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Ransom Love to Focus on UnitedLinux
morhoj writes "Looks like Ransom Love, who recently was host to a /. interview, has been replaced as CEO of Caldera and is now exclusively leading the UnitedLinux initiative. Some other stock buybacks and board swaps also happened at Caldera. Can't say that I'm all too pleased by this, I for one didn't like some of his answers in the interview, specifically that fees would be required to become "UnitedLinux" certified. That should really help wider Linux adoption."
He's sexier than a stack of kuro5hin calendars.
just plain asinine. They don't deserve any shelter on this one. Just plain greedy, perverting the open source ideal just to put a few bucks in their pocket, and to exercise some control over something that really isn't rocket science since it's been done already.
Sounds like a porn star name.
1) become united linux certified
2) ??
3) profit
Fault loves the past, worry loves the future, but content enjoys the present.
Is taking this guy seriously with a name like THAT.
We might as well have this guy lead UnitedLinux. Or this guy. An Oriental guy would be good for diversity. This guy too.
That should do for now.
Aw, fuck it. Let's go bowling. - The Big Lebowski
Robert Love is. Ransom Love is not a kernel developer.
Erm... that last missing link was supposed to point to Mike Rotch. Heh.
the reason people (windows users) dont use linux is because they are used to pay hundreds of dollars for windows. they think linux is a worse product because it is free :P
(:cP)-|==
Ransom Love has never really understood the concept of free software. He's stuck in the mindset of proprietary == added value and Caldera has suffered because of that. The same thing will happen to United-Linux if he has a strong controlling interest in its productization. The end result will be more of an Untied-Linux which will probably never even have as much relevance to the linux world as even Caldera was able to achieve.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
So what if it requires fees to become "UnitedLinux certified". I'm pretty sure every other certification requires money too.
Caldera bought DR DOS from Novell, sued Microsoft, settled out of court, and promptly sold it to Lineo. It is still, BTW, closed source, though Lineo is using it to expand its roles in the legacy and embedded device areas.
;)
The basic problem here is that Love has made Microsoft-inspired statements about the GPL, helped his company get a large chunk of their capital from suing Microsoft, buying worst-of-breed products (like SCO), etc. Is he really the person you want to have head the United Linux effort?
I personally think that United Linux will flop, and may take down Turbolinux, SuSE, and Conectiva as well. I would include Caldera as well, but that company has already lived up to its namesake
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Well, by charging, corporate america will be able to think with it. Besides it might become able to fund the partners to continue creating distributions we've grown so fond of.
It seems few here have any experience with keeping a company afloat. It's always complain, complain when these guys try to get paid for all the work they put into this. It would be one thing if they were making money head over heals like MS.
They have all been running at a loss with their linux distributions. Do you want to pay for them to continue?
I for one am willing to pay for what I get. Fair exchange, don't you think?!
So unless you can put up the money, and time it takes, and make it go right to bring out a great distribution, shut up!
Personally, I don't mind that United Linux is trying to make a profit. I also wouldn't mind paying for it, if it was worth it.
Having something be commercial is *not* the same as being closed (propriatary). If they try to charge money for something that sucks, no one will pay for it.
I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, and I'm a huge open source fan. But, people do still need to make money. And, I would rather see closed source software on an open platform, than closed source on a closed platform.
Just my $.02 worth, anyway.
LinuxSoft? MicroLinux? Either way, at least someone is taking the first step. To really be competitive means making money, and making money means charging for the product.
Redhat charges for Advanced Server (targeting the Enterprise), but allows server and desktop for free. If I understand correctly, United will charge for "Server" and up, but the desktop will be free. Sort of like "If you build it, they will come" for the desktop piece.
What is troubling (to me) is that, in the end, the precedents here are well documented. We all remember the "free" for life" services when the internet was in first bloom. Free E-mail, web hosting, etc. Those are gone. They won't be back, either. Because they didn't make money.
The "give" here (by United) is on the GPL and releasing source code to developers. That keeps the platform "open", while still managing to charge for the product.
Is Linux on the desktop "ready for Prime Time"? No, probably not. It isn't mindless enough. Certifications? Let's hammer away at that like MS and get 500,000 + folks certified (how many MCSE's are there?). Looks good to IS departments, anyway.
