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Love Says Caldera's Doing Fine, Despite Losses
sanpitch writes: "Caldera is barely scraping along, (in contrast to little brother Lineo, which may not survive). Their latest move is to close the Chelmsford and Erlangen offices, as well as lay off 73." At least not Noel Coward writes: "The bad financial report out of Caldera yesterday is actually good news, says Ransom Love in an interview on Linux and Main. Now, he says, they're ready to go forward with their grand strategy, which unfortunately has nothing at all to do with desktop Linux as we know it."
read it and weep, bitch
try biting your ear while claping your hands... good, now you look like a moron
Caldera ClosedLinux was just about the worst linux distro I'd ever seen...
First: Love Says Caldera's Doing Fine
then.. Caldera is barely scraping along. Those statements are mutually exclusive.
(in contrast to little brother Lineo, which may not survive)
In contrast to? If Caldera are 'barely scraping along' then surely they might not survive either.
The bad financial report out of Caldera yesterday is actually good news
That makes absolutely no sense.
This story sounds like a giant spoof. Noel Coward.. (of "Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun" fame?).. And 'Ransom Love'? Eh?
Is Slashdot trying to be The Onion of tech stories? If so, do your homework, this is only funny because of how stupid it is.
mogorific carpentry experiments
It is a little known fact that Caldera Linux includes source code that was stolen from Microsoft Windows to speed up the graphics routines. That's why Caldera Linux has a file called /usr/lib/direct3d8.so.
It is stolen code that maps OpenInventor code to DirectX using the special undocumented API that only Caldera can use because they are a monopoly on the Linux desktop.
It was THE worst linux distro I'd ever seen.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
f caldera.
and what the hell kind of name is "ransom love"? shouldn't he be serenading some hairy italian women on balconies?
Mandi's voluptuous curves emphasised the singlemindedness of a Reaganite generation. Her wholesome rump, which would do a farmer proud in even the most competitive Texan meat markets, once again interrupted my field of vision to the birds perching nonchalantly on the roof of the opposite building. Two years, three months, four days and one hour into my job at dotcomrevolution.com, and the word on the seventh floor was that the VC's were about to cut off our air supply. These gulls were my only break from the monotony of BSD server administration, and Mandi had to be punished for her countless intrusive hours at the photocopier.
"Your ass is blocking my view," I mumbled.
"What did you say?" she roared. Well, it was more an angry squeak than a raw. I just had to block out the irritating, high-pitched whine that characterised all Mandi's replies, and my instincts caused my right hand to jump onto the air conditioning knob for the server room, turning it up to full blast.
"You -- that again -- I'll -- the manager!" she continued, her voice drowned out by the healthy whir of the most expensive fans in Christendom. I looked at her and grinned. "I can't think -- that -- noise! Turn -- off now!" She was trying to keep her cool (an act made all the easier by the now exceptional air conditioning), but even a blind man could have felt the heat from her cheeks as they began to turn a rosy red with rage.
"I'm afraid I can't do that, Mandy," I responded. I guess she looked like more of a Dave than a Mandy, her smooth but noticeably dark follicles of facial hair contrasting with her pasty skin under the lifeless fluorescence of office lighting, but she would not have understood the reference anyway.
With that, I turned back to my console and resumed my xtank session. But what was this? Out of the corner of my eye, I saw water begin to drip out of the corner of Mandy's eye, while she was sitting in my assistant's chair. (Well, I called it the assistant's chair, I had not actually had an assistant since late 1999, when I selected him to be the scapegoat for my rather poor backup schedule.)
"Why must you always make fun of me? I'm just trying to do my job," she blubbed. Sitting close to me now, not even $10,000 of Taiwanese ventilation could block out her piercing tone. "Ever since I got this job the guys here have made fun of me for my shape, why can't they just respect me for who I am."
A change of heart that would have made Montgomery Burns proud caused me to stand up and walk over to the wreck. I wanted to explain this rationally to her, in terms of the mating habits of the human male, and the desire for a woman fit for childbearing and housework, but there was no time for that (it was ten minutes to five). "I'm sorry," I uttered, and rested my hand on Mandy's shoulder, fearing a lawsuit.
Mandy stood up, and without hesitation put her arms round me, whispering, "Thank you." I reciprocated, grateful for a secure office lacking in inside windows. Instead of letting go, she squeezed me harder, and her tears began to stain the shoulder of my designer shirt. I motioned to back away, and in doing so my hand slipped downwards, brushing against her behind.
"I'm not so repulsive, am I?" she questioned.
