With news of the recent Lycoris acquisition by Mandriva, it would seem that the Linux desktop landscape is in for yet another change. Lycoris, considered to be one of the most innovative and easy to use desktops at one time, has recently lost market share due to a botched release and their inability to keep up with the fast changes in Linux technology. If there ever were an acquisition/merger that made good sense to Linux Desktop users, this is it. We were able to catch up with Joseph Cheek, CEO of Lycoris and ask him some questions about Lycoris and the acquisition. Read More at GUILinux!
So, now it will be called Lyndriva?
Or maybe Manly.
http://os.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/06/15/2030250&from=rss
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Duval messaged back after this story was written to lay a fast-spreading rumor to rest: “No,” he said, “we aren’t going to change the name again…”
The funny thing is they did not change the name to Mandriva because they BOUGHT Conectiva and wanted to be nice to them , they where getting sued for the use of the name Mandrake and finally saw some sense into dropping the name and putting the money spent on lawyers on the development of GNU/Linux.
i actually do see this as a good fit…Slim down the choices for the newbie crowd and hopefully joining forces will manage to complement one another and mandrake has always been a good newbie distro so it should work out nicely and with iris and hopefully some eye pleasing aesthetics it should put the final nail in the linspire coffin…
I give linspire until the end of next year, by then it will be GONE!!!!
“I give linspire until the end of next year”
Linspire is alive because of Michael Robertson paying all the bills :
http://www.michaelrobertson.com/minute.php
he kinda left the company in the hands of Kevin Carmony :
“To maximize my purpose, I have decided to make the move to Chairman of Linspire. I’ve turned the CEO title over to Kevin Carmony, Linspire’s long-time President. ”
Every time ( cant say its an absolute I dont know is full resume ) he left a company the company folded …
Linspire Could Always be bought or Join Mandriva …
Linspire could be a great asset into Mandriva , I doubt very much that Kevin Carmony is a good enough manager to see the reality that is company as never once made a profit and that he could save the job of his employee and himself by joining with the #1 Commercial GNU/Linux distribution.
Maybe Kevin Carmony need to talk with Joseph Cheek.
“Maybe Kevin Carmony need to talk with Joseph Cheek.”
They did talk, Linspire was one of the companies that Lycoris approached, they obviously turned them down.
Sorry, Moulinneuf didn’t finish my thouhgts.
I believe it would take somebody with much more cash than Mandriva at this point to purchase Linspire, they have WAY too much invested at this point. All of Lycoris’ investment money seemd to be from Joseph mostly, and most likely isn’t getting paid back. The money that has funded Linspire will most likely be asked to be paid back, probably at almost VC rates, certaily at Angel investor rates, and there is no way Mandriva would be willing to do that IMO.
“with much more cash than Mandriva”
Mandriva , at this time and as always is undervalued.
“at this point to purchase Linspire”
There is more then one way to purchase a company , Linspire is not worth more then 2-3 millions currently.
“they have WAY too much invested at this point.”
The investments have nothing to do with the value of a company.
“All of Lycoris’ investment money seemd to be from Joseph mostly”
All of Linspire is Michael Robertson money , they even failed 3 IPO so far ( that I know of ).
“the money that has funded Linspire will most likely be asked to be paid back, probably at almost VC rates, certaily at Angel investor rates”
If Michael Robertson is Bright ( which he as shown to be in the past ) he will take a minimum stake in a much bigger profitable company , then a much bigger stake in a failing company. Not once as Linspire made a profit on any of there products , not that they where bad product , but GNU/Linux and computers are really cut throat market.
” there is no way Mandriva would be willing to do that IMO.”
GNU/Linux and more then ever Mandriva is at a critical cross road , dont get me wrong Mandriva will easily survive not buying Linspire , but think about how complementary both comapany are ,
– First of all I would stock split a couple time the Mandriva stock its ridiculous for a company of there size and magnitude to be worth 30 million with so few stock share. They are bigger in strenght and product then Red Hat and Suse put togheter and only follow slightly Debian and the Debian base. ( I blame this on Le Marois ).