My point? The Linux community will have to answer United's push, and the answer will be an MS-like Linux based counterpoint to Windows. Things are fixing to change.
As I see a few bits & pieces of the UL puzzle, I can't help but think of OSF. The Unix community was supposed to be united at last, as the software giants combined forces to create the one, truly standard OS. Focused more on fees than creativity... we all know how the story ends.
The more I read about UL, the less I like it. I seriously doubt that the people who developed most of Linux were expecting to be used as free labor in a conventional retail software product.
RL being replaced as CEO of Caldera won't make any difference. They'll still be clueless, they'll continue to trail RH in marketshare by a bunch, they'll still fail to make the services model work, and they'll still lose boatloads of cash every quarter.
I think everyone has missed the point here. The main story isn't that he's now heading up UL, but that Ransom Love is no longer President/CEO!
That story is HUGE. There has been enough mismanagement and misdirection in Caldera and it's finaly time for a change. While targeted by the OpenSource community for quite some time and for several (many times) unfounded reasons, Caldera has typicaly done nothing different than most other comertial Linux companies. However, they have consistantly played their hand in the wrong light. Their own announcements have come from a point of view that ticks off the OS community. ei. Suse and RH have both shipped proprietary software with their Linux distros but Caldera does it and they get the bullet. Go figure.
It always seemed that Caldera never thought of how they should say things as much as what was said and consistanly fucused (caldera internal joke...) on the wrong points.
I don't like the idea of UnitedLinux at ALL. The idea of all the distros under one "lead" specially a lead like the former CEO of caldera.....not good.
Ransom Love will destroy any hope UnitedLinux had. I hope he does not take SUSE down with him. He has never from day one understood anything about how to run an open source related company. Just look how popular Calera is with "Open"Linux (quotes are intentional.) They have boughten SCO, which is a horrible OS with a mainframe like following, and is slowly destroying that too. They had some cool technology years ago, like Linux NDS which was never widly used because nobody wanted to "tie themselves" to Caldera. He seems intent on creating vendor lockin, which is exactly what his market wants so badly to avoid.
Love seems to shoot himself in the foot each time he opens his mouth. People are complaining about the slashdot interview. That was one of the best interview he ever gave...go search for more, you'll see. This guy does not belong in the Linux business, he just doesn't understand it. What's even worse is he thinks he does.
This move of his saddens me. It also makes me want to go out and purchase some RedHat stock. All of RedHat's serious competition is about to die. I hope SUSE can maintain itself, and not sellout to Love's screwball mindset. I thought they knew better.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
On the Microsoft thing, you have to remember Microsoft created XENIX, mostly by farming it out to SCO to do the port. XENIX eventually became what is now OpenServer 5, which was SCO's mainline (and only UNIX) for many years. Kind of hard to hate MS when they formed the core of their business for decades. MS also owns some amount of the old SCO, dunno how that played out with the Caldera purchase. A lot of XENIX => OpenServer code had MS copyrights, and MS got a cut of every OS5 sale until 1997 I read...
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Who community when Yahoo! confirmed that a Who musician has dropped yet again, now they are down to less than a fraction of 66% percent of all members. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that The Who has lost more band members, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. The Whoe is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by coming dead last in the recent MTV comprehensive music test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict The Who's future. The hand writing is on the wall: The Who face a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for The Who because The Who is dying. Things are looking very bad for The Who. As many of us are already aware, The Who continues to lose market share. Blood flows like a river of red ink.
Who member "Ox" is the most endangered of them all, having lost 26% of his body to decomposition. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time The Who member "Ox" only serves to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: The Who is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Who leader Roger Daltrey states that there are 7000 fans of The Who. How many fans of "Ox" were there? Let's see. The number of Who versus "Ox" posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 "Ox" fans. The Who posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Elvis posts. Therefore there are about 700 fans of The Who. A recent article put The Who at about 60 percent alive. Therefore there are now (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 The Who fans. This is consistent with the number of Who Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of the music business, abysmal sales and so on, The Who went out of existance and was taken over by MCA Records who sells more troubled BS. Now MCA Records is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All majr surveys show that The Who has steadily declined in market share. The Who is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If The Who is to survive at ll it will be among music dilettante dabblers. The Who continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, The Who is dead.
