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Former Linspire CEO bumps heads with current Linspire CEO

The recent announcement regarding the sale of Linspire to Xandros caused a mini-uproar in the Linux community, with shareholders a bit baffled by the company’s sale to Xandros. The latest critic of the deal who has been angered is Linspire’s former president and CEO, Kevin Carmony, who voiced his displeasure in several blog postings.

After coming into existence in 2001, Linspire, formerly known as Lindows, was one of the first companies to try and market the Linux operating system specifically to Microsoft Windows users. After coming under legal fire from Microsoft over alleged trademark infringement, Lindows became Linspire, and continued to push its OS.

Linspire and Freespire received lukewarm support over the years, though gained notoriety with its Click ‘N Run service that gives users the opportunity to run applications from other Linux distributions in Linspire. The company’s latest OS, Linspire 6.0, was not well met among Linux enthusiasts, and the company quietly faded back into the shadows.

Xandros has transitioned away from home users and now offers its OS to companies to bundle with their low-cost notebooks and PCs, such as the ASUS Eee PC and similar products.

Current Linspire CEO Michael Robertson justified the sale of the company, with the deal stemming from “years of frustration in trying to achieve the goal of desktop Linux.” Although products such as the ASUS Eee PC, smartphones and similar products offers an appealing market for Linux, Robertson was extremely frustrated that he couldn’t bring Linux to the masses.

Minority shareholders, including Carmony, were not given much forewarning into the deal, who posted the three-paragraph letter to shareholders onto the Internet.

In a blog posting, Carmony calls the deal a “midnight, back room sell off” that took place without a proper shareholder meeting. He goes on to state the deal was made to help “Robertson drain the company of its cash and resources,” “help Roberston save face,” and “give Xandros a press release and perhaps some way for them to spin this to investors to raise money.”

Robertson responded by stating all Linspire assets related to the sale will eventually be distributed among all 100 Linspire shareholders. Preferred stockholders, who offered up the most cash when the company was started, will be the first to receive their shares. Robertson and company also will not be forced to hold a stockholders meeting because of Delaware law that says a public meeting isn’t required to sell the company.

dailytech.com