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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.
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
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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