Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was 1999. Monetization hadn't been invented yet.
You make it sound like companies didn't need to make money before 2000 rolled around.
[deleted]
Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
21–30 of 67 posts
Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#22Title sounds like it's a live startup made of ex-Apple employees, rather than the reality, which is it's an ex-startup that got acquired by Apple.
Suggest title of: "Eazel, ex-startup, acquired by Apple (2001)"
Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#23Title sounds like it's a live startup made of ex-Apple employees, rather than the reality, which is it's an ex-startup that got acquired by Apple. Suggest title of: "Eazel, ex-startup, acquired by Apple (2001)"
As a former Eazel employee, I can say that indeed Eazel did not get acquired by Apple.
As the Wikipedia page states, a sizable pool of people went to work on Safari 1.0 (and some are still working on Safari). Others went to Apple to work on the Finder or Core Graphics.
Another big chunk of people went to Danger to work on the T-Mobile Sidekick.
But the company shut down. No one was left besides the CFO.
Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#24Title sounds like it's a live startup made of ex-Apple employees, rather than the reality, which is it's an ex-startup that got acquired by Apple. Suggest title of: "Eazel, ex-startup, acquired by Apple (2001)"
FTA:
> Staff consisted of former employees of many technology companies such as Apple, Netscape, Be Inc., Linuxcare, Microsoft, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems.
Sounds like some of the people that founded, or at least worked at, the company did come from Apple.
FTA:
> The company attempted to sell its core development group but ceased operations on May 15, 2001.
> Hertzfeld arranged a meeting with Steve Jobs and most of Apple's high level management. In June 2001, most of Eazel's final roster of senior engineers joined Apple's Safari team
Sounds to me like your suggested title saying that they were acquired by Apple would not be an accurate way to put it.
Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#25I remember the hype when Nautilus first came out. I was a teenager, but even then, I had my doubts as to how a file manager make sense as the centerpiece for building a business. IIRC there were conversations about how to monetize it using premium add-ons which seemed pretty ridiculous at the time.
Their plan was to make people pay for image thumbnails? It all makes sense now! /s
Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#26Ken Kocienda's book Creative Selection mentions Eazel several times. Ken worked there with Don Melton, who founded the Safari web browser for Apple. After Eazel failed, Apple organized a job fair for Eazel employees.
Eazel is also covered in an excellent interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xImAMe32Itg) from the Computer History Museum.
Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#27I remember the hype when Nautilus first came out. I was a teenager, but even then, I had my doubts as to how a file manager make sense as the centerpiece for building a business. IIRC there were conversations about how to monetize it using premium add-ons which seemed pretty ridiculous at the time.
>how a file manager make sense as the centerpiece for building a business Well, there are Total Commander and other commercial file managers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_managers
But you will note in the cost column that the ones making money are on windows/mac. Its possible to sell commercial software on linux, just not desktop software as such. Between the small and very fragmented marketshare between the distros there is a pretty strong user distaste for commercial offerings. Which means the headwinds for a successful product are a lot worse. If one wants to create a new filemanager/whatever a far better plan is to target windows/macos as the primary offerings/focus rather than linux in the beginning. I guess some of that is application specific (ex a git frontend might work) but one better have a reason other than "I like linux" if they want it to be something other than a hobby.
Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#28As I was reading through the article, a thought experiment occurred: if a new Eazel emerged tomorrow (another Linux-focused startup led by ex-Apple "rock stars"), how would they best contribute to the Linux desktop? Join GNOME? Join KDE? Would any of their Apple-influenced paradigms even be accepted among the developers of mature DEs? Would they go create their own desktop environment ala Pantheon/elementaryOS? Would…
> if a new Eazel emerged tomorrow (another Linux-focused startup led by ex-Apple "rock stars"), how would they best contribute to the Linux desktop? Probably by joining elementary OS: https://elementary.io/
Or instead of Linux they could join something FreeBSD-based, like ravynOS
> We love macOS, but we’re not a fan of the ever-closing hardware and ecosystem. So, we are creating ravynOS — an OS aimed to provide the finesse of macOS with the freedom of FreeBSD.
Imagine former Apple employees joining them! That’d be so awesome!
Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#29I moved across the world (from Perth, WA) to work on open source software with some of my heroes (Bud Tribble, Andy Hertzfeld, Susan Kare) at Eazel. It was only a short time run, but I'm still in the Bay Area, still friends with many of the people I met there.
And I still use the software that I worked on at Eazel most days, which I can't say for anything I worked on since then.
Re: Eazel, ex-Apple led Linux startup
#30As I was reading through the article, a thought experiment occurred: if a new Eazel emerged tomorrow (another Linux-focused startup led by ex-Apple "rock stars"), how would they best contribute to the Linux desktop? Join GNOME? Join KDE? Would any of their Apple-influenced paradigms even be accepted among the developers of mature DEs? Would they go create their own desktop environment ala Pantheon/elementaryOS? Would…
I think you can see how this would go by looking at an Eazel that already emerged and found substantial success. Does this sound familiar?
- Founders from early Apple and Apple spinoff General Magic.
- Built a new Linux-based operating system.
- Their OS used an all-new, consumer-focused UI toolkit and userspace, and avoided playing around with any of the existing concepts from legacy linux distros, using GTK or QT, etc.
- They were acquired by Google.
- By many measures, the Linux operating system they built is the most popular OS on the planet, with more devices than macOS, iOS, or Windows.
Even with all that success, I'm not sure I'd say they had a major influence on the existing open-source linux distro "desktop environment" community.