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VA Linux Announces Planned 25% Staff Cut
prac_regex was the first to write with news of planned cuts announced today for VA Linux. "The title doesn't say it all, but it says a lot.
Yahoo reports the cost cutting VA implemented today." VA reported higher-than expected per-share losses, and announced some big organizational changes as well. Guess "playing in the big leagues" means taking the occasional bean-ball. (Note: OSDN, of which Slashdot is a part, is itself part of VA, in case you hadn't heard;))
Hey, let's look at WinNT 5 (i.e. Win-2000) for a real '70's OS. It is demonstrably closer to VMS than Linux is to Unix (in everything but name).
VaLinux was and probably always will be a company that builds expensive linux machines for elite linux users
...the company would discontinue building custom hardware. "It was never core to our business model and we can't afford those investments," ...
Again, according to the Reg, VA are going to be concentrating on software engineering and software customisation.
According to this article at The Register,
Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems
"Information wants to be paid"
revenue is how much money you take in roughly..profit is how much you MAKE (after paying everyonet buying a lot of crap, etc...) VA has revenue, ie people buy their stuff. but they have no profit. in fact, they spend a LOT more than they make, some 26 million more if i'm not mistaken. so there's your answer in layman terms.
well now that I know there's a commandline streamripper (are you responsible for the win32 gui prog of the same name?) I'll be helping live365 go broke quicker :)
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enterfornone - logging in for a change
they give linux a bad name
...because they are linux only ... gee how many linux first timer gonna buy from them now ...
... i heard linux and oracle dont mix
...
one: their PCs are very expensive
two: very few and bad options for videocards soundcards , which a PCs user usually look for
three: they are arrogant , i send em an email before and they told me , that am not (as a home user) their target customer ??!!!
i dont know how many corporation use linux on their desktops , or their primary servers
but those companies , reminds me of apple
they have wrong goals and objectives
penguincomputing say on their site they dont make dual boot machine linux with windows
PCs are commodity items now , every one can buy one and use it , kinda like a TV or a playstation
so maybe they wonna focus on the server market
but heh
and windows XP is probably gonna penetrate more in the small server market then linux will ever will
linux should target university student
i think
sheep for the sheep human for the human i just wonna keep my soul alive
Hell, they can't even sell their hardware. When I contacted them a year ago about whether they wanted some business supplying my employer hardware, no-one could even be bothered repsonding my mail.
I know a million or so New Zealand dollars are only worth half a million US, so I guess VA couldn't be bothered with such a small account.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And they couldn't even sell that. The company I work for (in Menlo Park, CA) wanted to contract with VA for some performance tweaking of a few large MySQL database servers running Linux. While the cost was about average for consulting rates, there was a four week lag time until the consultant could visit.
We didn't have the time. We figured it out ourselves.
But who were they selling to? The geek market is more likely to be making their own computers and installing their own distros. The large corporate market is likely to have their own staff that can deal with installing and configuring Linux.
This is somewhat true. We use Linux, FreeBSD and OpenBSD in our production environment. However, we buy systems from ASL Labs. The VA boxes were just too damn expensive, and the ASL machines were of higher quality hardware.
My perception of VA is that they are too concerned with Community "Look Good", and not concerned enough with running a profitable business. On one hand, they've done a great service to the Linux community. On the other, they are starting to fall apart because of it.
Will someone please explain why there are so many snide remarks about Jon Katz?
A few months down the road I get a bunch of no-starts in the morning so my gf and I are both late for work. Thermostat again. It gets "fixed".
Summer comes around, the bitch over heats 15k from civilization and boils g0d knows how much water out of the rad. Thank GM for road side assistance.
It gets "fixed"...oh, thermostat problem again.
[Insert several morning no-starts here]
By now I'm 2 years into the lease, upsidedown as all hell but fuckit. I switched it for a used Honda and the only problems I've had since are having no excuse for being late for work!
Prior to that, I had another 96 sunfre without problems except for the fact that it didn't corner as well as I thought it should have at 70km/h on a corner rated for 30...and I took out the local newspaper's propane shack. I was a lucky bastard that day.
Oh, and I failed to mention the 2 or 3 recall's on the car (stupid trivial stuf...like missing stickers for drivers side airbag....I knew the bitch was there, she wouldn't shutup the whole time I was dating her!! What did I need stickers for?)
--Clay
I think that you have a slanted view of unions. Unions do help workers. How many of your co-workers pull the weight you think they should? I come from a coal mining family, a union job is much better than that from a truck mine.
Sure, unions have downsides just like any work enviroment. But, with a union you have some concrete asurance that you can control your work enviroment. (Who can say that tech workers won't be as numerous as mine workers in the future?)
Support unions, soon the person three blocks over will do the same thing as you; cheaper! Largely, I support unions. The Heads of unions do underhanded things, which is why a union head should be an plain worker. But, damnit workers need corperate representantion.
Sorry, for the rant. My father is a coal miner and I know that for a common worker you can be replaced, with common labor, without reason . In 20 years IT workers will have much the same job. That of a common worker.
"Drug related crime" is a misnomer, "prohibition related crime" is the more accurate and correct phrase.
So does Mandrakesoft which seems to be growing extremely fast... in silence!
It's only reasonable to use "irregardless" as a one-word synonym of "somewhat conscientious." It's logical, and after all English is nothing if not adaptable. As for me, even though I sometimes ignore correct usage, at least I always write irregardless of semantic meaning.
