Progeny Linux Systems, founded
by Debian GNU/Linux originator Ian Murdock, has formally announced
that work on its Linux NOW product has been halted, citing an
unfavorable funding environment and a focus on the more
revenue-rich services the company provides in support of its Debian
GNU/Linux-based distribution.
In a brief phone interview, Ian Murdock confirmed the details of
the letter he sent out (see below) and said the company’s Linux
distribution: Progeny Debian GNU/Linux, will continue to be sold as
a shrinkwrap product and target of services. The distribution is an
enhanced version of the Debian GNU/Linux’s “Woody” or testing
branch.
The following is Murdock’s letter to members of Progeny’s NOW
list:
We started Progeny last year to develop Linux NOW and
bring it to market; we’ve since added other products and services
to the mix, but developing NOW was the impetus that got Progeny
started.The observation was that, although networks have been
proliferating at an incredible rate since the early 1980s, the
operating systems that we all use on a daily basis have changed
very little to take advantage of them. Indeed, the operating
systems in widespread use today, from Windows to MacOS to Linux,
are all based around the same basic design that originated in the
1970s, when multiuser timesharing systems dominated the computing
landscape and local area networks were still the domain of the
research lab.So, as local area networks were commercialized and subsequently
became widespread, we’ve ended up with large and growing networks
running operating systems designed for the timesharing era, though
now, the handful of timesharing systems in the machine room have
been replaced with hundreds or thousands of timesharing systems in
dozens or hundreds of different locations. Looking at it this way,
it’s easy to see why system administration of a network of
computers is a nightmare, and the situation only looks to get
worse.Our vision was to create an operating system that incorporated
the network at a fundamental level, to make the network look like
one large timesharing system rather than many little timesharing
systems, with the goal of making the network much easier to manage,
secure, and use. NOW was an ambitious project, one that we knew
would take a large team at least a year to develop; even then, we
knew it would be another year or more before NOW had some of the
more advanced features that we planned for it, such as support for
disconnected operation in the file system. That was all right at
the time, because it was easy to raise money for ambitious
development projects such as NOW that could take years to develop
and, thus, that might not pay off for years.Shortly after we started the company, though, the financial
markets took a turn for the worse. Like many other young companies,
the market correction forced us to take a nearer-term view of
things. Because of its long-term horizon, the NOW development
efforts often took a back seat to the needs of other projects. Most
new hires came in to work on projects that had the potential to
bring in revenue sooner than NOW, and the NOW effort never got the
attention it needed. As the financial markets worsened, we diverted
an increasing amount of energy away from the NOW project; finally,
in February of this year, we moved all of the NOW programmers off
of the project to work on developing our services offering, which
we knew would be our primary source of revenue.So, it is with great disappointment that I must formally
announce that the Linux NOW project is on hold for the foreseeable
future. In reality, it has been on hold since February, as we have
had no one working full-time on the project since then, but we held
off on announcing that in the hope that we would be able to find
the resources to pick up development again. That does not appear
likely in the near term.Despair not: The financial markets may improve, and projects
like NOW may again become possible. If not, the principles behind
the NOW project still very much believe in the original vision, and
it’s quite likely that one or all of us will pursue similar goals
in another form. The vision is still very much valid–it’s just not
a vision that fits well in the current environment.Thank you for your interest in and support of the NOW project.
We will keep you informed of any developments.Sincerely,
Ian Murdock
Chairman, Progeny Linux Systems