Matthew W. Beale. Preliminary final

Preliminary final
Matthew W. Beale

Publication date: February 12, 2002

The rumors turned out to be not greatly exaggerated: Eazel, Inc. dead. She's gone. She died and was buried. This is now a former company. But that doesn't necessarily mean the end of its much-hyped Nautilus file management program, designed to make the Linux operating system easier for non-technical people to use. Let's take a closer look at the current situation.

When software maker Eazel announced in March 2001 that Nautilus would be free to download, it seemed that it would, in some sense, succeed where Corel had failed and that it would be able to persuade users to install the operating system. Linux system on their desktop computers. However, already at that time the company, whose leaders thought differently and decided to make it easier to use Apple computers, wasted the $13 million invested in it, and the financiers did not see any bright prospects for it.

Promising Nautilus

According to the company, the software, which has made a name for itself through collaborations with companies such as Dell, Red Hat and Sun, is “a window into the networked user environment that allows access to files, applications, Internet services and the network, making the user's experience more dynamic and meaningful."

Among other things, Nautilus was designed to help users organize files and surf the World Wide Web. The company eventually planned to introduce online subscription fees. At this stage, a business plan should have been launched. However, Eazel did not succeed in implementing this project, and did not receive the additional funding that it so badly needed.

Like such giants as Linuxcare, Red Hat, TurboLinux and VA Linux, Eazel was forced to undertake severe cost-cutting measures and staff layoffs before finally closing its doors.

The main problem that Linux operating system companies faced was how to create a sustainable business model based on free software. For many, the end of Eazel signaled the end of the halcyon days when it was believed that intensive investment in high technology would provide a leap forward, especially for open source software like Linux.

But does Eazel's bankruptcy mean that desktop Linux is also doomed?

Many believe that Eazel's May 15 collapse has made the goal of pushing Linux into the desktop market more difficult than before. But although Nautilus, which runs on the GNOME Linux/UNIX user interface, has lost its parent company and funding, the project is governed by the GPL (GNU Public License), so in theory the software could still be brought to market.

Will he survive or not?

Andy Hertzfeld, who led the development of the first interface for the Apple Macintosh system and is now a former executive director of Eazel, said that he would use all the means at his disposal to ensure that the Nautilus project continued to develop. Bart Decrem, one of Eazel's employees, said, "The program will survive and hopefully continue to improve." Lead Nautilus developer Darin Adler also announced his intention to direct all his strength and energy to the development of this project. In this intention, he is almost unanimously supported by all Nautilus developers.

Sounds promising to those of us who would really like to see Linux become one of the main operating systems in the computer market.

A small operating system that could fit into the OS mainstream, a flavor of UNIX based on Minix, was indeed making a massive and well-publicized foray into the business server market. Subsequently, leading Linux companies such as Red Hat and TurboLinux began to shy away from the desktop market.

Skeptics who doubt that Linux will succeed on the desktop point to serious negative factors, not the least of which is that Windows still dominates the market, while open-source operating systems have captured no more than two percent of the market . There are also doubts about how quickly Nautilus development can move now that there is no longer a paid team of developers devoting their time to the project.

More generally, desktop PC makers continue to roll out new products to the market, and their customers have a powerful incentive to choose Linux over the Windows operating system: the lack of licensing fees. However, those who doubt that Linux will ever take over the desktop market also point out that the operating system is still very technically complex for most users. For example, Dell, when promoting Linux, relies on those users who are accustomed to using proprietary UNIX (and not on less technically literate people).

Other open source advocates see Eazel's bankruptcy as a death knell for Linux's prospects for desktop use. While Nautilus may be considered the last word in software and the best hope, these experts argue that GNOME and KDE are moving forward quickly on their own and may eventually make the breakthrough to gain attention and enough customers.

After the company got off to a hot start, tried to make a big deal, and failed, one anonymous Linux Today backer said Eazel is "the latest big-time Linux hype campaign that has failed." According to some industry analysts and people in the know, the company's short history confirms the validity and accuracy of this observation.

The confrontation, of course, will increase. According to a recently released IDC report, 92% of all customer OS shipments last year were for the Windows operating system.

"I'll Take the Rain"

The grim irony is that the day after my last article about Eazel and its new software product was published, the company went bankrupt. But I still believe in the spirit of that article's closing words. Essentially what it said was that while Eazel has fizzled out, Nautilus is part of a process that is still ongoing, despite what many computer scientists say.