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"Key" Linux Site May Be Sold?
An anonymous reader wrote in to send us linkage to
a news.com story that says a "Key" linux site
may be sold. Its actually talking about linux.org, but it also mentions Linux.com, Andover/Slashdot/Freshmeat, and contains assorted comments from
Michael McLagen. Doesn't say who interested, but he does
say it is "publicly traded company that buys web sites" so Earthweb and Internet.com are both reasonable guesses.
"Thanks, Rocky!" Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Your site's popularity is truely amazing. My agents have scrutinized your numbers and used all the industry-standard metrics to assess its value. We are convinced that your site is worth considerably more than $12 million.
We originally became interested when our Sysadmin, while reading some news site, spontaneously spouted "Shoeboy.org ain't worth a fsckin' fart in a whirlwind, much less $12 million!" Naturally, we were a little surprised that something "worthless" was being purchased for millions. We assigned the problem to a crack team of MBA's and market analysts. After very thorough research, backed by reams of solid documentation, they assessed your site's value at $47 million -- and even more if you are willing to obligate yourself to two years of supporting the site with our company.
Admittedly, our CEO was skeptical -- until we told him it was "on the web". Then we presented him with our research documents, detailing just how much similar sites have sold for. Now he is fully committed to the acquisition of your important site.
Please reconsider your hasty decision to sell Shoeboy.org. The company you are dealing with does not truely understand the value of such a landmark site as Shoeboy.org and has undervalued it to the point of insult.
Please contact me at our headquarters.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
...the most obvious Linux based company that would benifit from this (not to mention suddenly has a lot of capital to spend) is RedHat. Is there a good reason why they wouldn't want to spend good cash for this site?
Shoeboy.org pucharsed for 12 million
SEATTLE, WA The insanely popular web site Shoeboy.org has been purchased by an unnamed internet company for over 10 million dollars. The domain name Shoeboy.org was registered a couple of months ago, and simply points to a register.com site which states:
Coming Soon!
You have reached my future website.
We recently registered our domain name at
Register.com
Despite being almost entirely devoid of content, it averages close to 18 million hits per month.
Industry analysts predict that the hit count will go even higher once there is something on the site to look at.
"The popularity of Shoeboy.org is amazing!" explains Michael Wood of the consulting firm eCyberCommerceWebEnterprise. "It's also totaly inexplicable. It's not that the site sucks, it's that there is literally nothing there. Why it gets so many hits is totally beyond me. One thing we do know is that it's a great site to advertise on, a total gold mine!"
Shoeboy, the current owner of shoeboy.org refuses to disclose the buyer, but did inform us that the price tag had "eight digits, a decimal point and two more f***ing digits." He then did a series of back flips.
When questioned about the sites popularity, Shoeboy responded, "I have no idea why it gets hit at all, but I can assure you that it's definitely _NOT_ due to perl scripts fetching the page in an infinite loop. That would be unethical."
--Shoeboy
I meant to put a after WA, and I didn't mean to put an exact figure in the first line. Oops. What can I say, I'm an idiot.
--Shoeboy
Maybe. But as Obi-Wan said to Yoda... "There is another..."
If the penguin falters.. we still have the daemon.
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Don't worry, a cool million is probably what it will cost for our buddy Arisian there to protect his house from forclosure.
Mikey McLagan has been running various floundering software companies out of his home for as long as anyone can remember. Back when he saw fit to be the ultimate killjoy and bring "law and order" to one of the best irc channels on efnet for technical folk (#os/2), he'd recently had both of his cars reposessed and was threatening to sue one of his paying betatesters for getting fed up and blabbing his most embarrasing bugs to anyone who felt like hearing it. That's right, this kid *Paid* Mikey for the right to test a cheezy irc client, and Mikey wasn't fixing some obvious bugs, after months and months.
Mike McLagan is a wet blanket. Where he goes, mediocrity follows. The money he makes from the sale of his least deserved domain will probably only get him out of debt. So, being grateful that someone better will have controll of it, and really, anyone would be better, I don't think we have to worry that he's turning a profit.
If there's one thing Mike knows how to do, it's how to *Not* turn a profit.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
So this is the same guy who owned linuxhq? Sheesh. What a guy. Good riddance, and head on over to kernelnotes.org!
That small matter aside - I find it increasingly alarming that big business is moving into the linux arena so fast. What started out as a small phenomenon shared between the geekiest of the geeky has turned into a kind of mass-media event. I don't like the idea of large companies being linked to the name of linux. It just seems wrong that all the effort that has been expended on producing this wonderful free software will be covered up in advertisements, and packaged up in some forlorn website hawking the latest linux goods. And the newbies will never know what made linux great. I say we, as the linux community, petition all the major linux portals to provide easy access to documentation and papers that describe WHY linux is so stable, fast, and successful.
Because if we don't, linux may collapse into a black hole because nobody will contribute to it anymore.. they'll just use use use, and buy buy buy. People MUST be informed about free software. Linux is the poster child of the free software movement. It would be a damn shame if nobody knew that.
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They aren't being resold. I got this from the prior summary of the article, and felt like clearing the ignorance to come about what was said....
-sporty
---
Life's short. Play hard. Owowowow.. stitch in my side!
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Freshmeat and slashdot have already been bought out by andover.net. Linux.com is owned by VA Linux... it's linux.org that is up for sale.
It is kind of weird reading that article though.. Seeing as how "Linux Online" is the name of one of the forums in an upcoming site I'm working on.. (:
Well linux-arts.net and org arn't taken if thats any consolation :) I just have to hope that none takes my mindstalkersjizz.yum