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 Lineo logo | |
| Industry | Computer software |
|---|---|
| Founded | 20 July 1999; 25 years ago (1999-07-20) |
| Headquarters | |
Key people | Roger Alan Gross, Bryan Wayne Sparks, Brad Walters[1] |
| Products | Embedix,DR-DOS |
Number of employees | 14 (1999) 50 (2000)[2] 350 (ca. 2001) |
Lineo was athin client andembedded systems company spun out ofCaldera Thin Clients by 20 July 1999.[3][4][5][6][7]
Caldera Thin Clients, Inc., had been created as a subsidiary ofCaldera, Inc., on 2 September 1998.[8] Caldera Thin Clients' original President and CEO was Roger Alan Gross,[8] who resigned in January 1999. In April 1999, Caldera Thin Clients released the no longer needed sources toGEM andViewMAX under theGNU General Public License (GPL).[9]
In July 1999,Caldera Thin Clients decided on a major refocus onLinux and consequently changed its name to Lineo.[7]
Lineo licensed a stripped downOpenLinux distribution fromCaldera Systems and named it Embedix.[7] They continued to maintain the former Caldera Thin Clients sales office inTaipei in 1999. In January 2000, Lineo reincorporated inDelaware.
Lineo's technologies fully owned were well ahead of competitors' products in theembedded system portion.[7] These technologies included:
This combination of technologies allowed Caldera Thin Clients to offer a fullLinuxoperating system with a graphical browser that could run off afloppy disk.[11][12][clarification needed] More importantly the product was unique, and this came from the fact that Lineo's view on the Linuxembedded market was different from other vendors.[7][13] All the other vendors believed that Linux was heavily fragmented and that the solution was to offer Linux features for real time OSes, that is a LinuxAPI for some other OSes.Red Hat with its EL/IX created akernel independentframework (API) which allowed some Linux software to run on theeCos kernel. Lineo did not agree with this assessment and believed the API offered far more advantages and allowed for a fullyhardened system, that is, Lineo utilized a custom Linux kernel. Through the six companies Lineo acquired, they were able to extend the same Linux technology across multiple chip architectures and add real-time capabilities. The acquisitions gave broader Linux support, from very smallmicrocontrollers, through traditional platforms likex86, and up tohigh end,high availability systems.[13]
Lineo's president and CEO, when it reformed under the new name, becameBryan Wayne Sparks,[3] who also had been one of the original founders of Caldera, Inc., in 1994. At the time of its creation, Lineo had 14 employees.
Lineo's main product wasEmbedix, a lightweightLinux distribution for embedded systems, licensed fromCaldera Systems, Inc., another subsidiary of Caldera, Inc.[3][8][7]
Another product wasDR-DOS, aDOS–compatibleoperating system, previously developed byCaldera UK Ltd. between 1996 and 1999 and originally acquired fromNovell by Caldera, Inc., on 23 July 1996.[14][7]
Through its acquisitions Lineo also had a range of products in many different product categories.
Through a series of acquisitions and mergers, Lineo eventually ballooned to a peak of about 350 employees, with offices in seven countries. The companies that it acquired or merged with were:
In October 2001, Lineo refreshed and expanded a free license for the redistribution and modification of original Digital Research binaries and sources related toCP/M andMP/M through "The Unofficial CP/M Web site"[15][16][17][18] a license originally issued by Caldera in 1997.[19][20][21]
After some assets were auctioned off in April 2002, by July 2002 the company had reformed asEmbedix, Inc.[22] under the lead of Matthew R. Harris, formerly a Summit Law attorney for Caldera, Inc. However, Embedix, Inc. was short-lived and ceased to exist later that year, when theEmbedix division was purchased and absorbed byMotorola'sMetrowerks.[23][24][25]
The remaining Digital Research assets fell back to the investorCanopy Group, and parts of the DR-DOS sources were acquired byDeviceLogics in 2002.
Parts of the embedded modules and uClinux software assets (formerly Rt-Control Inc.) were acquired by Arcturus Networks Inc. in 2002.[26]
The router division (formerly Moreton Bay) spun out as SnapGear, and was later acquired by CyberGuard and thenSecure Computing, and Secure Computing was acquired byMcAfee and as of 2008 was still producing the SnapGear brand of VPN/routers.
Lineo Japan, a former Japanese acquisition and at one time wholly owned subsidiary, United System Engineers,[27] Inc. (USE), now trades as Lineo Solutions.
[…] We […] have very deep experience with embeddingDR DOS, and we've been making millions from that. So we are in a unique position: we are not a startup and we have funding. Our DOS product paid for all ourR&D on embeddedLinux. […] we are […] evolving our focus from an embedded DOS-only company to anembedded Linux company. […]
Caldera Thin Clients, Inc. released the source code forGEM andViewMAX under theGNU Public License in mid April, following years of speculation over GEM's future.Caldera bought the GEM sources fromNovell along with theDR-DOS in 1996, at the time noting that they may develop GEM into a platform for mobile computers and thin clients. However, these plans were dropped, and GEM was instead released into the open-source community.
[…] Let this email represent a right to use, distribute, modify, enhance and otherwise make available in a nonexclusive manner theCP/M technology as part of the "Unofficial CP/M Web Site" with its maintainers, developers and community. I further state that as Chairman and CEO of Lineo, Inc. that I have the right to do offer such a license. […]Bryan Sparks […]
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