02.18.08
Linspire’s Former CEO Gives Up on CNR
He may have never wanted Linspire to succeed anyway if he sold out
For a variety of reasons which were mentioned before [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], Linspire has suffered a sharp decline ever since its patent deal with Microsoft. In fact, Kevin Carmony, the man who once sold us Microsoft FUD, has little faith in the company he used to run (deliberately not a direct link) when he signed that appalling Microsoft deal.
Kevin Carmony, a controversial former CEO of Linspire who recently switched his allegiance to Ubuntu, has written an interesting blog entry on the current state of CNR.com, Linspire’s flagship software distribution service. Since Linspire has not made enough effort to maintain a good working relationship with Ubuntu, he argues that CNR.com (and, by extension, possibly even Linspire and Freespire), is likely to fail…
And then there’s the rest of this good weekly newsletter from Ladislav. Carmony resigned just a few months after making the colossal mistake (signing that deal). GNU/Linux thrives and it will probably do brilliantly on the desktop in years to come. It’s a shame that Linspire won’t be part of this because it got itself tied to unnecessary Microsoft debts and obligations. █
Related articles;
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.