Progeny Releases Linux Platform Manager

IanMurdock writes "Given your previous interest in Progeny, I thought you would be interested in our new Platform Services product direction and the release or our Linux Platform Manager tool. Briefly, Platform Services provides componentized versions of Red Hat and Debian, and Linux Platform Manager allows people to easily assemble these components into custom distributions. You can read more at http://www.progeny.com. More information on our new direction can be found in the Platform Services whitepaper."

Comments

Pick A Product

[technomancerX]

Ok, could Progeny maybe pick a product, finish it, release it, and market and support it?

What is this, version 3 or 4 of 'This is what Progeny does'?

Re:Pick A Product

[grub]

What is this, version 3 or 4 of 'This is what Progeny does'?

They're quite adept at putting out white papers! :)

Re:Pick A Product

[ndogg]

Progeny's main purpose is to render services and support to its customers, first and foremost, not to release yet another Linux distribution like all the other Linux companies out there.

SlashAds

[Dr. Mojura]

Is this important news to all of us, or just a way for Progeny to get some free advertising PR?
It's hard to keep the bias to a minimum when the story is submitted by the company.

Re:SlashAds

[Randolpho]

Why is it a problem when new technologies or versions of products are listed on Slasdot? It's news, regardless of who submits the article, and what's more, it benefits all. It gives Slashdot content (which it *technically* needs, dispite having content coming out the ears ;)), it gives us, the readers, info on a new product/technology, and it gives the owner of the technology some product awareness ("free advertising").

When you read, say, Computer Shopper, do you complain when they run an article about the latest technology, explaining what it is, who the company is, etc? Why would you complain about Slashdot doing the same? Do you honestly think that the editors of Computer Shopper aren't approached by the owners of this new technology in the hopes that they can get some product awareness? Hell, when we launched our big website a couple of months ago, we approached the local newspaper and got them to do a big story about it!

'taint nothin' wrong wit' dat. :)

Re:SlashAds

[chrisseaton]

But Slashdot thinks it's better than that - so it should at least try to live up to the standards it sets for the rest of the world.

A little disclaimer, "submitted by Ian Whatshisface, founder of Progeny", wouldn't have hurt either.

Shameless Plug

[FortKnox]

Slashdot needs a "Shameless Plug" tag to put on articles like this. Look at the submitters address. Slashdot is for news, not PR (unless they are getting paid for this story, in which case, I hope slashdot subscribers don't even get this story displayed to them).

BTW - What's up with all the Error 500's? Can't the Slashcode guys test the code before pushing it to the 'production' server (btw - these ARE the guys that complain about crashes in windows, then produce slashcode)?

Re:Shameless Plug

[jptechnical]

I think the point was to build awareness

from the building-the-interest dept.

and aid in making linux distributions more commonplace and easy to configure. I have installed and configured just about all every distro out there and still find something lacking. If I can get it modularized or configged as the post describes it may put me over the hurdles I have been facing. And as new features and ease of setup issues are resolved the platform becomes more powerful and usable by all. Isn't this the point of Open Source projects?

Re:Shameless Plug

[RevAaron]

I agree- I think this product has a good potential to provide some thing fairly important than Linux has been missing.

At first, I thought that perhaps it shouldn't have been posted to Slashdot, at least not until the product is ready to ship/buy/download/use. But then again, Slashdot posts stories about interesting OSS/FS projects when they're in a larval stage, provided they're interesting. I see this as about the same thing, except it looks like this LPM software already exists to an extent- you just can't get it yet.

Re:Shameless Plug

[arvindn]

Slashdot needs a "Shameless Plug" tag to put on articles like this. Look at the submitters address.

Hey, the submitter is not claiming to be a third party.

I thought you would be interested in our new Platform Services product direction (emphasis mine)

Besides, this is Ian Murdock of Debian. Since he's a big name in the free software community, I have no problem with a shameless plug from him. If I guy who's gained a reputation by doing a lot of work uses his status to get some hits and some revenue, well its a nice way of rewarding him.

Re:Shameless Plug

[IanMurdock]

Actually, you can get it. This is a web application you subscribe to, not a product you can download. But it is available today.

Security

[Florian Weimer]

They claim to use APT. APT (as used in Debian) does not offer any security (neither package signatures are verified, nor can you use HTTPS for download).

Does anybody know if Progeny has resolved this problem, or just doesn't care?

Re:Security

[Carewolf]

????

Ehmm... That's what signatures are for. You use a signature to detect whether it really comes from Debian.You dont need to encrypt the signature for this to work, all you need is a public/private key-system.

Re:Security

[jdaily]

Our (Progeny's) implementation of APT is reasonably secure.

• We have SSL support, derived from a patch by Tomas Pospisek.
• We have added authentication and authorization.
• Debian's APT currently supports the signing of repositories.

Regarding package signatures: that's more relevant to the package installation tools than to APT itself, but long ago, Progeny wrote and contributed to Debian debsigs, a tool for allowing GPG signatures to be embedded in packages.

Re:Security

[Florian Weimer]

What are you kidding me??? All debain .debs are signed and checked.

Only the initial upload by the Debian developer is checked. Subsequent downloads from the mirror cascade by the users are not checked, and users have to trust the integrity of the cascade (and DNS, and their network connection, and so on).

Is This News Or A Press Release?

[DoctorMabuse]

I realize that there are some press releases that qualify as news, but this one doesn't. Progeny isn't advertising anything that is innovative, cutting edge, free or otherwise newsworthy. All they are announcing is a new way to separate you from your money.

Please, Slashdot, apply some form of editorial standard to this type of tripe.

Re:Is This News Or A Press Release?

[IanMurdock]

As to whether or not this qualifies as news, our "downs" in late 2001 qualified as news, so I think it's only fair to qualify the "ups" as news too, don't you? The fact of the matter is that we have quietly done quite well for ourselves over the past year and a half. Given all that's gone on around us, I'm rather proud of what we've accomplished, and I'm ready to let the world in on it.

As to whether or not what we're doing is innovative or cutting edge: Have you looked at what we are doing? What we are doing is nothing short of offering a fundamentally different way of looking at "Linux distributions": as platforms for building precisely tuned solutions as opposed to the one-size-fits-all products that traditional distributions give us. Sounds pretty innovative to me, but I will admit a bit of bias. :-)

Deb-Ian

[bstadil]

Let's cut Ian some slack, after all he is the Ian in Debian

It's finally happened...

[Dynastar454]

"Given your previous interest in Progeny, I thought you would..."

It was just a matter of time... Slashdot has finally merged into one collective conscious. Maybe now we can take on Microsoft! :-)

Not stable enough?

[Jellybob]

Hmmm, anyone else find it kind of ironic that the "Linux Platform Company" shows their software demo being run on IE under Windows XP? /me thinks they need to do a little work on their desktops :P