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08.09.08

Expire, Linspire

Posted in GNU/Linux, Linspire, Microsoft, Xandros at 5:55 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

One Ballnux less to worry about

A trademark which Xandros bought appears to have just been thrown away. Tina has the details.

Linspire, the distribution originally launched as Lindows, is no more, says Xandros CEO Andreas Typaldos.

This was actually insinuated a few days ago when SJVN had this to say:

Typaldos did not mention what these changes would mean for the future version of Linspire, the commercial version of Freespire. Sources close to the company indicated though that the Linspire distribution and brand will be replaced by the Xandros.

It seems likely, therefore, that the name “Linspire” won’t be kicked around for much longer. The code and the artwork live on, so it’s not a total loss. The covenant with Microsoft, on the brighter side, may be irrelevant now (IANAL).

The news may seem sad, but it’s no reason to worry. Existing Linspire users will most likely move to GNU/Linux distributions that are not being ‘taxed’ by Microsoft.

We have been writing a lot about Linspire ever since it was acquired by Xandros [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11]. The ‘community’ version, which is not Free software, will stick around for a while, but it will be Debian based rather than Ubuntu based (Xandros cuts the ‘middleman’).

Xandros has announced a new version of Freespire, to be based on Debian’s forthcoming Lenny release, expected this fall. Xandros says it plans to “consolidate” its various offerings on Debian, following its acquisition of Linspire.

Xandros acquired Linspire last month. Freespire is a free version of Linspire, and was previously based on Ubuntu.

Here is the press release. █

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