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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?
...didn't want to call it VA GNU/Linux.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
Have the top brass figured out the next big buzzword?
VA XML?
VA Java? (haha, I'm just joking)
VA Unlimited Freedom?
VA USA?
VA Voom?
VA cancy?
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
The subject asks it all. They (apparently) don't do much development (above and beyond sourceforge) and they don't sell hardware. As far as I can tell they sell services for Sourceforge and ads for OSDN sites.
Exactly what business is VA in now?
I don't think that it really matters that they change their name, as long as it's not a move away from linux but a move to broaden their open source presence.
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.
Nasdaq doesn't delist until you go under $1.
And even then, they aren't delisting anyone until January, due to the events of 9/11.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
I don't really follow this sort of thing, but I don't recall ever having the impression that "most of the really cool open source hackers" did work there. Did they?
I am really scared that Slashdot will be dumped real soon by "VA Whatever" and my personal data will be thrown into the wind for the company with the most pennies to snatch up. As we have seen in the past, its real tuff to control your own personal data held by a third party under extreme financial trouble.
I am sure that Pud at Fucked Company will be reporting the demise of "VA Whatever" in the near future. Dump the stock if you got it.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I am switching to a Visual Basic kernel and drivers immediately.
Thank you for saving me a lot of time wasted with Linux.
VA XP
I wouldn't be surprised.Lately it feels that they are going to need to sell there soul to the devil soon
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
VA XP.
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?
Another post suggests that you and /. will "survive"
I only ask that you fix the server's time stamp - unless you've moved your farm to Central Time. What's the command? rdate [-something] tic (or toc).usno.navy.mil in the cron...?
db
Cig:
ôô
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..
Source Developer's Network?
Dot instead of SlashDot?
Meat instead of Freshmeat?
Live to Code, Code to Live!
You know, the interesting thing about this sig is that nursing is actually a learned (not instinctive) behavior. At least that's what they told us at the hospital when my first was born.
-- Brian
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
I messed up:
Tweedie works for Redhat.
-- &&
... and call itself VA gina. it'd probably turn a profit :)
I have to wonder if that is what they are realling interested in doing? It is damn hard to make money with Linux services and support. Most of the people who are capable of using Linux in a production arena do not need or require support contracts and consulting services. Until there exists an enterprise level killer app for Linux the only people who are going to be interested in running linux are geeks anyway. Think of an exchange killer for the enterprise, that is when the conservative management types will become interested in Linux. That is also when companies will be able to survive offering up expertise and service contracts. Till then, good luck hitching your wagon to the Linux money train because it just does not exist. Quite possible it never will either.
Wanna get high?
Supposing VA Software decides to cut off Slashdot... What's the Slashdot operating budget and can it stand on its own (ad revenues being what they are and whatever other revenue there might be)?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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
VA the state or with Virgin Airlines
Certified Black Helicopter Pilot *** Unwitting Dupe of One World Gov'ment
Dot instead of SlashDot?
no, it will be backslashDot (c)
The bill gates borg icon will get a stylish makeover and a heroic background to boot.
free passport account with your backslashdot registration!
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
My Karma is worth more than VA Linux err VA Software errr VA DOA.
Brush up your resumes guys. They have no money, and they dont have a clue.
It must really suck just waiting for them to pull the trigger.
Funny...Microsoft is making money hand over fist. Do you think its because they have a business model? A clue?
I'm still working on a clever footer.
Saw this one coming.
Vee Eh Software or Vah Software??? Could we get their CEO to record an MP3 of the correct pronunciation?
crazy dynamite monkey
The open source business model is not:
What other possible software market is there besides that, you ask? Look up job offers for programmers. 95% of them have nothing to do with working on a commercial software product. Most programmers develop custom systems. These are seldom sold on store shelves and never exist outside of the environment they're created in.
It just so happens open source software and custom developed systems go hand-in-hand. This is the market the open source business model targets. This market alone is far larger than the commercial software market.
This is exactly what IBM's core business is involved with, and exactly why they're so behind open source.
The thing that really gets to me is what this says about free software businesses, and about our understanding of it. Most people agreed, making a business from free software was supposed to go like this:
Yet VA Whatever has gone down in flames in a major way while RedHat is mostly going strong. Zope Corporation is doing very well too. So was Cygnus before it was bought out. And etc. ad nauseam. I guess we were flat-out wrong.
