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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."
1) become united linux certified
2) ??
3) profit
Fault loves the past, worry loves the future, but content enjoys the present.
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.
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!
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.
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
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
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).