I was racking my brain for a diplomatic response. "I guess there are advantages to looking at you over the gulls and the hypnotising router LEDs," I confessed. "And unlike with the routers, I'm not called out when you break down. And you don't leave a mess on the roof..."
"That's the nicest thing anyone's ever told me," she interrupted. "Do you have a girlfriend?"
(I'm a geek. Do you have a girlfriend? Exactly.)
"I'm, um, er.. I'm playing the field," was my closest attempt at honesty without offending my manhood. "I dont like to deprive others of my attention by focussing too much on one person."
"That's a shame," she said, and then her tone of voice changed completely. "Because I was so hoping to score before next week's lay-off."
"NEXT WEEK?" There was no chance that I would be able to return my home-brewed Beowulf cluster of 'borrowed' workstations so soon, and I had expected at least two week's warning from management. "Oh, and I know about your Beowulf cluster," she whispered, "but I'm sure I can use my special relationship with your boss to make it easier for you to return the equipment. The question is, what can you do for me?"
to be continued...
M$ no longer has the monopoly on bullshit.
To use Love's term, they are "streamlining" their business.
They may find themselves streamlined out of business soon.
I have been pwned because my
well, afturd we proform sum more magical # FUDging, we'll be abull to pay some more yacht fuel fewsures to ransom. doN'T ya just love IT?
Caldera is dying.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Of trying sell stuff nobody wants. Ok other linux distros aren't exactly rolling in cash but Caldera has got to be having the most trouble of any of the top five. I mean you know a company is in trouble when they have to make an anouncement about how everything is ok.
we just got dunn tawlking to our broker over at bear on stearno, & he said that buying ransom's funny money scenario would make US all billyunheirs buy nitefall. gooed enough for me.
see y'all at the hamptons partays. doN'T pretend you doN'T know who i'm tawlking to komandeur tahoe.
I'd be more worried about
"its chief technology officer, Drew Spencer, and chief legal counsel, Harrison Colter, have left the company"
Is this a rats jumping a sinking ship or somehow just bad timing?
In other news, Caldera says Love is all we need. Back to you, Jill!
As this is Slashdot
All news has to be good news
If it's on Linux.
Caldera sucked.
what they are still around, they used to make a crapy linux distro right? I almost forgot about them
...if this guy says "frankly" again I am going to explode.
... the 'properterial' version of Leenooks?
I know that this post may start a large discussion, but I just absolutely feel like saying something. Caldera was definitely in the game a few years ago, but the momentum which they had has been usurped by RedHat and some other distros. Caldera is now a large company which will soon be a small one. It seems that the main reason that Caldera is hurting right now is they simply lack vision. Love talks about selling to server-side clients and Unix clients, but it seems that this focus has changed from his mentioned graphical install and the desktop presence of Linux, something which he once thought that Linux could achieve. This interview shouldn't have taken place. If he doesn't have a business plan, he should do something about it or step down and find someone who can get a vision for Caldera. The last thing we need is to hear of another Linux company which isn't on the ball. Especially with the successes of new releases of OpenOffice, KDE, Mozilla, WineX, etc. (although WineX could arguably be a failure for Linux strategically).
I've got 40 strong reasons why Linux will have a powerful desktop presence in the near future and Microsoft is running scared, and Caldera needs to wake up and stop trying to market to the wrong target. And no, I'm not biased about Linux, I've just done my research. I'm prepared to remain in the top of the software industry no matter what curve balls come my way.
./cwide
soul daddies in a firewire tumble dryer
What's love but a second hand emotion?
Ransom and Caldera have always been rather "offbeat" members of the Linux community. I see no problems with them further withdrawing from the community into the proprietary software world - which is where I think Love is planning to take them. This recent spate of business "writing off" or "taking" losses is in part due to the Enron scandal. No company wants to be seen as hiding losses which might be discovered by the SEC, plantiff lawyers for shareholders' lawsuits, etc.. So no surprise as many other companies are rushing to confess losses.
You shank my Jengaship!
This could be bad news. Very bad news.
to create FUD for the OS which they love the best. Kind of self-defeating, huh? M$ is probably laughing their heads off right now. Caldera, you sucked. goodbye.
who actually cares if caldera disappears .....
Caldera, our beloved penguin, is in desperate need. Apparently, he is being held for Ransom by Mr. Love. For 10 million dollars, Mr. Love will release him, and once the Ransom is paid, things will be back to normal.
Hi. I'm The_Fire_Horse and you might remember me from such posts as "Backups? Ha - not on my shift" and "How to sneak Christmas card EXE's through the corporate firewall".
... yes
.. um.. porn .
... why... did you install it?
