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VA Linux Dropping "Linux" From Name
Several folks noted that VA is changing its name to "VA Software" to reflect the fact that they aren't a Linux company anymore. VA of course owns OSDN which runs various Linux and Open Source web sites including amusingly enough Linux.com. Can't say it matters much to me what they call the thing as long as they let us keep running Slashdot, but it really is sad knowing that most of the cool open source hackers no longer work there. My bad. Anyone have a link to the press release that doesn't require a login?
I guess it doesn't matter, they're within spitting distance of being delisted anyway, but are they going to keep LNUX as their stock ticker? That seems sort of silly to me.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I believe VA Research was one of the former names of VA. Maybe VA shall adapt it again?
It sounds cool and VA can still sell services.
Free Software: the software by the people, of the people and for the people. Develop! Share! Enhance! Enjoy!
I always thought the VA linux hardware was a good route for them, and they discontinued that line and sold off all their machines (I picked one up for cheap on ebay, btw).
So what do they have now? Just sourceforge, thinkgeek, some misc. ads & services? Honestly, does anyone know what kind of move they are planning here, because this seems like another step in the wrong direction to me.
Seriously though, what does this say about two crucial things:
A) What's going to happen to slashdot [if|when] VA Software Corp. goes under? It'll be incredibly hard to maintain the servers/routers/etc. with volunteers only.
B) Is there anyone left from a commercial standpoint other than IBM and Redhat who are willing to stand behind Linux?
VA Started as a Linux hardware company.. failed.
Tried being a Linux support company (ala Linuxcare) and.. failed.
I am bit suspicious of companies that keep on changing their business strategy as if it was a pair of gloves at a first sign of economic trouble..
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Many of us saw this coming, but that's beside the point. But personally, I'd rather see VA fold than become a commercial software house. What does VA's new focus mean to us? Well:
The future is looking bleak. Our biggest cheerleader has switched sides on us and we are going to be in serious trouble. I certainly hope the Linux community can survive this ordeal.
-CT
I was wondering that too, but according to the press release, "The Sunnyvale, Calif., company said the name VA Software better identifies the company's primary business of developing its SourceForge collaborative software development platform."
So they are apparently hanging their hat on selling SourceForge software. What I find interesting is that apparently the "enterprise edition" of the SourceForge software is closed source and proprietary (correct me if I'm wrong...). Does that mean they have clued in that OSS is not a winning business model?
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
What really constitutes a name anyway? Take the communications giant Motorola for example, a name derived from the beginning automotive era. Victrola record players were popular for the home, so Motorola was made a record player for the car. It didn't work that well (naturally) but they kept the name.
IMO, what establishes your image as a business should stay the same. The name "Linux" itself can mean so much than just an operating system. Linux has allowed them to build a decent-sized business with little overhead. Why not just give Linux credit?
This could be the beginning of the end for /. They may just decide it isn't worth it and divest all non core businessess, the way corel divested their linux business and spun off rebel.com to die an ignoble death. (Though I heard somebody is picking up a tiny piece of the Rebel.com corpse)
/. better be prepared to go it alone in a few months time if the worst comes to pass. That would indeed be a sad day, but a lot of other once famous online portals have folded their tent and gone 404...
But methinks
(Hoping I am dead wrong on this)
My rights don't need management.
Ah ha! You've discovered the one real opensource business model that has been proven to work -- the ugly underbelly of opensource software, so to speak. Cygnus was successful because they did exactly this. They charged multiple companies big $$ for the same patch. Hell, they even charged different divisions of the same large company big $$ for the same patch (divisions that didn't talk to each other much, obviously). They *never* did *thing 1* that was not precisely spelled out in the contract. They threw incoming free lance patches on the floor. They hoarded patches as *loooooong* as they possibly could, in order to extract patch fees from as many multiple customers as possible before releasing to the open code tree.
I'm sure this post will be labeled a troll... so be it. It is not intended as such. It is a report of my experience watching an employer write multiple 5 and 6 figure checks for exactly such "services" (in the Will Rogers sense of the word).
I love the OpenSource ideal. I hate seeing Cygnus held up as an example of how to be successful, it sickens me. It saddens me to see SF go the same way, but this has been a long time coming, and is no surprise to me. It started happening about a month after SF went live. VA tried to sell me exactly such *services* when my employer explored bringing SF inside (a few weeks after SF went public). The open code tree at that time sucked. Building a successfull SF behind your own firewall at that time required either putting up with the marginal packages that were released, or signing up for consulting.
