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VA Linux Dropping "Linux" From Name
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Tue Oct 30, 2001 05:34 PM
from the well-isn't-that-special dept.
from the well-isn't-that-special dept.
Several folks noted that VA is changing its name to "VA Software" to reflect the fact that they aren't a Linux company anymore. VA of course owns OSDN which runs various Linux and Open Source web sites including amusingly enough Linux.com. Can't say it matters much to me what they call the thing as long as they let us keep running Slashdot, but it really is sad knowing that most of the cool open source hackers no longer work there. My bad. Anyone have a link to the press release that doesn't require a login?
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VA Linux Dropping "Linux" From Name
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They just... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Not Linux anymore? (Score:5, Funny)
Are they still LNUX? (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting lookup on LNUX finds this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Notable quote: "Four years and they haven't fired me?" said Rob "Cmdr Taco" Malda, director of operations, Slashdot. "Now that's a record."
Careful you don't jinx yourself, Rob.
Internet Wire is a PR service and the article is from VA Linux Systems. Notably lacking is any mention of VA dropping the 'Linux Systems' part.
Other than OSDN what does VA do? (Score:3, Redundant)
Exactly what business is VA in now?
Re:Other than OSDN what does VA do? (Score:5, Interesting)
I was wondering that too, but according to the press release, "The Sunnyvale, Calif., company said the name VA Software better identifies the company's primary business of developing its SourceForge collaborative software development platform."
So they are apparently hanging their hat on selling SourceForge software. What I find interesting is that apparently the "enterprise edition" of the SourceForge software is closed source and proprietary (correct me if I'm wrong...). Does that mean they have clued in that OSS is not a winning business model?
Re:Other than OSDN what does VA do? (Score:5, Insightful)
VA Research (Score:5, Interesting)
It sounds cool and VA can still sell services.
Where can they make a profit now? (Score:3, Interesting)
So what do they have now? Just sourceforge, thinkgeek, some misc. ads & services? Honestly, does anyone know what kind of move they are planning here, because this seems like another step in the wrong direction to me.
Re:Where can they make a profit now? (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO, their mistake was trying to go from a niche market (nice Linux-running boxen) straight to a megacorporation with a wide range of products (a la IBM). They tried to make that jump by maximizing the burn rate, but burn rate can only buy green employees and hardware. It cannot buy an experienced engineering and development staff, mature software products, and all-important customer relationships and business partnerships. It is possible to build a large diverse company, but you have to expand in stages with attention to profitability every step of the way. E.g., like how Microsoft came from no where and dethroned IBM and DEC. The whole 'Instant IBM' approach was just doomed.
If you look at VA, their strategy was 100% Instant IBM. They tried to dominate the hardware market before they had the mature software and hand-holding support to make the extra cost worthwhile. They bought Slashdot to preach to the converted and shill house products. (Remember the Adfu days when /. banners occassionally had interesting products that actual geeks might buy? The only thing even vaguely interesting these days is Think Geek.) They threw *huge* amounts of money at bandwidth, hosting, and server administration in the hope of increasing the amount of free software. Nevermind that VA would have neither licenses nor expertise in the software thus developed, and could therefore not directly profit from it.
So what are they left with? Banner ads (ha!) for things I don't want to buy (ha! ha!) and SourceForge. SourceForge support and cusom development can probably be made profitable by itself -- it's a useful tool -- but even if it is maximally successful and they get a CEO with a winning strategy, it'll take a decade to recover the capital they pissed away. I don't see them getting such a CEO (although the board could surprise us), so don't see VA even being a software powerhouse.
If I was part of the /. crew, I'd be thinking hard about how to turn what they have into something sustainable. Random ideas: banner ads for tech products I might actually buy, paid placement of a few stories a week, paid Slash hosting (product support sites, religious/political sites, government sites), closed-source turn-key Slash installer, ...
Great for the stock price!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
I am really scared that Slashdot will be dumped real soon by "VA Whatever" and my personal data will be thrown into the wind for the company with the most pennies to snatch up. As we have seen in the past, its real tuff to control your own personal data held by a third party under extreme financial trouble.