I don't get what you don't get. They are LOSING money hand over fist. Now maybe they only lost a wee bit more than they anticipate, but companies simply cannot keep on losing money. In other words, the accuracy of these _public_ predictionals are not necessarily terribly relevant, there are other more important factors that you're ignoring. Such as, they also predicted that they're not going to be profitable till October 2002, 9 months later than what they first declared. This means that they may very well run out of cash before that point. The situation might well demand that they cut staff to even survive. What's more, they're predicting that their revenues may actually fall.
Without going into the long form (which would require me to review the thinking that went into such decisions and that would, alas, make my brain hurt), this is precisely why my finance prof said that nobody sane loaned tech companies money.
This doesn't, of course, mean that loans don't happen. In part, loans can happen as an interim measure where equity financing is expected (i.e., as in your company, the liability is going to transform from debt to equity).
There are certain businesses where it makes more sense to have a debt load than an equity load and certain businesses where it's the other way.
It is generally a better option, at least in tech, to finance capital through equity rather than through debt. This is why the venture capitalists have been getting rich off the tech boom and the banks haven't.
_Deirdre
In Raymond's case, his Libertarian dogma led him to pronounce that open source would make tremendous amounts of money and be a fabulous success, although as far as anyone can tell, Raymond has never been involved with creating an actual business plan, successful or otherwise. There was no business model behind his pronouncement, only the zeal of the religious devotee. Because the open source movement's value claims were snake oil, we are now left looking at the fading remnants of the Linux bubble.
In the message you quoted, Raymond states,
This is a question that a lot of us will be facing as open source sweeps the technology landscape. Money follows where value leads, and the mainstream business and finance world is seeing increasing value in our tribe of scruffy hackers.
If that's not embarassing now, I don't know what is. Open source has turned out to be marginal and only rarely even slightly profitable. The revolution will not be televised, because there is no revolution.
Tim
Man, this discussion makes me feel like a new-comer to Slashdot. I only have a four-digit ID in the midst of a three-digit conversation. I always have to grin a little when someone referes to a id of 60,000 as "low."
/. has going for it is the lack of a product (tell that to etoys and Amazon). It is damn cheap to come up with stories that will get hundred of thousands of hits a day (especially when fools like us send them in). Not only that, but the hits are coming from a very targetted audience (one that has quite a bit of money at that).
It should also be noted that Slashdot had been around for a while before the Andover buyout, and was making money. Granted the money was coming from advertising (which is not making the money it once did on the Internet), but it had an established method of making money.
The other thing that
Very low overhead. The servers and bandwidth probably cost a little, but other than that... (I mean, we all know that CmdrTaco sits at home and eats peanut butter and Ramin).
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
> Sorry man, but a bunch of geeks whining is not interesting. Trolls get variations of those four topics on the front page every day at kuro5hin.
Yeah. I sometimes check kuro5hin and read the comments. It is mostly ridiculous contentless mojo-whoring / self-satisfaction / mutual dick-sucking
Btw, you missed the (paraphrased)
5. I have a gun, and love it. But what can I use it for ?
6. Since last year, I got one year older, but still can't get laid. Am I homosexual ?
7. I am white, male, healthy, I never had a baby and my parent gives me money every month. Here is my position on abortion.
Kuro5hin is deadly ridiculous. If they had Anonymous Cowards, the quality would probably be better.
Cheers,
--fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
Not once has a popular website been bought out by a big corporation without losing its soul, and not once has a corporation managed such a site successfully without losing its shirt.
Slashdot? We just haven't seen the end of the road, yet. But it's coming.
It's the classic problem of vertical consolidation in the industry: VaLinux makes the hardware that people run when reading VaLinux's web content (via Andover). They control each stage of the production, and they ought to be able to do so financially successfully, right?
Wrong.
The disparate parts of VaLinux's farflung online empire were never well-suited to furthering VaLinux's corporate goals. VaLinux was and probably always will be a company that builds expensive linux machines for elite linux users (unlike Dell and other companies targetting the low-end linux crowd). Slashdot, Freshmeat, and now Kuro5hin were never aimed at this same audience.
The average Slashdot reader can't be bothered to load OSDN's ads. What made VaLinux think they could convince those same users to buy VaLinux-branded hardware?
Either the Andover division is going down in flames with VaLinux, or it will be jettisoned.
I only wish I could see the smirk melting from ESR's face. What's his portfolio worth now?
Read the rest of this comment...
I'm sorry guys...I've been getting Open Magazine for free even though I'm not in a position to actually buy any of the advertiser's products.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
[1] A parody of several things, including a former sign that had the VA logo and "Got love?"
VA Stock IPO high value: ~$274
ESR value at high: ~$40,000,000
VA Linux Today's close: $7.25
ESR value today: ~$40,000,000*7.25/274 = ~$1,058,000
Where is the "priceless" line?
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
When ever there is a new type of business there is the feel about stage where companies try to feel around and find thier place in the industry. The OSS business is just in it's infancy. Let us hope in the next year or so it will find itself.
Doubled it's revenue but widened it loss. It's like having a housekeeper without have a paycheck. Eventually the money will run out.
"We're tired of all those Microsoft developers shoving their Win-Ho's in our face."
"I've never understood what keeps compaq and dell afloat - their stuff is not as cheap or as good as generic clone hardware."
A few things:
1- Standardization: I can buy big OEM servers year after year and little actually changes. This makes all aspects of physical server management easier. For example, by ordering two-hundred servers from the same line over the course of two years, little parts here and there will change, but overall the design stays the same. This makes things like quick part replacements quick and easy. It also makes planning for rack utilization easier if I know exactly how big all the boxes I will use in the next year will be.
