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LinuxCare Gets $32M In Funding
TheFitz writes "CBS is running a story about LinuxCare receiving some heavy backing. Also mentioned in the story is the potential for LinuxCare to go public with an IPO. " Several comments from Sifry and a few other tidbits about the company. Worth a gander if you're curious about Linuxcare.
I think I'm finally ready to say that Linux is a credible threat to Microsoft. I think the change in the last week was an import one psychologically as well as financially.
The business world has not only noticed Linux now (that happened last year), they're firmly behind it. Gone are the days when we have to argue that Linux is just as good as a commercial system--now we can just point to a few billion dollars of investments and say "Obviously they believe it." That's a dumb argument, but it's one that carries weight with non-technical people who don't understand the actual merits of one OS over another.
Finally, all this money pouring into Linux is obviously going to translate into a lot of paid development hours and new applications. That should fill in whatever gaps there are missing in the Linux platform.
From now on, the missing functionality is no longer a liability... it's an OPPORTUNITY.
Nitpicky? Yes.
It seems to me that saying "go public with an Initial Public Offering" is a bit redundant, or at least awkward syntax. With all the IPOs these days, should we find a more elegant way of phrasing this?
I've called them a couple of times with problems. I on each ocassion found them to be friendly and smart. They know their stuff. Neither of the reps I spoke with had a problem admiting when he didn't know something, and was always able to go ask someone who did. I think they are a fine company, and I recomended them to my company to contract with for linux support.
--If you have nothing to say, say nothing...
...I'll shut upnow... before I start talking about a first post...--
I don't suffer from insanity- I enjoy it immensly!
if it's anything like VM linux... muf said
"What do you do with the mad that you feel when you feel so mad you could bite?" - Mister Rogers
I found it humorous the way that employees of Linuxcare were listed as "contributors to Linux". With the exception of Samba, nothing seemed to be said about what they contributed. Is there any serious Linux company that doesn't employ at least a couple of people who have contributed to Linux and other GPL'd software?
I don't know too much about Linuxcare, but it might bear watching in the future. The industry is currently watching to see which Linux distributor "wins" the market...
B. Elgin
B. Elgin
"Read at your own risk; feel free to ignore."
Now with this funding they should be able to provide better support services - both for paying mission-critical customers, and for casual users too by improving their knowledge base. I'm personally interested in improving the set of Linux knowledge bases that are freely available and Linuxcare should be a good "helpdesk".
I'm also watching the Linux Professional Institute with interest... they're working towards professional certification for Linux - though that seems to be a controversial topic all by itself.
Maybe it's just me, but I'm overwhelmed with the number of icons that now exist for various news stories. Does Slashdot need to have an icon for every business that ever mentions Linux in a press release? If so, there's going to be about 20 MB of icons in the next few months. One thing I like about slashdot is that the only image I have to reload every time I visit is the banner, so if there's a new icon every time I visit, my brain-dead browser has to download it before it renders the page.
Also, has anyone else noticed that the icons at the top of the page are always 3-8 stories behind? Why is that? When I first saw it, I thought it was a temporary result of some changes, but now it's been there for a couple months.
Just some suggestions. Keep up the good work Rob, Jeff, et al.
Finally... an Intelligent FP :).
Anyway, I think this has the ability to become a very good thing. While we have seen over the past year or so that businesses have started to turn an eye toward linux and then become major invetors, one of the key obstacles to any type of major OS or software is support. Where do the big guys go when they don't have the knowledge or resources available to figure something out? Once an infrastructure like that is in place it filters down to lower and lower levels, IE: smaller corporations and eventually small businesses. I don't thing that it will be long till me get some certification levels and alphabet soup tied to our knowledge. I know a lot of people here are not exactly friendly toward tech. certifications, but like it or not, a lot of not technical managers look to them to gauge a persons worth. Even if we know the certification doesnt mean crap,
Anyway, our time has come. Make your opportunities!
www.mp3.com/Undocumented
okay i just have to ask now..who the hell is natalie portman????
[relying to this is killing my karma...who cares?]
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
Andrew Tridgell, [is] a Linuxcare researcher who authored Samba, a piece of programming that makes a Linux server work much like a Microsoft (MSFT: news, msgs) Windows NT server.
like ...what a funny way to spell better!!!
Eric
PS This is humor. Turn off the flame-throwers.
Natalie is the troll's pregnant teenage daughter who's dating an unemployed dork distributing microserf warez. Quite sad.
