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Steven Schafer On The Future of Progeny
Eugenia writes: "Last month Progeny Linux Systems ceased development on their own distribution in order to focus on selling professional services. In their announcement, the company cited the prohibitive cost of developing and publishing a distro. This move marked another firm in the wave of tech companies, Linux and otherwise, making significant changes to adjust to the market slump. Progeny's distribution was based on Debian GNU/Linux, and many in the Linux community were closely watching the company because it was founded by Debian creator Ian Murdock. OSNews spoke to the President of Progeny Linux Systems, Michael Schafer, once the dust had settled on his company's announcement."
Nice job, Eugenia. That was word for word from an article on this mornings Debian Planet ;)
We don't usually see such blatent plagurism, but hey. it works
Colin Davis
We have too many distros as it is. I'm sure there are a few that offer unique things, but many are just there.
Imagine if everyone made their own Windows!
Now, when Slackware decides to close up shop, let us know!
Newt-dog
My Doctor prescribed daily nasal saline irrigation, hehe
early - mid 1980's was massive growth with all sorts of companies trying to dominate the OS and apps. Ultimatly only a few companies won that. Now we are on the next round and watching (or participating) the next replacement OS and apps.
History will always repeat itself.
Just in case no one caught the discrepancy in the article.
Jeff Licquia, Progeny Employee
Despite the duck hunters above, this really is a shame for the GNU/Linux community. Progeny was one of the better Debian distro 'packagers' and will be sorely missed by many I'm sure.
Unfortunately, very few can 'buck the market' especially when dealing in a marketplace where the buyers really do want 'something for nothing' (and I'm not excluding myself).
Hopefully this isn't just yet another nail in the coffin for Debian...
--This isn't a man who is leaving with his head between his legs.
Have no fear, progeny. You will have a great future! Microsoft is going to settle for you. $1.1 billion! Quite a future indeed!
The retreat into "enterprise services" or "contract services" is the first step to insolvency. Whats interesting or insightful about profiling a company that is going out of business????
OSNews is a very fresh, original, informative site (no, I have no connection with it besides reading it) and I think Eugenia has better things to do than plagiarize for 3 Slashdot karma points.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
All we don't need is more distributions of the same thing. On the otherhand, expertise in making an already good distribution do exactly what a client wants should be a valuable commodity.
For that matter, having proprietary tools (NOT part of any distribution) to help you manage a customers system could be quite useful - the tools don't have to be applicable to any possible configuration the way most distribution supplied tools do.
Nowhere should open source insist that companies be non-profit.
Liquor
Sanity is a highly overrated commodity.
Any idea as to why a mod would mod down a post that is already at -1?
Probably the same reason we're still bombing in Afganistan.
Soon. I am filling out the report as we speak.
Good. The turd report brings a ray of brown sunshine to my otherwise boring day.
The primary motivation for this decision is our desire for convergence with Debian proper. From a technical perspective, nearly all of the features we introduced in Progeny Debian have found or are finding their way into Debian, and it is thus becoming increasingly unnecessary for us to continue investing the resources required to maintain a separate "Progeny enhanced" version.
From a business perspective, our customers consistently ask for Debian, not Progeny Debian, and while Progeny Debian is technically just a "release" of Debian (akin to "potato" or "woody" from the Debian project), the appearance of maintaining a separate or "forked" version is a liability given our company's shift away from a mass-market product and service focus and toward consulting and other professional services.
I read this to mean that the "standard" Debian distro is sufficiently good that a separate product is not necessary. Rather than being a sign of impending doom for Debian, I see this as a sign of its strength.
This really irritates me. He's now saying that their original value proposition was faulty.Guess what? That's what people were *paying* for - Debian with a bit more ease and less idiosyncracies.
The real reason why Progeny never happened is because their distro was (IMO) unfinished crap. It couldn't compete with what others were charging for, and the support that they gave, IMO, wasn't worth spit. In fact, if you bought the "download" distro, they refused to give you an electronic version of their beloved manual.
Progeny, IMO, was criminal in its behavior towards its customers - first releasing a substandard distro, then orphaning it because no one wanted it.
We didn't make a nickel.
But those who have tried it, even ordered it paying a full price will say,
ay, there's the rub.
Well, at least they did not flag it as a Troll!
"significant changes to adjust to the market slump. "
This is no temporary market slump. Most tech-companies aren't worth anything since they don't make enough money to make their businesses work.
The value in tech related companies will not raise until most of them handle their business in a professional manner with good (and working) business-models.
If there will ever be a positive trend has little to do with the market situation in general, it has everything to do about how those companies are managed and their businessmodels.
What this mean is if you want to be able to have a long lasting business you must: 1) Charge for your work, this is ofcause mutual exclusive with giving your work away. May sound simple but the number of people not understanding such a simple reality is just amazing. 2) Make things that people want and beeing there for the cunsumer. Again, the number of people thinking that job is the same thing as playing around is just amazing in this industry.
If you don't charge for your products you will not be able to continue business in the long run, simple as that.
They totally say it "didn't fit the business model" but really it's because the distro sucked. Ever try it? Try ten more first. Fuck, even gray cat from Holland is a better distro.