I am sure that Pud at Fucked Company [fuckedcompany.com] will be reporting the demise of "VA Whatever" in the near future. Dump the stock if you got it.
Re:Great for the stock price!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
One way to assess what a stock price represents is that it is the consensus of the investing public regarding what the current value of all future cash flows for the company in question will be.
Stated more simply as two questions: 1. how much do you think this company will net over your lifetime? and 2. how much are you willing to pay today in cash for the rights to receive a fraction of that total future net?
The multiplicative Pozni-like "loaves and fishes" effect of squandered venture capital led to the recent trend of tech companies being in a business other than producing technology, namely the production of securities and the paper they were printed on. Because of this loss of focus on actually making a product and a profit, these securities are no longer worth the paper they're printed on.
In the wake of this effect, you get people asserting that a stock price dropping to zero will make a company fail. In fact, most investors thinking that there will be no future stream of income, and there being a commensurate lack of buyers for the stock representing that income stream, is what causes the stock price to drop to zero.
Re:Great for the stock price!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Self-serving people make me sick.
You don't buy stock for the purpose of underwriting your favorite failing business. If you were fool enough to do so, your ability to serve others will quickly dwindle, along with the means to maintain your own well-being. Your statement is short-sighted, and whoever modded it up is insane.
What's next? (Score:5, Funny)
Dot instead of SlashDot?
Meat instead of Freshmeat?
Dot instead of SlashDot? no... (Score:5, Funny)
no, it will be backslashDot (c)
The bill gates borg icon will get a stylish makeover and a heroic background to boot.
free passport account with your backslashdot registration!
The Question that Begs Asking (Score:4, Insightful)
Worried about open-source funding (Score:5, Interesting)
Many of us saw this coming, but that's beside the point. But personally, I'd rather see VA fold than become a commercial software house. What does VA's new focus mean to us? Well:
The future is looking bleak. Our biggest cheerleader has switched sides on us and we are going to be in serious trouble. I certainly hope the Linux community can survive this ordeal.
-CT
Yup (Score:5, Funny)
Open source business is incomparable to closed (Score:5, Insightful)
The open source business model is not:
What other possible software market is there besides that, you ask? Look up job offers for programmers. 95% of them have nothing to do with working on a commercial software product. Most programmers develop custom systems. These are seldom sold on store shelves and never exist outside of the environment they're created in.
It just so happens open source software and custom developed systems go hand-in-hand. This is the market the open source business model targets. This market alone is far larger than the commercial software market.
This is exactly what IBM's core business is involved with, and exactly why they're so behind open source.
This blows big-time. (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing that really gets to me is what this says about free software businesses, and about our understanding of it. Most people agreed, making a business from free software was supposed to go like this:
Yet VA Whatever has gone down in flames in a major way while RedHat is mostly going strong. Zope Corporation is doing very well too. So was Cygnus before it was bought out. And etc. ad nauseam. I guess we were flat-out wrong.
Or maybe it was VA Whatever's fault. They had it all: big visibility, a whole shitload of cash, and many of the smartest people in the business. The only snag, I think, was that Direction didn't realize that they actually needed a plan, too.
I think they still don't realize that. Someone should tell them and tell them now. Will you do it, or should I? How about you, Taco? You know the guys. GO TO THEIR OFFICE AND CLUB THEM OVER THE HEAD REPEATEDLY WHILE SCREAMING "YOU FRIGGING MORONS".
Thank you.
makes disturbing sense (Score:5, Insightful)
so basically this all makes sense with the name change... VA (s/Linux/Software/) is no longer the open-source-focused company it once was... it's sad to see things go this way...
Re:makes disturbing sense (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sure this post will be labeled a troll... so be it. It is not intended as such. It is a report of my experience watching an employer write multiple 5 and 6 figure checks for exactly such "services" (in the Will Rogers sense of the word).
I love the OpenSource ideal. I hate seeing Cygnus held up as an example of how to be successful, it sickens me. It saddens me to see SF go the same way, but this has been a long time coming, and is no surprise to me. It started happening about a month after SF went live. VA tried to sell me exactly such *services* when my employer explored bringing SF inside (a few weeks after SF went public). The open code tree at that time sucked. Building a successfull SF behind your own firewall at that time required either putting up with the marginal packages that were released, or signing up for consulting.
