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Eazel Tells All

Posted by michael on from the post-apocalypse dept.

Ur@eus writes: "We have just put up an interview at Linuxpower with some of the people at Eazel. This is the first interview they've done after the release of Nautilus 1.0 and their recent restructuring. So if you want to know more about Eazel and how they plan to move forward I think you will find this interview interesting."

10 of 48 comments (clear)

  1. What I'd Like to Know by mholve · · Score: 3
    Is when they plan on releasing binaries for the platforms that have vowed to include GNOME in the next release of their OSes - namely Sun Solaris and HP HP/UX...

    So far, only Redhat and Debian have releases available to them.

    This is a very visible time for both Eazel and GNOME, and they need to get on the ball. Especially since these new platforms can do a lot of good to those projects.

  2. Re:Very Sad by Skeezix · · Score: 3
    The economic slowdown has had a profound effect on a great many companies. I was layed off a couple of weeks ago at a company that a year ago was making a lot of sales and things were looking up. Economy slows down, sales go down, people get layed off--happens.

    As far as how Eazel will make money, you have to be creative and think outside the box a bit. The answer is corporate partnerships, services, support. I don't claim to have the inside scoop on what things Eazel is exploring behind the scenes, but a few things jump out readily:

    1. Customizations, enhancements, add-on components and feature requests funded by other companies. As the Gnome platform gains popularity there will be an increase in the need for third party products to integrate well with it. I can see Eazel writing custom views, components and services that integrate with Nautilus for third party vendors.

    2. Services. Read anything about .NET web services? Read the interview where it talks about Reef? The possibilities are endless here and it's hard to say where it will be 5 years down the road; it's a rapidly evolving paradigm. Not only can I see users paying for network delievered services, but I can see third party vendors paying Eazel for integration so that their service becomes part of the suite of services integrated with Nautilus.

    3. Support. With Gnome popularity rising rapidly there will be more and more demand for support and on-demand fixes and enhancements. Who better to do it than the companies (Ximian and Eazel) who employ some of the best Gnome hackers in the world?

    4. Actually selling the software. This one may come as a shock to some of you. Yes, you can sell free software. Red Hat and others have done it. Eazel could too. I could see Eazel selling, for example, a boxed set containing Nautilus (and perhaps the entire Gnome platform) along with a manual for newbies and perhaps gobs of extra stuff--backgrounds, Nautilus themes, icons, more emblems, viewers and components that work with Nautilus (Open Office, various media plugins, etc.), perhaps some extra media files like mp3s and .wavs for previewing in Nautilus.

    Anyway, just a few ideas that sprung to my head. The bright folks at Eazel no doubt have many more ideas being lined up right now...
    ----

    --
    Celebrate the finer things in life
  3. Re:Just a thought... by abelsson · · Score: 3
    I'd say it hits 1 (possibly),7,8,11,17,19,20 too.

    I just don't see any compelling reason to change from KDE 2 to Gnome/Natilus. The KDE desktop is clearly more advanced, and i can always keep the GTK+ libs installed to run usefull gtk programs. But Konqueror is clearly the killer app. It's somewhere between IE 4 and IE5 now, without the backing of the worlds largest software company. And that they've mananged to write a webbrowser that beats everything out there (for linux) without any webdeveloper support (how many people test their pages for konq. compability?) is just amazing.

    -henrik

  4. Worst is yet to come? by Matthew+Smith · · Score: 3
    Christian: As mentioned in the previous question you have yet to secure your third round of funding. How serious is this situation?

    Bart Decrem: Actually, we've only had one round of venture capital funding. But one thing is for sure: things are a lot different today than a year ago, when we closed our last round, or even a few months ago, when Ximian secured financing. The reality is, the US economy is headed into a recession, dot-coms are going out of business all around us, venture capital funds are taking severe beatings and Linux stocks are down a lot. So a year ago, investors were willing to bet on unproven but potentially huge future markets. Today, investors are a lot more risk averse[...]