2- Vendor support. If I have a big problem with a Compaq/Dell box, I can pay them to come deal with it, and chances are that one way or another I can get someone who knows the hardware in and out. Good luck doing that with a clone box.
Dude, Can you clue me in on how you can embed knives into your signature. I've never seen one of these clever signatures, but it sounds like just about the coolest thing that could possibly be done with html.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
Here. In terms of code, this is how a start up runs:
if (Money Out > Money In && Stupid_Venture_Capitalists == 0)
decrease_money_out();
else
buy_superbowl_ads();
What did you eat today? http://www.atetoday.com/
Not deadly - extremely alive!
Sniff - I miss the inchfan.
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
I can see both sides of this one. And I agree that American unionism, as currently practiced, is quite incompatible with the 'geek cowboy' culture that keeps the computers running. But what if a union was more like a guild? Among other things, it could promise employers that when you hire an (apprentice|journeyman|master) you get a certain level of knowledge. This is similar to the idea of 'certification', except I don't think certification should be controlled by a company like Red Hat, but rather by a body of professionals.
Ah, that's the concept I'm groping for. I don't want sysadmins etc. to become blue-collar union members, but I'd like us to become professionals, and currently we're not. And given the nature of our work and personalities, we don't need some age-encrusted authority 'certifying' us for knowing Cobol/CICS. We need a new organizational structure, properly adapted to the internet age.
Why aren't we professionals now? Well, professionals are people who took an oath in order to assume their current status. Medical doctors take the hippocratic oath, and it's at least controversial when a doctor administers a lethal injection. When a sysadmin is asked by management to violate a user's privacy, he can't say "I took an oath not to do that. I'd be expelled from the worldwide league of sysadmins." But I kind of wish he could.
I'd really like to see a VA Linux box that can "smoke" a fully loaded E10k. What were those TPC benchmark values again?
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Heh heh.... I work for a company that is involved with union shop Worker's comp claims... You should see these things spike the Friday before deer season -- EVERYONE has a back problem...
I was just watching CNBC and according to the moron doing the reporting "Linux...the popular computer program that many programmers are happy with" is down 30% in trading today due to job cuts and organizational changes.
Does anyone know where I can dump all these shares of Linux I have clogging my portfolio?
Says it all. This is FUNNY SHIT morons. A troll is someone trying to provoke angry responses through posting things that are sure to do it.
Christ, I swear some of you should have your accounts revoked so you can't moderate like this again anytime soon. :P
OK just 25% of John Katz will do it too.
There is one problem with your logic. What does the company receive from selling stock? That's right: Cash (technically, the stock could be issued for anything, such as the services of a new CEO, which isn't a tangible asset). What's cash? An asset. The value of a share is thus (assuming all shares are common; preferred changes a few things): (assets - liabilities) / numberOfShares.
Assuming that the new shares are issued at the market value of the company at the date of offering, then there is no decrease in per-share values.
However, the price of the offering shares is rarely the market price of the existing shares, because the price is fixed some weeks before, in the SEC filing. However, the share prices tend to congregate very quickly.
This is obviously an oversimplification, but it is fundamentally true.
Jon Katz I hope... please oh please oh please....
Especially when cutting off one's employees at the kneecaps is involved. It's about survival, man!
sulli
RTFJ.
Is Slashdot, or the other cool websites Andover bought, being affected by this?
I'll give it a try. Bless you.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
On a serious note....
.com pool of ca$h that have been sustaining a lot of companies for a while now.
/. still exists? Maybe this is a better question for Ask Slashdot, but I figure I'd post it here. If VA is laying off 25%, then the demise of the .coms is coming closer to home, and I'm wondering how this will affect /. and it's users.
/. on the side like in the old days? Will /. be immune to the .com deaths? I would have thought so, simply because of it's popularity, but if VA is cutting back, the the possibility exists. I wonder if the /. owners have thought that far ahead :)
Slashdot is owned by anover^Wva^Wwhoever, and it's owners (*wave* to taco and hemos) are paid from the
So what happens when that money runs out? Will
Will you guys (taco, hemos, cowboyneil, etc) continue on and try to scrape by with what you can get from t-shirts and banner ads, or will you go back to having a "real job" and doing
yeah. this is a service company where the employees services are sold for profit. therefore they will have less employees to make more profit. good one.
Who cares that some linux compnay goes under. Linux is free!
And I don't think this was finance droids. Most likely this was greedy CEO and board members making sure their stock is worth shit by the time they can cash out. That's what it usually is.
I'm going to go short VA linux.
Take this personaility test.
I would guess that most of it would be looking at future sales. Most companies keep track of their orders and also have forcasters looking at the industry. I am guessing that their orders were down significantly, and their forcasters were saying that it isn't going to get any better soon. Also, if they are like everyone else in this industry they have way to much inventory for the demand that is out there. I really doubt that this will effect Slashdot as I am guessing that page views are not down, just hardware sales. I think that Slashdot is probably pretty self-sufficient.
This really isn't a finance thing, more of a 'it does us no good to make a million of these things if we are only going to sell 10'.
You have to love a stock whose performance doesn't need a log chart to convey rate of change!
LNUX Or even better: CMGI
n3bulous
"The area of penetration will no doubt be sensitive." ~ Spock
All this time I thought lay-offs were a form of "dot-com puberty" .... as in, your dot-com is in a little league until you survive the perils of puberty.
... yet. Alternatively, it has passed the puberty stage, but just was simply a eunuch, and thus infallable (in the Survivor theme, was immune ...)
Surprisingly, lay-offs are also a part of mid-life-crisis. as in the automakers, Nortel, etc.
By inference, Microsoft has not hit puberty
gus.
