linux. What will affect Linux is the advent of companies that include Linux support as part of their overall customer support.
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"To fall in love is easy, even to remain in it is not difficult; our human loneliness is cause enough. But it is a hard quest worth making to find a comrade through whose steady presence one becomes steadily the person one desires to be." --Anna Louise Strong