Commercial Linux

["Ian Wright" <nospam [at] iw63.freeserve.co.uk>]

HI,

I just saw this on another list and wondered if anyone might be interested.
Apparently it was on the Reuters site today.

Apple, AOL veterans making Linux easy
    By Paul Festa and Stephen Shankland
    Staff Writers, CNET News.com
    February 16, 2000, 6:10 p.m. PT

Veterans of Apple Computer and America Online are setting their sights on
the Macintosh equivalent of Linux, in other words, a
version of Linux your mother could use.

A start-up called Eazel is at work on a graphical user interface (GUI) for
Linux that founders say will extend to every aspect
of the Linux computing experience. The project is an extension of the Gnome
user interface.

With the current Gnome and the competing KDE user interfaces for Linux, it's
still hard to avoid typing in commands, an activity
notoriously unpalatable to average users. Though showing some signs of
growth for desktop use, Linux still predominantly is used
on servers.

Eazel's technology and management team has deep roots in Apple and AOL, the
two companies most famous for creating and marketing
consumer-friendly computing products.

Chief executive Mike Boich joined Apple in 1982 and was an evangelist for
the budding Macintosh project. "Software wizard" Andy
Hertzfeld started at Apple in 1979, where he made Apple II peripherals and
software, was a member of the original Macintosh team
in 1981, and wrote much of the original Macintosh OS.

Another original employee of Eazel is board member Mike Homer, a senior vice
president at AOL who joined the
world's largest Internet service provider with its acquisition of Netscape
Communications. At Netscape, Homer was in charge of
the Netcenter portal. He also got his start at Apple, in 1982.

Eazel launched with seed money from its founders, as well as with
investments from Ron Conway's Angel Investors, Sippl Macdonald
Ventures, and former Macromedia chairman John "Bud" Colligan (a board member
of CNET, publisher of News.com, and now a partner
with the venture capital firm Accel Partners).

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Eazel is in the process of closing a round of
venture capital funding with a "major" VC firm to the tune
of about $10 million, Boich said in an interview. He would not identify the
firm.

Eazel is not alone in trying to deliver user-friendly Linux. Other companies
have seen the opportunity in extending the
open-source operating system to the consumer desktop market.

Corel in November released a version of Linux that has won some plaudits for
being user-friendly. It garnered Corel $3.2 million
in revenue through the end of 1999, the company said, and Corel has inked
deals to improve support for mainstream hardware.

MandrakeSoft, a French firm, is marketing its Linux product as "a complete
pre-configured graphical Linux operating system (that
is) easy to install, easy to use and stable." Mandrake Linux is based on the
version from Red Hat.

Boich said his company aims to take ease of use to a new level and plans
ultimately to surpass Microsoft's Windows OS and the
Mac in simplicity.

"We are doing something really comprehensive," Boich said. "We're writing
the software that serves as the file manager and the
graphical shell.  There are some graphical environments out there, but they
don't cover everything. We're going to provide GUI
coverage for the whole system."

Eazel will develop its software under the open-source model that has fueled
Linux's popularity among computer enthusiasts and
its rise in the corporate marketplace. Because the software will be free,
the company will follow the lead of other Linux
outfits, such as Red Hat and VA Linux Systems, in earning its revenue
through services.

Eazel was the brainchild of Mac OS co-author Hertzfeld, who became
interested in open source when Netscape released its
Communicator Web browser source code through the Mozilla.org group in 1998.

"He saw tremendous need for usability work on Linux," Boich said. "Today
it's more of a back-office operating system, but we
believe the potential to be a lot more than that."
-------------------

Ian

--
Ian W. Wright
Sheffield  UK

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