Fact: The Who is ying
As some one who has suffered dislocated shoulder several times, I feel very sorry for these guys. I'm afraid gentleman #2 may be deceased, but the 1st guy, I hope he can get his arm back in place( it looks really painful). This is further evidence to allow the govment to install devices into all cars to cap their speed at like 60MPH(similar capping bandwidthon cable ). If it can save a single life, it is worth it. Never again should a civilian drive faster than 60MPH.
This is the same guy who is angered by the question about what Caldera does not give back to the Open Source community in the recent slashdot interview. He tells of how much "merketing" caldera has given to Linux, and how we should be greatful.
That shows how much he understands the Open Source world. I remember when Caldera was considered a "bigger" more reliable Linux distribution than RedHat back in the kernel 1.2 days. Look at the two of them now, and the business/respect they have. If he thinks "marketing" his own product is enough giving back to the open source community, he deserves to fail. Calera should have died a long time ago. He bites the hand that feeds him...we have bitten back. I am afraid he will stunt (if not completely destroy) UnitedLinux's growth like he did Caldera.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
damnit, modded down already... does anybody have a sense of humor anymore?
And what have you done for Linux recently?
Most recently,
/usr/src/linux/drivers/video/matrox/mat roxfb_accel.c
That just gets me that a technology company hired one of the head guys at Franklin Covey... I think I'll just jot that down in my leather bound date planner.
"I say we need to take back our Linux and make it be know that's it's from the people for the people. "
Nobody has run off with it. The people can eat their fill. It was pretty clear from his recent interview that UnitedLinux isn't for the people, it's a package with a bow on it for business, addressing their concerns. Which is fine. That's part of the beauty of Linux, no one can have a monopoly on it -- not Linux hippies, not business, not anyone, but everyone is free to use it, and there's a flavour for pretty much everyone. After reading his interview it was pretty clear to me that I'll never be using UnitedLinux, but that's fine, I've got more than enough other choices. Heck, I can even build it from scratch. And I have.
It would be this:0 0/03/03 21RansomLove.jpg
http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/ne/pre/Ent/20
I could just see that nasty grin on his face.
Anyone who _needs_ GUI based coding can't code, your comment about gcc didn't make sense, and any non-retard could tell you that M$FT shared source means M$ owns your code. The GPL is the one that's free. If you had any idea what you were talking about you would know that the FSF doesn't own your code. It is FREE, as in not owned by anyone. You seem to have mixed them up, and you obviously aren't a real programmer, you're just a M$ drone.
Or does anyone else think the blue part of the Caldera logo looks like the left ear and part of the head of Mickey Mouse?!?!?!
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Here's what I think. I think a company needs to be started (let's call it Microsoft for our purposes), and that company will take all the GPLd software, package it, and license it under a commercial license so strict that you're not even allowed to remove the CD from the shrink-wrapping, let alone try to execute any of the information on it.
I don't know about huge. CEO of bit player in the corporate Linux world steps down. Nobody cares about Caldera.. a few people (most of Redhat's competition) care about UL. You seem to be saying that he'll do less damage this way, but I think he has the potential to do more damage.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
with this United Linux initiative if you know what I mean. GPL'd code must be free!
With any luck, the demise of UL will take RL with it. Unfortunately, the M$ hype machine will be screaming at full blast to announce the death of Linux, when it's really just UL being flushed down the toilet.
Regarding SUSE, I'm not so sure any of the Linux parters in UL can survive this expensive mistake. These companies simply don't have the financial reserves to go out and take foolish risks like this. Of all the potential UL casualties, SUSE is the only one that I will miss.
How are you man? Long time no see!
Is this some kind of double troll, falling for an obvious troll to see how many people point out how trolled he is... or is this AC just really fucking stupid?
is the same reason that no-talent moron River Phoenix got any parts in films - because of his 'dorky-cool' name.
That's it. There's no other logical explanation.
I mean, I've never met anybody who's even claimed to -know- anybody who's ever run Caldera Linux, or even seen it running on some computer somewhere, you know?
So, let's do ourselves a favor and just forget about this dimwit and his oh-so-pretentious moniker so and go back to more relevant stuff like
whether or not Ozzie's wife is going to defecate in his bag of pot or whatever, OK?