Or maybe it was VA Whatever's fault. They had it all: big visibility, a whole shitload of cash, and many of the smartest people in the business. The only snag, I think, was that Direction didn't realize that they actually needed a plan, too.
I think they still don't realize that. Someone should tell them and tell them now. Will you do it, or should I? How about you, Taco? You know the guys. GO TO THEIR OFFICE AND CLUB THEM OVER THE HEAD REPEATEDLY WHILE SCREAMING "YOU FRIGGING MORONS".
Thank you.
Actually, before 9/11, Nasdaq would, in theory, delist a company if it traded for under $1 for more than 30 days. In reality, they did allow many companies trading for under a buck to be listed for a lot longer (like Caldera for example).
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
va research in my bookmark file.
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
Microsoft has what it has always had:
Marketing.
this makes sense in a disturbing way considering what they've done with sourceforge... i'm currently working to get an internal SF system running at my company and VA hasn't been too much help (btw, if anyone here has had luck with it please email me or reply here)... what they basically did when they closed SF was to go and completely rewrite a lot of the backend scripts and relicense them as commercial... now they charge insane amounts of money (at least insane in my opinion) for companies to have them come set up a system for them... since their pricing scheme really didn't click well with what we wanted to set up (they charge per log-in account, and we were going to need a few hundred of those, though not nearly as many concurrent users) we're installing it on our own (using the sf-genericinst package, available on sourceforge.net)... the so-called "SourceForge OpenEdition" is still vapor, and when it does get released it will be missing huge chunks of code... namely things like the database tie-ins, and such...
so basically this all makes sense with the name change... VA (s/Linux/Software/) is no longer the open-source-focused company it once was... it's sad to see things go this way...
09
Nope.. You can't sue Apple, nor Microsoft. Or haven't you been reading your EULA?
Open Source is no more of a liabiliy than the "big boys"
Oh, and your warranty? Disclaims all 'consequential damage'. The most you can get IBM for is the price of the hard drive. MS and Apple will not opay you a cent.
.sig: Now legally binding!
According to their press release:
If the proposed name change is approved, the company intends to change its Nasdaq trading symbol. Shareholders will vote on the proposal at the company's annual meeting on Dec. 5.
Sig goes here
They expect to make money, hand over fist Immediatly. Most business need 3 -5 years to becoime profitable, a rule of thumb that got tossed by the wayside during the .com hysteria.
/. gang retains the rights to /.
VA will not suddenly start makinging Billions of dollars because of its name, clearly some exec is trying to blame there association with Linux as the reason for not making tons of cash. each move they have made is a panic move, sure to loose in the long run.
I see many opportunities for VA to increase revenue, but they seem to unable to see the forest from the trees.
On a personal note, I hope that if they do go under, the
Of course they could fire Jon. Clearly he makes more then he's worth.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The real reason is that VA is a conjugation of ALLER in French. Some Frenchie's thought it was contridictory to have a name VA Linux, because Linux isn't going anywhere.
In other news, Microsoft merged French versions of IE 6.0 smart tags and French versions Microsoft Word's Thesauraus together. In an effort to bring a better web experience, Microsoft deleted entries of terms that do not exist in their dictionaries as they may confuse people. They did it in English, why not French?
où voulez-vous aller aujourd'hui?
I'm with CmdrTaco on the "seen it coming" bit. I was sort of a fan of VA.. Yet there was a few things about them that bugged me.
Back before the dot-bomb bubble burst, the co. I worked for gave me a huge budget, and pretty much allowed me to order whatever I needed. These orders included a number of Sun and VA servers. Here's the thing:
Why did they HAVE SOUNDCARDS?
Why did they have hardcore 3d cards?
It was basically like paying a bloated few thousand dollars for a Linux Hack's gaming box. Plus a little extra for a rackmount case. I like linux, and I do gaming (on my windows box)... But for a rackmount machine, I don't want a sound card. I dont want a 3d card. I don't want all this novelty bullsh*t (X, games, etc) installed into my kernel by default.
