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Linuxcare/Turbolinux Merger Called Off
A reader submitted: "Just got a call from a friend who used to work for Linuxcare until about an hour ago. The merger with Turbolinux has been called off and there are heavy casualties at both companies. According to my friend, Linuxcare is now down to about 30 people." That's just hearsay - but LinuxGram has a confirmation story as well.
They're going to package up their turbotools as proprietary tools and try to sell it as software.
Their tools work, barely, for a specific distro version (and they haven't been right since 6.0.x). I can't see them making a business off of them.
Remember, these are the same people who thought they could make a business off of the TurboCluster "product" (ie, joke).
Say it ain't so!
No one is listening to the needs of their would-be customers. People at best are berated for not settling for the Linux solution that apes their existing solution. The industry climate is so contemptuous of the suits that could make it work, that the suits of ability and ambition go elsewhere. The best model hasn't been explored: PSO's working with free tools that bid on contracts. That sort of organization requires a strong sales force, not the "build it and they will come" naive faith that many linux service companies seem to have adopted. Also, add the failure to working with existing IT service companies.
No one sat down and did real market research before this all began. My suspicion is that a bunch of Linux fan-boys, bouyed by a ridiculous capital market, said "let's start a company!" And the rest is farce.
I know people have been saying "well, this proves that the support model for Linux is broken," but that's not really the case. The reality is that this is a hard time for most businesses, especially fledgling ones. I think Linuxcare will be just fine -- and the support model will prove profitable ultimately. That it's not raking in megabucks now is a reflection on the current state of the economy more than anything else.
Linuxcare was designed to be distribution-agnostic and I'm glad this will mean they'll be able to untie themselves from a single distro -- and back toward that independence. Overall, I think that's better for Linuxcare.
Oh, and kudos to Art Tyde for hanging in there, it can't have been fun.
Everyone here is blaming linux (you cant make money off of a free OS) or the merger plans (I want blue carpet, No I want RED) or a thousand other reasons, noone is looking at the obvious, a poor business plan. Support is a shakey business to begin with, and choosing to sell support for a product that 90% of the users are more qualified than your telephone support people is asking for financial ruin. Linux users know Linux. you have to. Granted there are some specifics that are supportable (how about a Squid proxy support desk, an apache support desk, a samba support desk. Actual linux support is really simple and anyone can deal with it, most of us need support for the add-on software that we use, and there is no worthwile support companies attacking. (Support php3+mysql+apache!)
It is flawed from the beginning, so the demise is not a suprise, and is not the fault of linux.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It is interesting that engineering feats are not necessarily good financially. Case and point is the underground (subways). The original London underground was a financial disaster. But subways are an integral part of many cities today.
Hopefully, Linux's business analogy will be more like the oil industry. There are lots of mom+pop operators until a "Rockefella" transforms it into an industry. Can anyone say "RedHatefella"?
To make it the most useful, get some of those business card CDs that fit in a wallet. That's what LinuxCare uses when they give them out. That way you are sure to always have it when you need it.
Both of these are good companies. TurboLinux does some very nice things on the server side of Linux.
LinuxCare does some great stuff on the support side. Their bootable rescue CD is EXCELLENT. Also, their hardware certification tests are nice. I based a lot of my decision to buy an IBM Thinkpad X20 on their certification and haven't regretted it one bit.
At LinuxWorld LinuxCare was showing some very nice remote management and monitoring systems they have, along with some interesting R&D work they were doing. I hope somehow they both make it...
The 2 camps (TurboCare vs. LinuxLinux) were in a deadlock, and neither side was budging....
How about Compu-global-turbo-linux-care?
It's sad, really. I hate it when a company lets its staff go because they can outsource tech support. Er, wait a minute...
A dingo ate my sig...
...that the layoffs would have been as high or higher had the merger gone through?
Glad I don't own stock in them...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The two may not look as if they're competing right now, but with Turbolinux setting it's sights in new directions (unbeknownst to Linuxcare) you just gotta wonder.
You said "We're the premier source for support on Linux."
As an active member of the South Florida Linux User Exchange, and several LUGs before that, allow to tell you : Bullshit!