Let's hope OpenSource doesn't disintregrate into a band of rich pretenders taking advantage of a community of naive idealists.
(note to self: next time, remember the tags)
There in too much of a hurry (Score:3, Insightful)
VA will not suddenly start makinging Billions of dollars because of its name, clearly some exec is trying to blame there association with Linux as the reason for not making tons of cash. each move they have made is a panic move, sure to loose in the long run.
I see many opportunities for VA to increase revenue, but they seem to unable to see the forest from the trees.
On a personal note, I hope that if they do go under, the
Of course they could fire Jon. Clearly he makes more then he's worth.
What's in a name? (Score:3, Interesting)
What really constitutes a name anyway? Take the communications giant Motorola [motorola.com] for example, a name derived from the beginning automotive era. Victrola record players were popular for the home, so Motorola was made a record player for the car. It didn't work that well (naturally) but they kept the name.
IMO, what establishes your image as a business should stay the same. The name "Linux" itself can mean so much than just an operating system. Linux has allowed them to build a decent-sized business with little overhead. Why not just give Linux credit?
In related news... (Score:5, Funny)
Naming via domain registration... (Score:3, Funny)
So, they found vasoftware.com" was available [netsol.com] and went for it. Looks like the record was updated today, too.
So what else might they switch to in the future? Domain squatters are already on the hunt for their next possible name...
www.vasoftware.com resolves (Score:3, Interesting)
I always find it interesting when News sites get press releases like this before the Company itself updates their own website. It's quite telling about who is important, Wall Street (Journal?!) or clients/customers/fans of the Company itself.
Makes me wonder: Are they in business to hype the stock price or are they in business to make good products?
Anyone else notice... (Score:4, Funny)
...that there are very few "Good idea, VA!" posts?
...that the very few "good idea"s that there are are modded up?
...that they're all biased?
...that CmdrTaco is the only one who seems to care and post articles about the OSDN?
...that adding "Now mod me down for being a troll" at the end gets about "+5, Funny" or "+3, Interesting"?
With saying that....
Mod me down for being a troll, just wanted to put these out...
--joshua
Wake up people (Score:4, Interesting)
- big name corporate sponsors
- its very own news relay site
- a big centralized FTP/WEB hosting site
- software companies to pay its developers
..then you were missing the point all along.
Granted, all of these things have been very nice, but the fact is the VA leadership proved themselves incapable of reliably providing us with such services because they lacked entrepreneurial direction. (or they were just dot-com'ers looking to make a quick buck and high-tail.. who knows) Had they focused solely on top quality hardware at reasonable prices, they could have stayed in business for years, even if only marginally profitable until a truly brilliant idea came along. But apparently they weren't satisfied with this. Instead they just threw in the towel and blew out all their VC on worthless crap. Thanks but no thanks.
In light of the inevitable future and to prevent any major disturbances to Open Source developers worldwide, I suggest that we quickly, calmly, and intelligently find replacements for the services that SourceForge provided us before it disappears. Until the US internet infrastructure becomes more robust wrt bandwidth and switches over to IPv6, I suggest something of a large-and-permanent-node-only P2P network to share the load of a SF-style (but more lightweight) web interface for project hosting and management. Such a network would, as most of our major FTP sites, be hosted primarily in academia or by generous ISP's or corporate entities. From a security and reliability standpoint, I think this might not be such a bad idea anyhow. Any comments or takers?
The sky is falling... the sky is falling ... (not) (Score:3, Interesting)
First off, VA changing focus again for the umpteenth time is not an indictment of Linux. It is an indictment of an ill-concieved/executed business model. Would anyone say that web-commerce is a flop even though the dot-bomb went off?
Second off, VA (in the hardware area) was well out of its league. Playing with the big boys means you get the crap beat out of you on occasion. I had the chance to compete against VA a number of times, and most of the time we won, in part due to VA not knowing how the hardware was really going to be used.