They should have spent some more time accelerating the console administration kernel module. They should have wasted less money on lame 3d graphics chipsets and sound. And, maybe, they should have hired more people with better business sense than ones who basically marketed a rackmountable PC. Oh yeah... What in the heck possessed them to do celeron?
For the former employees: sorry about your misfortunes. For traders who lost exorbitant amounts of money: HAHAHAHAHA. Idiots. Serves you right.
Regards,
-l
--Windows 98/NT/2K are your only choices-- Uh huh, right. That's why POS Win 2k servers are always going down, getting rebooted, etc... The entire New England Sports Network's sites including The Boston Bruins, The Red Sox, and their e-commerce stores were all hosted on Linux (I'm sure they still are but the last development I did for them was last year). We never had any problems with our linux servers and we were serving millions of dynamic pages a month. The Micro$oft school of thought is the buy the most expensive machine possible so it can clunk along with IIS and SQL Server hogging all the resources. Oh let's not forget the monthly fun ppl with IIS get to have when they get taken down from the latest worm. Show me an instance of a Win machine outperforming a Linux machine with the same hardware setup. Show me hard evidence. D'
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?
My first system was a VA, but that was before it was VA Linux. But you're right, it normally takes 2-3 years of slim margins (and usually losses) with any new firm.
.com effect, and is still true now.
/. will continue to do well, due to the loyal base of /.ers, but for VA to survive and prosper, they need to stop trying to shift with the wind.
When I did a small game design business I expected to lose money for three years and planned accordingly. To my surprise, I broke even the first year and made money from the second year on (a small profit at first, then a bigger one). Not bad for what started as a hobby.
Most businesses fail due to cash flow. That was true before the
The reason I bought into Red Hat at IPO was that the prospectus showed they understood what it takes to get ahead in business. I seem to recall not getting into VA Linux due to the high multiple for not very great rewards.
Even after selling some of my initial Red Hat shares, I still own 400, which is about the same as my original 100 presplits. And I made money on the trades, when people got too crazy and offered insane multiples, and then buying back in on the inevitable drops.
VA can survive. I would hope that
That doesn't mean that VA might not want to reposition a little bit, but only for sound business reasons.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
and I almost thought we were in April because of your subject. Beware of what you post dude.
Notable quote: "Four years and they haven't fired me?" said Rob "Cmdr Taco" Malda, director of operations, Slashdot. "Now that's a record."
Careful you don't jinx yourself, Rob.
Internet Wire is a PR service and the article is from VA Linux Systems. Notably lacking is any mention of VA dropping the 'Linux Systems' part.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
What is VA other than Sourceforge and Slashdot?
SFRG?
SDOT?
SLSH?
If Chevrolet decided to stop making cars would they still be in business? If McDonalds decided "No More Hamburgers" would they still be in business?
/. is going to be left paying the tab for a company that never really had a business plan other than: "We are a hardware company that in the course of 6 months will stop selling hardware..."
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
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.
OUCH, down from more than $200! way to burn money, guys.
You have a dim grasp of capital financing if you think this sentence makes a damn bit of sense. You can't "burn" stock value. You're thinking of venture capital. And your post goes downhill from that low point.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
Taco, what if VA goes under (hope not), and what if Microsoft makes a bid on /.? Would you sell?
I - for one, and am not alone, I'm sure - take exception to your sig. I was making personal computers "talk" to each other when you were learning to talk and say "mama" and whatever. Did you ever hear of CP/M? Ward Christenson and XModem? Montezuma Micro? Didn't think so. Maybe you've heard of SCO Xenix...Never mind Atari DOS, C64 Sprites, TRS-DOS & granules, acoustic couplers @ 110 and 300 baud - you were still in diapers, but I was making it work - In fact I had implemented Novell networks well before you broke your arm at age 8.
I personally don't eat at McDonald's. The cheese, for one thing, is not *real*. But I don't blast people for their chosen speciality, just because I don't approve of the product.
One thing that is *real* is the dominance of Microsoft, and I need to make a living. I did not pay for my MCSE - I was "lucky" enough to have a greedy employer whose network I had maintained as a consultant for 12+ years prior who paid for the the courses, Sylvan tests, etc. - so they could hang the "prestigious" MCSP shingle and charge 4x what they paid me for my services.
