A pair of articles published today claim Eazel, the company
behind GNOME’s Nautilus graphical shell, has either already ceased
operations or will do so next week. Neither piece is particularly
rich in verifiable detail or attributed beyond “sources close to
the company.”
Passing comment is made in a column on DotComScoop.com, which
reads:
“Palo Alto, CA-based Eazel , an open source software
firm, will cease operations today, according to a source close to
the company. Eazel was building softwares for the Linux operating
system and had distribution deals with Red Hat, Sun and Dell. The
company closed an $11 million round of financing in April 2000 from
leading venture capital firm Accel Partners.”
At least one Eazel employee on IRC this evening said the company
isn’t formally out of operation as of today, which discredits the
DotComScoop in terms of its timeline, though the lack of a formal
announcement from Eazel at this point would explain reticence on
the part of individual employees to comment on the company’s
fate.
A more detailed item in the RumorMill column at CNET
News.com stops short of declaring the company dead, and says
CEO Mike Boich issued a standard “no comment” before saying a board
meeting will be held early next week to make decisions, presumably
on Eazel’s fate.
That same column also holds out the possibility that fellow
GNOME Foundation member Sun Microsystems may well have pulled a
decision to invest in the company at the last minute.
Eazel laid off 40 employees in mid-March despite partnerships
with Sun, Dell Computers, and Red Hat, all centered around
deployment of Nautilus as a default file manager for systems and
software shipped by the companies.