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TSL Is Dead, Long Live TSL
Masta writes "Trustix AS, the company behind
Trustix Secure Linux filed for bankruptcy on monday. Erlend Midttun and Christian Toldnes, two former employees of Trustix AS and the main developers behind Trustix Secure Linux, founded a new company, named Tawie Technologies AS.
They continue the work on TSL, under the new name Tawie Server Linux. All former volunteers and contributors declared their support for the new distribution, so 'TSL is dead, long live TSL.'"
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Trustix Secure Linux: The future is secured
Founding father of Trustix Secure Linux, Erlend Midttun, along with Trustix Secure Linux developer, Christian Toldnes now offers development, maintenance and support for community and commercial customers from the newly started company - Tawie Technologies AS.
Trondheim, Norway - 1st October 2003 - Erlend Midttun, a seasoned UNIX and Linux system administrator and the creator of the Trustix Secure Linux distibution, along with Trustix Secure Linux developer Christian Toldnes, founded Tawie Technologies AS as a means to provide full support and services around the Linux operating system in general, and the Tawie Server Linux product in particular.
Erlend Midttun says: "The community and several commercial customers needed someone to guarantee the future of the Trustix Secure Linux product. This move ensures the customers and the community that the future of Trustix Secure Linux is secured. The name of the product is also changed to Tawie Server Linux, to reflect and state what the product is and to avoid any conflicts with trademark ownership. The product will continue to be developed under the GPL".
Tawie Technologies AS not only employs Erlend Midttun, experienced security and software engineer Christian Toldnes was also part of the founding duo. Christian is the current maintainer of SWUP, the automatic software update tool for Tawie Server Linux (TSL).
Christian was instrumental to the release of TSL 2.0 this summer, and says: "We have received several reports of TSL 2.0 installations in several 30+ server environments. Serving Windows and UNIX users, primary DNS, web and e-mail services in Europe, Americas and Asia. Systems administrators rely on the stability and security of TSL, and our move to Tawie Technologies AS now gives us the time and security we need to focus on TSL".
Tawie Server Linux 2.0 provides full cross upgrades from Trustix Secure Linux 2.0. The details for doing this is provided on the Tawie Technologies webpage.
ABOUT Tawie Technologies AS Tawie Technologies AS was founded in 2003 and provides consultancy and service contracts for the Tawie Server Linux. Services are provided world wide, with a wide range of support options available.
For more information about Tawie Technologies AS, see http://www.tawie.com
ABOUT TAWIE SERVER LINUX Tawie Server Linux is a Linux distribution targeted at companies, of all sizes, in need of a low footprint and high security server operating system. Tawie Server Linux includes the open standards based SoftWare UPdater, SWUP, which keeps all software packages up-to-date, resolves library dependancies and integrates public key cryptography to ensure safety and security.
For more information about Tawie Server Linux, see http://www.tawie.net/
PRESS CONTACTS: Jo Uthus,
Linux is trademark Linus Torvalds All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.
If lots of OSS companies start going bust then starting up again, will that shake investor confidence in the other companies (eg, redhat) even though their business model may be sound?
Its good to see Open Source show its strengths like this. In any other development model, TSL would have died and been sold off in small peices, no longer much use to anyone. TSL is a valuable player in the Linux distribution markets, and many people would be sad to see it go, not to mention, unable to find a suitable replacement! For those that do not know, TSL has a large range of innovative features, many of them innovative even in the Linux market space where innovation is always abundent (Just look at KDE, or Gnome!)
However, one thing still bothers me. Apparently, it is O.K to spend cash like water, rip of your creditors and declare bankruptcy, and then just do a little paperwork and carry on as before? These people have no shame, and the "volunteers" who continue to support these shucksters are fools for trusting a bunch of people who are demonstrated themselves to be crooks. The Government should investigate this immediatly, and freeze the assests of this so-called "new" company until the previous creditors have been paid off in full. Personally I feel it is high time we brough back debtors prison for amoralistic scam artists such as these.
I use it for all my small linux machines.
Very streamlined, very well supported (I'm gonna start donating so they will have a little more $incentive$) and just plain small.
A great project!
Ash nazg durbatuluk, ash nazg gimbatul Ash nazg thrakatuluk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul
Don't give up so quickly, you should be able to get $699 from each user of TSL's Linux..
Trolling is a art,
1. Start new company
2. Create Product
3. Declare Bankruptcy
4. Start new company selling product made by previous company!
5. Profit!
6. Rinse and Repeat!
So the answer to #2 in:
1. Make Linux distro.
2. ???