... people don't mind crap, if its the same crap everybody else has.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Will the Progeny OS installer be ported to Woody? One of the most important things to improve in Debian is its installer. User-friendly installers mean more Debian users.
Until then, people will have to get an old Progeny CD, install Progeny 1.0, and change their apt lines, then apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade.
Sure its not difficult to change a text file full of URLs and then type "apt-get update" and "apt-get dist-upgrade" (which would automatically upgrade your entire OS from Progeny to Woody), but then again, I have seen people claim that its difficult to install applications on Linux, which is as easy as typing "apt-get install whateveryouwant".
Maybe this explains so many of the recent changes at Progeny...
his children? It's fun to read the subjects without knowing their computer connection.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
The first time I read the title, I thought it said: "Steven Schafer On The Future of Pornography".
He says there is too many Distros
When hes basing a distro off of a distro called Debian!!!!
Hes one to talk!
And he says the economy is bad? Redhats doing fine, The economy is bad for everyone not just linux, but a good business plan will get you through it.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Lowlife fucking thief. Go bury yourself.
I know progeny is based on debian. But they have their own logo. We don't see SuSe and Mandrake listed under the RedHat logo.
It's a shame that so many Linux based companies have gone under or shifted focus because of the economic slump. However, the code isn't going anywhere, and when the economy begins to rise again, Linux will be there, and many new companies will form around it again.
1 Has no net bearing on the present.
2 NOW is dead as far as PLS is concerned.
3 The timeline went to infinity.
4 Has no net bearing on the present.
5 BINGO. No business PLAN, no net nothing.
6 They've moved once (twice?) so far.
7 They got a lot of warm bodys and then RIFfed many of them when round two funding didn't happen. Many had moved to Indy from distant places. The toll in people is the worst part of this deal (unless you invested in this thing).
I am not slamming Ian or anyone else here. My point is this company, like so many of the other dotcoms, needed skilled, experienced, professional management from the outset to assure the basics of business were followed. The venture capitalists were at serious fault for not assuring that these rules were followed and as a result they lost (or have nearly lost) all their investment.
I wish PLS lots of luck in the services arena. Rumor has it that they have a positive net cashflow doing services. If they can keep these customers and carefully manage their growth they can flower into a cool, competent Unix/Linux oriented consulting house. The world could certainly use more of those... Linux space or not.
-- Multics
I have to say, I love Open Source. I have been playing with Debian on a server I have almost religiously. Its freeeken cool. Apt-get is a monumental achivement. Actually, I think that Debian in general is a monumental achivement. The incredible country-like atmosphere: voting, bug reports, elected officials, a clear and distinct vision. All of this is very very good.
My experiences with setting up this latest debian server have been nothing more than wonderful. As much as I like the slackware model of "pure simplicity" I like the mode of Debians package management. I do not get the args against it. When it works, it works, even of there are some problems. hey there always has to be some problems.
The fact of the matter is getting debian setup is a bit of a chore. i am not one to think that the "installer" is a problem. Installing seems AOK for me- at least the base install. The trouble is when you get into having to do the dselect part of the install, which of course you end up having to do.
deslect aint so bad really. Its just that there are *tons* of packages. It makes it confusing for the average user. I know Debian says that the average user is no good for debian. I think quite simply that the social contract says otherwise.
debian needs to be excited about anyone who decides to go with the platform they have created.
And what a good platform they have created.
Freedom truly is the issue. And freedom truly is a goodthing(tm).
On that note, I installed Mandrake 8.1 one tonight on a machine I use for my main Workstation. Just for kicks. Just to see how things are. Just to see how things went. I ma quite impressed. I have to say that I love being up and running with a wonderful, kick ass GUI with a minimum of muss and fuss for my workstation machine. I am sorry. I just do not want to spend hours fucking with my workstation: I can do that with my servers for hours. But to get a GUI based fully functional machine running with a minimum of effort is totally sweet for me. I have to say I hate the services and crap that are running on Mandrake, I hate the installer and do not think for a second that Debian should emulate the kind of crap install process that Mandrake *imposes* on the user. But there is something about having hardware pretty much setup, having the desktop pretty much ready to go if needed that really rocks. Especially when you want ot get down to work, doing something besides tweeking your setup.
I love debian. But Debian has some things to learn from the whole Mandrake process.
Do not make it as stupid, make it as functional.
A ray of brown sunshine?
Does that mean that your turds are somehow related to Guiness beer?
I'm gonna have to switch brands methinks.
Persoanlly I always thought the idea of NOW was really interesting. Unfortunately the interview is short on details on this topic. Basically it's referred to as "flawed from the beginning" or something.
Does anyone know what went wrong with it, or if anything went right? I mean, it's more of a "dotnet" idea then anything Microsoft has thought of, it would be great to have it up and running. (And from what I've understood there are several achademic OS's that operate along the lines of Linux NOW.)
The real reason is that Progeny sales were low. What is left of tech support have almost nothing to do. Nobody bought the product, no need for paid support. Meanwhile, management killed NOW because putting all their eggs into the Progeny Debian basket -- NOW is what was supposed to drive the company anyway. By shifting resources away from NOW and to Progeny Debian and dead-end ideas, the company was clearly not going to pull through even in a good economy. Different targets every 3 months means a lack of vision that is hard to escape from.