“Chances are that you think Linspire lets you run Windows applications, that you have to run it as root, and that it’s really not quite a proper Linux. Wrong, wrong, and wrong. At LinuxWorld in Boston this week, CEO Kevin Carmony explained what Linspire Linux is, and isn’t, all about.”
1. Lindows got told to take a hike over their attitude about source code mods by Codeweavers.
2. They have modified the installation routine, and, just like most other distros, now have a dialog after setting up root account that asks for user account creation.
3. Well, it IS Linux, after a fashion, being hawked by a used-car salesman.
TFA implies that subscriptions are not their source of income, which is baloney, since more than half of what they make comes from that Collect New Revenue (CNR) padlock they apply.
I think the mp3.com guy has left Linspire, so they should probably improve to be a half-decent company; maybe
.
if it uses the linux kernel, it’s linux.
“Some people seem to think that Linux is a secret club, where you have to pay your dues before you can learn the secret handshake and run it. That’s nonsense as far as Linspire is concerned.”
Nonsense.
“The other part, the majority of Linspire’s gross income, comes from its easy-to-use Click ‘N’ Run online software sales service. A small percentage of each sale adds up to more than half of the company’s revenue. ”
If you going to charge, charge for your service not the actual software. I think charging for free software is just wrong.
If you going to charge, charge for your service not the actual software. I think charging for free software is just wrong.
why is it wrong?
does the GPL let people charge for free sofware?
Dont you see a contradiction here, charging for Free software?
Other distributions charge for the support and manuals.
There is no contradiction. You pay for the delivery of the software and not the software it self.
Besides that, it’s free as in free speech, not free as in free beer.
And you know that.
“Dont you see a contradiction here, charging for Free software?”
No, because the “Free” in “Free Software” is not about monetary matters.
crap, my score went down to zero such for asking a couple of questions because i did not understand.
crap, my score went down to zero such for asking a couple of questions because i did not understand.
As Linux fans keep yelling it’s free as in speech, not beer. Everyone is allowed to sell GPL’ed software as long as they provide convenient access to the source code (you may charge a fee to cover the costs of the access too). The GPL protects your rights in access to the code and redistribution/modification rights, it doesn’t care about wether you charge for the software or not as long as these rights are intact.
RMS himself started out selling tapes with his Emacs editor on it (150$ although he insists it was only shipping and handling costs).
Tyr,
Re: “As Linux fans keep yelling it’s free as in speech, not beer. Everyone is allowed to sell GPL’ed software as long as they provide convenient access to the source code (you may charge a fee to cover the costs of the access too). The GPL protects your rights in access to the code and redistribution/modification rights, it doesn’t care about wether you charge for the software or not as long as these rights are intact.”
You seem to misunderstand some readers frustration with the way Linspire charges customers to access free GPL software. If Linspire actually contributed to improving a particular software application and sold it to help cover developement cost but also released the modified source code as per the GPL then people such as myself wouldn’t see an issue. Instead they typically take software created by other developers, package it in their CNR Warehouse (aka: repository), then charge customers to access CNR. There are very few commercial applications listed in the CNR Warehouse. Those that are can be easily obtained from each developer website. The majority of the software listed is free GPL software that either comes already packaged with distributions such as SUSE Linux and Mandriva Linux or can be obtained for free easily from a repository.
Kevin Carmony,
Re: “But Carmony does admit that Linspire is “something of a black sheep in Linux distributions.”
My points above to Tyr, are just a few examples why the Linux community dislikes the business practices of Linspire Inc.
Re: “That’s because Linspire’s goals aren’t quite the same as other Linux desktop distributions. The company’s sole focus is on a “consumer-friendly Linux that your grandma, sister, or brother can use.
Some people seem to think that Linux is a secret club, where you have to pay your dues before you can learn the secret handshake and run it. That’s nonsense as far as Linspire is concerned.”
These two comments from yourself are also good examples why several people in the Linux community dislike Linspire Inc. Making comments to the public that imply Linspire Inc is the only one striving to make a Linux distribution and tools easier for end users, not just Administrators is a blatent lie.
As for your “secret club” comment it’s either an attempt to spread FUD to those not familiar with the Linux community and various Linux distributions so as to boost Linspire sales or possibly an indication you have no idea what your talking about. Either way as a Linux customer and one that has used several distributions both in evaluation and work I found your comments not professional and just further lowers Linspire’s public image.
Re: “Another part where Linspire strays from most is that it includes all the third-party proprietary libraries and programs needed to run DVDs and the like with its distribution.”
One thing I would like to know is does Linspire Inc legally pay companies such as Microsoft for the licensed codecs that you’re referring to? Including all licensed codecs in distributions is a concern for companies such as Novell that distribute their product to a global market due to each country specific laws and the cost increase that would occur for the distribution.
