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Great Bridge Out; Caldera in Trouble
tim_maroney writes: "CNET's news.com gives us a pair of open source disaster movies today. Great Bridge, an open source database maker which refused a bid from Red Hat earlier this year, will lay off 38 of 41 employees and close its doors. Caldera, a seller of Linux and UNIX versions, announced layoffs, plummeting revenues, and a reverse stock split intended to allow it to be relisted. Not a happy day for fans of open source business models."
T-shirt sales can't pay developer's salaries?!?
</sarcasm>
Has anyone else noticed that *ALL* business models are affected, not just the open source??? The O/S model is really just starting out, consider that when you compare them to hp or compaq or whoever. You'll see that they are holding their own. Which is amazing considering how radical the O/S model is compared to the closed source model (not so much caldera, their kinda like a leech). The WHOLE ECONOMY is in a "downturn" not just this "crazy" market..... geezz... /. has become the MTV of the geek world....
All open source companies are doing badly.
Suse recently had to be bailed out by IBM and Intel to prevent it from closing it doors.
VA Linux has exited the hardware market and is losing money hand over fist. It appears that VA Linux does not have much time before collapsing.
Corel is selling its _entire linux arm_ for $2 million, which is virtually nothing.
Ebiz, which merged with LinuxMall, has been delisted by the Nasdaq, is trading at $.04/share, has only $1,000 in the bank, and will collapse shortly.
Red Hat, which is by far the most successful of the group, has lost over 97% of its value and is trading at 1/8th its IPO price.
Great Bridge just never really existed. Just as the company was formed the bottom fell out of the tech market. Add to that the virtual commodity status developing in the low-end database maket. In a way it was a company without a soul. Successfull Linux startups seem to grow from a core of true believers. Most of the startups we see flopping out now never really had that. Companies like RedHat, KDE and VA will continue because of these people. Pofits are great, making money is great, but in the end the people behind these companies will continue doing what they are doing because they love what they do.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
And you are a troll.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Jet engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney learned long ago: sell your engines at a loss. The real money is in service.
At the time, IBM happened to be piloting System R (precursor to DB2) at Pratt & Whitney. And they learned there: Virtually give away the software, and make money on your services. And that's why IBM global services is such a powerful consulting force today. Global Services is the real profit arm of IBM.
But IBM ain't dumb. Of course, IBM global services prefers IBM products, but they'll support Solaris and Linux and VB apps too.
And that's the rub. Most Open Source-centric companies don't have deep pockets, but only support a narrow field of Open Source software.
The fact is guys, it's hard to support 50 new employees on a brand new, growing marketplace. It would be wiser to support existing commercial products while pushing your own [open source] agenda. Heck, that's the successful IBM GS model (sans the Open Source bit).
Grow up guys, get off your high horse and step into the real world. You can't start a company hoping that all your customers will knock on your door supporting your agenda. But you can can fight for your utopian dream by FIRST supporting your customers, and only SECONDLY by showing your customers why your ideals are best for THEM.
should form with the best representative developers from each distro.
Yes, a linux monopoly, while preserving open source philosophy and various linux flavors.
-advantages: fanatically dedicated, growing market for free software
-encourages cross-fertilization of ideas between distros
-unified, centralized tech support
-less duplicated efforts in development and support
-coherent business model can be developed when there are fewer competing models of Linux
-larger company with pooled capital (if there is any) viewed more favorably by market
Stop trying to compete with microsoft! There are constituencies which cannot and will not use Bill's software for their computing needs. These people will continue to use linux and ancillary services and the less overhead involved the better for a company dealing with a finite market.
Goat sex free since 2001
" No serious business model includes the willingness to release incomplete products."
.....
.... Microsoft, Corel, Adobe,
Open Source *CAN* be a buisness model, bit it still is experimental; at least until the right steps are figured out.
I never liked Caldera, and don't really care that they are gone. They were half-hearted about Free Software / Open Source and I could never understand why they stayed around.
