Linspire + Xandros = Anything of value?

In math, two negatives make a positive. In the fledgling world of desktop Linux, unfortunately, this is unlikely to be the case.

According to reports from OStatic and others, Xandros is buying Linspire. Who cares, you ask? Certainly not the former CEO of Linspire, Kevin Carmony, who had this to say as to the importance of the acquisition:

This will end up being a completely insignificant event for Linspire shareholders, and the end for Linspire customers. I predict this was done to: 1) help [Linspire owner and founder Michael] Robertson drain the company of its cash and resources...2) help Robertson save face by issuing a "Linspire Acquired by Xandros!" press release, instead of living with the public humiliation that Linspire failed under his leadership...3) Give Xandros (also seemingly on life support) a press release, and perhaps some way for them to spin this to investors to raise money.

Carmony then goes on to declare that this merger may well be a merger of equals, but they're both equally weak. This is not a merger of which the open-source world can be proud. It's something to learn from and then move on.

Learn what? Well, perhaps we could learn from this that "partnering" with Microsoft on patent immunity is no excuse for a good business. Xandros' deal with Microsoft didn't do it any favors. Ditto for Linspire. To be fair, this patent foolishness was just the tip of the iceberg on Linspire's and Xandros' problems, but it sure didn't help.

[digbychicken]

two sellouts becoming one big sellout? guess their choice hasn't worked out very well huh

[Mr. Dee]

The reason why the patent immunity deal didn't work for Xandros was simply because of a more established and formidable Linux distribution offered by Novell. There is no footing under Xandros except for its recent glimmer of hope with the ASUS EE PC deal. There are just too many Linux distributions out there, the more they are consolidated, they better it might be fore the community itself. The next Linux distro that needs to disappear is Mandrake I consider it not be going anywhere.

[Scott 56]

Two negatives only make a positive if you're multiplying. If you add two negatives you just get a bigger negative.

[thelemurking]

I was happy with Linspire 5.0. I had ran a few versions since they were Lindows, but 5.0 I thought was a step in the right direction.

I have since switched over to Ubuntu and the only thing I don't like with Ubuntu over Linspire was the software store aspect. I think the Linspire had a much more user friendly interface with it's one click idea that downloads and installs. But then again, there's something cool and old school about downloading and installing via command line in terminal :)

[Seaspray0]

I agree with Dee, the more that linux consolidates itself under one distribution, the better off it will be.

[TimBowden]

The biggest winner out of this is... Ubuntu. Whilst hardened linux users might not be overly interested in ease of use (preferring instead unlimited tweakability), the bulk of the potential user market are. Ubuntu are targeting this market aggressively. To cement their position as firm #1 in the (eventual?) mass market linux desktop arena, they are well served when alternatives drop by the wayside. Distros such as Gentoo will always have a strong loyal following, but they will never have an impact on the bulk user market. It's 2bit commercial distros such as Xandros and Linspire that have made plenty of noise about trying to capture the mass consumer market without having the backing of the hard core linux developer community that fragment the market, and will in my opinion ultimately fail to capture this market.

Open source needs to be looked at in four ways; philosophy, development model, business model and community. Screw any one of these up, and you make if much harder for yourself to turn a dollar in the open source world. Both Xandros and Linspire have screwed up royally.