Re: “I don’t care about how many people download Linspire or buy our boxes in the stores. What I care about is how many people bought a computer with Linspire on it.”
Your company should be concerned because from what I’ve seen is that most Linspire PC are very low end systems being sold and don’t interest most consumers looking to purchase a computer. While it’s true consumers like to get the best product for their money they also don’t want a cheap looking product that provides limited upgradability. Such low end systems are better suited for schools, excluding college and university institutions.
If Linspire actually contributed to improving a particular software application and sold it to help cover developement cost but also released the modified source code as per the GPL then people such as myself wouldn’t see an issue. Instead they typically take software created by other developers, package it in their CNR Warehouse (aka: repository), then charge customers to access CNR.
You seem to suffer from the most common misconception of the GPL. The GPL does not demand that Linspire releases source code to all; no, the GPL demands you only provide source code ‘in machine readable form’ to anyone you distributed the binary to; in other words, if you don’t buy Linspire, you have no right to their source code. The same applies to the developers of the original programs Linspire improves upon.
Linspire has not broken the GPL one single time. I, for instance, have Linspire 3 and 4. Accordingly, I have access to source .iso’s for both releases, as well as all the updates to those two releases.
And by the way, Linspire does give back. Their photo and lPhoto and lTunes apps are licensed under the GPL, for instance. If I recall correctly, they also employ Everaldo, the man behind Crystal and various other artwork packages for KDE.
“The GPL does not demand that Linspire releases source code to all; no, the GPL demands you only provide source code ‘in machine readable form’ to anyone you distributed the binary to; in other words, if you don’t buy Linspire, you have no right to their source code.”
Actually that is incorrect or at least only partially correct. Anyone who receives a GPL covered binary also receives the rights to the source code of the GPL product and Linspire would have to provide it for a reasonable fee.
“Linspire has not broken the GPL one single time. I, for instance, have Linspire 3 and 4. Accordingly, I have access to source .iso’s for both releases, as well as all the updates to those two releases.”
Actually I think even Linspire will admit to having to correct some issues and changing some things to make sure they are within the GPL. So while I wont say they have “broken” the GPL they have stretched it a bit and needed to correct some things. I certainly think Linspire did not stretch annything on purpose just had some misunderstanding about what was required of them.
When they banned me I was a bit upset and went off but all in all I think they are a viable choice but have some issues that need to be worked on.
Thom,
Re: “You seem to suffer from the most common misconception of the GPL. The GPL does not demand that Linspire releases source code to all; no, the GPL demands you only provide source code ‘in machine readable form’ to anyone you distributed the binary to; in other words, if you don’t buy Linspire, you have no right to their source code. The same applies to the developers of the original programs Linspire improves upon.”
Please read my post again in response to Tyr and Kevin Carmony as I believe you misunderstood what I was saying. No where did I say that Linspire was breaking what’s stated in the GPL. What I said was that I dissagree with charging Linux users to access software which is already freely available from the developer of a product and in most cases packaged together with a distribution by companies such as Novell.
Re: “And by the way, Linspire does give back. Their photo and lPhoto and lTunes apps are licensed under the GPL, for instance. If I recall correctly, they also employ Everaldo, the man behind Crystal and various other artwork packages for KDE.”
While the products such as NVU and CNR are the exceptions the majority of software included with the base installation was not developed by Linspire Inc. Instead what is seen is that the company is notorious for rebranding another developers work then taking credit for the product which is false advertising due to misleading consumers on what they are buying. Providing source code for rebranding software created by someone else is not giving back to the community. Unless Mr. Carmony can prove otherwise the way I see the company now is that they don’t really contribute much back to the Linux community. I do actually appreciate that Linspire Inc, doesn’t add the word “Linux” to Linspire (even though inaccurate) due to the image they currently portray to the public. While I don’t hope that Linspire Inc will fail, I do hope that the company will rethink their business model and actually work with instead of against the Linux community. It’s time the company start acting more professional not only in the way they sell Linspire but also how they treat the Linux community.
Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL
Edited 2006-04-09 18:06
Linspire doesn’t give back to the community? What about NVU? I do believe Linspire is the main sponsor for that app, one that I personally use all the time.
Yea, no kidding. They give an app, they sell others, that’s fine with me! Maybe I’ll think it’s not enough when they’re a multi-billion dollar corp, but right now they’re not even profitable!
I’d be honored to have people pay to run my software gotten through CNR :-p.
You wouldn’t believe how many people buy things that are basically repackaged versions of free software, I was amazed at how many people buy IM programs based off miranda and gaim and such.
