Andover.Net and the deep pockets of Wilber the GIMP?

Well, to me it looks like Linux is beginning to be exploited by business people with no clue. At first you may laugh at it or be offended by it, but think of it this way: would the business people bother exploiting it if it was going to fail? Did they ever exploit BSD? No. So maybe it is a good sign, because with success there are always the "clingers," you know the types: Corel, and now, apparently, Andover. Even Microsoft, if you count the announcement on Slashdot today that they will release a Linux Media Player. Actually that was probably another stupid joke they did, but I guess we won't know till tomorrow.
Yes, it feels dirty. Yes, it feels wrong. But having the sell outs of the Linux world (especially some companies considered "big name") can't all be bad. We don't have to buy their product, or use their product, but to play devil's advocate let's look at it this way: if one company sees Corel fail at delving into Linux, do you think that they will try? Of course not. And the more companies that are afraid to try Linux or marketing Linux, the less likely it will catch on.
Yes, I do realize that this was concerning the Gimp and not Linux, but as Gimp is a Linux app I thought it would be fitting to point this out here. Once more graphic computer artists (or whatever the heck you call them) find out about the Gimp, maybe they will use Linux. Now, I'm not saying you should shell the bucks out of your pocket just for a little advertising, but take it as a good omen.

Just for the record, I would like to remind you that the Gimp is not only a Linux application: it runs on other UNIX-like systems (I use it daily on Solaris) and it has been ported to Windows and OS/2 as well. The Gimp seems to become increasingly popular as a Windows application.

And now for the on-topic part: I just hope that Andover has a marketing/advertising department that is clearly separated from their investments/acquisitions department. I could understand that they have clueless people in the former and bright people who understand Open Source in the latter. If all of them are clueless, then it is scary.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that it was a Linux only app. It runs on Linux, though, and I bet that's why they called.

It's clear that at least some of Andover's marketing droids are clueless about the industry they operate in. The real question, IMO, is whether VA's recent acquisition of Andover will change anything....

Make it better and more free. World domination, "market penetration" and all these other things are uninteresting. The only "advantage" to a free platform that's offered by having a large market share is that companies will port their proprietary software to it. Which isn't much of an advantage at all, really.

As for the cluefulness of Andover, seeing what Slashdot is like these days, both from the user side and the admin side (Roblimo, anyone?), I wouldn't be too surprised. I'm not too optimistic about the VA thing either, given that VA has its own agenda which isn't necessarily congruent with the interests of the community. Their intense focus on Intel chips, for instance, could be negative to the state of non-x86 ports of free software, especially in a scenario where more and more free software developers work for the large companies.

Considering the Slashdot Beanie award for $2k to Wilber the GIMP, you should have plenty of money for advertisements now!

;)

I would also like to chime in on win32 gimp...

My wife is using this daily! And, she is passing copies around to people in the Edu. Tech. program she is in at Cal State. Most of the peoples eyes glaze over about the time the `x' of unix rolls by, but gimp they get.

The win32 port has increased linux visibility quite a bit, at least in this case.

Hey, slow down! Salespeople are, as a rule, clueless. Period. They are good at selling things. They generally don't know shit about what they are selling. Of course andover.net's salesforce aren't any different. That's Showbiz!

Now that Linux is mainstream, we are going to see this sort of thing reported time and time again. But, really, so what? It's hardly a novelty for anyone who's been in the computing field for any length of time. When Linux was not commercial, this sort of thing didn't happen, because there was no money in Linux. Now there is; so don't expect Linux to be treated differently from any other commodity.

-- What's the difference between a used-car salesman and a computer salesman"?
-- The used-car salesman knows he's lying.

If I decided that every time I heard someone from the US say something stupid that every American on the planet was a fool I would have it constantly re-enforced into my skull.

Luckily I'm able to reason that just because one person in a group may have a faulty understanding of issues, or make a mistake that can be corrected, that s/he doesn't reflect everyone there.

As anyone who has ever been in an akward situation where they weren't aware of everything going on can relate to, sometimes you make mistakes. Perhaps the rest of us have been lucky enough that these people who corrected our mistakes didn't take the time and energy to post our mishaps on a website.

Hey there everyone, we all let out a collective "What the ***" when we heard about this too, we found the sales guy and explained that this is not really rthe right thing to do. In his defense, he just didn't know, and luckily, he does know now, Andovers VP of sales Bill Dwyer talked with him and explained things. (Bill is pretty cool about such things)

Josh Freeman over there will be doing a bit more on who and how to contact for ad sales and such so this sort of thing doesn't happen again, no matter how funny it is. IF anyone has anything else on thier mind, they can email me at chris@valinux.com

Chris DiBona VA Linux Systems.