"The purpose of releasing it is to prove the technology," Richter said. "We have deliberately not put the first edition into the reseller channel because we aren't asking them to shoulder that risk. Once Linux DVD Archives has established some technical and business performance, then we may roll out a future edition into the reseller channel in an organized manner."

Richter said the company didn't go after the venture capital, staffing expansion or marketing blitzes of other Linux companies of the last few years because the company wasn't ready for it -- then. "We needed to be more poised for growth, in terms of having working infrastructure in place, people ready, clearer path to a liquidable event," he said. "I think we have largely accomplished that in the past year." Richter added that no new capital was required in order to produce the DVD product.

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What Yggdrasil may or may not do in the future is still a riddle. Richter is almost IBM-like in his unwillingness to talk about future directions and products. Still, he said that the company's website is getting an overhaul and that the company was spending significant resources on "internal development."

In other words, something's coming, we're just not sure what. In response to a question about whether a future Yggdrasil Linux distribution might contribute to fragmentation, here's what Richter said:

"Although fragmentation is not as bad for mutually compatible free software as it is for proprietary software, we are interested in addressing this inefficiency. We have publicly released some development snapshots of software designed to address the issue of software package tracking in a more packaging system independent way. When or if this might affect a future product, I won't say, but it demonstrates that we take the fragmentation problem seriously and are looking for more creative solutions than 'everyone should just switch our product'."

Read into that what you will. I'm just happy to see the re-entry of a familiar face among the startups and hangers-on, especially that of a company that's always cared about both the cause of free software and the desire to be profitable. I wish Adam and the company well.

Even if I don't have a DVD reader yet.

Do you remember using Yggdrasil Linux? Tell Evan in the TalkBack below or in the ZDNet Linux Forum. Or write to Evan directly at evan@starnix.com.

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