Submitted by “In an interview today with Linux-Watch, controversial Linux leader Kevin Carmony confirmed rumors that he had resigned as CEO of desktop Linux vendor Linspire on July 31. Carmony said he plans to work on several of his own business projects, and on Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.”
guy is being punished for Microsoft scam!
No one forced him to make the deal. He did it anyway hoping that working with MS would actually mean interoperability, he was sadly mistaken.
the witch is dead.
May he be as “successful” with Romney’s campaign as he was with Linspire. (AKA…an also-ran)
Raise your hand if you were actually surprised by this turn of events.
True, most of us Linux users are part of the People’s Party.
I know that if you look at it from a distance, linux appears to be “the people’s”; however, a closer inspection show’s it to be “the individual’s”. It is the individual developers that make the choice to release her/his code under a specific license. It is out of respect of an individual’s rights that we use her/his code. Linux is made up of thousands of individuals, and rarely communal groups as “the people” implies.
Linux (GPL) is for individual liberty (republican), where BSD is more for group rights (democrats).
Don’t confuse Republicans with the Neo-cons that are impersonating Republicans (Bush/Cheney administration).
EDIT: I consider Romney a Neo-con.
Edited 2007-08-06 17:28
None of the current Republican candidates are the Republican Party founded by Jefferson. Hell none of them remotely resembled Teddy Roosevelt’s Republican Party.
[Thomas] Jefferson did not start the Republican party.
However, Abe Lincoln was the first Republican president.
Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican party has an indirect lineage with modern day democratic party (having being split during the Andrew Jackson timeframe), but not the modern day republican party.
Jefferson Democratic Republican -> Jacksonian Democratic -> Democratic
In an overly simplistic view of the lineage.
The modern day Republican party didn’t begin to emerge until the 1850’s
Linux (GPL) is for individual liberty (republican), where BSD is more for group rights (democrats).
Thanks for the laugh I haven’t read anything more absurd in weeks.
How many ways to get what you want
I use the best I use the rest
I use the enemy I use anarchy cos i
I wanna be anarchy !
The only way to be !
John Lydon
After signing a deal with MICROS~1, he decides to back a republican candidate…?! Bad decisions…Bad decisions…
This guy must have a pretty bad karma.
Why are you writing Microsoft like MICROS~1? Are you still using DOS? Or are you just another one of MS haters trying to be cool.
Anyway back to the topic – their free distro freespire hasn’t seemed to have progressed much at all with their ambitious release schedule announced last year they have only got 1 release out the door which was basically Linspire with changed artwork. Linspire / Freespire don’t seem to be doing too well.
Personally, I think Mr. Carmony is a very nice fellow. I think he always meant very well in everything he did. Navigating the Linux “business” world is a very dangerous proposition. I do not like the Microsoft deals that Novell and others have done. However, at least Linspire was always up front and open about their position on proprietary bits in Linspire. And everyone seems to forget about the Free Software version of Freespire (there are two versions of Freespire) that has no proprietary stuff.
As for Linspire, I hope the reigns are taken by someone with less “business” mindset and more of a “technical” mindset. I hope Linspire can recover from a never-ending image problem as the “sell out” OS, going back even to the Lindows days. The actual distro is very nice and very easy to use. CNR is a wonderful distribution system. I really look forward to what OpenCNR has to offer to other distros.
Good luck, Keven. Good luck, Linspire.
[EDIT: spelling]
Edited 2007-08-06 15:59
I hope Linspire can recover from a never-ending image problem as the “sell out” OS, going back even to the Lindows days.
the very name of the distro was (and still is) a ‘sell out’. how could you possibly expect anything to change when the company was founded on selling out? geez.
And everyone seems to forget about the Free Software version of Freespire (there are two versions of freespire) that has no proprietary stuff.
everybody forgets about freespire because it’s just another ‘me-too’ supposed ‘community’ distro. few people with any tact have any impetus to use or contribute to a distribution with such shady parentage. actually, i think rather than forget, most people just ignore freespire.
few people with any tact have any impetus to use or contribute to a distribution with such shady parentage
Ubuntu? Debian?