I can't say I would have saved and done it myself; my reputation for making PCs work spoke for itself. This can be chalked up to experience. My MCSE expires in November, I hear. Big deal - I won't renew it. The coursework was the equivalent of Cliff's notes for the busy professional tech. Without almost twenty years of "on the job" training, I would have been an idiot with no business hanging a shingle. However, every other tech who I studied with was a *real* tech, and would not fit into your generalization criteria.
Point is, you should be modded as a troll on the basis of your sig. When I find the other malicious poster with a similar sig, I'll tell them the same thing.
db
Cig:
ôô
I have to say that you hit the hammer right on the nail by the CAD statement.
/implementation people).
./ in due time I hope.
One thing I have seen during the years, and foresee will be the case for the foreseeable future as well, is that Custom Application Development will always be required. In the future even more so, when the companies realize that all of a sudden application servers and their hosted business logic and services have become the heart of the companies.
Since you all remember the "buzzwords of the year" a while back "Core business" and "outsourcing" of non-core activities, it's easy to envision the current state. Today many companies have become very streamlined and as a result they work almost exclusively with their core business. Now there is not much more to put externally and soon each business wig will wake up and realize that they DO NEED application developers (architects and design
Why?
Because the companies' business processes have become more tightly coupled with computer systems than ever before. This trend is shifting fast. The companies I have worked with (mostly larger like the F100s) are vacuuming the market for technical people. People who can model and implement the business into software and utilize the latest features / 'buzzwords' (Web Services, XML, SOAP etc..).
Having used a fair amount of OSS in later projects, I have come to see the fine talents that many OSS projects apparently possess (like the fine folks in the Apache projects) and as a result, you people should have a golden future!
Doing CAD is pretty much the same as working on OSS (albeit in a different work form... more 'companyish').
Profitizing on OSS have never tasted good in my mouth and I have never believed in it. OSS as a driving force for standards, compromizes between rivaling proprietary technologies, an alternative for those not having millions of $$$ to spend on software is something I do believe in.
There is absolutely nothing stopping OSS developers from having "regular" jobs at "regular companies". In fact, I do believe many (most?) OSS developers already do work in these kind of companies.
If VA, RedHat, Caldera, SuSe or what-not goes under is of minor or no importance to OSS. Hammering the dooms day drums whenever a small OSS exploiting company goes under is something which will cease on
In a society that believes in nothing, fear becomes the only agenda ~ Bill Durodié
Where on OSDN.com is .asp code being used?
.pl extensions on some of the links to apps on OSDN.com.
A quick check of OSDN.com shows:
Server: Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) mod_perl/1.22
And there are
As someone else pointed out the are running mod_perl
Apache:ASP is a module for mod_perl
to allow you to use the ASP "paradigm"
with much more wholesome software.
Were that I say, pancakes?
Is this it?
sulli
RTFJ.
D'oh! Jumped the gun and cropped thte title there
Were that I say, pancakes?
Nice troll. DUH - if you post to a PUBLIC site on the INTERNET expect that your ip will be logged...hell, they'd have to turn off Apache logs to erase the record. If you have problems with this, post from an Internet Cafe or something. Or just keep it to yourself. Jeezus.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Microsoft is dropping 'Micro' from their name...
Perhaps VA has followed in many of the former "dot bomb" naming conventions where one thinks up a good list of names, then determines which are available. As most are probably taken, a domain name, and thus company name, are easily chosen.
So, they found vasoftware.com" was available and went for it. Looks like the record was updated today, too.
So what else might they switch to in the future? Domain squatters are already on the hunt for their next possible name...
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?
We gave the country away to John Ashcroft, might as well give the TLD away to NeuLevel.
Edith Keeler Must Die
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
If VA goes out of business, does this meant that slashdot will actually deserve that .org in their domain name (nonprofit status).
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
What I have failed to grasp is why so many people, junk magazines et.al. so badly want to see Linux on everyone's desktops and in each company's server farm.