To play with the big dogs, you have to pee in the long grass.
.. if only.
It seems like VA Linux got into this whole concept that supporting open source in any form was a good thing, but it seems like they've really overstretched their resources. Slashdot, Freshmeat, SourceForge, etc, all seem like great things but none of them seem to be in any way significanlty profitable concepts.
I think VA had it's heart in the right place trying to be a one stop open source shop, but this may have a nasty side effect. What happens if they go down? What happens to all of these resources? In the long run they may end up doing more harm than good by dragging down a lot of the momentum behind open source with them.
I have it on good authority that VA is implementing it's 25% reduction is staff size by amputating all employee's legs at the kneecap. I'd hate to see what happens when they reduce head count.
yes. this is slashdot, so no nitpicking grammar, but this just sucks sucks sucks. it's sloppy.
literally (ltr--l) adv.
1.In a literal manner; word for word: translated the Greek passage literally.
2.Abbr. lit. In a literal or strict sense: Don't take my remarks literally.
3.Usage Problem.
a.Really; actually: "There are people in the world who literally do not know how to boil water" (Craig Claiborne).
b.Used as an intensive before a figurative expression.
Usage Note: For more than a hundred years, critics have remarked on the incoherency of using literally in a way that suggests the exact opposite of its primary sense of "in a manner that accords with the literal sense of the words." In 1926, for example, H.W. Fowler cited the example "The 300,000 Unionists . . . will be literally thrown to the wolves." The practice does not stem from a change in the meaning of literally itselfif it did, the word would long since have come to mean "virtually" or "figuratively"but from a natural tendency to use the word as a general intensive meaning "without exaggeration," as in They had literally no help from the government on the project, where no contrast with the figurative sense of the words is intended.
This looser use of the word literally does not usually create problems, but it can lead to an inadvertently comic effect when the word is used together with an idiomatic expression that has its source in a frozen figure of speech, such as in I literally died laughing.
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1) A single copy of Solaris scales almost linearly from 1 CPU to 64. Linux doesn't. I'd like to congratulate the admin who runs 16 4 CPU Linux boxes instead of 1 64 CPU Sun box for being a masochist when it comes to multiplying his administrative overhead by 16.
2) Solaris has clustering too. In particular, I've seen the recently released 3.0 SunCluster software do scalable apache really beautifully, and scales over multiple nodes. Let's see, going with the current supported limit (supported means Sun will troubleshoot your problems; unsupported doesn't mean it won't work) of 4 that means a total of 256 CPUs serving your webpages etc. And only have to manage 4 system images, instead of 64 or more. And of course the next generation servers will support nearly twice as many CPU's and the OS will still scale pretty much linearly. So tell me again, Mr. Troll, how VA Linux smokes Sun's "best boxes".
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Pretty good troll. You should have put in something about, say, a VA box beating an SP/2 as well.
(jfb)
To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.
One of the dangers of working for a publiclly traded company I'd say. When in doubt start your own company. It may be more work and more risks but you never get fired. Of course this only works if you can sell yourself and your product well. :)
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Read it here: http://www.fuckedcompany.com/extras/valinuxemail.c fm
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
You're going to have to throw some of these back -- you're over the limit.
(jfb)
To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.
I totally agree with this. One summer when I was still in high school I worked as a janitor for a different school. It was amazing working there. First off, every day they would push me to join the union. No way I was going to give up that much money for a union I would never use, I was only there for the summer. The other thing was the fact that they gave me shit for doing to MUCH work. I was constantly told to slow down. They would tell me that there was no need to work that hard, and I don't have to worry about getting fired... if I join the union.
--
Free Mac Mini
You are comparing Mandrake soft to the correct thing.. That being both are silent, and quite possibly deadly. Can you guess what I'm talking about?
A ninja?
Did anyone notice that the VA Liux hardware is a bit more expensive than comparable IBM or Dell gear? I do understand that VA probably understands Linux better than Dell (Dell shipped floppies with windoze drivers in their "Linux server" box, gee).
...)0
Also, VA Linux workstation line is horrible. There is no middle ground in it. You can either buy an underpowered workstation based on a notoriously underpowered Intels810e chipset or buy a big ugly SMP box. But most people would like something in between. (Eg a P3 or Athlon box with PC133Mhz RAM, decent motherboard, reasonable price, etc
" ...and figured that the most this fellow would do would be to waste a lot of his time, and that of anyone else who decided to help."
hahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!! you are prophetic.
::I will not moderate my opinions for your stinking karma
So long, Katz! ;>
Right. This is why Sun should just acquire VA and spin off all the cruft. Goes nicely with their cobalt acquisition, and it would harness the VA linux expertise as well as slapping a well known brand on it that businesses could "trust" to build a system.
So, what's "cruft" under that plan? Most everything cool, is the problem; OSDN would almost certainly go. And the thing is, I don't know if it can survive as a corporate entity without a benevolent behemoth sponsor (personally i think ibm would be better for that than sun). Maybe it should reform as a non-profit and charge a minimal hosting fee from the project coordinators? That would get rid of the script kiddies real quick!
go there tonight and post your review.
I also heard of a good gyro place on Lafayette, north of 101, south of 237.
There are a lot of 'hole in the wall' type places there, but unfortunatly I do not know the name.
can't say i really care. but i've never made such a bad investment.
VA Linux's buisness plan seemed to be
"we have linux in our name, we'll sell... uhhh um.... linux boxes!"
-Jon
Streamripper
this is my sig.
