It’s still Fat City for the venture-capital community in Silicon Valley, according to the latest numbers from the Mercury News/PriceWaterhouseCoopers survey. As funding pours into start-ups, digital plumbers of the Internet have all the makings of another investor-fed dot-com craze.
In my Sunday column, I imagine what VCs would say if they actually spoke their minds.
Linux, Linux, Linux
It’s time for the Linux World Conference and Expo in San Jose, and people are asking the usual question, Can it move out of the back room and onto the desktop? (Mercury News)
There’s lots of news:
Mercury News: VA Linux to unveil build-to-order software model. “We will do for software what Dell has done for hardware,” Larry Augustin, chief executive of VA, said in an interview at its offices, where stuffed, plastic and crystal penguins, the Linux mascot, adorn many an engineer’s cubicle along with yellow crime-scene tape declaring the area a “Windows-Free Zone.” New York Times: Developers of Linux Software Planning Assault on Microsoft. The foundation plans to announce a set of initiatives, including a unified desktop user interface and a set of productivity programs intended to compete as a free alternative to Microsoft Office. The Register: Dell to demo Linux on Itanium. Dell also wants to get out of the 64-bit Linux gate ahead of server rivals Hewlett-Packard, Compaq and IBM.