__/ [ BearItAll ] on Friday 06 October 2006 08:56 \__
> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>
>> PR: Mandriva Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Linbox
>>
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | Mandriva, the global editor of Linux distributions, announced today that
>> | it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Linbox FAS ("Linbox").
>> | The agreement remains subject to shareholders approval.
>> `----
>>
>> http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2006-10-05-021-26-NW-BZ-MD
>
> Can't companies ever work together anymore. Instead of this buy-n-bust
> attitude (well lets face it, the first thing you have to do when you buy a
> company is give a fast gain to please the marketeers, the quickest and
> easiest way to kick start that is to reduce the wage bill of the company
> you bought).
>
> What happened to the days when companies could work together to come up
> with solutions. That should be even more important in the Linux world, we
> are Open Source which means we can share ideas and code, it happens with
> great success in sourceforge, Mandriva should join, it's free they should
> be able to afford that. IBM share, they are bigger than Mandriva, but they
> see the advantage of this wonderous system.
>
> I don't like Linux being at the whim of of the marketeers. Actually I don't
> like any company being at the whim of the marketeers. The marketing system
> is doomed to failure anyway but also is the biggest single reason why they
> wont be a planet to stand on because the profit is more important than the
> ozone or the tree or the fish or people or .... {fill in absolutely
> everything}.
The last paragraph sums it up very well. Many companies thrive in a culture
of excess, waste, and "get rich before you die" (or die trying). Here we
have a better way of getting things done. We can compete and collaborate at
the same time (think of the odd contribute-collaborate-and-compete-with
relationship between Novell and Red Hat). Another issue that crops to mind
are patents, which slow down innovation and hurt the customer (price- and
choice-wise). I hope the Free (software) culture movement will change much
of this before it's too late...
As a side anecdote, there are far too many people I industry that merely
serve as middle(wo)men. This reduced productivity and misses great potential
of betterment.
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