My ass. I've seen unions in action in the auto industry. There's a reason you really don't want a Pontiac built on a Friday afternoon, and that reason is the union.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Who should be pink-slipped? ( ) CmdrTaco ( ) Hemos ( ) Timothy ( ) CowboyNeal
Certainly this poll (as with most polls) is flawed. Only one choice? Axe the lot of them. Put in their place a hunk of code which takes stories off of The Onion instead. At least when you're reading those you KNOW they're bullshit.
They are a threat to free speech and must be silenced! - Andrea Chen
Fish! LipHo
Or the trolls might pool their money and buy it... *shudder*
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Just look at the recent debate against that new cipher thing (earlyer today), or that dudes ALPINE p2p thing, most people here really injoy taking other peoples ideas apart.
btw: i'm sure VA is going to ditch intire "sites" not staff, probably the less successfull andover sites, freshmeat and slashdot will be fine, at least i hope so.
-Jon
Streamripper
this is my sig.
So far the best place is on S. Bascom near the Pruneyard; I forget the name.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Although it amuses me to think of all the /. readers trying to figure out what RRSP stands for ("Must be some kind of UPS scheme" -- "Maybe it's got something to do with firewalling"), I'll let you Americans in on this thing - RRSP = 401k (sort of).
First, I really put very little thought into writing proper English on slashdot. I don't proof read for it here. The only thing I care about is whether or not I'm conveying my message clearly. When the grammar is so poor as to make that difficult, then I care.
Second, you, and the vast majority of other users, know exactly what I meant.
Third, irregardless is a word, albeit a colloqial and not entirely accepted word. Please refer to Merriam-Webster's dictionary if you do not believe me. That is, incidentally, a little more than just "any" online dictionary, even if it is not quite OED. If you're reading slashdot, you're clearly more than willing and capable of reading broken english, never mind broken thought processes.
Fourth, I am more than capable of writing proper english when I so desire.
Fifth, if you're going to be a grammar nazi, please do yourself a favor and learn to spell grammar properly. Otherwise, the egg ends up on your face, not on your victim's face. Your comment is riddled with other flaws too. For instance, "meant" is the past participle and past tense of "mean", it simply does not fit in that sentence of yours.
QED
Oh fearless keepers of the open source flame, where art thost to do!
"No son it doesn't matter whether you win or lose just how drunk you get" ---Homer
If we start a newsgroup to discuss this issue now, perhaps we can avoid the possibility of /. having to close its doors. I've been tossing out a few ideas left and right, on other stories and threads here, but that means nothing if there isn't enough intelligent discussion to seperate the good ideas from the crap. Come on! Prepare for an Andover meltdown now, and perhaps we can keep the best parts of their sites still up, even if VA Linux keels over.
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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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email: proprietary becomes free, org to com
Good thing: There's a haystack right below me!
Bad thing; It's got a pitchfork in it!
-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!
-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!
No, tim, these are not the big leagues. I would call, oh, IBM announcing a writeoff of a failed venture a beanball. Rambus was/is a beanball for Intel. MS Bob was a beanball for Microsoft. These would be isolated incidents for otherwise successful (profitable) companies. I'd say VA Linux has had nothing but beanballs even since that record-breaking IPO.
Look at this story for the definition of spin, folks. Did VA Linux double their revenues last quarter? Absolutely. But at what cost? Their losses increased at almost exactly the same rate as their revenue -- within 5-10%. Sweet deal, huh? Thank god I don't own their stock.
I'm sorry. I know how bitter I've come off sounding. I just get annoyed when someone with an obvious vested interest in the company tries to put a happy face on things when he also has a committment to journalistic integrity. Can't be fair? Don't post it, or go into PR. (This all springs from a couple failed start-ups following a career in journalism. Figures, huh?)
t.a.f.
obviously, I make the assumption that slashdot has an obligation to journalistic ethics. if you choose to argue with me, and I hope you will, please don't bother with that particular point, since I firmly believe that rob & co. qualify as journalists (and consider themselves as such when it suits them).
Hi, I'm a pretentious cock who will make some gay comment about ignoring AC posts here.
I have it on good authority that VA is implementing it's 25% reduction is staff size by amputating all employee's legs at the kneecap.
None of these internet companys are making any money... thousands of examples... but they'll give me a job!
Amazon.com should really form a union as well, i've heard they had dangerous staples in the packaging that is really harming the employees working environment. I also heard one time people started to become afraid to touch door knobs because of static electricity shocks.
Glad i don't work in those harmfull environments
Can you point us to some of this misinformation? I'm wondering why I haven't seen it mentioned here... If propaganda against Linux hits the fan, the shit hits it *here*, accordingly. It's as consistent as an equation.
... If they fail with their endeavour, it's a failure on them.
SUN has released Staroffice's source code, given their JAVA interpreter away, etc. SGI is working on a journaling file system that will make Linux all the more enterprise ready, and they promote the MIPS port of Linux (mind you, as much as possible.) With all these kind actions toward Linux, I find it hard to believe either company would try to discredit Linux.
"I'm sad to see VA go." ?? Where has it been said they're leaving? A 25 percent staff cut == Company end? Or are you just concluding that's the case due to it's stock price? Furthermore, if VA is leaving, it is indeed their fault; They work on the embodiment of a very unique product that stands far apart from other UNIX implementations
mwtr / THIS SIG HAS BEEN PRAYED OVER AND MAY BE USED AS A POINT OF CONTACT (ACTS 19:12)
First, the traditional work environment does allow for lay offs. Layoffs are expected whenever the numbers are not working out, especially when their are negative cash flows. In fact, most shareholders would consider management remiss in their duty if they did not.