3. Profit!
was "declare bankrupcy." Please tell me, how do I invest in this new startup?
This is truly sadening to see an OSS company with a functionnal and viable product go down.
Looking at it from the business perspective, does that mean that there was no demand for the product? Or is the business model that is not viable??? I vote for the second option. Open Source is nice on paper but it struggles in a world driven by profit margins.
It kinda ressembles the Church business model. Have faith and contribute... Some have faith and will contribute. Some have faith but need some proof to be real believers (profit?). And the rest, they just don't care...
This can't be happening! Yet another drama about a superior (aren't they all) linux distro going under, only to be saved by the concerted efforts of open-source superheros! Next thing you know, the Unemployed Guy will get tasked to do the screenplay for the made-for-TV miniseries, due to his obviously superior writing skills.</rant>
Come on guys, let's try reporting some real news for a change...
I don't think that supporters of Linux need to be concerned about competing with Microsoft, it is not necessary to be concerned with the lack of a unified desktop interface. Microsoft has to worry about providing compatibility across their product line and backwards into their older software for corporate reasons; Linux developers are freed from that.
I rather think that the diversity of choice is rather a healthy thing. People can chose for themselves what interface they like and use it and contribute code into it. There is no corporate mandate to capture market share; there is just the opportunity to use and develop nonproprietary software.
In addition to being a functioning OS, Linux is also a tool for exploring new developments which is in the hands of anyone who is interested. Yes, many efforts will be dead ends, but failure is inherent in any novel venture. It may turn out that the entire Linux development effort will eventually become dead end, but 1) the product will be out there for anyone to inspect at a future time, and 2) the open source movement will move onto whatever new system has developed.
Main rule for business:
You won't succeed if there is a well established, cheaper, reliable Competitor (OpenBSD) out there.
But at least they can truthfully blame Theo for their failure.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
I really love TSL, I use it mainly among my servers, its a streamline dist, no doubt.
I hope they'll make it in the future.
Linux will never become as uniform in look and feel as windows, and it never should. Now, there may come a de facto standard -- Gnome or KDE, or perhaps the Ximian Desktop -- and that is fine. But people will, and should, always be able to run fvwm or whatever else they want.
Have fun.
philcrissman.com.
Solution? Go bankrupt, screw the initial investors, shed the debt, and start over.
Iridium is a good example.
-- ac at work
Interesting, That's the wonderful difference between windows and linux flavours (lol, I remember that flavour debate). You can only get windows in two forms, NT and 9x, that might be nice and standard, but what if you don't like either of them. With linux you've got a choice between widely differing distros. if you don't like one, then you can try another, all created and supported by different people. That's the whole point of open Source, you can change it to fit your needs and the great 'standard' thing about linux is that most of the linux software will work no matter which flavour you choose to use.
...and that is all I have to say about that.
http://jessta.id.au
The concept of rebranding the distribution to the new company will probably make some lawyers scratch their heads for a while.
However, most of Trustix' products are standard software (standard as in "you pay for the software but you actually only have a license to use it, blablabla" - just like in the Windoze world), and these products still belong to the bancrupt Trustix and will be part of the assets potentially to be sold on.
Actually, this is precisely the reason they were struggling, they had problems selling software the old fashion way to Linux users. Also, the one's that were willing to pay preferred standard stuff like Checkpoint.
IMHO the problem for Trustix was that the number of linux users willing to pay for SW is/was not big enough to sustain them, no matter how good the products.
"Windows are for cheaters" - Bruce Springsteen
You can't kill it, not even with armies or nuclear weapons. Despite moving slowly and ploggingly, it somehow overtakes those perky coeds. It's created by lone inventors working at late hours. It has strange power that allow it to do the seemingly impossible. It does not destroy out of passion or design, it just so happens that civilization was in its road.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Warning: didn't read article, just the post.
Isn't this unethical behaviour. They obviously have debts, i.e. creditors. The creditors get nothing, but the same company has basically started again. These sort of phoenix companies are dangerous to investors and consumers. And when consumers get burnt there is an outrage.
What is different here, except you guys think they are the good guys?
First off, mod him up!
Next: I am relieved to see this was not a bancrupt and restart-job, something the Norwegian law makes quite easy (something I know since where I work pulled the same stunt many years ago and people are still unhappy about what happened)
Thus I sincerely hope you can clarify the issues on your web pages; as it stands it gives me and probably others too a bad feeling.
Anybody know what package system TSL uses?