Linux and all Open Source products have their premier source of support in the community. That's why it works so well for the rest of us. No contract, no fee, just trust and the love of the game. Do not disregard that kind of support just because your brain has been washed up by your paycheck provider.
Looking for a great online backup: Green Backup
We bundle business card size rescue CDs with some of the Red Hat Linux products in Europe - at least, we did so with Red Hat Linux 7 professional there, and I don't know that we've stopped.
Red Hat Linuxcare's biggest client? I doubt that - we have high-quality support up to 24/7 enterprise level and make money from it. Why would we waste money buying services when we have deeper knowledge of different aspects of Linux than Linuxcare, and good people to deal with it? We're the premier source for support on Linux.
Sorry, I meant for commercial and high-end support - for a normal user with a new user's needs, nothing beats participating in a LUG.
Now, if you increase the difficulty level a bit, LUGs become less resourceful and the commnunity of users using the same software become more important - but if you're a corporation and need your answers quickly, then the support we offer is a very valuable tool. E.g if your web servers are down or are having performance problems and it needs fixing now, our Stronghold and kernel teams are second to none.
Maureen O'Gara lost all creditability with me when she wrote the article about her interview with the Suse guy.
c -range=on&advquery=Maureen+O%27Gara&andorbox=OFF&a dvquery2=
It was completely lies...
Since then it has been removed from linuxgram but you can still see parts of it and other maureen o'gara articles on linuxtoday.com
http://linuxtoday.com/search.php3?negate=&news_sr
I have not read this slashdot article and I don't plan to. As far as I'm concerned Maureen O'Gara is lying scum and I have no reason to read anything she writes.
What do you mean that LinuxCare screwed a lot of people in the Linux Community? I don't remember reading anything about that. I was never impressed with their business plan but I always liked it when they used to host kernel traffic. Zack Brown still does it even though he doesn't work for them any more which is tremendously cool of him. And they have those boot CD's that people said were cool. But other than that I don't remember anyone getting screwed by them.
TurboLinux does have some proprietary software... I have never used it. They seem like an alright company. I heard good reviews about some of their software.
Also congratulations on having such a high user id. I notice that it is just a couple higher than the other Suse_guy who also replied to my original post. Both of them were created today aparently. Just to respond to my post. Forgive me for suspecting that you are not telling the full truth about why you two would feel strongly enough to create new logins just to respond to my post. I know that probably the one reason I would do something like that is if I worked for LinuxGram. If you don't work for LinuxGram then please forgive me for thinking something bad about you. Hanging around slashdot has made me into a conspiracy theorest I guess.
>>I admit I created user accounts on /. before but I lost them because I had to change jobs so many times in the last year.
You get fired a lot and so you create two new logins (ingenuity7 and Suse_Rulez) just to troll me? I should feel honored I guess.
>>Kernel Traffic was Zack Brown's project before he joined LinuxCare.
I never said that it wasn't. I just said that I am gratefull to them for hosting it.
>>I guess you don't know anyone who worked for LinuxCare. If you did, you would know how they screwed the community. They were always a pretend company.
LinuxCare is not a "pretend company". So far they haven't been too successful but they were never fake. You haven't told me yet what LinuxCare did that you think "screwed the community". I hear that when they laid off some of their employees people were upset because they shut off their email. That is a hassle but I hardly call it "screwing the community".
I don't normally respond to trolls like you. But aparently someone thought your first post was "Interesting" and when it was actually lies.
As a former employee of one of these companies, I would just like to concur that this does not reflect on the viability of Linux even as a profitable business. There are many companies based on Linux that are failing, but from my experience, it has more to do with poor management and the money/business focus trumping any technology push within these companies. Linux companies are best served not by large investments (which push the business agenda) but by sound technology, small, nurtured growth, and a focus on the end goal of maturation instead of immediate revenue generation.
Profit is one thing (necessary), but growth for the sake of generating revenues, and making revenues king generally results in turning business stragedies into "Lets charge a premium for this free community-thing" or "Lets do some of the infrastructure in a proprietary tie-in way." You end up killing the true technology that may win in the end and let the business mind-set gravitate back to the standard proprietary ways of doing business. This I feel is why so many Linux co's, who have had "new management" take over, tend to sound hipocritical today and sound oh so old fashioned and counter-revolutionary.
The end result: Don't trust Linux co's to be the flag bearer or to succeed in maturing Linux. It will take further maturation by the OS community, non-greedy/sound business plans, and people focused on the end goal. Its not anti-business! Its just that sound business-building/technology-building tactics are not employed!
How about Compu-global-turbo-linux-care?
Then Bill Gates would have to come and "buy them out".
Anyway, now we understand why they won't merge. Anything computer-related with "turbo" in it can't last, and LinuxLinux is just plain stupid. :)
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
TurboLinux is the Asian Linux more than it is anything else.
/Brian
that the bootable business card cd does not go away. That little thing kicks ass and is usefull in *many* ways. I'll have to go read what they have to say about mirrors just in case the do go away. Turned out that not getting hired by Linuxcare was a good thing.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
MG
Randomly distributing Karma whenever possible.
I would like to interject with my own information...
TurboLinux is _huge_ in asian countries, and LinuxCare is actually a great company who does a lot for the community and for the companies who work with the community/market. Just my two bits...
Quote from the linuxgram page: "Turbolinux CEO Paul Thomas said the reasons that existed for the merger six months ago no longer exist day because of the flagging economy."
Oh give me a break. Everytime a .COM or hype market (Linux [which is a fine OS but the market hype was irrational], MP3s, etc.) implodes after reality sets in (i.e. "show me the money"), the talking heads come out talking about the flagging economy, to the point that the overwhelming negativity of dreamers affects actual consumer spending and actually disrupts the real economy. Those ridiculous extrapolated charts just aren't coming true in the real world where business models have to actually at least break event.
Then again, perhaps that's what he means: Maybe he means "The rules that govern the economy have failed to change in a manner that would allow us to make money by spending more than we take in. This fundamental of our business plan has not proven true so we must cede defeat.
My biggest beef with mergers is that you end up with companies that do everything and do that everything very badly.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
The 2 camps (TurboCare vs. LinuxLinux) were in a deadlock, and neither side was budging....
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
--
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Hey, merge with Eazel - I hear they're goin' cheap!
But with an icon like that for their own section, who can blame anyone from not having faith in them?
Are you on the Sfglj (SF-Goth EMail Junkies List) ?
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
Yes and yes. But I'm not anti-linux. I'm running Mandrake on a system at home and have run Redhat, FreeBSD (yeah, I know it's not Linux), Slackware, and TurboLinux. Of those, TurboLinux was the least satisfactory.
I think that Linux suffers because there is no unified vision for the UI, no controlling authority for the code quality, and no entrance exams for those who wish to contribute. You get some brilliant code and you get some pretty crappy code. It's still damned impressive given those obstacles and I hope to see it mature further as I have no desire to rent software from Microsoft.
It's a shame that people are out of work and I wish them the best, but this is not exactly like talks between Redhat and IBM breaking down. It was two bit-players in the Linux market that could not agree on the terms of a merger. I intend no criticism of their services or products by this, but it's just not news...that matters... for most nerds.
IBM is still strong on Linux, and other companies as well. Wolfram Research has used Linux as their primary development platform for years.
It hasn't been look good for most Linux-only companies, but Linux is still a good deal for companies where it isn't their primary focus.
this is a bad day for the people that got cut, however, just for all thoughs that will say "look linux is not viable", this is just a company that supports linux instalation sites and does consulting. this not to mention the fact that Redhat, Linuxcares biggest client had rolled out the Redhat network, and will not require as much support survices. although it would be interesting to see if Linuxcare can addapt to this and get an outsource contract to administer the RHN.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
On the contrary, I have always been amazed at how much good info you can get from Client Server News (Linuxgram, whatever).
Sometimes what they report sounds unbelieveable but more often than not it turns out to be right on the money. They are obviously plugged in everywhere.
My question is, why beat a dead horse? Linuxcare was a bad company and screwed a lot of people in the Linux community. Who cares? Turbolinux makes proprietary software and has always sucked and claims they are big in Asia. Who cares? We all know this. Tell us something we don't know, please!