On Thu, 2005-08-04 at 19:33 +0200, Charles-H.Schulz wrote: > yes, this is right too. But then let's just consider the monetary > interest of everybody in that story, and certainly, M.Shuttleworth is > not disinterested in all this himself. (Of course, being interested in > that way is not a crime, so what I'm saying should be interpreted in a > bad way).
To be honest, I took Shuttleworth's interest for granted and assumed everyone else did, too. I just wanted to remind everyone that none of the commentary is disinterested. Nothing sinister in that -- I just thought it needed mentioning. > > Also, while I haven't talked with him on the subject, from some of the > > comments he's made publicly, I suspect that he's hoping that someone > > will buy out Progeny. > > I thought Progeny was now cash-flow positive...? Being profitable and being for sale aren't incompatible. Owners of successful companies don't necessarily want to keep running the company all their lives. My suspicion is based on the fact that Ian has made otherwise strange public comments that Mandriva should convert to Debian to become competitive against Red Hat. He seems to have volunteered these comments without any other suggestion that Mandriva would do such a thing. In the same article, he suggests that Mandriva should continue its acquisition of small distros, and ducks the question of whether Progeny would be receptive to an offer. I could be wrong, but I believe that the technical term for such comments is "fishing." See: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/newss/5900/1/ -- Bruce Byfield 604-421.7177 http://members.axion.net/~bbyfield