If you going to charge, charge for your service not the actual software. I think charging for free software is just wrong.
There’s a quote that says “Linux is only free is your time has no value.” CNR is dead easy. It makes software installation newbie friendly (because only an idiot actually believes that ./configure && make && make install is an accomplishable task by the average computer user). You’re paying for the service wrapped around the software – the actual delivery system.
Dont you see a contradiction here, charging for Free software?
No, considering the two unrelated meanings of the word ‘free’. There’s nothing wrong with charging money for a free as in freedom product, as long as the license is followed. It doesn’t impinge on the free as in freedomness of the software at all: you can still modify it and distribute it yourself as you like, and if you object to the charge you can get it for free as in beer elsewhere.
Which underscores the point: they are charging for a service, not the software itself. You can pick up pretty much anything in CNR from elsewhere and compile and install it in Linspire yourself without having to pay anything. They charge for CNR for the convenience, for the service of a one click install. Apt-get good enough for you? Don’t pay them for it. See? Freedom intact
When MS bought off Lindows and MR back in 2004, and as part of the buyoff, they had to stop distributing some codecs and got the rights to use others for four years (which will expire in 2008). They do NOT included libdvdcss2 by default, so the DVD player that is available is xine but won’t decrypt DVDS. That is either 10 bucks or 40 bucks from the Collect New Revenue warehouse.
Linspire does give back to the community, there are several out there that do not, like Transgaming. The only real complaint about Linspire is that they essentially charge for a front-end to apt-get.
I will say that the last time I saw Linspire (I think it was version 5 something) they had been giving away copies on their site. It was extremely polished. My old boss had installed it. It was very slick, he just complained that when he tried to use the Debian repositories to install things it broke horribly. He had the same problem with Xandros. He is an RPM guy, I tried to explain to him that is why I don’t use Linspire or Xandros, because they’re not very compatible with Debian’s stuff. Even Ubuntu is drifting away a bit, though for the most part you can still take a generic .deb and put it into that without breaking anything, the same really can’t be said for the majority of things in Xandros or Linspire.
If all you need is the base install and you’re not going to be installing lots of other software, then Linspire or Xandros are excellent choices. On the other hand, if you like to install things just to play around with what’s out there, then get a distribution that doesn’t charge for everything. Ubuntu is free of charge, and easily obtainable, play around with it.
It’d be nice to see some of that polish of Linspire trickle into Debian standard. Maybe through just artwork for Splashy, or icons, etc.
Leech
There’s absolutely no problem at all that Linspire is not freely available from them; it’s their right under the license to do that.
The problem many people have with Linspire is that it’s also not free as in freedom; it’s not ‘free beer’ and also not ‘free speech’.
“Although the basic GNU/Linux system is free software, most of the GNU/Linux versions now available include a small amount of non-free software–just enough to spoil them as a way to attain freedom. But Linspire is in a class by itself; large and important parts of this system are non-free. No other GNU/Linux distribution has backslided so far away from freedom. Switching from MS Windows to Linspire does not bring you to freedom, it just gets you a different master.”
* On Venezuela’s decision to use Linspire for their Venezuelan computer project
From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman.
Linspire would have a lot to gain by making a free (as in speech) version of their operating system. Sadly, they won’t do that.
So Linspire should be treated now the way AOL was treated back in the day?
I guess he’s right, if I’d get a Linspire disc in the mail/with a magazine, I’d probably dump it in the trash the way I did with ~300 AOL floppies.
I am an intermediate linux user. My mother asked for a computer. After about 3 years of dealing with virii and nonsense I installed linspire for her. All she needs is Solitare, Email and Web Browsing. For that Linspire is “perfect”. I have had no problems whatsoever for the past 2 years having Linspire on her machine.
I don’t know what the big deal is really. It works, it causes no problems. It’s flawless in terms of useability. Sure I have gone through Gentoo installs and countless other distros. Linspire is NOT for me. But for “grandma” it’s perfect. Truly the only other distro that would suit her would be Ubuntu as of this point. When Novell Linux Desktop 10 comes out, I might buy some copies and fool around with that. But as it stands now in this time, Linspire is kick ass without a doubt.
It’s not for every user, but for the joe and jane 6 pack it’s perfect.
…just because Linspire has a working model? They can take Linux, tweak it a bit, add some apps and a repository that they control and make $$$ off it. I think that it is a successful business model and, as was already pointed out, they do give back to the community. Why does everyone hate them so much? Because they are selling something we all know [linux/kde] to be a great product combination?
I don’t get it. It looks nice, works well and they are marketing it fairly well… I say good for them.
