10.19.07
Eric Raymond Has Left Linspire’s Board
An icon departs
“Why did Eric leave so quietly? Did he know all too well what he was leaving behind?”Shane once asked himself what Eric Raymond would do after Linspire’s deal with Microsoft. It turns out that shortly after Kevin Carmony had left Linspire, Eric left as well. The press did not report any of this, despite the fact that the press did make a lot of noise when Eric dumped Fedora for Ubuntu Linux. It’s rather amazing how micro-stories beat the macro-stories because of distro war drama. To be fair, it’s also due to Eric’s desire to be heard (carbon copies of the mailing list message to various editors). Why did Eric leave so quietly? Did he know all too well what he was leaving behind?
Good luck to Linspire, by the way. Best of luck getting that OOXML ‘translator’, which nobody really needed anyway (with the exception of Microsoft).
Eric Raymond has been quite silent (as in “low profile”) for several month, but there was an exception. He was actually among those who openly resisted Microsoft’s inclusion in the OSI (just before things fell over, so to speak). And speaking of the OSI, Brian Proffitt talks about his time at GOSCON and also mentions the OSI in an interesting context.
Zemlin caught me rolling my eyes, and asked if I had a problem with the OSI. Not at all. They have well established themselves as guardians of the OSD, and I cannot take away anything from the individual intelligences of the OSI members. But, I said to Zemlin, the LF [Linux Foundation] is already involved with enforcing one standard (the LSB) that could be described as open, why not go the rest of the way?
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.