Eazel, the company that created the Nautilus navigator for Linux, has closed its doors after an unsuccessful attempt to obtain further funding for its activities — an apparent casualty of the current economic down-turn. The following message was posted to the gnome-hackers discussion list . . .

From: Bart Decrem
To: gnome-hackers gnome org
Subject: Eazel
Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 16:33:34 -0700

Hi everyone,

For the last few days, there have been rumors floating around that Eazel is going out of business.

I regret to inform you that Eazel is in fact shutting down. Over the past six months, our board members and executives worked tirelessly to secure financing for the company. Unfortunately, the high tech capital markets have all but dried up and we have been unable to secure funding.

In the midst of these difficult times, our hackers have managed to hit two major milestones for Nautilus: our 1.0 and 1.0.3 releases. We would like to express our gratitude to the Eazel hackers for keeping their eye on the ball over the past 2 months. Thanks also to all of our friends who've been so supportive these last few months, in particular the more than 100 members of the GNOME community who are hacking on Nautilus and the folks who sent us money via Paypal (we sent you tshirts and thank-you cards).

Here's what to expect over the coming days and weeks: over the next day or so, the Eazel web site will be shut down, Eazel's online services will be discontinued, and the Nautilus bootstrap installer will no longer be able to fetch files from our software catalog. We'll make sure that the users of our online storage are able to retrieve their files, and we are sending out mail to all our registered users. Andy Hertzfeld has generously offered to host what will remain of the Eazel web site and all the Nautilus resources will continue to be available.

The source code, CVS repository and binaries have always been hosted on gnome.org, and this will continue. Our Bugzilla repository, the Nautilus mailing lists and other Nautilus resources (such as the RSS feed etc.) will be hosted by Andy. E-mail to former employees' eazel.com address will be forwarded at least for the next few weeks, and resumes for some of our former employees will be posted on the remaining web site. The company's assets will be sold to pay off our creditors, so it's conceivable that the Eazel trademark or domain name will be purchased by a company that has no relationship to the current Eazel.

Nautilus is licensed under the GPL, so the software will live on and, we hope, continue to improve. It is my understanding that Darin, Andy, and several other key Nautilus contributors plan to continue to work on Nautilus on a volunteer basis. Expect to hear from Darin and Andy shortly. Miguel has indicated that he and others at Ximian will also contribute to Nautilus to ensure that it continues on as the file manager for GNOME and meets the users' needs.

If you haven't tried out Nautilus 1.0.3, please do so — there are numerous new features and bug fixes and performance has improved since the 1.0 release. The source code for Nautilus 1.0.3 is available via ftp, here. Nautilus upgrades will also be distributed through Red Hat Network and through Ximian's Red Carpet. Now's a great time to check out Nautilus, and an even better time to roll up your sleeves, get involved with Nautilus, and prove to the world that free software can thrive even when its corporate sponsors run out of steam.

Like many of the people who worked at Eazel, I fully plan to stay involved with free software and GNOME. On behalf of everyone from Eazel, *thank you* for having welcomed us into the free software family, and GO GNOME!

Bart
and The Eazel Team

 
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