Oh, Natalie Portman! Oh, you might want to check out the Star Wars site.
Another IPO? Expect to see a flurry of people trying to get their names in a few of the contributor lists so they can get the "letter" this time.
:-)
Hmm, what could *I* fix...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
In case anyone's interested, here's the low-graphics, printer-friendly link.
Queen Oh-My-God-A from StarWars. Even though OSS-NP dude is a bit of a troll, I must say he does have some amount of taste. Personally I would prefer an Open Source Erika Eleniak or Paulina Porizkova, but alas, since I can't code I keep my mouth shut and take what they offer (I will however be happy to alpha/beta test any open source female celebrities weighing less than 175 pounds).
I think the stock market is going to turn out to be one of the most effective ways to fund free software. Instead of throwing away $$ to Microsoft on software rental, invest that money in companies that create/support free software.
Then you get better software for keeps, companies get investment to make(and support) more free software, and hey you also may get a finacial return on your investment. Cool.
You'll pay 32 million dollars for Natalie Portman?
I know who you are! You must be ESR!
Har har.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Everyone has been so hell bent on defeating Microsoft.. Problem? I dont think many folks to include myself realized what that meant. To late is it now to come back from the dark side. Damage has been done. We have gotten what we want. A playing field in which to hack it out with MS? Is it going to be worth it when enough money infiltrates the scheme of things? Stay tuned...
Otherwise known as Yaipo?
I guess its time for everyone to cash in now...
I hope all this hype won't bite back when stockmarket types suddenly realize they have millions invested in companies that aren't making money....
Then again, if *I* was a member of the VA board, I expect my perspective would be altogether different... *smile*
--
"Just another programmer who hasn't scored his millions yet"
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
This article also mentions some recent acquisitions by Linuxcare.
http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/991214/c.html
or do you think that won't ever happen? It's very interesting to me.
I'm curious if anybody got in on the VA Linux IPO. it went up 800% on the first day (it's dropping steadily now though) I'd like to have made 800% of course. did anybody here get a piece of the action? care to share details so I can be jealous?
However, we need to remember that we don't need to justify ourselves. Each of us use linux for whatever reason we want to. I personally don't care if linux takes down windows. It would make me happy as I have a personal vendetta with MS, but as far as the development of linux, it's unimportant.
As linux grows into the masses it is becoming simpler and easier to use. This is a good thing. When people have trouble, they look for support from a trusted name. LinuxCare is looking to be that name.
All of this is well and good, as long as linux stays in touch with it's roots.
It is important to remember what free software is really about. Freedom. Not price.
Don't use VA's IPO, RedHat's IPO, or LinuxCare 32m to justify your use. There is plenty of justification already in place.
You know the really sad thing about that e-mail you recieved.. I'm not even slightly surprised.
I was musing that this sort of thing may actually start to happen a lot while I was reading over the vast threads of posts regarding the VA IPO frenzy. Specifically people were discussing motivation (Well, that was covered more in the ESR article comments), and how some people may begin to try contributing to attention-getting projects in the hopes of getting onto a contributor list. Now I'm curious to see if it really does happen. However, I do hope it takes more than a half-assed program on Freshmeat to get corporate attention.
For contributing in your own small way to the impending economic collapse of the United States. I'm getting really sick of hearing about mediocre companies at best going for IPOs, knowing that their stock price will be bid by a bunch of amateur investors up far further than their price/earnings multiple would indicate what they're really worth, simply because they have the word 'Linux' in the name. This is disgusting. RedHat I could understand, but VA? Linuxcare? These are companies that are nowhere near the point at which a company usually has an IPO. People are being ripped off. And this has to be screwing up the economy, throwing millions of dollars after worthless tech stocks of companies that don't actually make any money, nor do they have the potential to. It used to be good to see Linux have some success in the software market, but its just gone too far. But if the goal is to compete with Windows, I would say that Linux is well on its way. -lx
forty second!
First we had the "we don't have to be profitable, we're an Internet company". That was a marginal idea, although OK if revenue is large and increasing. Now we have "we don't have to have revenue, we're a Linux company". That is not going to fly for long.
This thing looks cool! Will it compile on my Redhat 6.1 box ? If so where can I download it?
I think it is very true and when the time comes for a shakeout and the mass financial wipeouts (of people running unprofitable businesses whose stock is now worth $xxx per share) begin, there will be financial tidal waves all over the western world akin to a quarter mile wide comet landing in the Atlantic.
