10.24.07
Turbolinux Might be the Next Linspire (It’s Not a Compliment)
Going down the road of sellout, having cashed in to take a dive
A couple of days ago Turbolinux officially sold out entirely. Some used to think that Mandriva would cave, but all concerns were soon put to rest because rumours invoked the response Mandriva’s CEO.
“The nice thing about Linux is that there is a lot of choice.”Turobolinux was always on the verge of letting its weakness lead to reliance on a Sugar Daddy. The company even had involvements in OOXML [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] after that pointless OOXML deal with Microsoft. This tactless move made a patent deal an easy prediction to make.
The nice thing about Linux is that there is a lot of choice. The code is out there for everyone to use and reuse. Bad distributions, where “bad” refers also to their behaviour (or the behaviour of the parent company), will fade away while benevolent ones will survive and be made stronger by a large and supportive community. That is the nature of Linux.
TurboLinux is not a large company and it may be following the same sad route of Linspire [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15]. Like Linspire, there was never a reason for them to enter this deal, but Microsoft apparently paid handsomely for something in return [1, 2, 3, 4].
Do not buy Turobolinux. Not even the Wizpy (Turobolinux-based), which is somewhat of a failure in the market anyway. Your wallet is the best weapon and the mouth can help control other people’s pockets.
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.