... No - thanks, I've got to go.So there you have it folks - from the horses mouth , all people want is easy access to their Porn - and it looks like Linux can deliver!
There has been a lot of talk lately about if linux is ready for the desktop. Issues such as useability, reliability, security, applications have all been discussed, argued and generally thrashed to the limits. Today we go straight to the source and get an interview with that one elusive user who actually USES all these desktops - Joe Sixpack.
TFH : So tell us Joe, how do you think your computing experiance can be enhanced through modern Operating Systems.
J6P: [cracks a tinnie] What the fuck are you on about?
TFH: What do you want your computer to do?
J6P : Lookin at tits and ass - why, what do *you* use a computer for?
TFH: Ok - so you like to look at porn. What else, do you use documents, like resumes for jobs or a database for your Tax Returns ?
J6P: [snorts beer through nose] - HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW - shit, you're some kind of fucking comedian aint yu?
Hell, no I dont do any of that nerdy shit. But the missus likes to play that card game sometimes.
TFH: How do you backup your downloaded porn. I mean, where do you keep it after downloading it - Hard disk, CDR, floppy?
J6P: Hey, watch it boy - there aint nutin 'floppy' about me, alright ?
Hmmm... let me think [scratches nuts... for several minutes] Oh, I git yu - yup. You mean when Jemma Maria is yappin on the blower, who do I git me hooter pics?
TFH:
J6P: Well - its a pain in the ass, but we go to the folders on the computer and click on them from there.
TFH: So, that would mean you have to go to My Computer, then My Pictures to get your
J6P: [scratches head] Nope that isnt it... Ummm... its called.. oh, yeh
All me stuff is stuffed in \home\Joe\ I just go to there and all me pics are there in one spot.
TFH: You use Linux!?!?
J6P: Who? Ah, crap I dont know. Its a PC - I wouldnt know who made the fucking thing
TFH: So how
J6P: Well, you see when we first got it it had this fancy 'Windows 98' screen after you turned the power on, and it looked pretty, but after it finished i didnt know where the fuck anything was - there were icons everywhere. I just wanted Porn and the missus just wanted solitaire.
The we get this CD in the post called "Simple Linux". So , I plugged it in and it took about 25 minutes of chugging away but when it was done I had all my porn in one spot, the missus had here card game (3 of em now actually!).
TFH: So you moved away from Windows98 and installed Linux and it works well now? J6P: Well apart from the missing cloud startup screen - it works a shit load better than before - we can leave it running for days without that Blue screen appearing all the time - and it displays the porn faster too.
TFH: Thanks, Mr Sixpack for your answers - you've been very helpful
J6P: [cracks a tinnie] No worries - you wanna see my collection, I've got...
TFH:
The bad financial report is actually good news. Yeah, good in a sense they can MAYBE show a little profit, or atleast a decline in losses. However, (comma) it is never a good thing to put a "happy" statement right next to the statement that says how many people they are laying off...remonds me of my former employer:
www.lucent.com
Sent from your iPad.
Jon Katz is going to be on letterman. watch the man make bad arguments in real life!
They share and make illegal copies of all their music, they steal bandwidth. Man! Will they stop at nothing?
I would hate to hear someone say that. We don't need more reasons to enforce crazy laws!
-- A cat is no trade for integrity!
The bad news is actually good.
:)
Yeah, right
Yet another crippling bom.... *BSD is Dying! The Hurd will rule the planet!
The more sunshine management spreads around, the more likely rain is in the forcast.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Caldera is dead! Hooray!
Screw Caldera. They've never been anything but an aberration riding on the coattails of the open source movement. Their philosphy has always seemed to have been "Gee, free marketing. Too bad we can't make this stuff proprietary so it's Ours". I've never had anything but loathing for that besotted company.
As little interest as I have in Mandrake, I suppose it has a place, among the "liek i wanna run linux but make it just like windoze plzthx k" types who want to be able to tell their coworkers that "Yeah, I've used that Linux thing. It sure is neat." as well as a strong following among the "so it's gcc install smurf.c rite" script kiddie sorts. Redhat is ok. I dislike RPM systems as a matter of course, and find Debian to be the most usable linux distro, but whatever.
My point is, not that I particularly had one, Slashdot is falling victim to their "anything related to linux is good!@#!!!!!" bias, ignoring the fact that Caldera is just yet another moronic dotcom wanna be company riding on the Open Source hype. Name a single worthwhile thing they brought to the table(m$ folk read; innovations) and I'll change my tune. Seeing as you can't, stop posting this absurd fodder about a failed company as interesting news. "Stuff that matters", cmon, ring a bell?