I can make some vague guesses, but would like them confirmed if possible:
Personally, I like different OS' depending on what I do. For graphics, I prefer Mac or MS Windows. For business apps, I use MS Office (as do all my clients), for development I use *nix and MS Windows, mostly MS Windows since I consider the latter to currently be the best client OS for my needs. For deployment Unix is the natural choice (including Linux and S/390 Open Unix).Am I the only one seeing merits of operating systems other than Linux?
In a society that believes in nothing, fear becomes the only agenda ~ Bill Durodié
Anyone remember when they were VA Research and changed their name to VA Linux. Ah, how life comes full circle. And for the time being their stock symbol is still LNUX.
Here's the link that doesn't require a login but it's only about VA requesting that the shareholders allow them to change the company name. Here
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
At least that's what I thought those end of financial quarter results were saying...
BlackNova Traders
I'm sure IBM wouldn't mind hosting it as Linux is very much their strategy these days, and the cost is peanuts to them.
...that all anti-VA posts, such as "Will they change their stock symbol" or "Who cares" have all been modded down as redundant?
:)
...that there are very few "Good idea, VA!" posts?
...that the very few "good idea"s that there are are modded up?
...that they're all biased?
...that CmdrTaco is the only one who seems to care and post articles about the OSDN?
...that adding "Now mod me down for being a troll" at the end gets about "+5, Funny" or "+3, Interesting"?
With saying that....
Mod me down for being a troll, just wanted to put these out...
--joshua
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
Definitely:
FCKD
My point that you missed is the phrase: I personally don't eat at McDonald's. The cheese, for one thing, is not *real*. But I don't blast people for their chosen specialty, just because I don't approve of the product. Shameless persecution of people who are proclaimed "inferior" is not-so-indirectly what we are at war about.
The *sig* sucks, and so does profession-bashing (unless you're talking about lawyers...;-)
db
Cig:
ôô
Say goodbye to UNIX support. It's expensive to develop for UNIX compared to Windows. VB programmers are a dime a dozen and can be hired for $30k a year, so why would a software company want to hire anyone else? The former "LNUX" will soon be in bed with Microsoft before we know it.
This is stupid stuff. Do you really know what the cost of using Windoze junk is? I work at a company that M$ is deep into. The productivity lost is astounding. We have spent fortunes on closed source junk that can never cross comunicate, never works that well and sits on a crippled OS. VB apps that get broken with every change in M$ Office, IE and service pack are the least of our problems. At least we can throw co-ops at maintaining that junk. A larger problem comes from custom applications that never talk to each other, much less the M$ Office the company delcared "standard". Consultants and new hires are astounded at the Byzantine complexity of the tools we are expected to use to get our jobs done. In the end, you find your workers hanging around the printers for jobs that may or may not come through. VA can die, but that won't make closed source junk any better. The alternatives to free software are less and less atractive.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Does this mean we'll all have to go back to getting our "geek" news via Usenet??
Hey, there's an idea for SlashCode -- hang a Usenet gateway and an NNTP server off of Slashdot. If they make it advertisement free (or relegate all advertisements to ONE newsgroup!), they could make it a pay service (a la Clarinet [what ever happened to them?]). As long as their subscription rate is low, many hackers might sign up.
Possibilities?
I voted for I.O.U. to replace Linux .
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?
MY POINT IS: Don't defile professions - yours could turn to *shit* at any time. Some poor, non-technical sap with the McDonalds cert (didn't check - might not exist) you asserted in your sig will be hurt by the sig itself.
I can't feel insulted - my wife is the only one to effectively do that. And, I can't see why you'd make an analogy for the benefit "computer illiterate people" on slashdot. Try that on AOL. A much more gullible audience.
Anyway, keep your sig. I'm over it. It's just slashdot, after all. It could be worse - I could catch anthrax. Thank God the small town/county in which I live and work is M$-centric and appreciative of a tech who puts 3-in-one oil on their Colorado QIC40 120mb tape drive's stepping motor shaft to give it another year of life, not to mention the only spores coming in will be from SS checks mailed from DC or wherever.
db
Cig:
ôô
It's sad that a company tries to solve their problems blaming their name. Maybe we should all change our names to William Gates Jr and become billionaires ? =)
OSDN and closedSourceForge are the future!
Who cares?
Now mod me down for being a troll.
sulli
RTFJ.
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.
...Originally called VA Research anyways?
