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.'"

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Trustix Secure Linux: The future is secured

[another misanthrope]

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.

OSS Business model

[Interruach]

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 TSL live on

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Its good to see TSL live on

[tyldis]

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.

If you are referring to Trustix and TSL you are wrong. TSL was one of the products Trustix had (they had so many they went bankrupt). Only the two main men behind the Linux distribution went on to form a new company to support the distro they developed. It is not 'same shit, new wrapping', it is a completely new company with no other relation to Trustix than that they were emplyed there at one point.

Re:Its good to see TSL live on

[i_really_dont_care]

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?

Depends. First, this is the whole idea of having a "business", "company" or whatever: You invest in something, but have a fixed amount of money to loose, because you can go bankrupt and start all over. When you start a bussiness, you can be sure, that if the business goes down, you will typically loose money, but it will not break your neck. This is not different from an investor who will also only give the company some fixed amount, which he may loose, or get back sometime.

The problem is another one here, though. Normally, a company that goes bankrupt, leaves some value. Say, a manufacturing company leaves machines, vehicles and the likes. These are f.e. auctioned, and so the amount of money lost often is kept within a limit. Likewise, a software company normally leaves a bunch of source code (some may call it "intellectual property"), and the rights to this code can be sold to another investor.

With open source, all the source code is public, and there is no point in selling it (except you transfer the copyright, but that's difficult with something that builds upon another GPL'd product, but that's another story). Thus, at any time, the value of the "intellectual property" contained within the open-source company is effectively zero.

That doesn't mean that open source is worthless or companies building their business model on open source are deemed to fail. It just means that investors must be aware of the special "intellectual property" issues that arise in such a scenario.

Re:Its good to see TSL live on

[christht]

What bothers you would bother me too. If it where true that is.

Erlend Midttun and I have only been working as developers for Trustix AS, and solely with the open source project TSL. I got laid off the 25 of juli this year, and have been working with the distribution as a volunteer since then. So has Erlend.

We are two developers wanting work with what we love. I'm sorry to experience the consequences of bad managment, and hope we will do better with the support services we offer, than the Trustix AS management did with their commercial products.

Erlend and I have started the new firm with our own savings, and hope it will bring a solid future for the TSL development. We might loose, but please don't compare us with the old owners / managment of Trustix AS.

I just wanted to set things straight. :)

New Business Model

[jagilbertvt]

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!

GPL Software = B Movie Monster

[EvilTwinSkippy]

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.

Re:Package system?

[masta79]

It's using RPM. For normal maintaince there is a tool called swup (SoftWare UPdater), which brings your system up-to-date or installs packages via ftp/http.

bubble burst.

[GISGEOLOGYGEEK]

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.