Lineo near Death

An anonymous reader notd a bit running on LinuxGram about Lineo about ready to croak. It paints a pretty bleak view of the Linux embedded system company. Oddly enough, I'm still not exactly sure what they were trying to do.

Comments

Simple Explanation

[Dead Penis Bird]

It was also reportedly spending $40,000 a month on an office in San Mateo, California to house 10 people

It's simple why this company is going bankrupt. It's poor management like in the example above. There are likely to be many others like it.

It's time business retreats from the glitz and gets back to basics: making money.

Re:Simple Explanation

[Otter]

I'm not a CEO, but I am the corporate controller for a small electronics firm

I'm wondering which is a worse sign for a business -- paying $40K/month to house 10 employees or having the Penis Bird Guy as your corporate controller. ;-)

Yes, odd indeed

[TheGreenLantern]

Oddly enough, I'm still not exactly sure what they were trying to do.

Which pretty much explains why they are going under, doesn't it? If you can't get your point across to those that are interested in what you are doing, you have no hope when it comes to the rest of the world.

How can this be?

[fmaxwell]

Ten to twenty years from now, people are going to be shaking their heads in bewilderment about the attempts to make money selling "free software." They will react in much the same way that we do when people mention "New Coke".

Re:How can this be?

[JordoCrouse]

Somebody mod this back up... He's an idiot, but he would be right, if thats all they were doing.

But you see, they wern't selling free software. They were trying to sell closed source software leveraged off of free software, and (more importantly) the expertise to combine the two.

They failed because of their they way they ran their business, and many, many management missteps along the way.

If Redhat goes under, then you might question the intellegence of selling free software, until then, don't give the Lineo management so much credit. Put the blame where it belongs: not on "free" software, but rather really bad business.

Bankruptcy.

[saintlupus]

It paints a pretty bleak view of the Linux embedded system company.

If only they'd changed their focus in time. They could have been a survivor, like VA Ice Cream And Adult Novelties.

--saint

This is just flat out *wrong*

[BurritoWarrior]

n fact, a fair number of the last paychecks of the 50 people laid off reportedly didn't clear the bank. Paychecks paid to current employees at the end of March didn't have any funds to cover them either and automatic deposits weren't made.

The people in charge know long before all the money runs out that things are in bad shape. It doesn't sound like they notified any of their employees or gave them any warning so that they could look for other jobs.

Cripes. People have bills to pay and families to feed. Doesn't anyone have a shred of decency anymore?

Re:This is just flat out *wrong*

[penguin_nipple]

Cripes. People have bills to pay and families to feed. Doesn't anyone have a shred of decency anymore?

From my experience I can give a resounding 'no' to that. There is no decency unfortunatley. I was a research devloper at a Canadian University in the dept. of physics and computing. Our research group is/was a "Center for Excellence" and we developed two fully functional laser simulators of the Quantum Well and VCSEL variety. Things were progressing for 2 years, and the projects both reached decent beta stage.

Our entire research group was summarily laid of on a lovely friday afternoon at 5:30. No warning, no heads-up, no consideration.

Personally I was insulted but I can tell you, I am not the first, nor the last that this has happened to...

Mind you the educational institution referred to here had no problem highlighting our research group and some of my other research projects in glossy fliers in order to attract attention to new students and the general populace.

Oh the irony of being highlighted in promo material by the marketroids and concurrently bitchslapped by the accounting dept. in one fell swoop.

Problem with Making Money with Linux Services

[Greyfox]

Everyone talks about how you should make money with services. Well a few years ago, I set up a guy with a linux based web server and hacked out some scripts to keep 4 modems dialed out and bonded at the same time. Just recently I ran across his E-Mail address and sent him an E-Mail asking him if I'd pissed him off or something since I hadn't heard from him in ages. He told me no, and the machine I set him up with was still running great.

Having to keep finding new customers is a royal pain in the ass. You're much better off with Windows, where they keep coming back...

I've got some lineo products

[Restil]

They sell, among other things, a full linux compatible embedded system that fits completely on a single simm chip (30 and 72 pin varieties). Along with 10mbps ethernet, there are several I/O lines available for interfacing with the outside world. The systems I have run at 33mhz and use extremely low power as well as a sleep mode that uses even less. Basically, it can easily function off of nothing more than a small solar cell. It only needs something like 70 mA at 3.3 volts, even less if ethernet isn't being used.

The big problem with its design is, I don't think it scratches a big itch. Its primary useful application is for prototyping. Any company that makes embedded products might want to develop their software using such a device for testing, but if they plan to produce anything remotely resembling significant quantities, they'll lay out their own embedded design to better fit the application at hand.

Also, except in the tiny portable computer market, extremely low power doesn't make much sense. If the product being developed has no power restrictions tied to it (it gets power from the outlet for instance), then the entire advantage of this device is thrown out the window. I've done an analysis of the chips on their board, and it could be built for 1/4 the price if more power hungry versions were used instead. Also, if this
device will be primarily used for prototyping, and there IS a market for such devices, there's no reason to make them work off solar cells. As long as they remain compatible with low power models, they'll be just as effective, and a whole lot cheaper in the long run. And if they're less expensive people will purchase a LOT more of them.
Even the hobby market could support them if only they were priced more reasonably.

But regardless of all of that, face the fact, Lineo is a legacy dot com company. They spend more money than they have, and it shows.

-Restil