Ubuntu? Debian?
by parentage, i meant the people and ideas that drove the formation of the company, *not* the distribution it’s based off of. sorry if that wasn’t completely clear.
debian is a wonderful distribution and happens to be my personal distro of choice.
“And everyone seems to forget about the Free Software version of Freespire (there are two versions of Freespire) that has no proprietary stuff.” No, we DON’T forget about that version. Part of the tumult that KC and the Sunshine Boys precipitated arose when said KC decided to discontinue the OSS-only version of Freedows because “nobody was interested in it.” Check the Freedows forums searching for OSS version discontinued to catch a few threads about it.
I didn’t know that. That would be a bad sign.
Maybe… you must know him better than most. As an outsider looking in, it appears that he made his money and left. It isn’t the first time he’s gotten involved with a “project” (as he calls them), sold out (ie, cashed in) and started a new one.
http://www.kevincarmony.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Carmony
His final act was to cash in on Linspire before bailing. In that regard, he did very well..
I’d be interested in knowing when Kevin Carmony switches back to Windows on his personal computer(s). Now that he’s no longer in the Linux business per se, he no longer needs to be a Linux cheerleader. While I’m sure it is true that Mr. Carmony had a genuine interest in Linux and alternative OS’s in general, he always struck me as one who was in it more for the business angle rather than a true Linux advocate. I’m sure he’ll be back to Windows as usual in the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, I hope the folks at Linspire begin a more technical approach to building an operating system instead of trying to be “just like Windows.”
Edited 2007-08-06 16:25
Well it makes me wonder if they all do, to me Linspire is nothing more than a Windows wannabe. Lindows name didn’t help and was a stupid stunt, anyone could see Microsoft’s lawyers were going to knock on their door.
Mr. Carmony’s support of Mitt Romney may be religious as well as political. They are both Mormons:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latter-day_Saints
Not that I have a problem with being Mormon…but Mitt Romney is the first ever serious Mormon candidate for U.S. president and I am sure all Latter Day Saints are pulling for him to win.
You ascribe to them a likely unjustified amount of groupthink. The Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, also Mormon, is a Democrat. At the very least, he and his supporters are likely not pulling for Romney to win.
The existence of prominent Mormon politicians in both major parties, aside from possibly triggering conspiracy theories, blatantly demonstrates that co-religionists are not guaranteed to share the same political views. Mormons are as likely as anyone to realize that, and not blindly support a politician based solely on his religion.
Further example: Bo Gritz. A Mormon when he ran for president in 1992, he didn’t exactly enjoy massive support from fellow Mormons (or anyone else).
It’s great fun to compare this to old concerns the Pope could have inordinate control over US policy if JFK (the first) were to win. I wish people would take separation of Church and State more seriously
All that said, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Romney took the Utah primary. If that happened, he’d certainly take Utah in the general election due to Utah’s Republican leanings. [/OT]
I’m not too sad to see Carmony go from Linspire. In the name of pragmatism, the man seemed not to care at all about the community spirit of FLOSS. I suppose it’s an easy trap to fall into for a business trying to make money from the desktop market, but I always thought he could have found a way to strike a better balance.
Anyway, while I had no idea his resignation was coming, in the end it’s hardly a surprise. He must have seen the antipathy his comments provoked, and finally decided neither he nor Linspire profited from their association.
Hey now, what about Joseph Smith’s attempt at running for president?
An irrelevant leader resigns from an irrelevant company.
I always thought they might have a chance with legal Windows codecs and DVD playback, but Carmony was such a weird duck and they made the “deal with the devil” that Lindows never became mainstream.
that although he said he would always be a supporter of Linspire that “I will always be a desktop Linux user.” He supports Linspire, but what Linux is he using?
Also, I would like to clarify something; a neo-conservative is one who came from the Left, including former members of the Communist and Socialist parties who became Republicans. David Horowitz and Norman Podhoretz are neo-cons, Dick Cheney is not. I know it’s off-topic, but the misuse of the word annoys me.
“Desktop Linux” is a synonym to Linspire, at least to Linspirians. It is often used in their promotional literature, etc.
