Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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"?
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.
I installed it a spare machine and couldn't bear to keep it around more than a few hours. Blech.
But, hey, free useless documentation!
RinkRat