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Linux Software

"Key" Linux Site May Be Sold? 58

Posted by CmdrTaco from the one-step-away-from-domain-squatting dept.
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.
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"Key" Linux Site May Be Sold? More

"Key" Linux Site May Be Sold?

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  • "Thanks, Rocky!" Schwab

  • What the hell was the "whole LSA fiasco"?

    Well... two questions....

    Does this mean I'm not going to get my mug for spending three hours updating their software projects page?

    They sent me mails demanding I pay for the mugs they said volunteers would get for free. I wrote back, they said "sorry," and then never wrote back or sent the mug.

    Especially frustrating is the fact that I just got my own office, and now I have no kewl penguin mug for my desk.
    ------------
    Michael Hall
    mphall@cstone.nospam.net

  • 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 [altavista.com] 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 [shoeboy.org] site as Shoeboy.org and has undervalued it to the point of insult.

    Please contact me at our headquarters [slashdot.org].

  • Commerialisation of OpenSource is the ultimate victory. It's what good old RMS has been working twords for nigh on 15 years now, cause if Linux beats NT, and KOffice beats MSOffice, then Joe average office worker doesn't have to sign away his soul and his right to be nice to his friends and co-workers just to be able to work in his job that earns him $10/hour.

    Even now this is possible, or nearly so, but as GPLed software (Not just any Open Source software, software released under the GPL) gets more and more supported by corporate interests, it'll get harder and harder to sell propriatary compeditors to the GPL'd software.

  • No. Unfortunately this other is not as strong in the ways of the Source.

    His licencing and development meathod promote fragmentation and propriaterization - he allows the intrusion of the Dark Side.

    The penguin cannot be lost, for, without him, we must rely on the Hurd, and the Hurd, as they say, is Crufty.

  • ...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 to be purchased. (Score:3)

    by Shoeboy ( 16224 ) on Friday August 27, 1999 @12:08PM (#1721100) Homepage
    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
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Maybe. But as Obi-Wan said to Yoda... "There is another..."

    If the penguin falters.. we still have the daemon.


    --

  • littlebastard.cx? Far to long. Wanna buy mine? :-)
  • Anybody remember where http://microsfot.com points to?
  • Sproing!

    I've never complained about moderation before but -- this got moderated up from zero?

  • All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-99 Andover.Net. (look at the bottom of this page :)

  • I think I saw a Win32 app on there once, and you could theorettically compile most of the programs there for *any* UNIX...

  • They had to split it with the soundman.
  • 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.

  • I've got a few domains, and I probably need fewer. I'll let Linux101.com go - make me an offer!

  • So this is the same guy who owned linuxhq? Sheesh. What a guy. Good riddance, and head on over to kernelnotes.org!
  • >because of the support of such mainstream, and popular companies like C|Net

    Eh? C|Net and sites like it are jokes when it comes to Linux. You want to see linux users break out in laughter? Mention ZDNet,C|Net and knowlege of Linux in the same sentance. Most of the C|Net guys couldn't explain how to format a 1.44meg floppy under DOS if their life depened on it......

  • Like you're gonna make money selling shareware?


  • I would assume that this purchase would preclude the non-profit status of linux.org - has anyone made a statement on this?
  • SEE I TOLD YOU SO, linux is the best OS for fast secure (doesnt crash) computer use and it wouldnt be that way if so many ppl hadnt supported it that aside i guess we should look at both sides - ***** on one hand we have a free os and lots of free software, and with it comes some software we have to pay(dearly) for. The motivation for developing the OS is that other ppl will be developing free software,updates,games,etc ***** we could have an OS where everything is free, but if that were the case we wouldnt have ANY commercial buissenesses helping distribute,develop, and promote linux i agree that linux should always remain free as an OS, but some influence from commercial buissenesses might help, so long as they dont become like microsoft and buy out all the little developers, and start selling the distributions, OS, etc I hope microsoft has NO part in the future of Linux
  • I wonder if he had some inklings of this sort of thing a couple months ago when he yoinked linuxhq.com back under his control...

    More power to him for getting away with it, but this so far looks to be much more profit-driven than community-driven as most of the others involved in this recent spat of Linux-related site purchases, etc.
  • Is any of the four named site's really interested in selling?
    Haven't Slashdot, fm etc. allready gotten their economic's safe recently?
    Does they really crave so much for additional money that they will sell their sites?

  • STOP! (Score:4)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 ) on Friday August 27, 1999 @11:44AM (#1721126)
    First off, I am severely tempted to say that I would welcome any buyout of linux.org just to get a halfway decent looking webpage on it!. Yeeeesh.

    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.





    --

  • It didn't say slashdot, freshmeat and whatnot are linux sites. I'll admit thought they are very linux oriented.

    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!

  • 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.

  • ...truly leet Geocities WHY I USE LINUX AND HERE IS MY DOG'S PICTURE websites...I'm sure the not-so-savvy people would love to have a few of those under their "information umbrella"


    Dan
  • It's too bad all the good names are taken. I would love to sell one of my domain names for millions, but I'm having trouble finding bidders for littlebastard.cx. Oh well, I guess I'll perpetually be poised on the tail end of the wave, unable to quite get ahead. But then, isn't that where most of us are? We get into the latest thing minutes too late to make the real money that the people at the top of the pyramid make. It feels like Amway.

    If you need to point-and-click to administer a machine,
  • Maybe, but RH hasn't been buying up Linux sites, and the story explicitly states that the interest has come from such a company. Like the earlier poster, my money's on C|net.
  • You can almost feel the masses getting ready to buy everything that has to do with linux. I can see people registering badlinux.com goodlinux.com
    mylinux.com and any other *linux*.com/org/net. I just hope that quality of the site doesn't suffer. So far I think slashdot and liunx.com have stayed true to their own image but as more and more people become interested in liunx and signal to noise ratio increases this will become harder and harder to maintain.

  • C|Net (Score:1)

    by hakker ( 11892 )
    I am willing to bet that it is C|Net. They have been buying up Linux domains lately. I noticed that they purchased and stuck some content on searchlinux.com ... I hate being religated to looking for Linux info on anything C|Net related. First it was "You can download Word Perfect from download.com" and now it is "All the linux info you ever wanted at searchlinux.com".. Or at least it seems that way. Bad C|Net, go away.

  • Re:STOP! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    No, it's good.

    I don't object to business.

    I object to what I believe to be immoral businesses, such as those who license proprietary software.

    That's what Linux and Open Source is all about.

    Commercialisation of OpenSource is its ultimate victory.

  • Am I the only one thinking CMGI?
    They're pretty light on Linux properties, though they own everything else...
  • linux.org faded into obscurity after the whole LSA fiasco last year. After linux.com's debut, I'm sure even more people deserted linux.org.

    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 [min.net].. (:

  • Well linux-arts.net and org arn't taken if thats any consolation :) I just have to hope that none takes my mindstalkersjizz.yum
  • I've worked at C|Net (well, it was in the gamecenter division, but basically the same thing), people there USE linux, and understand how it works, and all i can see is the future getting brighter for linux because of the support of such mainstream, and popular companies like C|Net
  • Does anyone know weather .microsoft.com is for sale....now that could be fun!
  • Erhm, don't you mean the signal to noise ratio *decreases*? I don't see it increasing anytime soon.

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