You had me until the Dick Cheney part. You speak from the Wikipedia reference, yet you ignore the footnote reference to Dick Cheney as an example of a Neoconservative reference.
The man’s actions wreak of the third manifesto of Neoconservatism:
Foreign policy
“First, patriotism is a natural and healthy sentiment and should be encouraged by both private and public institutions. Precisely because we are a nation of immigrants, this is a powerful American sentiment. Second, world government is a terrible idea since it can lead to world tyranny. International institutions that point to an ultimate world government should be regarded with the deepest suspicion. Third, statesmen should, above all, have the ability to distinguish friends from enemies…
“Finally, for a great power, the ‘national interest’ is not a geographical term, except for fairly prosaic matters like trade and environmental regulation. A smaller nation might appropriately feel that its national interest begins and ends at its borders, so that its foreign policy is almost always in a defensive mode. A larger nation has more extensive interests. And large nations, whose identity is ideological, like the Soviet Union of yesteryear and the United States of today, inevitably have ideological interests in addition to more material concerns.
“Barring extraordinary events, the United States will always feel obliged to defend, if possible, a democratic nation under attack from nondemocratic forces, external or internal. That is why it was in our national interest to come to the defense of France and Britain in World War II. That is why we feel it necessary to defend Israel today, when its survival is threatened. No complicated geopolitical calculations of national interest are necessary.”
It’s bad enough that the article referenced a political candidate that has attracted a lot of off-topic attention here, but now you’ve quoted three paragraphs from somewhere else about another politician who isn’t even running for office.
“Also, I would like to clarify something; a neo-conservative is one who came from the Left, including former members of the Communist and Socialist parties who became Republicans. David Horowitz and Norman Podhoretz are neo-cons, Dick Cheney is not. I know it’s off-topic, but the misuse of the word annoys me.”
You’re kidding right? A person does not have to be exactly like the founders of the ideology to subscribe to the ideology.
You do no “have” to be from the left and move right to believe the ideology of the neocon or to be labeled as such. All you have to do is support the ideals.
Think before you post next time.
“Also, I would like to clarify something; a neo-conservative is one who came from the Left, including former members of the Communist and Socialist parties who became Republicans”
Yet still identifies with Donald Rumsfeld, William Kristol et al…all neo-cons – they founded PNAC together. Looks like a duck…
Given the delays in delivering newer versions of Linspire and Freespire.
Given the lack of major functionality (no CNR) in the current Linspire 6.0 OEM release (and given the lack of working CNR, really means… Not ready for release).
I have felt that Linspire has lost momentum. It has stopped being exciting.
I has stopped looking like something I wanted to recommend to friends.
Especially after the deal with Microsoft that I think will turn out to be more negative for Linspire and much more positive to Microsoft (Given Bill Gate’s intelligence, and the intelligence of the other folks at Microsoft at marketing and licensing, can anyone doubt this? Does anyone seriously believe that Microsoft would sign a licensing agreement that wasn’t in it’s favor?)
And Kevin’s departure is only more bad news for me.
Looks like I’ll be installing that copy of Xandros I just bought from Walmart for $30.00 and testing it out.
Not bad enough that you favor a non-free distro and would recommend it to others, but you move from one deal signer to another. You ARE a glutton for punishment, aren’t you? Xandros autographed on the line before the Lin/Freedows guys did.
At this point, I’m only exploring Linux. And Xandros is a nice, finished distro.
I’m not Anti-Microsoft, being that my main box is a Windows XP Box.
I’m Platform agnostic, running an iMac G5 alongside a Dell Dimension E510, alongside an LNW-80 and many other systems.
I was excited about Linspire becoming a full featured, desktop Linux distro. Except, it seems they’ve taken several wrong turns in the past year.
As for Xandros… It’s better for me than a distro that doesn’t have a large company behind it.
The main thing I dislike about Ubuntu (though I have it here…) is that it’s brown. I hate brown. I like Blue.
I’m not sure if you are aware of this, but Xandros sold out and signed an almost identical deal with Microsoft.
“Looks like I’ll be installing that copy of Xandros I just bought from Walmart for $30.00 and testing it out.”