I looked around their website, but couldn't find anything on it. If it's dpkg, then maybe I'll have a go at it.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
As a tree grows, the weaker branches need to be trimmed. The weak perish so that the strong may survive. Not ethical when it comes to people, but when it comes to business its both ethical and true.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
I've always loved The Singing Latvians. Rest in peace my friends.
Not the same old company. Two developers started a NEW company. The old company is still bankrupt.
Get a free ipod.
Searched news for "stephen king" dead. Results 1 - 10 of about 60. Search took 0.90 seconds.
What's this "x is dead, long live x" from?
I've heard it used before, but couldn't
quite figure out where it came from.
soo Linux companies can be scummy shady outfits too it seems.
Obviously their business plan failed, they stuck all the debt and liability with the old company while putting all the assets into the new company and sank the debt into bankrupcy.
look for the new company to be wallowing in debt struggling to survive in a year or two due to the same people making the same mistakes again.
investors should avoid this company like the plague, when times get hard they will just abandon you again.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
At least that's where my mind was this! Let's go wheelin'...
This post is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
TSL? TSR? How many folks did a double take on that? I know I did. Hmmm. I thought TSR had "died for our sins" long ago.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
So a couple of Developrs started a company making some cool stuff. However the company went under, obviously because not enough other people thought it was cool stuff. BUT these two people are able to get another business loan and/or fund the SAME business AGAIN? Um... Maybe i'm just a fan of successful business practices, but if your business goes under, I wouldn't start another one doing the SAME thing...
Ave Molech Setting
Apart from the value of brands/trademarks, this is true. That however is not a reson for investors to avoid investing in open source / Free Software companies. Every investor who knows what he's doing will estimate the risks of the various investments (at least how big the worst-case loss is), and the investor will diversify in order to avoid as far as possible the possibility of unacceptably big losses.
If anything, this should make investing in open source / Free Software companies more attractive because for this type of businesses, estimating the worst-case loss is trivial - it's obviously the total investment.
The true problem with investing in open source / Free Software companies is that currently there is so little knowledge and experience on how to successfully run such a business that all such investments are high-risk but at the same time open source / Free Software business does not create any effective monopolies. Without the possibility of creating an effective monopoly, there is not the possibility of a very high ROI, and without this possibility high-risk investments don't make sense.
Explain Microsoft again to me then? Bottled water? 93 Octane gasoline?
Ha!
The answer to all three is marketing.
Many bottled waters just come from the tap in a different city. I have lived in a very few areas where the tap water tastes awful or just has a very high mineral content. By and large, however, tap water is just fine and is no healthier than bottled water.
Where Octane is concerned, consumers believe that higher is better, as with so many other things. Despite studies that reliably show that octane makes no difference as long as your car is not knocking on the octane you're using.
Microsoft? Marketing. Well, plus other "tactics" too. :)
And to the topic parent, who would have thought that Google could arise and compete against such a well established competitor? When there is not an artificial barrier to entry, it's not uncommon for a small new company to challenge an established market leader.
Trustix isn't the name in the copyright notices in the code files and as long as these two gentlemen didn't write the code on company time, they should be in the clear. However, if that's not the case, the bankruptcy proceedings may become very interesting.
Hopefully Trustix will see the same outcome as
FreeBSD: since the death of BSDi, their user
base has grown, their feature set has improved,
and there are more developers working on it.
Sometimes, the novelty of a corporate entity
associated with an open source software project
-- the focus on profit often distracts from the
focus on proper engineering. Perhaps this
may teach the slashdot trolls a lesson or two
also: companies die, not successful open source
projects.
It's a fact. Comproved by NetCraft, blablabla! LINUX IS DYING.
If they see it as a Linux vs. rest of the world, then yes. If they see it as an internal shake-down in the Linux market, no. Then the others have managed to drive a competitor out of business, proving their products, services or solutions superior. (Ok in real world it's not that clear-cut with marketing, FUD, public perception etc., but that's the general idea).
Quite frankly, with the number of distributions competing for the Linux market (yeah yeah, I know they compete in different markets, but do the investors know that?) I don't think they'll take that as a bad sign for Linux. Consolidation happens quite often in a maturing industry.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
They didn't have to change the logos on their polo shirts!
I never understood "Trustix". It is supposedly a security-enhanced Linux distro, but there's nothing particularly secure about it, unlike actual secure distros like OWL and Immunix. The only "trust" in Trustix is in the name. Why is it that users should trust Trustix?
Cynical Bastard
Not a big issue, but worth noting.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
FACT: Linux is dying.