Heh...any guesses on the severity rating this'll get on FuckedCompany?
C-X C-S
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???
Clarinet still exist, afaik: IIRC Actrix still gets a feed from them.
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
That makes no sense. If UNIX support were as expensive as you say, it would be a highly attractive business proposition for a support provider. The reality is that UNIX/Linux support costs about as much as Windows support, but that companies need a lot less of it. Our support costs for UNIX systems are a tiny fraction of those for Windows, for example.
VA has no reason to support Slashdot, Sourceforge, Themes.org, and other very expensive sites that produce zero revenue.
I don't see why themes.org or Slashdot should be particularly expensive sites, at least in principle.
The business community will believe "Linux is dead" and it will be an uphill struggle to regain their confidence.
Who cares? If company A wants to pay several times as much for their software, maintenance, and support because it runs MS Windows than company B that runs Linux, let company A face the financial consequences. It's a free market, and stupidity has its costs.
Not a Linux company and not a company that has a vested interest in promoting open source. Back in the day, VA's success rested on the success of the Open Source movement. Not any longer - as a software company, they are going to be producing commercial wares that compete with open source solutions.
Who cares? VA Linux was not needed for the growth of open source software, and if they go away, life will go on. The nice thing about open source software is that contributions are, and remain, public and available no matter what happens to the companies involved.
We better get used to the fact that most open source software will have been created and supported by failed companies. That's not because open source strategies make companies fail, but because closed source software doesn't survive the failure of its creators.
So, let's stop belly-aching and get on with life. If VA Software keeps contributing to open source, great. If not, it doesn't matter.
I suppose that you guys got lots of VA stock when you sold out to VA. Damn. I hope you guys cashed out a long time ago, or asked for CASH. Otherwise, you guys have built this huge website, and you'll be back to nothing as soon as VA goes under.
No one is talking about Sourceforge, has everyone already moved away from Sourceforge? The clock is ticking, the whole schbang is not going to live for much longer, those who depend on Sourceforge are in for a rude awakening.
Sounds like a good time to make sure all the offsite backups are in good order to me.
Anything is possible given time and money.
Now they all work for Red Hat, RHAT hired all of the good VA Linux Open Source programmers a couple weeks ago.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I too am dropping "Linux" from the end of my name. I had it legally added in the late 90's when it was all so hip, fresh, and cool. But now in the 21st century it has just become passe. Just like heroin.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
My MCSE hasn't done me much good since I left the employer who funded it, even to the point of the largest local employer's IT dept called *me* overqualified. I won't/can't relocate, and don't really think I can work for anyone else but myself - so I'm *not* raking in the $$$, I just get by.
The course you linked to seems to be quite comprehensive, but it should be for $7000 and 250 hours. I guess you could check for requirements on a Canadian equivalent of monster.com or whatever, and then supplement your credentials accordingly. I'm really not that familiar with the job market in the US, let alone up there.
OTOH, I *could* have attained the M$ cert by studying from the Transcender tests and paying $100 each to take the 6 (?) M$/Sylvan tests, provided I had the hardware and OS (NT4 in my case) to hook up to break and fix. If you do, that's the cheapest way to go, and get the damned piece of paper the PHBs want to see.
Good luck...
db
Cig:
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Wrong URL. The link to the register article is: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/22559.html. Or you could just read the article at Kuro5hin:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/10/31/15654/175
According to Kuro5hin's story, it was Roblimo who informed them they were getting the boot too. Inneresting.
Right....
Actually, I was posting to the post above that one, that may have confused you.
Get a life, maybe you could lose some of that aggression if you spent more time having a social life instead of posting flames all day.
Something from the The Register
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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!
Do not trust a business a community website like slashdot.
Ha. ha. ha. Dude, you quoted the troll in your original reply. You can't do that and still cover your ass.
I suggest that you learn to laugh at yourself...because we all are. It's like that time those jokers at work cut up a piece of chalk, put it in an Altoids tin, and asked me if I wanted a mint.
I fell for it too! I ate it! But I laughed too. Because chalk is a good source of calcium, and while their teeth were rotting, mine were growing stronger...harder...tranforming me into...
CAPTAIN ZOMBO-TEETH
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)