mealy-mouth linspires
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tuxchick2 Aug 05, 2006 9:07 AM EDT |
Mr. Carmody's blog is an interesting exercise in mealy-mouthed double-talk. Back when Linspire was Lindows, and the company was run by Michael Robertson, it was fun. He founded Lindows to compete with Microsoft. Hardly a day went by that Mr. Robertson didn't take shots at the evil empire. As far as I can recall, he was the first and only person to challenge the validity of the Windows trademark. Microsoft sued Lindows in practically every country on the planet, so in the end Lindows had to cave in and changed their name. Mr. Robertson has long since moved on, and now they're stuck with this Carmody weenie who cheap-shots other Linux distributions and mis-represents what Free software is about. For anyone who cares, I'm not objecting to Linspire's packaging of closed drivers and codecs. Xandros does this too, and they have a nice, polished distribution. But they don't pretend to the Best Friends of Free Software, and they don't take cheap, untruthful shots at other Linuxes. And they do challenge Windows directly, right on their front page: http://www.xandros.com/ I officially pronounce a stern 'fie on Linspire.' |
| NoDough Aug 07, 2006 8:59 AM EDT |
>...so in the end Lindows had to cave in and changed their name. Sort of. If you call taking $20million of Microsoft's money caving. |
| dcparris Aug 07, 2006 9:33 AM EDT |
>Sort of. If you call taking $20million of Microsoft's money caving. I thought it was an excellent way to raise capital funding. |
| tuxchick2 Aug 07, 2006 9:54 AM EDT |
It was caving in because they quit fighting the trademark lawsuits. Perhaps a better choice of words would be "they were outgunned and beat a strategic retreat." At the time a lot of folks thought $20 mil was chump change, but what's done is done. |
| NoDough Aug 07, 2006 10:13 AM EDT |
>At the time a lot of folks thought $20 mil was chump change, but what's done is done. That's an eye-of-the-beholder thing. To Microsoft, it was chump change. To Lindows/Linspire, it was a big help to their development. To me, it's something I'm not likely to ever see in my lifetime. :( |
| sbergman27 Aug 07, 2006 10:52 AM EDT |
I actually have a better impression of the company now that they are just a Linux company than back when they were playing legal name games. Perceptions would probably be different if it were the name "Debean Linux" that they had refused to give up for years. Anyway, Freespire comes in 2 downloadable flavors. A completely FOSS version, and one with some extra binary only stuff. Users who want Freespire can decide for themselves which they want. Choice is good. Isn't that what we usually say? |
| jimf Aug 07, 2006 11:49 AM EDT |
> Anyway, Freespire comes in 2 downloadable flavors. A completely FOSS version, and one with some extra binary only stuff. Users who want Freespire can decide for themselves which they want. Choice is good. Isn't that what we usually say? True, and even though it's not my choice, the choice of Freespire, or even Linspire is better for the world than the MS offering. |
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