Linuxcare
|
|
Linuxcare (now Levanta) was a San Francisco-based company founded in 1998 by Dave Sifry, Art Tyde and Dave LaDuke. The company's initial goal was to be "the 800 number for Linux" and operate 24 hours a day. In the late 1990s, Linux was slowly gaining in popularity as both a desktop and server operating system. A common complaint was that Linux was inappropriate in business environments, because obtaining support for Linux involved newsgroups, mailing lists, and websites operated by volunteers. Linuxcare intended to hire some of the disparate Linux experts and get them working together to provide reliable support, for which individuals and businesses would pay.
When Dell started to ship desktop computers with Red Hat Linux pre-installed in 1999, they bundled a coupon that allowed a certain number of free support calls to Linuxcare.
Several of the people that Linuxcare eventually hired were developers of well-known open source software projects:
- Rasmus Lerdorf worked on PHP
- Martin Pool worked on Apache
- Rusty Russell worked on ipchains
- Andrew Tridgell worked on samba, rsync
These experts were allowed to use company time to develop their projects, and were expected to help with technical support in their areas of expertise.
Linuxcare had four divisions: Linuxcare Labs that tested and certified hardware systems for Linux compatibility, Linuxcare University, which provided training, Professional Services which provided consultants to other companies and Research and Development that concentrated on enhancing open source software.
In December 1999, Linuxcare acquired Ottawa-based consulting company The Puffin Group and the Italian company Prosa. Linuxcare was preparing for an initial public offering in early 2000, until it fired its CEO and CIO. Shortly after, around 33% of the company was laid off. In January 2001, Turbolinux and Linuxcare began discussing a merger, but it was called off in May 2001.
As Levanta, the company no longer provides Linux technical support.