Geeknet

Geeknet, Inc. is a publicly traded (NASDAQ NM: LNUX ) American software companies.

History

The company was founded in 1993 under the name VA Research by the two Stanford students James Vera and Larry Augustin to sell powerful Linux PCs as an alternative to the far more expensive Unix workstations. In the early years the company's sales grew constantly, and exceeded 1998, the limit of USD 100 million.

In April 1999, VA Research took over most competitors, Linux Hardware Solutions, and changed its name to VA Linux.

The IPO of the Company on 9 December 1999 was the most successful of all time, as the share price rose from the start of trading at $ 30 up to $ 320, and closed at the end of trading at a price of $ 239.25. However, this course was not held long. Just one year later, after the bursting of the dotcom bubble, the share price was below the issue price, and varies since then only to the 13-15 dollars.

In February 2000 Andover.net was purchased (later known as Open Source Developers Network and Open Source Technology Group ). This acquisition included Slashdot and other news sites in software to VA Linux, and the business model of the company expanded to include a strong software development focus.

Due to the growing competition from other hardware vendors, which now also sold PCs with Linux pre-installed, and consequent losses to VA Linux decided in June 2001 to leave the hardware business and focus only on software and websites. In December 2001, hence the name was changed to VA Software.

As of May 2007, the company SourceForge, Inc. was called, then in November 2009 renamed Geeknet, Inc.

In September 2012, Slashdot, Sourceforge and Free Code for 20 million U.S. dollars were sold to Dice Holdings.