Great Bridge on the other hand is probably a real loss. They stood for the Service & Support business model. I shed a tear.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
so they're laying off 38 of 41 staff and closing the doors? someday, open source archaeologists will reopen those doors and find their three skeletons surrounded by mountain dew cans . . .
go get it
This isn't quite accurate. I believe Open Source models can work in a few business scenarios (not in the current give away software and make it up on services one though) interestingly all of them involve making sure your company is not the sole company bearing the weight of development.
On the other hand, the current practice of paying developers to work on a product that you either do not sell or sell for peanuts then hoping to make it up in services, which require additional costs, means that your services will have to be over priced to make up (guess that's why the RedHat DB is $3,000) for the fact that you gave away the software that you spent money developing.
To the best of my knowledge, Caldera's business model isn't really an "Open Source" model in the sense that, e.g., Red Hat's is. Red Hat makes money by giving away software and selling services. Caldera tries to make money by giving away free software (Linux) and selling proprietary stuff along with it.
Remember that Caldera CEO Ransom Love publicly said that he agrees with Craig Mundie's statement that "Open Source is bad for business". That's because even though they give away Linux, at the end of the day they still make their money by selling proprietery software, just like Microsoft.
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
From an interview with Bruce Momjian last year:
Not a happy day for fans of open source business models
What? Caldera buying SCO was the biggest bone head move of all time - they bought the least-likely-to-survive Unix on the planet when faced against Linux. I understand some of the motivation was for their distributors, sales channels and support/tech but really, SCO was a pile of bricks. Bad Move.
On top of it all, Caldera, under the lead of Ransom Love, has got to be the least amiable of the Linux Companies - he has said some *very* stupid things and really dosnt *get* what GNU/Linux will do to the software world... frankly, im glad to see the "Caldera Company" go. On the other hand, i do feel some pain for their employees - best of luck to the *people* involved.
Have you ever browsed through news stories over the past year and heard about dot-bomb.com laying off 50, 100, 200, 500 people and wondered to yourself "how in the world did they employ that many to begin with???" There are many examples of potential successes that were hampered by overspending and poor planning. I have no idea if /. is making any money, but I'll bet that if they hadn't been bought, that the minimal staff could have done quite well. Giving away software and selling service can work fine if you don't staff up before having customers.
I run http://www.freesql.org:27960 to give database newbies a place to play for free, I do it on a shoestring. Obviously if I hired staff I couln't survive.
I hate to say it but perhaps what the tech world needs is a few more MBA's
SuperID
Remember the old adage "give away the razor and sell the blades?" It works great for hardware, and it seems to make sense for software.
But common practice in the Open Source world is different. Here, they give away the razor, flame anyone who sells blades, and wonder why no one's paying them for the privilege of being a barber.
Okay, rant off...
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
All open source companies are doing badly.
Really? I bet that IBM is by far the largest OS company in terms of $$ spent on OS projects ($1,000,000,000, or so they say) and they seem to be doing pretty well. Everyone cries "Who will make a succesful service business that supports open source?" The answer: IBM.
Red Hat, which is by far the most successful of the group, has lost over 97% of its value and is trading at 1/8th its IPO price.
RedHat's IPO price was an insane reflection of the IPO bubble. IIRC, Red Hat claimed to be on the border of profitability just before the IPO. The IPO market (insanely) required them to up their "burn rate" to build for future expected profits. Now that the financial markets have returned to sanity, Red Hat looks to be returning to profitability, at least on a cash basis (the depreciated "good-will" accounting charge will haunt their official accounts for a while longer.)
We fully believe in open source and in business built on it (ENTIRELY open source). So far it has worked outnicely.
Our model differs from the one of Great Bridge. We maintain control of the database kernel so that we can sell commercial licences to those numerous companies who need a non-GPL licence. We also have a strong and widely known trademark. MySQL AB offers support done by the core developers. This allows us to offer a total product and service package that is in line with the open source / free software thinking and also makes sound business sense.
Marten Mickos, CEO, MySQL AB