Yeah. Feel free to flame away at this, kiddies and crapflooders. Just don't count on me answering.
Love Says Caldera's Doing Fine
That sounds like the beginning to a really dreadful country song.
--saint
Frankly ;) my current opinion on Caldera is not very flattering. Frankly, I do not know anything concrete about them, I just have the image, that they have tried to knock multiple doors to enter the desktop. Now, I read that they are not aiming to hit the desktop. Frankly, I do not have any hunch on why buy something from Caldera.... I just think that they decided to choose "business customers" to have better change to survive only by effective lobbying and no realworld evidence.
I have not used any time to find out what Caldera really is, or wants to be, but this is what they have been able to communicate to me so far - not very convincing. By looking at their financial figures I assume they have been able to communicate the same image to others as well.
Redhat, instead, might not be "that" different, but they have been able to create an image, that they are thriving to do something concrete and something that might become beneficial - Caldera just is - atleast for now.
Oh, wait, that would assume that RH is making real (as opposed to pro forma) profits. Never mind.
Maybe Caldera will get lucky and sell themselves to either HPaq ot IBM.
Why worry they will be gone soon
Microsoft has conceded to the nine 'rebel states' who have filed a lawsuit against them for 'providing services American citizens don't want.'
Microsoft press agent, Uri Frah, said: "This is a good outcome for all parties involved although not for Microsoft. We are, however, optimistic about the outcome of this case, and our shareholders should be delighted with this turn of events in light of the recent events as respective to the relevance of the outcome to this announcement."
Bill Gates was said to be 'depressingly happy' about the outcome.
if Caldera simply went belly up. I mean that way it would take the last remenents of SCO out with them. I mean SCO really sucks and since Caldera sucks too that actually would be twice as good.
This sounds pretty weird. Usually they have celebrities or people with interesting opinions on there (recent guests include Tom Waits, Mary Tyler Moore, Hugh Grant).. who the hell outside of Slashdot has heard of Jon Katz?
Good luck to him though. Perhaps he'll be making a guest appearance in Friends next.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Conectiva announced this week that it's going to sell Caldera products here in Brazil.
Use the fish, luke.
eliphas
Why does everyone seem to hate Caldera so much, I mean what did they do? Aren't they a Linux distribution that has been around for a while? What is the problem? I would have thought that they are the good guys. I know not eveybody likes every distribution, but you don't see too as much of this desire for a linux version too disappear. Lots of people hate Debian or Slackware for being too hard. Many people dislike Mandrake for being too easy. Yeah people will say "Mandrake sucks, get a real distro" but you don't see "Mandrake sucks, I hope they fold" So what makes Caldera deserving of more venom than usual?
Don't think Caldera ever supported desktop Linux. For Caldera, RedHat, VA I.O.U. it was a brief experiment. Caldera and RedHat went embedded and VA I.O.U. dissappeared.
This posting to slashdot was just a cheap way to find out public opinion of Caldera. Now that it is known, Caldera will be tucking their tail between their legs and running away...
Caldera OpenLinux was my first Linux distro a few years ago. It really helped me get started; it had a graphical install, which was a novelty at the time (complete with a game, Tetris, I believe) and a great manual to help you get going with KDE. Without Caldera, I probably would have never gotten into Linux. Now years later, Caldera makes you buy per seat licenses (!) for OpenLinux, has a slow development cycle and it seems to ignore GNOME completely. Other disstros have passed it by in the ease of installation and use. Sad.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
I DO!
"The Community" loses a really dodgy distro from a company that doesn't understand open source.
What have Caledra actually done for Linux, in the past 2-3 years? (Yes, that was a serious question.)
I don't know a single person who has even considered using OpenLinux in any way, shape or form. Maybe that's why they're dying.
Caldera bought SCO, and thus has a HUGE Unix market share... they will not be going anywhere.
I told that to my bank once while dealing for a House loan...
My bad financial report is actually good news...
Now, I live in a fridge recycled box...
Am i the only one who uses Caldera? Its always gave me what i needed, with much less fuss then the others.. More geared to business users...
True they have given little back to the community lately, but is that a crime, or just someting to be frowned apon?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Don't know much about Caldera's Linux, but Ransom Love is an idiot. Anyone else remember when he said he has done more for Free Software than RMS? Ummm.....yeah. In the immortal words of Dr. Forrseter to TV's Frank: "that's an interesting world you've created for yourself there..."
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
I bought in at 15
'nuff said.
Now *that* comes as no big surprise. We tried to use the Moreton Bay (I guess they're called "Snap" now) line of NAT gateways but the prices kept going UP. When we could buy NAT gateways for less than $100 and these things were going past $250 we could no longer justify recommending them even though their use of Linux made them easier to admin (from our standpoint).
