Founded by Ian Murdock and John H. Hartman in 2000, Progeny Linux Systems seemed for years like a modestly successful free and open source software (FOSS) company. Although it abandoned its original plans for revolutionizing networks, it survived the dot-com crash while many other companies had gone under, and its efforts to commercialize Debian were profitable after its first year and a half. By early 2005, Progeny had reinvented itself by offering update services and modular components for building specialized GNU/Linux distributions. Yet on April 30, Progeny ceased operations. What happened?

Source: Progeny’s closure highlights problems of small FOSS companies