Actually, a few things cause a great deal of heartburn. One, these people have seemed to overpromise and underdeliver from Day one (the Lindows will run any Windows proggie without Windows, the AOL computer which turned out to be just the AIM client included with Netscape, and AOL knew nothing about the deal these people screamed to the skies about), rebadging KDE, Mozilla, GAIM and other software so that it appeared THEY did it (taking credit where none was due) and the attitude that the “secret geek society” is jealous because they are giving away the secret handshake and depriving us of our mystique, which is hogwash. MR is a used-car salesman of the worst ilk, as evinced by many things, the latest example being the XUL item released under the ajax buzzword (ajaxWrite will replace MS Word).
Alright. Uncle. They are sleazy.
Rubbish egon.
They are rebadging so that for the 9x% of users out there they are targeting, things make *sense*.
GAIM? What the heck is that? OH! Instant Messaging… I’ve heard about that.
Mozilla? That sounds scary. Internet browser? I know that… that lets me go on the interweb thing.
Then if you look at the splash, and about of each product it shows what the source is, who did it and in NO WAY tries to take credit.
Some people need to calm down about Linspire.
No, NOW they include the “powered by Mozilla” or “powered by GAIM”. The 4.x releases included Lindows-this and Lindows-that, and the Collect New Revenue warehouse contained KWrite, KDE PIM and other items, all rebadged with Lindows all over em. Oh, and perhaps we should also mention “CompareSoft” with OpenOffice.org, the GIMP, et al. also relabelled? Nah. Yeah, RIIIGHT.
You could always go into the about and see the product origins. Any extra “powered by” were no doubt added to try and appease people like yourself; a pointless gesture.
It is never that they tried to claim credit for others work. You’re either being duplicious or are very misinformed. Given the amount of nonsense written about Lindows/Linspire that second wouldn’t surprise me.
However your inane use of terms like “Collect New Revenue” would point towards the first.
Slapping your OWN brand all over the work of someone else, removing references to KDE and renaming ISN’T trying to imply you did it yourself, hence claim credit for it? No, it most certainly IS. I am NOT being in any manner duplicitous, as anyone with copies of Lindows can find out, and I am NOT misinformed, since I spent almost a week working with someone trying to get Audacity working on his equipment-the Audacity HE installed from Collect New Revenue warehouse on HIS brand shiny new Lindows FIVE-OH (cue obvious rip of Hawaii Five-O theme).
Before I was banned from the Lindows forums, my post count was nearing the 1000 point, so..straightforward AND very well informed.
Given your performance here I can understand why you’d be banned from their forum. Collect New Revenue? Please… are you also one of those who call Microsoft Microsoft or the other inane variants?
What is your problem with people renaming a product in the GUI to make it actually easier to use for Joe User? An example. What the hell would a computer illiterate user make of Kate? What exactly about the name Kate tells me it’s a text editor?
If you can’t see that to ordinary users, there is benefit in functional naming then there isn’t much to say.
K.A.T.E.
K Advanced Text Editor
What doesn’t? Where’s your acronym love?
Gads… So Kate is KDE advanced text editor?
And (some) people wonder why Linspire rename apps.
(I’ve used various Linuxes on and off for about 7 years and didn’t know that… since it’s not all capitals didn’t know it was GYAPA. Yet Another Poxy Acronym (the G is just for kicks))
Edited 2006-04-10 00:48
“What exactly about the name Kate tells me it’s a text editor?”
The words “Text Editor” in parenthesis after the word “Kate” in the menus, perhaps?
I find it amazing that nearly every topic involving Linspire brings up comments of alleged GPL violations, etc.
If anyone feels that Linspire is violating (or has violated) the GPL, there’s a very simple thing to do. Use your time productively and contact the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and bring your concerns to them. Rambling about it here amounts to very little in terms of productive value.
Also, I’ve heard of people brining their concerns to the FSF. However, not once have I ever heard of anyone reporting back to report that they were wrong in their assumptions, or that the FSF validated their questions.
To report GPL violations or simply ask questions about issues that may need clarity, all anyone has to do is email the FSF at compliance@fsf.org The FSF does have legal talent that will answer your questions & concerns.
Also, if anyone wants to contact the FSF for other issues the deal with, here’s a link to their Contact Page http://www.fsf.org/about/contact.html
The problem is not that you have to use it as root (you don’t), the problem is that most new users WILL run as root, for lack of the *automatic* creation of a normal user login.
synaptic is dead easy
gnome-app-installer is dead easy
YourFavInstallerNameHere is dead easy
nobody HAS to use ‘make’ anymore and comparing that to CNR is like comparing the crank on the first autos to a auto today…keep it real please
hit submit tooo soon…
I do agree that you are paying for the service and not the software I just think Linspire is going to have to improve the service or innovate with the service even more or they are going to get left behind…