Let's hope OpenSource doesn't disintregrate into a band of rich pretenders taking advantage of a community of naive idealists.
(note to self: next time, remember the tags)
The hostname www.vasoftware.com resolves yet there isn't a press release or anything to that effect on the VA website.
I always find it interesting when News sites get press releases like this before the Company itself updates their own website. It's quite telling about who is important, Wall Street (Journal?!) or clients/customers/fans of the Company itself.
Makes me wonder: Are they in business to hype the stock price or are they in business to make good products?
Actually, Motorola didn't take the name from a record player, they took it from the Victrola radio. Motorola (Motor Victrola) marketed the first successful car radio. Incidentally, the unit was designed by the same man (Bill Lear) who invented the eight-track player, the Learjet, and a long list of other devices.
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
If you thought all along that the Open Source movement needed:
- big name corporate sponsors
- its very own news relay site
- a big centralized FTP/WEB hosting site
- software companies to pay its developers
..then you were missing the point all along.
Granted, all of these things have been very nice, but the fact is the VA leadership proved themselves incapable of reliably providing us with such services because they lacked entrepreneurial direction. (or they were just dot-com'ers looking to make a quick buck and high-tail.. who knows) Had they focused solely on top quality hardware at reasonable prices, they could have stayed in business for years, even if only marginally profitable until a truly brilliant idea came along. But apparently they weren't satisfied with this. Instead they just threw in the towel and blew out all their VC on worthless crap. Thanks but no thanks.
In light of the inevitable future and to prevent any major disturbances to Open Source developers worldwide, I suggest that we quickly, calmly, and intelligently find replacements for the services that SourceForge provided us before it disappears. Until the US internet infrastructure becomes more robust wrt bandwidth and switches over to IPv6, I suggest something of a large-and-permanent-node-only P2P network to share the load of a SF-style (but more lightweight) web interface for project hosting and management. Such a network would, as most of our major FTP sites, be hosted primarily in academia or by generous ISP's or corporate entities. From a security and reliability standpoint, I think this might not be such a bad idea anyhow. Any comments or takers?
Folks, there have been many posts about the end of this or that in Linux.
..." They are at the end of their cash, maybe a quarter+ left for them. Dont go that route. Park the egos. The company goes under if you cannot.
First off, VA changing focus again for the umpteenth time is not an indictment of Linux. It is an indictment of an ill-concieved/executed business model. Would anyone say that web-commerce is a flop even though the dot-bomb went off?
Second off, VA (in the hardware area) was well out of its league. Playing with the big boys means you get the crap beat out of you on occasion. I had the chance to compete against VA a number of times, and most of the time we won, in part due to VA not knowing how the hardware was really going to be used.
Third off, in software, who the F*** is VA? What do they have? Why should I risk placing my data on Sourceforge, as VA is in trouble, and the ownership of that data would be in question during bankruptcy proceedings? The ASP model as promolguated by several types over the last several years is so full of horse puckey as a business model, it deserves a rapid anonymous burial. Several friends went to CA to seek their fortune building up ASPs, only to have dot-bomb wipe out any value/confidence in their product, and leave them with no ability to make money.
So where the hell does that leave VA?
1) need a real business plan fast. For this you have to hire grown ups. Sorry folks, but the vast majority of 18-35 year old kids have not brought a sustainable business to market, and grown it year after year. Those that have, have grey hair (voice of experience).
2) find a buyer fast. There is cachet in the brand name. Sell yourself to IBM. Or Compaq/HP. Let them figure out the business portion for you.
3) Ch 7/11. Well, it would be horrible to see this route, but it could come to this if debt is in the picture.
The market is tough. It is brutal. It is unforgiving. Some may protest the capitalistic nature of this analysis saying it ain't fair.
Welcome to the real world. Is the Antelope brought down by the lion going to argue fairness? Will the lion care?
Reality check: Life is cruel. It is not easy. You must struggle to survive. Fairness is an illusory concept developed by humans. Great in discourse so we dont kill each other, but not relevant for most capitalist societies.
VA will not survive if it does not learn how to compete. Pure and simple. Doesnt mean a thing for Linux. If you hire experience, you often get good results. If you apply patronage, you get a VA. Or an SGI.
