Kevin Carmony Drank the Kool-Aid
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Kevin Carmony, the president of Linspire, just sent me a letter. In the letter he explains why he became involved with Microsoft, and why he has not been speaking much since the announcement of their new cooperation.
Personally not worried about the growing fissure between the factions signing on to the agreements, and those not, he claims that Linux has been split into many pieces for a long time. Choice of interface, update method, and base distribution are all there because of differences in the way people function.
He is correct in this assertion, and continues his comments with the list of items that are, or will be, part of the new, improved Linspire. The KDE interface, which he states is closer to the Windows GUI, Click and Run, truly their indisputable better idea, and proprietary codecs, software, and drivers, will all be a part of this new, improved product.
Mr. Carmony veers far off course next, when he assaults those who have not signed the agreements, and likens their efforts to code around proprietary software to ‘high-brow software piracy’. Not only is this a very disturbing remark, it shows how far from the ‘open software concept’ he wishes to take Linspire. It will be interesting to see what the Free Software Foundation has to say about this current thinking from what started as a small, but interesting company.
The letter concludes with the repeated assertion that Linspire and others, who are entering into the licensing agreements with Microsoft, are the proper companies, acting in the proper way, which will lead to greater respect for the Linux community.
[tags] Kevin Carmony, Linspire, Freespire, Linux, Microsoft, patent infringement, cross-licensing, Click and Run [/tags]
6 Comments
shadowmyth
June 27th, 2007
at 10:24pm
Wow, I totally agree. I can never understand how people can sell out like that. You know I don’t care how good of a profit Microsoft manages, in the long run it will find it’s self obsolete. Bill just has his people in Redmond, we the open source community have the world. Open Source gives it away for free, and Microsoft price gouges. Microsoft is really the company of the middle and upper classes. Who else can afford his software? The rest of us out of necessity have created things that are affordable, and in the process created an entire renaissance of possibilities no single company is going to attain. It doesn’t matter how long Microsoft struggles to stay on top, open source will rule. It is inevitable considering the majority of the population barely makes enough to get by every week, or is in extreme debt. Well, if Linspire wants to sell out, let it. It will find it’s self in the end perhaps wishing it hadn’t. Too bad though, I was going to get me a copy of Freespire, but I think I’ll just go with Ubuntu.
What does Bill need with more money anyway?
theoracle
June 28th, 2007
at 5:51am
Thanks for the comment. Freespire will continue to be free, and won’t have the codecs, but it also won’t have the functionality of its more expensive brother.
In the midst of all of this, one needs to realize that it is ok to make money, and people need to make money. How it is made is what counts, and assaulting others who are clever and go around a problem to solve it are no less intelligent or forthright. Calling those people who stick to the principles of open source ‘pirates’ is wrong, and totally unfair.
Windows Sucks
June 28th, 2007
at 6:04am
How are you going to take other peoples software, use it and make money from it and then come back and say that it’s stolen?
Man I used to support Linspire but besides CNR (If they make it for Ubuntu) I would never, EVER by anything from Linspire again!
TheRooster
June 28th, 2007
at 9:27am
Come on guys…on Ubuntu’s website they promote tools that allow you to download and install windows media codecs without paying for them. That may not be illegal in all countries but it is in some countries and in those countries that is software piracy.
The fact that open source people still use proprietary software is hypocritical to say nothing of resorting to illegally installing and distributing pirated software.
theoracle
June 28th, 2007
at 4:41pm
Rooster, having JUST visited the Ubuntu pages because I wanted the very latest word on this… The pages clearly state that each user should check whether the installation infringes in their country. There is nothing illegal about this.
This is really much the same as the idea that knowing the inner workings of a fission bomb is not illegal. Spelling it out is not illegal [not yet, but give Darth Cheney a while]. Procuring it, and building a bomb IS.
I’m sure that with enough interest, black box coding [coding without disassembling the existing code] will replace these codecs, and will probably become better, with that many more eyes on the code.
Thanks for the comment.
theoracle
June 28th, 2007
at 5:08pm
Rooster, just another small thought. Most of the people I know don’t use these codecs, and are very vocal on pages where a place to offer a comment resides. I know because I’m one of them. I hate it USING WINDOWS, so it’s not much different when I’m on an Ubuntu machine. Let me explain…I use Opera, some pages don’t properly register that I’m using Windows, or have WMP 10 on my machine. These pages won’t render their content properly, because the IDIOTS who code them make the assumption that everyone will be using Internet Exploiter [misspelling intended]. This is very wrong, since 1] not everyone uses IE, 2] Opera adheres to more of the established web standards than IE, 3] if open codecs were used for rich content on web pages, the page authors could assure themselves of getting their pages to the MAXIMUM number of people. That is the idea, right?