Ideas on Carmony's Exit

[dann]

On the show last night Ken hinted out there being some interesting reasons for Kevin Carmony leaving Linspire and that the LInspire/MS deal may have been forced for some reason. Perhaps I am daft, but what is the allusion here? What is suspected to come out in the next few months that will clarify to and possibly outrage the community about these events?

There has been smatterings that MS is using these deals to muddy the waters and appear to those in the business world as OpenSource friendly which has the potential to assist OOXML becoming an Open Standards.

[snarkout]

Dunno, but the whole thing is extremely weird - partner with ubuntu, err, not so much - buy salvation from MS, err, no, wait, I QUIT! I'm sure that's not exactly how it played out, but that's how it looks from the other side of the screen.

To this day, I'm really not sure who Linspire's intended audience is - I know, the mantra of "THE AOL OF LINUX!" but, really, there is no AOL audience for linux. I'm sure it would be an excellent starting place for someone interested in getting involved on their own, but that doesn't seem to be how linux spreads. IME, linux is spread by either evangelism, which seems to have a low uptake rate, or by people who are sick of MS asking their friends who *do* use linux to get them on the road to being a linux user, which seems to have a slightly higher uptake rate. I know the old saw about linux not being more popular because it isn't on store shelves probably has some truth to it, but IME, even with all the Dell and Lenovo buy-in currently happening, people aren't going to leave the Windows world w/o having a reason to, and most simply either really don't have one, or have no idea that computing can be any different that it is on a windows box.

Ahh, whatever - that was turning into a major tangent rant, so I'll stop there.

[snarkout]

And, yes, I realize that my AOL of linux analogy doesn't take into account emerging nations, but I really don't thing a linux with a pricetag and yearly subscription fee is going to be the correct starting point for those people either.

[allix]

As was mentioned on the show, advertising is the key, dell should show linux on the main website and not some "secret" url.
A high street store like pc world or wall mart could sell them pre-installed aswell, ive heard that linspire was in wall mart, unfortunately something that costs money and is not well known is not going pick up, if ubuntu was in the store and free accept if you want support it would do better imo.

Before i finish, normal users think of applications and not operating systems, i am not sure how advertising gimp , open office or amarok would work. People want to know that familar software exists that will fit their needs.

[schotty]

I think that the leadership should be changed. Linspire is in a rut right now with the fact they had to completely redo their OS from scratch to get it to be able to work with current hardware and to have a chance in hell of being considered for OEM installation. That was leadership errors that allowed that. They need to be replaced. If this was a public company I would be lighting the fire under their ass (cuz I would be an investor, CNR is great and has immense potential) to clean the fuck up.

Although KC was a great guy, I wonder if he really got it.

[Tsuroerusu]

and that the LInspire/MS deal may have been forced for some reason. Perhaps I am daft, but what is the allusion here?

Well, when Red Hat was talking to Microsoft about doing solely interoperability work (ActiveDirectory support in Samba for example), Microsoft said that a patent deal was mandatory.
Maybe Linspire had a "Novell-moment", where they're like "Ouch, we're getting our asses handed to us by the competition, we need something to differentiate ourselves". When I try to get my friends to use Linux one bugger for them (I'm talking about 15 - 20 year olds) is that there is no robust webcam support through MSN Messenger and so fourth. Since Linspire is aiming for the consumer audience, I can see why they would want to license say Windows Media 10 stuff, VoIP protocols and whatever. Microsoft might have said "Sure we'll work with you on this, but we need to have the patent part covered as well", just like they told Red Hat.

To be honest, I am not that surprised by Linspire, when I have listened to Kevin Carmony, I have on numerous occasions had to seriously shake my head, this guy just doesn't "get", what it is that we're all doing.
I far from expect him to see and understand the same ideals as people like Richard Stallman do, however this guy seems like he was a lot further away than say somebody who uses Linux with a bunch of proprietary stuff added.