What do we do now? We use freeSCO on salvaged 486 boxes with no hard drives unless we need a full blown firewall... then we install SuSE 8.0 and use their firewall and/or netfilter. We've also not fallen for the $1,000 linux-based "firewall" distributions which license 10 or 20 internal IP addresses... hell, we can build the entire firewall for less than that and have unlimited internal IPs.
In my opinion (which is worth every nickel you've paid for it) the Linux-based companies are still struggling to find a profitable niche. Except for companies like ours, which simply design and build working solutions using open-source tools on an individual basis. We don't have "products", we just go in, solve their problems and leave. Oddly enough, they're happy to pay us to do that.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
As a caldera stockholder and previous beta tester, I've been a caldera fan for a long time. When they were involved heavily in the desktop arena, they had the best distribution without-a-doubt. They pioneered so many things which are common to our distributions today, like the graphical installation (no more boot/root disks!), the automatic update utilities, and they even created WebMin.
However, they're in bad shape now. Their stock price was hovering around 1.00 a few months ago and so they decided to do a reverse stock split 4-1. Yup, I've now got 4x less shares, and guess what the stock price is? It's a 1.02 as of this morning! Now, they've chased out all of the institutional investors because the float isn't even large enough to allow for large share blocks. I don't know what that management team is doing, but they had better get their act together quickly.
Once predicted a few years back by Linux Journal as being 1 of the 3 linux companies that would make it through the dot-com burst and software buzz (the other two being redhat and va linux), I'm starting to have my doubts.
Kris
This really one article people should read to the END before commenting on. Sounds like Caldera has a good business plan and a decent strategy - too bad one has to read the whole thing to see what it is.
Really shows how poor the commenting is, or the moderation, or whatever it is....
Be nice to have a discussion about the what the Caldera business model really is, as opposed to this sort of tripe. They have all those SCO resources, which is intriguing, to say the least.
1) How did Ransom Love get a name like that?
2) If I change my name to a powerful name of that sort, will I be more successful in life?
I had a promo copy of Caldera 1.3, the first with the Lizard install. It is still great.
Howsomeever, there were really stupid quality control problems with the version. xinitrc was hosed, along with 10 other problems with text files. It would only run as root. I compiled a list with fixes for the newbies, and had the audacity to suggest it be posted on the home page as errata. Caldera told me to stuff it.
By the way, that was the first and last time my manager looked at the highly touted Linux. "What a piece of crap!" was his comment.
Hey Ransom, quality and execution matter. You couldn't manage a janitorial business.
To which I thought, "Yeah, 'Downsizing.' Meaning 'We're getting rid of those pesky customers.'" They went bankrupt shortly thereafter.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
I was a beta tester of some of Moreton Bay's dedicated firewall gear (later Lineo, now Snapgear), and it's VERY GOOD stuff. Alas, their $250+ prices just cannot compete with a (technically somewhat inferior, but still adequate) $99 D-Link or Netgear unit. Granted, the low-end D-Link doesn't have remote logging or VPN capabilities, but it's really, really hard even for a dedicated Linux advocate like me to pony up 2.5 times the price for functionality I don't use. I like and respect the Moreton/Lineo/Snapgear folks, but they have a really rough price point problem.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
This is like the dreaded vote of confidence. It comes right before the end.
The bad financial report out of Caldera yesterday is actually good news
That makes absolutely no sense.
Read the article, not the /. blurb! Love never made any such statment in the article. Timothy botched the recap. The closest statement that I can pick out which may correspond to what Sanpitch was trying to summarize was:
Ransom Love: I hate to take a negative and entirely make it into a positive, but in reality some of it is just the ongoing work of streamlining the business, and, frankly, we're making tremendous progress there.
Translation: "I really hate sounding like I'm full of s**t, but one of my responsibilities as CEO is to put a positive spin on "screwing the pooch". So I'm going to put the blame the negative quarter on restructuring and streamlining, and we did such a tremendous job, it can only get better from this point."
(Rant: I submit a wonderful article on how IIS grew market share at the height of the "Code Red" contagion, and it gets rejected. Meanwhile, drivel from the CEO of a non-player in the Linux world is given the front page. *rrrrrr*)
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Well, from a very close and trusted source, Caldera just closed their division that built the product they (used to) sell !
So, what's next ?
Maybe try to have a stock value higher than $1 when a year ago it was in the range of $10 and used to be even much higher...
What's left of the SCO product lines (Tarantella and Vision, basically) is sold by a new company called Tarantella, inc.