On Monday 24 April 2006 22:04, Peter Carless wrote: > Link: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060424164142296
*sigh*
ok, linspire pissed off a lot of people in the early days because they came
out of nowhere (read: no community base) and didn't even try to create one.
they were there for one reason and one reason only: sell boxes of linux
because downloading open source software was a business model the former
founder (michael robertson) of mp3.com ("download music") could grok.
they used to take software, package it, -rename it- and sometimes even jig
with author credits, etc.. -very- not community friendly.
but it evolved into one of the most user friendly distros for "regular" users
(and still is there at the top).
and then michael moved on to other things and handed the reigns over to his
generals. they stopped the package-and-rename games, started dropping their
custom software (e.g. lsongs is going away in favour of amarok and i believe
lphoto will be replaced at some point by digikam) and even started paying
community open source developers to hack on software they needed (nVu and
kopete, to name two).
the twist is that to be truly newbie frindly they have decided to make some
concessions that the free software advocates don't like: shipping binary
drivers and other bits of "non-free" stuff.
they still aren't overly marketing savvy when it comes to the community,
however, but they are good people and certainly friends of open source even
if they don't have an FSF-compatible viewpoint on the world ;)
decide to feel how you will about them, but they aren't the devil IMHO and
certainly not deserving of the shit-kicking they got in that article. i
really do with the community was a little less self-destructive at times.
(disclaimer: i've spent a few days in the linspire offices; know several of
the people there personally, some of whom i count as friends)
--
Aaron J. Seigo
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43
Full time KDE developer sponsored by Trolltech (http://www.trolltech.com)
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