Xandros Acquires Linspire

[Chris H]

Seems that Linspire's assets have been acquired by Xandros.

I expect a few people will be chortling. Me, I'm sad. Almost.

[techieMoe]

Surprise Desktop Linux Move: Xandros Buys Linspire

An interesting move. What will this do for their respective products I wonder? Will they continue separately or merge like Conectiva/Mandrake? Any guesses on a new company name?

XanSpire?
LinDros?
SpirLinDrosXan?

[kprowell]

And if I am not mistaken, didn't MS do that patent deal with Xandros and didn't Linspire say they would never do that deal with MS? Hmmm...

[smolloy]

[troll]
Interesting. If two crap products merge, does their combined crapness default to their arithmetic mean, or do they sum to create a crapper product than either company could have created on their own?

One can only hope for some sort of cancellation effect....
[/troll]

[Chris H]

And if I am not mistaken, didn't MS do that patent deal with Xandros and didn't Linspire say they would never do that deal with MS? Hmmm...

Both did the patent deal. In addition Linspire negotiated the inclusion of MS codecs into Linspire. The net result of which was a very useable distro coupled with a shakeup of Linspire's charging model leading to lots of upset punters.

[techieMoe]

Thanks to whoever merged this. Didn't realize someone had already mentioned it.

[masinick]

Surprise Desktop Linux Move: Xandros Buys Linspire

An interesting move. What will this do for their respective products I wonder? Will they continue separately or merge like Conectiva/Mandrake? Any guesses on a new company name?

XanSpire?
LinDros?
SpirLinDrosXan?

What I really get from the article is that Kevin has some real problems with the way that Michael Robertson does business, and he may have some points. He worked with Michael, both on the MP3 stuff and at Linspire. Kevin was turning Linspire into something worthwhile, and at the same time, Michael was just looking to cash in. When Kevin realized that he sounded off, then prepared his exit. He has been vocally opposed to the Linspire direction ever since.

I really like Kevin, so when I tend to see him so upset, I tend to believe it is for good reason.

Xandros is not really an open company. It uses open software, but virtually all of the content it adds is closed and proprietary. I could be wrong, but I cannot think, offhand, of any open software that they contribute to the GPL software stack. Can anyone correct me on that, or am I correct in saying that Xandros is a GPL "consumer" but they do not write GPL code themselves? I'd love to get a solid update on that.

[techieMoe]

I read somewhere that the new name is Digital Cornerstone Inc., if anyone cares. Not nearly as interesting as some of my suggestions, but what can you do? I've always liked the name of Xandros. Perhaps the X just makes it sound cooler. Linspire, not so much.