– Second Mandriva as excelent products but somewhat bad marketing and somewhat bad PR and a perceived ugly desktop , wich is exactly the only strenght of Linspire at this time.
– Third Linspire might eventually see where its flaws are and fix them and become a much more profitable company ( highly doubtfull With Mr. Carmony , now , controlling the show )
– Fourth never 2 without 3 😉
– Five its always better to make someone part of your familly or a friend or an ally when he is small , then have to face him when he is the same size as you or bigger.
Will Mandriva do this ? Highly unlikely , will Linspire do this ? Highly unlikely , but purely for market strength and strategy at this moment in time it would make a lot of sense.
I have NEVER seen a closed commercial based of DEBIAN beat Debian or the open source Debian based. I even have a name for them : The Byte the dust : Stormix , Corel , Progeny and all the others.
Anywho in the position François Bancilhon is currently I would have a steak or lobster with Kevin Carmony in a higly public space with the press knowing it and discuss the possibility face to face , or just try and get The Lsongs code for 10k and acess to MP3Tunes for the MandrivaClub.
But you know with Mandriva what make sense rarely happen when the time is good. Even do lately they start to make some more sense then usual, I guess when you have made the mistake they made you learned a little from them.
Two step forward this time ,lets hope there not going to do 10 step backwards any time soon.
Linspire needs to lower their price tag. They could be more competitive if they would just do that. But then again that also goes for Suse, Mandriva and Zeta even.
Linspire could be a great asset into Mandriva , I doubt very much that Kevin Carmony is a good enough manager to see the reality that is company as never once made a profit and that he could save the job of his employee and himself by joining with the #1 Commercial GNU/Linux distribution.
You mean Red Hat (generally the #1 title is reserved for the company with the most sales)?
Terraformed said to Garret: “Linspire needs to lower their price tag. They could be more competitive if they would just do that. But then again that also goes for Suse, Mandriva and Zeta even”
No they don’t. Linspire is a product that you only have to buy the OS once. After that as long as you are a subscriber you get upgrade downloadability for free. And the subscription is far cheaper than it costs to buy the new versions of competing *nix’s when they come out.
That being said however, there’s a lot of things wrong with Linspire. It’s clean and polished yes and has terrific fonts – the best I’ve ever seen in a *nix, but it doesn’t ship with the dev tools and adding them yourself is a much reported pain in the butt.
So if one needs to customize their Linux experience Linspire is NOT the os for you. Xandros does a much better job in terms of that. Unfortunately Xandros is expensive (because it ships with Crossover vs. getting licences for codecs like Linspire did) making the cost of ownership of Xandros vastly more expensive than MSFT windows.
I know that will make people mad but its the truth. WinXP hasn’t had an upgrade we are forced to buy yet – all of its updates have been free. Xandros on the other hand (which remember I’m still a fan of) charges for every full number version which lately has been yearly. That adds up to about double the cost of windows if not triple.
All of this means it doesn’t make any sense to pay for Linux at all. It’s a loseing situation unless you like burning money. What makes more sense is useing a distro like pure deb or (better yet) Slackware or Gentoo, give a donation to their project and pay for the products that bring it up to snuff (such as Crossover).
“generally the #1 title is reserved for the company with the most sales”
Thats who I named 😉
When Micrososft make windows xp ship with as much real software and tools as a GNU/Linux distribution does for 50$ then you will have a point until then , when you buy XP you need 300$ just to buy softare that fix the design , flaw and insecurity of xp.
and 20k leggaly to access the most basic software included in all GNU/Linux distribution.
GNU/Linux is superior to all other OS in existance , its more polished and as more software , the only problem it still as is hardware driver and be installed as default.
TCO of GNU/Linux is cheaper , install is easier and faster , Live cd ? Windows dont have live cd , windows is a one solution os , when GNU/Linux you have the best offer in the minimal boxes and just more software and service in the higher pack.
xandros OCE is freeeeeeeee and as you said is a very NICE distro that works well….
I assume that it is easier for Mandriva to merge/take over a RPM based distribution than a deb based distribution so i expect Mandriva to acquier Best linux, PLD and some of the Japanese distributions.
next!