Third off, in software, who the F*** is VA? What do they have? Why should I risk placing my data on Sourceforge, as VA is in trouble, and the ownership of that data would be in question during bankruptcy proceedings? The ASP model as promolguated by several types over the last several years is so full of horse puckey as a business model, it deserves a rapid anonymous burial. Several friends went to CA to seek their fortune building up ASPs, only to have dot-bomb wipe out any value/confidence in their product, and leave them with no ability to make money.
So where the hell does that leave VA?
1) need a real business plan fast. For this you have to hire grown ups. Sorry folks, but the vast majority of 18-35 year old kids have not brought a sustainable business to market, and grown it year after year. Those that have, have grey hair (voice of experience).
2) find a buyer fast. There is cachet in the brand name. Sell yourself to IBM. Or Compaq/HP. Let them figure out the business portion for you.
3) Ch 7/11. Well, it would be horrible to see this route, but it could come to this if debt is in the picture.
The market is tough. It is brutal. It is unforgiving. Some may protest the capitalistic nature of this analysis saying it ain't fair.
Welcome to the real world. Is the Antelope brought down by the lion going to argue fairness? Will the lion care?
Reality check: Life is cruel. It is not easy. You must struggle to survive. Fairness is an illusory concept developed by humans. Great in discourse so we dont kill each other, but not relevant for most capitalist societies.
VA will not survive if it does not learn how to compete. Pure and simple. Doesnt mean a thing for Linux. If you hire experience, you often get good results. If you apply patronage, you get a VA. Or an SGI.
If anyone asked me what to do with VA, I would think real hard about a niche that they could make money in. Slashdot is a name, a brand. It has value. Think about deploying Slashdot internally at companies as a searchable weblog community builder. It is an enabler of free flow of information which is needed at many companies.
Sure, some geek can download Slashcode and set it up. As much as you may believe in open source providing freedom, ask yourself if you are giving away all of the value that you can provide, for free. If this is true then you need to think carefully as to how to make money off of it.
No folks, GPL is not the be-all-end-all. You have to build value and brand around it to make it work, as people will buy value, and will buy brands. GPL is not an IP destroyer. It just doesn't fit well as the central theme of the business plan. Sure you can do GPL, but you damned well better have a way to pay your programmers in the end. Some of them have families, and need to eat.
So in the end, you have to build value. A value proposition. Something customers actually want. The last thing (actually one of the dumbest things) that a company wants to do is build a product, toss it over the wall, and hope that someone will buy it. This is the better mousetrap concept, and folks, it doesnt work.
If it did, then explain why all those Sun servers are out there, when they suck in comparison to other stuff. Has nothing to do with system quality. Has a great deal to do with branding, value proposition, etc.
VA needs to ask very carefully: "What is it that our customers want? What market niche do we wish to play in? What expertise do we have that will enable us to bring a product to market that customers will buy, and will enable us to survive and possibly even grow?"
I havent heard anyone there try to answer this question. VA needs a grey hair in there now, steering the company. Larry, sorry, but you need to step aside. Find someone with a clue, who knows how to turn companies around, and who wants a challenge.
Dont go the SGI route of "strategy X du jour will save us... no it didnt? Ok, layoffs and move to strategy Y to save us.... no? oh
The Market Will Decide (Score:3, Interesting)
VA looked like a company that was devoted to a buzz-word, "open-source", rather than to a goal or a business plan. They went out and made expensive acquisitions that had nothing at all to do with their core business. They didn't need to support a pile of open-source developers, and they had no use at all for Sourceforge, or Slashdot or the rest of Andover. Those seemed to be vanity moves with little effort to focus their business or make money.
Their more recent moves look like the last, desperate actions of a dying company. Eliminating their core business basically meant giving up any hope of becoming profitable, in favour of slowly wasting away. Now they want to put big advertisements all over Slashdot because it is losing too much money. Watch most of those ads be for ThinkGeek or OSDN and wonder why.
Way back when, VA appeared to be a sound company, with a well-executed business plan. We all had big hopes that they would be the ones to break through and show that you could make a profit with Linux. Then they went on a completely pointless shopping spree and forget about what they did best. Now, it seems very fitting that their name is VA, which is French for "go", because they are quickly going away.
Re:Open Source Maketplace Insights (Score:4, Funny)
Thank you for saving me a lot of time wasted with Linux.