It's gonna happen. This overvaluation has to deflate sometime.
If you don't believe me check up on the 1920's.
BTW: Someone please moderate that man up. He deserves it.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
IBM purchasing 30,000 copies of Windows 2000 and barnes&noble seem to be using it through the busiest shopping season right now. Likewise with Microsoft.com and soon Hotmail. Linux hype?? where??
No, you can't even put an identity on this 'prediction', so we can't chuckle at you personally next February (and if Win2k is anything like NT, it's going to be 5 long years of luser testing before they get it up to snuff - Gartner Group: wait untill service pack 3). At least Bob Metcalf had the courage to put his name on his belief that these Internet stocks we're all going to crash on Nov. 8
Besides, OS/2 was pretty much just another NT (in more ways than one) w/o the benefit of an installed base of DOS and Win31 to leverage, capitalize on, exploit and ensure they migrate to yet another Mickysoft product from.
Win2k will meets the needs of a lot of people, it will succeed - just some of us will demand software we can work with and control, not luserware that want's to control us w/ 'proactive help/marketing'. And I'm certainly not going to make the mistake of supporting M$ products on someone else's dime again (they're still getting a lot of 'free' support from their suckers) - if someone pays for a Win2k license (and esp if they pirate it) and has a problem and swivels around to look at me, I'm just going to read them the EULA, laugh and say "sorry I don't support it - call MSFT, it's their property".
Boojum
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
It could be a bug or a feature in the SlashCode running Slashdot -- has anyone else noticed it is now possible effectively to post your own stories on Slashdot using the URL form comments.pl?sid=yourLoginName? More details and questions about this were posted on Slashdot yesterday.
This makes the engineer in me feel satisfied; even if the stock is a bust, Linuxcare has a bright future.
Just my opinion,
Rusty.
When linux is being covered by Gartner reports and shows up favorably in the "magic quadrant", then it's big news. Many large corporate decisions are made based solely on a simple gartner square with some dots in it.
:()
It sounds silly, but if you're in a big company, and you're pushing a solution or a product that isn't favored by Gartner research, Senior management's going to ask you to re-evaluate and see why $GARTNER_TOP_PICK wouldn't work for the company.
Nowadays, the senior execs have suddenly "DISCOVERED" linux, and now they're looking to form "Strategic Alliances" and establish "linux partnerships" (but the senior execs are still using Windows
anyway, on a related note, I head 3 non-technical women in the movie theater yesterday talking about investment (and the LNUX IPO) and one was trying to explain to the others what linux was. She said "now everybody is trying to learn linux - it's like windows NT but people say it's better and it's free." To me, overhearing that discussion meant more than placement on the gartner quadrant!
Have you noticed that nowadays hardly anyone mispronounces linux?
Yet
Another
Fucking
Linux
Company
Selling
Out
FP are you following watching me???
I didn't mean to come off saying that Linuxcare is a worthless company, it just seems too soon to me to be having an IPO. There's been kind of a Linux IPO frenzy lately, and that's what I disapprove of, not the services that Linux-oriented companies provide. Things like VA's IPO scare the hell out of me - that kind of manic stock market doesn't bode well for the future.
-lx
That's very true about the 1920s. I had noticed that about a year ago and got somewhat freaked out, but eventually I guess I found myself in denial about it - no one wants to think that another depression will happen. I think that when the market has the correction that it so richly deserves, it's going to really suck, but it won't be as bad as The Depression - we now have far better understandings of monetary and fiscal policy than we did back then.
-lx
Have you noticed that nowadays hardly anyone mispronounces linux?
Actually, they almost all still do - though in a better way than before. In Finnish, the "i" in Linu[xs] is a long one. So "Leenux", not "Linn-ux", would be the correct phonetic spelling in English.
We need to shove Microsoft off the map! I'm glad that Sun is up there heading the list of primary investors... Though Sun is starting to get Monolithic... Finding anything on their website is almost as hard as finding anything on microsoft.com...No, I'm lying... finding anything on microsoft.com is impossible!!!
I thought the article was good in mentioning that Dell and Plattner are investing personally in Linuxcare... If Linuxcare is publicly traded they will probably make a lot of money (understatement...)
Two things I found really interesting from the article...: (i) I didn't know Tridgell worked for Linuxcare; and (ii) what Sarrat says at the end: "... look at IBM. They didn't get good at services until they split them out as a separate comapany"