You’re kidding right? Xandros made the same deal with MSFT and got less in return. On top of that Xandros has a history of dragging their feet when it comes to updating the kernel so you’ll be up a creek without a paddle whenever you add bleeding edge (heck sometimes 2 year old tech even) hardware.
He just said he bought it at Wal-Mart. Bleeding edge technology is not a factor…
This is the third message thinking that the deal with Microsoft is a deal breaker in choosing a Linux Distro…
What’s wrong with you folks?
Do you all like biting off your nose to spite your face???
I said I was “testing” Xandros out. I didn’t say I was deploying a million systems, in any event…
Sheesh! Get a life y’all!
Theoretically, you are supposed to be able to build a business around Linux. Linspire has been catching flack for years for doing just that. Before their 1.0 release, they had a tussle with the wine folks over contributing and whatnot, ever since then they have been good open source citizens, and yet have never been able to shake the bad reputation.
Seemed like no matter what they did, they were always fighting a losing battle with the “community”. Considering that Linspire has gotta be the easiest distro to use, ldvd is the only way to legally watch dvds in linux (in most of the world anyways), and nvu is the most promising dreamweaver contender I have seen on any platform, and their involvment both financially and with code in a multitude of opensource projects and initiatives (http://www.linspire.com/lindows_products_license.php), I have always felt the hatred was misplaced.
“Thanks for the laugh I haven’t read anything more absurd in weeks.”
I see you’re amused, but you fail to state to absurdity. I obvisously don’t see it, as I made the statement.
Please elaborate so that I can point out the folly of your logic. Or rather maybe you’ll make an insightful remark?
I think that with the proper definition of “republican”, my point is valid. It is my opinion that the title of republican has been coopted by the “neocons” and the religious right.
The GPL license is a grant of the author to release his copyright to the general public in return for any “improvements” to be given back. This emphasizes the individual’s rights – a “republican” belief.
The BSD license gives the rights to the code away. This is democratic (socialist) in nature.
So without you expounding upon that which you find humour in, I consider you trolling.
I think you have those two switched.
The GPL license (and other copyleft/non-free licenses) tells small businesses and private individuals they should subsidize large businesses and be happy about it while giving up essential rights in the process, a republican value.
The BSD license (and other actual free software licenses) is about protecting the rights of the individual to do what they like without fear of the majority’s will, a democratic value.
Edited 2007-08-07 11:40 UTC
I think you have it backward.
The BSD license (and other similar too-permissive licenses) is about allowing large businesses to simply take the work of small businesses and private individuals. The BSD license is perfect for allowing a large predatory company to subvert and subsume a work via a “embrace, extend, extinguish” strategy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend%2C_extinguis…
The GPL license makes sure that the work of large businesses, small businesses and private individuals contributed under the GPL remains forever openly available to large businesses, small businesses and private individuals.
The GPL license allows for “embrace”, it allows for “extend” (for all to use), but it prevents “extinguish”. Perfect. Ideal.
Google has the right idea:
http://www.informationweek.com/internet/showArticle.jhtml?articleID…
“Collaboration” and “co-operation” are the aims of copyleft licenses, not “takeover” or “slave labor”.
I have no idea what American political flavor the concept of true “collaboration” would come under.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons-based_peer_production
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase%27s_Penguin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Networks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed%27s_law
Edited 2007-08-07 13:55
If that were true, wouldn’t large companies as opposed to non-profit organizations be using BSD?
You know ‘Extend, embrace, and extinguish’ is nothing more than a bit of propaganda created by the open-source movement to try to draw attention away from the fact that the open-source development model still hasn’t created anything that can match (much less beat) the old-fashioned maybe-developers-should-get-paid closed-source development model?
Additionally, to protect your credibility, you will want to stop using Wikipedia as a reference.
Not so. The GPL’s copyleft clauses ensure that big business has to do nothing to benefit from all the small guy’s code, while not having to give up anything in return. The BSD license encourages the large companies to take part in the development of BSD-based software, by letting them decide what they give up and what they keep.
