:Linux.com: It's Not The End Of The World As We Know It: Opening Gambit
Linux.com: It's Not The End Of The World As We Know It: Opening Gambit Feb 11, 2000, 16 :41 UTC (6 Talkback[s]) (3105 reads) (Other stories by Jessica Sheffield and Rob Bos)
"During Linux World Expo in New York last week, VA Linux Systems announced an acquisition of
Andover.Net, a company that happens to own a couple of very high-profile Linux news sites and
resources, including the popular Slashdot.org and Freshmeat.net -- Web sites that VA has had their
eyes on for quite some time. This acquisition, coupled with the impending absorption of Andover's
assets into the existing VA corporate infrastructure (which at this time includes Linux.com,
Themes.org, and SourceForge), gives VA ownership of several key Web sites in the free software
communities. This has a number of people worried -- so much so, in fact, that Larry Augustin and
Bruce Twickler, the respective CEOs of VA and Andover, wrote an open letter full of corporatese and
buzzwords to help allay some of the concerns that people might have over the matter. In it, they say
they will "assure the future of these important community sites" and promise them "the resources to
play an enduring central role" in their respective communities."
"Needless to say, this attempt to allay the fears of the free software communities were met, perhaps
rightly so, with skepticism. "What if VA attempts to strongarm slashdot!" was the complaint of many
people. "What of editorial freedom?" "Would VA prevent competition from advertising on these sites?"
"VA: The Next Microsoft," and so on. Trillions of innocent pixels have been freely spent on megabytes
of invective on the subject, in fact. People in many popular fora have openly screamed bloody murder
over the possibility of VA shoving its weight around where it really shouldn't belong, and perhaps with
justification. Time and again our community has been burned by what we term "sellouts," and it's
reasonable to expect that people would be suspicious of such a huge announcement. A great many of
these people, however, are simply blowing smoke. The knee-jerk reaction of the community has been
to cry havoc at the merger, without doing their homework and finding out the real issues behind the
story."
