10.06.08
Sell Out Linspire, Then Blame the Founder
Kevin Carmony - Greedy, crook or just incompetent?
The words above, “Greedy, crook or just incompetent,” were used by Carmony to attack his former boss. It’s hypocritical enough to amuse. We’ll come to this in a moment.
As a little bit of background, Linspire is no more. Things have been relatively quiet since Linspire was sold [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11] and its distribution subsequently phased out (only Freespire remained).
Prior to the collapse of ‘old’ Linspire came Klikit, a community distribution which we previously mentioned in [1, 2, 3]. Only yesterday, the following screenshots gallery of Klikit was published, so ‘escapees’ of Linspire are encouraged to explore it. Klikit is built by a community of users to serve those very same users. These are the ‘good guys’, who left Linspire in protest against the deal with Microsoft.
I just found this Linux Distribution today and I figured why not and support Klikit by posting there Screenshots here. I hope you guys enjoy. Klikit-Linux is based on the latest stable release of Kubuntu. Klikit-Linux comes with a collection of applications that will meet most of your daily computer needs, such as office, graphic, multimedia, and internet work.
Now we come to the latest distasteful development, which involves Carmony calling names and announcing lawsuits (the comments in Slashdot offer him little comfort).
Whose fault was it really? Carmoney [sic] wants money now, but does he deserve any?
Linspire’s status and reputation was much better before Carmony threw FUD at the GPL(v3) and discredited suppliers of his code (a very tactless thing to do). Here is his attack [rel="nofollow"].
To this day, Michael Robertson has yet to explain to the 100 some-odd shareholders what happened with the millions of dollars in cash and assets that were owned by Linspire just a few short months ago. The assets seem to have completely vanished, leaving shareholders with no return on their investment or even so much as an explanation as to what happened.
It’s understandable that these shareholders at least deserve an explanation. However, for Michael Robertson not to give Kevin Carmony a penny would be the right thing to do. He screwed up badly and mocked the very same software he was assigned to sell. It never seemed like selling out to Microsoft was Michael Robertson’s idea. █
“Lastly…some distributions have come out, claiming to be taking the “morale high ground” by refusing to give into “Microsoft threats,” while openly promoting the means of circumventing proprietary software on their web sites, amounting to nothing more than high-brow software piracy.”
–Kevin Carmony, Is Linux Splitting into Two Factions?
“Mr. Carmony asked a question, will Linux split in two factions? The answer is no. Some Linux distros will limp along a while and then die off, because they misunderstood what folks want when they choose GNU/Linux and FOSS. You can see that already. Red Hat, which refused to sign any such deal, is flourishing, for example. It’s not about code that “just works”. Apple offers that already. It’s the freedom. And we’ve proven willing to put up with some temporary frustration in order to get it. In time, FOSS will win, and all those proprietary codecs and everything else will be made available on pleasanter terms, because market share does that.”
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.
WMcBride said,
October 6, 2008 at 2:15 pm
I agree with Carmony. Shareholders have a right to know what happened to their investment.
WM
Roy Schestowitz said,
October 6, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Yes, I agree and I wrote this beneath the quote. The criticism here is different though.