Thanks to the GPL, big business does not have to contribute anything to benefit from the individual’s and the small business’s work; the small guys are contractually forced to give up all they create, letting the big guys pick-and-choose (and creating nothing, thus giving up nothing) in order to create products. They know that selling support for GPL software is nothing more than selling bubbles and tulips, but they’ve been very good at making just enough changes so that their customers (who often buy into the free-as-in-speech fantasy) have to continue buying new support. And best yet, they say with a straight face that they’re supporting innovation among small companies; how better to get other companies to take the fall for failed ideas and then be able to take (royalty-free) those ideas that work?
With BSD, nobody has to contribute anything to benefit from everyone else’s contributions. The operative keyword: Contributions. Nobody is contractually forced by the BSD to give away more than they want to give. The small guy has the same potential as the large corporation with lots of rich laywers to develop something that’s uniquely their own.
Can you see why the BSD license is superior? Can you see how being allowed to make something that’s your own out of something that’s freely given (free as in free) is not good for just businesses, or just individuals, but everyone?
I agree — they’re a BSD corporation:
http://www.google.com/bsd
http://code.google.com/p/google-gears/
http://code.google.com/p/bsd-appliance/
http://code.google.com/p/google-perftools/wiki/GooglePerformanceToo…
http://code.google.com/soc/2007/freebsd/about.html
Oh, and the article you quoted came from InformationWeek. You’ll want to avoid using references to them, they’re about on the same level of reliability as Wikipedia.
Edited 2007-08-07 14:35 UTC
So you think that you can dismiss truth by smearing one place where it is written about?
That doesn’t work.
http://www.benkler.org/wealth_of_networks/index.php/Download_PDFs_o…
Try another tactic.
http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/press_release08_06_07.php
http://www.infoworld.nl/idgns/bericht.phtml?id=002570DE00740E180025…
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070807015043108
See? Your tactic is just not helping you.
Oh BTW: “With GPL, nobody has to contribute anything to benefit from everyone else’s contributions. The operative keyword: Contributions. Nobody is contractually forced by the GPL to give away more than they want to give. The small guy has the same potential as the large corporation with lots of rich laywers to develop something that’s uniquely their own.”
You don’t have to contribute anything to GPL software. No-one forces you.
Nevertheless if you are considering the GPL or BSD as a license for your software, consider this: only the GPL license will ensure that your software remains forever open, and also consider that the GPL is chosen by other developers for open source projects far more often than the BSD license … there is a reason for that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License
“As of January 2006, the GPL accounted for nearly 66% of the 41,962 free software projects listed on Freshmeat, and as of January 2006, about 68% of the projects listed on SourceForge.net.”
The inconvenient truth of wikipedia strikes again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses
“The BSD License allows proprietary commercial use, and for the software released under the license to be incorporated into proprietary commercial products. Works based on the material may even be released under a proprietary license (but still must maintain the license requirements). Some notable examples of this are the use of BSD networking code in Microsoft products, and the use of numerous FreeBSD components in Mac OS X.”
And again.
So without you expounding upon that which you find humour in, I consider you trolling
No I wasn’t trolling. I am still ROTFL. What exactly exactly causes one to laugh is difficult to define. I think in this case it is that your statement amounts to a philosophical category error.
However somewhat belatedly back on topic didn’t Mitt Romney give some support to OSS and ODF while he was Governor of Mass. Though I imagine he probably backtracked when MS brought out its big guns and big dollars.
Thanks Kevin ,
You did put your money , mouth and action toward what you believe in , no one can take that away from you , you showed that your strategy don’t work in a GNU/Linux environment , but in doing so contributed a lot of developer and code and advancement that would not exist today if you did not started the discussion and contribution on them.
One thing is for sure you really had a passion for your products and offer and did show up to defend them and market them , that’s more then a lot of other CEO this day’s.
I hope that you find success in your new projects.
– Moulinneuf
Now we probably won’t have him commenting on OSAlert (or other online publications) articles about Linspire 5 seconds after the article gets online…
Really, it seemed like he was always on the look-out for such sightings as I’m sure some readers can testify. Well, at the very least it was a nice way of having the discussion go somewhere.