If anyone asked me what to do with VA, I would think real hard about a niche that they could make money in. Slashdot is a name, a brand. It has value. Think about deploying Slashdot internally at companies as a searchable weblog community builder. It is an enabler of free flow of information which is needed at many companies.
Sure, some geek can download Slashcode and set it up. As much as you may believe in open source providing freedom, ask yourself if you are giving away all of the value that you can provide, for free. If this is true then you need to think carefully as to how to make money off of it.
No folks, GPL is not the be-all-end-all. You have to build value and brand around it to make it work, as people will buy value, and will buy brands. GPL is not an IP destroyer. It just doesn't fit well as the central theme of the business plan. Sure you can do GPL, but you damned well better have a way to pay your programmers in the end. Some of them have families, and need to eat.
So in the end, you have to build value. A value proposition. Something customers actually want. The last thing (actually one of the dumbest things) that a company wants to do is build a product, toss it over the wall, and hope that someone will buy it. This is the better mousetrap concept, and folks, it doesnt work.
If it did, then explain why all those Sun servers are out there, when they suck in comparison to other stuff. Has nothing to do with system quality. Has a great deal to do with branding, value proposition, etc.
VA needs to ask very carefully: "What is it that our customers want? What market niche do we wish to play in? What expertise do we have that will enable us to bring a product to market that customers will buy, and will enable us to survive and possibly even grow?"
I havent heard anyone there try to answer this question. VA needs a grey hair in there now, steering the company. Larry, sorry, but you need to step aside. Find someone with a clue, who knows how to turn companies around, and who wants a challenge.
Dont go the SGI route of "strategy X du jour will save us... no it didnt? Ok, layoffs and move to strategy Y to save us.... no? oh
Dell could push out intel boxes cheaper than VA ever could. At the end of it all, it really boild down to this.
In a relativistic sense, this could be bad for Slashdot - the website. However, if CmdrTaco and the others who run this site really love doing it, I can't imagine them not figuring out another way to support this, or some other site with a similar purpose. You have to remember that it is the people who made this site in the first place, and the thousands of people who come here every day, that make this site what it is.
I don't mean to sound "peppy" or anything, but let's be realistic, rather than freaking out because a company ruled by suits (which all companies are) makes a decision that sheds a negative light upon the marketability of Slashdot, or of Linux. Yeah, the suits probably never understood Linux - they don't teach OS design and the fundamentals of software engineering at schools of management (unless it is a really odd school). And frankly, if their hearts aren't in it (yeah, sappy again), then why the hell should we want their help, and why should we bitch when they jump ship? I come to Slashdot every day, and post very rarely. I would be very sad to see it go, but if this site dies because VA {ARGV0} no longer supports it, it isn't entirely the fault of VA - this site existed well before VA was a glint in the eye of someone, and will exist long after if we keep our heads. And for God's sake, don't worry about how this will affect Linux's development or acceptance. Clued individuals who need the power of Linux already use Linux, and they aren't going to suddenly use Windows (which they can't work with for whatever reason) because Linux suddenly doesn't have much (or any) presence on Wall Street.
Know ye not that ye are Gods???
One thing that these companies did not realize just a few years ago is that the supply of venture capital is limited. They can not keep on losing money for as long as they want. One thing they should know is that a large change in direction in this stage of a company's life doesn't reassure investors, it scares them.
VA looked like a company that was devoted to a buzz-word, "open-source", rather than to a goal or a business plan. They went out and made expensive acquisitions that had nothing at all to do with their core business. They didn't need to support a pile of open-source developers, and they had no use at all for Sourceforge, or Slashdot or the rest of Andover. Those seemed to be vanity moves with little effort to focus their business or make money.
Their more recent moves look like the last, desperate actions of a dying company. Eliminating their core business basically meant giving up any hope of becoming profitable, in favour of slowly wasting away. Now they want to put big advertisements all over Slashdot because it is losing too much money. Watch most of those ads be for ThinkGeek or OSDN and wonder why.
Way back when, VA appeared to be a sound company, with a well-executed business plan. We all had big hopes that they would be the ones to break through and show that you could make a profit with Linux. Then they went on a completely pointless shopping spree and forget about what they did best. Now, it seems very fitting that their name is VA, which is French for "go", because they are quickly going away.
Being Liberal should be a Crime!