Turbolinux Sells Linux Business

bachoom writes "Today, NIKKEI(Japanese story) announced that Turbolinux Inc. sold worldwide Linux business to SRA, Japanese SI company. Turbolinux has burned through at least $100 million raised across three rounds from a dazzling collection of companies including Intel, IBM, and many Japanese companies. Currently, They were sold by $1 million."

Comments

Sold their linux business?

[Spudley]

Turbolinux Sells Linux Business

So does that mean they only sell turbos now?

Wait...

[Rayonic]

So they spent about $100 million in investor money, and now they're being sold for $1 million. In today's economy, doesn't that mean they turned a net profit?

I'm suprised it took this long

[richj]

I can't really say I'm suprised that they pissed away 100 million in venture capital. Their sales guys seemed to having an adverse reaction to SELLING.

I met with TurboLinux at LinuxWorld 1999 in NYC, this was during the big Linux boon. I was working as an independant consultant, and I had a Fortune 500 client looking to pilot Linux on file and print servers.

The TurboLinux salesguys were flat out fucking rude to me when I told him that I was evaluating different distros to present in my solution. "Oh that's great, just download it and go and install it, what's the big deal?" or some shit he said to me. Idiot had absolutely no idea how business works, if I brought him into my client we both would have been out the door.

Anyway, I wound up running with RedHat (a distro that my client paid for on all systems). I'm not saying that my client expected World Series tickets for a few grand in licensing, but when you have people like that working the booth at a tradeshow it's not the type of people you'd bring into a large and established New York City company.

Re:I'm suprised it took this long

[richj]

Looks like you had no idea how Linux works. Just download it and go and install it, what IS the big deal? Did you need your hand held?

This works around the apartment or on a friend's PC. But, for a second do you actually think that someone in charge of a network infrastructure is going to gamble his reputation on a consultant with a few burned CDs and no support?

What if the pilot was a disaster and he had nobody to call? The client would have been back to the "Windows 2000 Migration Plan" quicker than it would have taken you to feel the foot across your ass as you hit the street.

Your mentality is why companies are afraid to migrate to an Open Source system, you have no concept of assurance.

obligatory

[kin_korn_karn]

TL1: What happen?
TL2: Somebody set up us the merger.
TL3: We get signal
SRA: How are you gentlemen?
SRA: All your rinux are belong to us
TL1: what you say !!

Lets get over the Mandrake thing, please?

[Vanders]

Why is it that people must label Mandrake as some sort of "Linux for idiots" distribution? So its easy to use, so what, thats bad somehow? What, I have to installing & configure everything by hand to be a "proper" Linux user?

Look, get over it. I've been using Linux since Redhat 5.1 (Whats that, 5 years?). I've written my own dialup scripts, I've configured Xf96config by hand, I've upgraded, installed, built, re-built and hacked on Linux until my eyes bled. So please, don't try and tell me I don't know how to use Linux.

You know what, though? After doing all of that, I became sick and tired of it. All I want to do is get my work done, deal with my email and use the web 95% of the time. So I use Mandrake, which at least lets me do most of it without anoying me.

Oh, not that Mandrake is anything like perfect. Far from it, in fact. Its just the least sucky of the bunch, for me.

Re:UnitedLinux

[jcoy42]

First Mandrake drops out, now TurboLinux is sold off. What next?

Profit!

Clarifications; did SRA spend their $mil well?

[sam_handelman]

I'd like to thank Bachoom (the author of the little blurb) for all his excellent work in writing car manuals and stero instructions (Do not to the measurement! There will be a great occurence!) I say this to all my Japanese friends - use the grammer checker, dude.

Babelfish translation of the story itself (his link) is pretty incomprehensible - don't bother, but let me clarify: SRA bought the entire company, 100% of the stock. SRA will continue to operate in an independent fashion, however, at least for a while (I think).

Does Turbolinux have any debts, or was all the venture capital stock purchases?

We can all agree that TurboLinux inc. was a financial failure of epic proportions (distro was good, I think). The question is - did SRA make a good buy for their $1 million dollars? I don't know much about SRA, but they seem to provide Linux-based consultancy in Japan, where Turbolinux is a very popular distro. If their core consultancy (and training? I can barely read japanese - the corporate babble on the SRA website is utterly incomprehensible) business is viable at all, and TLinux remains popular in Japan, I think this was an excellent buy.

Wanted: /. Editor (Experience with English a plus)

[Lindril]

"Currently, They were sold by $1 million."

All your base are belong to us.