Second, VA Linux is not profitable and they have negative cash flows. Put bluntly, the shareholders money is paying for virtually all of the employees salaries. Irregardless of how much cash or assets they currently have on hand, they are finite. They depend on the shareholder, if they neglect them they will die.
Third, unions cannot stop this from happening. These kinds of cuts are not about mere profitability, it's about survival.
Fourth, the IT industry needs unions like it needs a bullet in the head. Unions have been shown to slow companies down, reduce customer service, innovation, etc. time and time again. Although there are a few rare exceptions, these are mostly with neutered unions, in very friendly environments.
When VA first went "underwater", I posted a
"Ask Slashdot" when we were going to get the "Meditations on Sudden Poverty" essay.
Too bad they never print any *interesting* Ask Slashdots...
expect
    failure();
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
While it's not appropriate for me to comment on too many things, I wanted to address concerns about SourceForge.net and SourceForge onsite (SFOS). So basically, during the , uh, shuffle, VA has had to decide where people will be cut and which areas of thebusiness will be concentrated on.
One of those areas is SourceForge and it's sister group, SFOS. SF and SFOS is super important to the future of VA from a bunch of angles. Dan Bressler, the product manager will be posting a reply to this note giving a brain dump on what's going on within. In short, SF has headcount and budget and we are looking to add staff on both teams. So that's the short post. Dan will post a more in depth piece. I wanted to get a place holder in for those who care about SF.
I'll answer other questions if I can, but for many questions, the answer can only legitimately be given by Pat Fossenier, our investor relations person.
Chris DiBona
Linux Community Evangelist, VA Linux Systems
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
Pres, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
On the technical side, if Andover bites it, /. would need bandwidth. Therefore I propose distributed slashdot; everyone runs a local mysql database and httpd server and as new stories and comments come 'online' they are passed betwixed databases (using some sort of authentication of course) and the user reads it from the local httpd server. For those that don't have xDSL or cable, we would need a CPAN-like redirector that picks the closest slash-server. This way slashdot could be supported by the community and wouldn't suffer for bandwidth.
or am I crazy?
This sounds a lot like the usenet...
www.rdex.net
I know! Why not fire Jon Katz?!? He's a lazy no-good piece-of-shit dead weight anyway! Just tell everyone that if they can't right code to pack their shit and shove off!
Right. I'm sure that getting rid of Malda's personal masseuse really hurts the bottom line.
Look, start-ups have a nasty tendancy to hit a point where they're suddenly overstaffed. It takes a lot of people to get things going, but there comes a point when things are up and running. Suddenly, the business finds that it can operate just fine with less staff -- the intranet is set up, the docs are written and just need small changes, the server farm is chugging away just dandy...
It's not fair or pretty, but it's true. Besides, what good will it do anyone if VA Linux doesn't trim their fat? It's just stupid business, especially in a day where computer vendors have to struggle to stay alive (this isn't the market of 2-3 years ago).
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Unions are like RRSP's you don't know you need them until it's too late.
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No the game never ends when your whole world depends
crazy dynamite monkey
Why isn't there a story on fuckedcompany.com about this yet?
MOVE 'ZIG'.
... "innovators" that are clearly stealing away VA's market with misinformation. VA is the first real innovator and brought about many great products and benefits to linux back in the days of "VA Research". Today VA provides fully scalable systems that literally smoke the best Sun and SGI systems. To be anyone else and say you're as good or better than VA is total BS.
I'm sad to see VA go, but it's not their fault, its the fault of money-hungry closed source companies that are scared of competition.
I was a blue collar worker once myself (dishwasher at a nursing home). The union? Teamsters. What did they do for me? Rape my wages, that was all, thanks. (I was a student part time worker, they took out full time dues until we got a new steward who was willing to fight the system).
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Take a look at this. VA's stock price seems to very closly follow that of Redhat's.
/me manually puts bullet in head.
Vertical consolidation is a great move for any company looking to increase their profitability, but in VA's case it wasn't even really vertical consolidation, it was, well, "diagonal" consolidation if anything.
It seemed at though they were attempting to go for prestige and "kudos" rather than a sound business model. They had absolutely no need to buy Andover - the two companies were in totally different businesses where the only tenuous link was Linux.
The trouble is is that VA is a hardware company at the end of the day. And their selling point was their Linux expertise. But who were they selling to? The geek market is more likely to be making their own computers and installing their own distros. The large corporate market is likely to have their own staff that can deal with installing and configuring Linux.
This left the dotcom companies as their target market. And given the fickle nature of the dotcom "revolution" this was always going to be risky. The growth period in internet companies is over, and VA are left with a smaller new market, and hence less potential revenue.
Don't blame consolidation, blame a risky business plan. The reason we're seeing so many cuts is that they're attempting to cutback now and avoid even bigger cuts later. It wouldn't suprise me if they did try and sell of OSDN and move back to their core business.
Jon Erikson, IT guru
- of three articles a day on Napster and P2P
- of the latest stupid way to cram linux into something better suited to be a toaster oven than a computer
- of three articles a day on why Open Source is the answer to the universe (we know it is already!)
- of the same article posted three times in the same day
- of links to 5 gigabyte video files
- of lists of things that people are tired of
- of goatsex
- of the lack of editorial review and a spell checker
- of people saying Athalon instead of Athlon and saying 'then' when they mean the comparitive 'than'
- of ten stories a day on some new stupid patent and why the government is collapsing next week because of stupid patents (we know already!)
- of clever signatures.
I'd like to see more ofSomeone you trust is one of us.
Wouldn't it have anything to do with that ?
É que os desafinados também têm um coração
pack err up...We are headed back to the garages and basements...Linux and the financial world dont seem to to be able to cut a deal....Hell - Linus and the boys were never looking to make a buck, and the Kernel seems to be progressing just fine...I dont think the Gimp folks were counting their stock shares when they first typed "vi gimp.c" --- yall go back to your day jobs working on boring corporate WinHacks and save that creative stuff for the evenings and weekends...And the rest of us will be waiting with a cold beer and a few kudos when you visit our LUGS.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
We don't need
-Jon Katz
-Anonymous Cowards
-Trolls
Err, wait. That's about 80% of slashdot...
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Check out my blackbox styles
The good news: I sold my 100 shares of VA Linux the second day it was traded
The bad news: I held on to the other 40
That's right in the TiVo/Palm/Transmeta stomping grounds. If anyone has further info, I'd appreciate it. _Deirdre
Who should be pink-slipped? ( ) CmdrTaco ( ) Hemos ( ) Timothy ( ) CowboyNeal
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
I like that list, except for possibly:
Discussions on why Jarjar sucked
Definitely beating a deal horse there... But, there's more modification to the current content:
And on the positive side:
Heck, maybe it's even time to look over at Kuro5hin.org and see how things are done there to produce better conversations. No, not the article voting system - I'm talking about the articles themselves, the tone they are written in, and how the content is normally designed to create meaningfull discussion. (Of course, the fact the community it's self acts as a filter helps.) They don't get paid to write the stuff, and the quality is a great deal higher at times, and definitely contributes to meaningful discussion.
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
For instance, Rob Malda will have to hold on to that VAIO for a year now, instead of his planned six months.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Sourceforge itself isn't in a very good state right now, the statistics are broken, cvs breaks often, shell breaks often, the compile farm just went back online, the list goes on.
I have a feeling its turned into the place where script kiddies can get a shell account to play around with, all they have to do is make up a project name, and set it's state to pre-alpha, or planning (as are a huge portion of the sourceforge projects)
We all wanted to stock market to sober up, but i don't think we relized how and where we would feel it. Sourceforge IMIO (i=ignorant) was a reaction to the OpenSource(tm) hype of 99/00, it has absolutly no way of making money, and must cost a decent amount to run.
Another site that might not make it till the end of the year is live365.com, they bassicly give anyone T3 bandwidth to anyone who wants to stream there mp3s. right now they seem to be scabbleing to make money, i don't think it's going to work out.
-Jon
Streamripper
this is my sig.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
They are most likely cutting employees in response to the massive slowdown in growth for the IT industry. VA, like many other companies (Sun, Cisco) overdid it as they ramped up for the new economy, and now that the new economy has suddenly been smacked with the reality stick and fallen apart, all the companies that hired people for the new economy realize that those people are never going to be needed, and are letting those people go.
The economy is hurting everybody. I've been through 3 rounds of layoffs and the Linux company I work for. It is tough on the soul, even if you make the cut.
Republicans are Nazis. LetsRiot!
does anyone remember this ESR post? How he pompously declared that, now that VA Linux had gone IPO at a huge value he was absurdly rich. At least about 30 million dollars. While that isn't absurd in the traditional sense, it's a ludicrous amount of money for such a pompous, talent less, wanker. ESR isn't a 'hacker' he's a hack. Of course, based on his inane randite ideology the more money you had the more 'valuable' of a person you are. Look here:
Besides, it wouldn't be fair to dissemble. I serve a community. I'm wealthy today because my efforts to spread the idea of open source on behalf of that community helped galvanize the business world, and earned the respect and the trust of a lot of hackers. Larry thought that respect was an asset worth shelling out 150,000 shares of VA for.
Right, and now that 150,000 shares is worth just a tiny bit over a million, and hopefully going less. Assuming he didn't flip the stocks at the fist opportunity. Which I guess was June. But oh well. The sooner that idiot leaves the public eye, the better.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
So, as a responsible and long-time member of the Slashdot community, I feel it is my duty to open nominations for which of the Slashdotters should be going -- voted off the island, if you would. I figure they owe VA one sacrifice after they issue a pink slip to the obvious choice (coughKatzcough).
I would like to place my vote for jamie, because he's got the same name as my ex-girlfriend (who dumped me rather painfully, I might add). That'll teach ya.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I didn't say to copy the content. In no way do I contend that needs to be done. I don't COMPLETELY agree with your opinon of what ends up on Kuro5hin, but, it does end up redundant bitching at times.
What I meant was, the stories that DO go up there normally are designed to inspire intelligent discussion, and often do! /. could use a lot more of stories designed do the same thing. Looking at how those stories create discussion, and the tone of how they are written could give good insight into what could change to produce more positive results on /. I don't want /. to be Kuro5hin, and I don't want Kuro5hin to be /. If I did, I'd be reading one or the other, and not bothering to express my opinion on the other one ;-)
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
So VA Linux doubled its revenue, but it missed its loss projects by $.02/share. This necessitates a 25% cut. Can someone explain why? I've never understood the workings of finance-droids.
Cool - nice to see you on here trying to put those who wonder in the know! But, this comment presents a problem:
Anyway, hope this clears up any concern.
Man, you must be kidding. Does that clear up the idea that SourceForge is going to loose a lot of people in the short term (IE, next 3-6 months)? Yep. Does that clear up the idea that in the longer term (1 - 2 years) SourceForge is going to have serious problem? Nope. I like the idea of SourceForge and all, but, it's still hard to see where all of this outlay is really getting VA it's money back. Sure, some of the projects get a fairly direct return back to VA when even nearly completed. But, take a look at the contents of SourceForge - very little of it really seems to apply. I mean, take a look at all those projects listed - a good number are half-ass thought out projects that are going to fail within the first two months because the creator of the project can't find people to help out or just plain old can develop the idea they came up with. Heck if I get another offer to join so-and-so's VB game project, complete with a link to a SourceForge project, I'm going to SHOOT SOMEONE! (Especially when I look, and there's not even a 'design' behind the game yet. *SIGH*)
It's hard to see where that much, well... random crap that SourceForge is having to support in terms of bandwidth, storage, and support requests really do much to contribute to VA's business. I'd probably have more faith in it if there was an approval process or something - IE, users submit a written request for the privilage of hosting a project on SourceForge. Something that makes them stop and think about what they are doing, instead of letting SourceForge become the GeoCities of Open Source projects. For every good project like CrystalSpace3D, there's now 3 projects in the 'pre-alpha' stage with no chance of getting any farther.
Anyway - I don't mean to sound like a troll or flamer who's saying it can't ever work, etc. Just pointing out what I've been seeing and have been heavily concerned about on SourceForge. On the flipside of those concerns, I think it's great that SourceForge exists, and provides access to a collaborative environment for Open Source developers with a minimum of hastle!
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
Gotta love the short-term requirements of investors. Oh no! The company lost 7% more this quarter than the analysts said they would! They better cut jobs!
Wow! This comes as quite a shocker. A company that tried to sell a 20 year old operating system is slowly dropping off the face of the planet. What a shame. Linus, the 70s called...they want their operating system back.
How long before they sell off SlashDot? Imagine SlashDot owned e.g. by AOL-TimeWarner. Or by kuro5hin.
and don't let the stress of possibly being laid off in a recession get to you, I'm facing that too, at my dot.com, and I'm keeping a level head about me.
Now, where did I put the beer and bong?
I have to say, dude, that I would not like to be a "Community Evangelist" during a 25% downsizing. You might want to change it to "Marketing Manager", which is effectively what you are, and which doesn't look so glaringly like a waste of money when the bankers take a look at the outgoings a/c.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
...so that VA can sell more systems.
The problem is, anyone can sell those systems, including Dell and Micron. Red-hat really seems to have a better bussness model after all.
Amber Yuan 2k A.D
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
had to say it. ;)
Their servers look interesting, but I've heard of quality issues, and there is no way I'm going to buy one now, wondering if the company will outlast the warranty...
Yes, I'm having trouble deciding if you are being serious or not, but unions are not something to be trifled with.
If you are serious:
(Please, I'm not against all unions, but I am against them in the technology realm. Unions changed the face of the commercial realm and did things unheard of before their time.... but I'm not sure they're needed like they used to be.)
The tech industry does not have unions in any large manner because unions would quickly destroy several of the foundations the tech industry relies upon. The tech industry is based on knowlege and skill. If you don't know and/or you can't do, then you are not promoted (and possibly) fired. Every person who participates must be able to do what they claim. If a company has someone not performing, then the company needs to be able to fire them. Unions are many times able to keep that person in a position even though that person is hurting the organization around them.
Also, the wages and positions in the IT world are based on merit, not seniority. There are several places out there were 16-year-olds are on the board of directors making way more than I ever will. These (children?) are on the board because they deserve to be, they're smart, hard-working and good at what they do. I don't begrudge them that. A union would make it difficult to have such things happen. A tradational union would push to put a seniority system in place so that promotions and wages are based soley on how long you've been there, not your ability. In a fast paced, performance workplace this will damage the organization's ability to function, and therefore hurt it competatively.
In addition, the beaurocracy generated by an organized union often results in union leaders being paid 6-7 figure salaries. When these same people order their "minions" to strike it affects them in no way. Its not as if some worker puts down his lathe and says "That's not fair, let's walk boys!", that worker would suffer too, not so in current times.
Unions work okay for blue-collar situations, where seniority based systems can fairly accurately reflect the skills of the people in the system. For white-collar and tech situations these same systems would only rot the core of the business and eventually destroy that very company the workers are trying to work for.
If I were to be asked to join a union, or even support one I would say no. It might benefit in the short run, but never for the long one.
I'm willing to listen to *new* ideas for unions in the tech world, but I'd be a hard sell.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Pussy. Not only are you a marketing manager, you're attempting to pretend that you're not one because you think that "marketing" will make you unpopular. In other words, you're marketing yourself at the anti-marketing market. How sad is that?
For God's sake, man, if you're that ashamed of the perfectly honourable profession of marketing, don't do it. If you're not ashamed of what you do, be proud of it. Bizarrely, despite what the thirteen-year-olds (literally and mentally) post about "oh yeah, engineers rock, dude, marketing people are droids and they suck", some of us realise that companies go bust if they don't sell things, and that people who know what sells are useful. Your current .sig is approximately ten times lamer than "geek and proud of it".
-- the most controversial site on the Web
One of the problems with the IT industry is the absence of unions to protect the workers. This allows management to get away with abuses that would be impossible in traditional work environments.
I have it on good authority that VA is implementing it's 25% reduction is staff size by amputating all employee's legs at the kneecap. Clearly this is an abuse of the employer/employee relationship and we must do something about it.
The IT industry needs unions to prevent further incidents such as this. In the words of Joe Hill, "Don't weep for me boys, organize."
--Perdida
In other news, Bowie J. Poag, outspoken and self-appointed nemesis of VA Linux Systems spontaneously combusted immediately following 2.8 minutes of furious masturbation. The masturbation episode has been directly attributed to today's news regarding layoffs at VA Linux Systems.