"specifically that fees would be required to become "UnitedLinux" certified"
... IT IS A BUSINESS
Yeah... it almost looks like a business... ehm... oops
So in the end Linux in your opinion should be about Free as in beer?
It remains to be seen whether UL will be a good thing or not. But I thought the whole point of Open Source was to allow you more freedom (as in speech) over the code you run. Since when is charging money going against this ideal? Even RMS says it's ok to charge for Free Software.
Say UL is successful and lots of businesses adopt it. They still won't have the kind of control over the users that Microsoft does - because they can always take the source and go elsewhere if they don't like the direction UL is going.
Certification is about giving businesses the comfort factor that applications will work out of the box on their linux systems. Certification means testing - which means time and manpower - which costs money. Charging for it seems to make sense to me. And you're only getting charged if you want to be part of the UL distro club (as far as I can see anyway).
Well, he seems to be trying to hold Linux at 'Ransom'
From my Autobiography - "Lifestyles of the Sad and Desperate"...
I am so sick and tired of people ragging on Ransom and Caldera. I have been using Caldera for years now, and I feel that it is the most stable of all distros out there. (I can say this because every once in a while, I install other distros just to see what is going on in other people worlds).
Now lets go after peoples bitches about Ransom and how he "bitches" about the "freeloaders" in the Linux community. First off, I have read all of his interviews that I can find. I have never seen that quote. Usually that is people saying that he said that. Second, everything that Caldera does for Linux OS is done under the GPL so all can get to the source. To me, he is giving more back to the community than most people who are just running Linux (I put myself in that boat!) Please notice that I put Linux OS because they do write apps like Volution for money. Yes, I said the dirty thing when it comes to Linux, making money. Business's as a rule need to make money to stay in business. I realize that most people in the community don't seem to have a clue about running a business, but let me make it clear as I can. The above is the first and cardinal rule: You need to make money to stay in business.
Oh, buy the way, there are not to many businesses staying afloat on service contracts alone. Look at RedHat as an example.
The moral of my story would appear to be: If you don't like Caldera or the UnitedLinux thing, don't use it. Plan and simple.
At least the nut isnt in control of Caldera anylonger.
Let him go out and do stuff on his own.
I dont see a problem with it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Maybe we'd have to be certified to take him seriously :-P
I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, and I'm a huge open source fan. But, people do still need to make money. And, I would rather see closed source software on an open platform, than closed source on a closed platform.
I agree, and while my experiences with Blender have led me to conclude that proprietary software coupled with proprietary formats is a no-win situation on any platform, open or closed, there is a place for commercial software in the Free World.
The problem with United Linux is that they are promoting a very erroneous and IMHO destrictuve meme: that (a) a single commercial entity imposing a defacto embrace-and-extended standard is better than a community consensus and (b) that commercial products are better off targeting one imposed distribution and counting on compatability with others (in contrast to packaging their binaries in a distribution-neutral manner, the way VMWare does, Blender and Loki did, etc.).
Point (b) is particularly problematic (and my sole signficant gripe with Red Hat, who I otherwise like as a company, as they have promoted that harmful meme to some degree as well), and why I will actually be cheering the demise of United Linux (to put it bluntly).
Their strategy is to encourage vendors to package stuff for their distro, arguing that they are the standard to which all other distros (e.g. Gentoo, Source Mage, Slackware, Debian, etc.) must become compatible, then use that in)compatabilties to coerce those who would like to use said commercial products into purchasing their distro.
In short, they are about coercion and removing choice from the community, and as I said in another thread, the losers will ultimately be the commercial vendors, whose products would simply be disregarded regardless of merit because of their incompatability with the installed distribution (which in our case we prefer for a number of reasons, the details of which aren't important here). The vendors will likely then think, erroneously, that they failed due to a lack of GNU/Linux interest, when in fact they failed because they targeted a coercive distribution that the majority of the community rejected, and thus closed themselves out of the very market they were trying to address.
The entire notion of United Linux is based upon at least two false pretenses: (1) that it is somehow impossible for vendors to package binaries in a distribution-neutral manner, despite numerous examples to the contrary and (2) that the GNU/Linux community will accept a compatability standard imposed upon us by either a unilateral or multilateral corporate interest instead of community consensus.
They are sorely mistaken on both of these points, and their arrogance will likely prevent them from seeing that until it is far too late.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy