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.

Comments

Naive, largely ignorant, and stone deaf.

[Lemmy Caution]

Because too many people were impervious to research, were too willing to believe the glib "oh, you can make money on suppport!" mantra that legions of non-MBA holding suit-hating techies (few of them, honestly, developers) kept on churning out.

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.

Cripes

[Lumpy]

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.

Business types miss what geeks see as obvious

[hillct]

From the article:

Tyde could not explain why there wasn't more synergy, not less, between Linuxcare, the service company, and Turbolinux, the systems management house, than there was between Linuxcare and Turbolinux, the non-neutral distribution. He said the pair needed "the right mix of products and services and that marketing issues needed to be worked out." He seemed relatively unaware of Turbo's plans to change direction as though that hadn't factored in the decision.

It's sad that business people can't be as forward-looking as those of us in technology. I believe that everyone here can see the truth of the above excerpt from the mentioned article. How management types can miss the sorts of opportunities that will save their companies, merely because they want to remain in control, is unbelievable to me - (ok, maybe not unbelievable, but just pathetic).

--CTH

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Sorry for the loss of jobs...

[fmaxwell]

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.