    This is not exactly optimistic. It sounds as if they are wholly dependent on securing the next round of funding. Given the performance of linux stocks in recent months I'd say they are extremely unlikely to get any more money. Methinks they're doomed.
  5. Just a thought... by bLitzfeuer · · Score: 3

    It seems to me that Konqueror hits 2,3,4,5,6,13,15,16(SMB) and 18, of the Nautilus wish list. Mind you that this is without commercial backing (and with a clear conscience now that Qt has been GPL'd).

    Maybe eazel could write an IO slave for Konqueror that can access the eazel services, that could increase thier potential revenues, no?

  6. Hear Hear!! by chabotc · · Score: 4

    I'm afraid i mostly agree on this observation. Most of the new linux users seem altogether happy to slam every move a linux developer makes. Wether its the question if the 2.4 kernel can run embeded devices or on 65000 cpu's, mozilla not being standard enough, or to bloated cause of trying to folow all the standards, or now nautilus.

    And the odds are very big these are all people who will never contribute a single line of source code, or documentation, or help fellow linux users out. Obviously they just see open source as 'free software', and not as open source, as we come to know and love it.

    I think the most apropiate responce would be a old timer responce from the linux-kernel list
    "Don't talk, code"

    Show us in code what is the 'better' way, fix those bugs, add those features, trim the bloat, document and translate and be welcomed in the world of open source!

    None of the apps you love using today (enlightenment, gnome, kde, bind, wuftpd, apache etc) came into existance by hords of users complaining about bloatware and bugs, they came into existance because people disliked bloat and bugs and -did something about it-

    just my 2 cnts (Hfl)

    -- Chris Chabot
    "I dont suffer from insanity, i enjoy every minute of it!"

  7. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  8. Good old days by On+Lawn · · Score: 5

    Two years ago, we were happy about advances in Linux usability and technology. We were a happy band, encouraging and helpful.

    Now? Well we've grown out of the innocent outskirts and hit the big city. Screams of "this is bloated", "this sucks", "this doesn't work" and "this will never work, fall from the greasy windows of tall concrete buildings.

    Some from MS plants, some from idiots that want us to stop and look at them, and some jealous that they will never get true credit for something good.

    Its been a year since we noticed the change from real hackers to wannabe managers on slashdot. And in the confusion, I sit back like many unheard others that think 'I could use this' and 'this is actualy pretty cool'.

    So for anyone who is wondering if slashdot shows a cross section of the linux community, rest assured it doesn't. You are invited to join us and let the trolls stamp around in their own go-nowhere lives.


    ~^~~^~^^~~^

  9. Issues w/Nautilus and GNOME by mholve · · Score: 5
    Be sure to also read "GNOME 1.4 Release Candidate 1 available" over on the Gnotices site, and see all the issues that are arising because of Nautilus' inclusion in the next GNOME.

    There are a lot of issues that need to be addressed like instability, inability to compile on various platforms, bloat and other things.

    Be careful before you rush in to embrace it.

  10. Here's their business model by Carnage4Life · · Score: 5

    They plan to make money off of Eazel Online Storage and Eazel Software Catalog.

    Eazel Online Storage

    This is similar to the technology made popular by X-drive that allows users to create a virtual drive that actual exists on a remote server. The problem with this technology is that it is expensive for the service provider (hard drive space and bandwidth) and from what I've seen from the online file storage market is that a lot of them (e.g. X-drive) have given up on the consumer market because of economies of scale and will instead try to capture the business market. Online file storage seems to be at best a break-even part of teh business instead of one that will generate enough profits to cover the cost of software development.

    Eazel Software Catalog

    This seems similar to RedHat's download page, where one can obtain software from a web interface instead of via FTP. One hopes that they also plan to have something like RedHat's up2date or Debian's apt-get to distinguish themselves, if not then it isn't worth signing up for. Again, I don't see this as a great profit generator.