[LUAU] Linspire damage control (on the subject of ESR 'leaving' Fedora)

[Jim Thompson]

http://talkback.zdnet.com/5208-11048-0.html? 
forumID=1&threadID=30518&messageID=567648&start=-1

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Eric Raymond's boot to Red Hat's head

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Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony Responds
For those wondering...

1. Eric Raymond doesn't work for Linspire. He is simply one of many  
un-paid volunteers of the Freespire Leadership Board.  
([HYPERLINK at wiki.freespire.org]) Eric has never been paid or received  
anything from Linspire (he wouldn't take it even if we offered). He  
got involved because he liked Freespire's work in solving some of the  
driver and multimedia problems for desktop Linux.

2. No one here at Linspire, myself included, had any idea Eric was  
going to do this. First we knew about it was when we read about it in  
the press.

3. If Eric was doing this on our account, he would have announced  
switching to Linspire or Freespire, not Ubuntu.

4. If Eric were in fact doing this for our benefit, the last thing in  
the world Linspire would have wanted him to do was him sending his  
email and upsetting the Fedora community. The Linux companies need to  
work more together, not less. Linspire has been trying to work MORE  
with Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, and others, to solve the problems  
facing desktop Linux.

Because I didn't know about this earlier, and haven't spoken with  
Eric since, I can't know his motives. However, I do know Eric fairly  
well, and he's not one to do much of anything "for someone else" or  
just for money. He's a pretty principled guy, from what my experience  
with him has been. I sincerely believe he just became unhappy with  
some things, hit is boiling point, and got so upset he made the  
switch and sent the email.

If anyone reading this belongs to the Red Hat Fedora mailing list, I  
hope you'll forward my comments along to that group. I'll certainly  
will be sending them to the contacts I have at Red Hat, with whom  
Linspire has always had a very positive relationship with.

Regardless of what Eric's motives were, I can assure you, they had  
nothing formally to do with Linspire.

Thanks,

Kevin Carmony
CEO, Linspire