Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
Have no fear, progeny. You will have a great future! Microsoft is going to settle for you. $1.1 billion! Quite a future indeed!
Hopefully this isn't just yet another nail in the coffin for Debian...
Coffin? I hope no-one has been arranging a funeral, because they didn't invite us, and everyone knows, failing to invite someone to their own funeral is terribly impolite..
(but, well, is it a nice coffin?
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
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.
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.
I'm all for choice, but it's obviously both a curse and a blessing. You can have any flavour you like, but that means that the mindshare about what flavour is worth using gets diluted.
Maybe people wouldn't be so confused/worried about switching to Linux if they didn't have to consider the distro wars.
Assuming its this eugena then I don't think it counts as plagarism.
Yes, that's this Eugenia. :)
Uh, go to OSNews's front page and see that Eugenia Loli-Queru appears as the author for many of the stories. Seems he submitted a story currently running on his site to both slashdot and debianplanet. The summary is straight from the article intro (including the incorrect first name of Michael Shafer).
Eugenia is an OSNews editor, but it is very unlikely (as others have speculated) that she is the "Nicholas Heron" that did the interview (unless it's a male pen name).
Besides - if you really want to participate as a "Slashdot conspiracy addict", you could say that one of the Slashdot editors is defecting and sliding submissions to Debian Planet in preparation to get a job there after VA WhateverThisWeek folds Slashdot. And add that the editor defecting is JonKatz, who is really a Grey working for the Bavarian SubGenius with a link to Majestic 12.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Before anyone replies, yes I AM aware of t he mispelling of foul.
*sighs* this day just keeps getting better and better.
Anyway, sorry to have been an ass.
Colin
Colin Davis
Hopefully this isn't just yet another nail in the coffin for Debian...
Progeny is basically admitting that the free version of Debian is getting to be just as good as their proprietary distribution ever was. That might or might not be a bad thing for Progeny, but how could it possibly be a bad thing for Debian?
No problem Colin. :-)
... 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".
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.
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
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