Bonum Certa Men Certa

Sell Out Linspire, Then Blame the Founder

Kevin Carmony - Greedy, crook or just incompetent?

The words above, "Greedy, crook or just incompetent," were used by Carmony to attack his former boss. It's hypocritical enough to amuse. We'll come to this in a moment.



As a little bit of background, Linspire is no more. Things have been relatively quiet since Linspire was sold [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11] and its distribution subsequently phased out (only Freespire remained).

Prior to the collapse of 'old' Linspire came Klikit, a community distribution which we previously mentioned in [1, 2, 3]. Only yesterday, the following screenshots gallery of Klikit was published, so 'escapees' of Linspire are encouraged to explore it. Klikit is built by a community of users to serve those very same users. These are the 'good guys', who left Linspire in protest against the deal with Microsoft.

I just found this Linux Distribution today and I figured why not and support Klikit by posting there Screenshots here. I hope you guys enjoy. Klikit-Linux is based on the latest stable release of Kubuntu. Klikit-Linux comes with a collection of applications that will meet most of your daily computer needs, such as office, graphic, multimedia, and internet work.


Now we come to the latest distasteful development, which involves Carmony calling names and announcing lawsuits (the comments in Slashdot offer him little comfort).

Whose fault was it really? Carmoney [sic] wants money now, but does he deserve any?

Linspire's status and reputation was much better before Carmony threw FUD at the GPL(v3) and discredited suppliers of his code (a very tactless thing to do). Here is his attack [rel="nofollow"].

To this day, Michael Robertson has yet to explain to the 100 some-odd shareholders what happened with the millions of dollars in cash and assets that were owned by Linspire just a few short months ago. The assets seem to have completely vanished, leaving shareholders with no return on their investment or even so much as an explanation as to what happened.


It's understandable that these shareholders at least deserve an explanation. However, for Michael Robertson not to give Kevin Carmony a penny would be the right thing to do. He screwed up badly and mocked the very same software he was assigned to sell. It never seemed like selling out to Microsoft was Michael Robertson's idea.

"Lastly...some distributions have come out, claiming to be taking the "morale high ground" by refusing to give into "Microsoft threats," while openly promoting the means of circumventing proprietary software on their web sites, amounting to nothing more than high-brow software piracy."

--Kevin Carmony, Is Linux Splitting into Two Factions?



"Mr. Carmony asked a question, will Linux split in two factions? The answer is no. Some Linux distros will limp along a while and then die off, because they misunderstood what folks want when they choose GNU/Linux and FOSS. You can see that already. Red Hat, which refused to sign any such deal, is flourishing, for example. It's not about code that "just works". Apple offers that already. It's the freedom. And we've proven willing to put up with some temporary frustration in order to get it. In time, FOSS will win, and all those proprietary codecs and everything else will be made available on pleasanter terms, because market share does that."

--Groklaw

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
 
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Plagiarism, Fake Articles, and FUD About Linux
not a day goes by without Google News feeding FUD from slopfarms
Gemini Links 01/10/2025: Chat Control and End of Life
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: Long Covid Risk Reiterated, "Bitcoin Queen" Caught
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: EA $55 Billion Deal is Debt and Slop "Raises Vishing Risks"
Links for the day
Bluewashing at Red Hat Means Redundancies
The man who sold Red Hat to IBM meanwhile became a Microsoft Mono booster
After Killing OpenSource.com, IBM ('Red Hat') and OSI Told Us OpenSource.net Would Replace It (But That Didn't Happen)
Now it's time to move on, perhaps tarnishing the "Open Source" label some more (for whatever sponsor wants this)
Linux is Not a Community Project, It's a Wall Street Product
The core goal should be freedom
Bad Actors Abusing the Free Software Community, Vandalising It Using Rogue Politics and Old Tactics
Oil giants have long attempted to do this; now, the digital equivalent of Big Oil does this in technology
Social Control Media Isn't the Future, The Federation or Fediverse Isn't Growing, People's Accounts Vanish for Good
users' accounts will get deleted, not just become inactive
IBM is Failing, This Helps Show Wall Street is Entirely Detached From Actual Commercial Performance
IBM is unable to grow, it's just constantly shrinking
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Clerical Aspects of Publishing and Development
In Free software, the management aspects are considerably reduced
Slopwatch: Fake Articles and Google News Promoting "Linux" Spam or Bot-Generated Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
These slopfarms help misplace blame
Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in September, This Time Many in Liverpool Affected
Be ready for more waves of layoffs ahead of the so-called "results" in late October