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Lindows' Heavy Hand Leads to Summit Dropouts
shawk writes "With Lindows becoming more popular the company's confidence seems to be growing. According to a news item on Desktoplinux.com Lindows unilaterally adjusted the agenda of a planned vendor-neutral summit in a way that is not tolerable for others supporting the conference.
A related article on CNET reports HP having withdrawn from the summit as well."
Any source code yet?
Yes, right here - all the source and all the modifications made to all the packages in Lindows.
Is Lindows stealing from open source programers?
Nope, one of my packages was included in Lindows, and the President even contacted me personally to ask if I could add a few features. They aren't stealing from open source "programers" - they're complying fully with the GPL.
-- Wibble
i think the question is "Who would admit to using Lindows?", but thats another point. Linux Counter reports that, out of 115,886 submitted values, there are 8 distros in use, none of which are Lindows, which must be in the "Others" department, which takes up 13.13% of the share. Those 8 (in order of usage): Red Hat, Mandrake, Debian, Slackware, SuSE, Conectiva, "diy", and Debian sid. Then again, would your average Lindows user even know or care about something like Linux Counter? -- While you're there, fill out a reg form.
I was scheduled to give a talk on "The Kernel and the Desktop" at the Desktop Linux Summit and I formally withdrew on Thursday after having a discussion with the involved parties due to the issues discussed in these news articles. The behavior shown - especially the treatment of Bruce - is not acceptable.
I, uh, bet there will be more dropouts over the next couple days - Lindows is not cool.
I am a Lindows.com Insider. I have cut and pasted the post the President of Lindows.com made on our forums. Here it is:
We had contracted with one of the employees of Desktoplinux.org (they only have a couple) to pay them to help out with organizing A FEW PARTS of the summit. Without going into great detail, let's just say this relationship ended up being unworkable. Due, perhaps from some bad communication on our part, this person became upset with some of the decisions being made about the summit. (We wanted a consumer, media-friendly event, not a technical, developer's conference.) Based on early misunderstandings, this person unfortunately had made promises to vendors without our final approval and had promised speaking slots. When the agenda came up for final approval (the first time Michael or I even saw it), we made changes to make it have more of a mass-market slant. The changes we made put this person in an awkward position with some people. We told this person that we would take full responsibility for the misunderstandings and to blame us if anyone was disappointed.
In the end, it was simply a bad fit and this person was simply not the appropriate ambassador for the summit as we envisioned it. (It's hard to sell something you yourself don't believe in.) Therefore, we stopped contracting with this individual and used other people who LOVED the summit as we had planned it.
As for this notion of "vendor neutrality," Lindows.com was NOT in anyway trying to turn the Summit into a "Lindows.com Show." Anyone who attended Wineconf or an MP3 Summit (both events also sponsored by Michael) know he's not like that. One look at the agenda and it's pretty obvious this is a show about how COOL LINUX IS ON THE DESKTOP, not about Lindows.com. Besides, Linux is so much more than distros. It's about office suites (Sun), applications (Kompany), printers (HP), tablets (StepUp), Games (Transgaming), hardware (Microtel), and on and on... Lindows.com doesn't even compete with 95% of the vendors at the show. We DO plead guilty that we VERY MUCH were making sure the summit stayed a show with MASS MARKET appeal, but the notion that we wanted to turn it into a Lindows.com show is simply ridiculous. (Go view the wineconf or 4 years of mp3 summit videos to see for yourself.)
This is the sort of wacky "drama" that has plagued Linux for far too long and makes Microsoft laugh at Linux. Fortunately we, as we always do, will remain above this. The only reason I'm even making this post is because this thread asked for a response.
We'll have a packed house and it's going to be a great show. If you look at the agenda, you'll see it's the interesting, consumer-focused type of show Linux needs to start moving into the mainstream markets.
Kevin
I am a Lindows Member too... and here is some more information that was given after the post above:
r berianc ke s
Here's an update on the latest with the Summit...
As of this evening, the following changes have been confirmed to the Summit's sponsor/exhibitor list:
Deletions:
- HP
- Questnet
- the Kompany
Additions:
-Epson
-Earthlink
-Bitstream
-Ce
-CentralCommand
-Hancom
-GridIQ
-Brobe
-SpeakEasy
-MP3.com
-Photogenics
-GarageGam
As for the issue with the Keynote. Michael was ALWAYS slated to be the Keynote. It was this person from desktoplinux.org who promised it to Bruce Perens. (Michael and I had no idea about this!) It was NOT Michael who insisted HE be the Keynote speaker. That was ME! I have heard Michael speak on several occasions and I have also heard Bruce Perens. No offense to Bruce, but he's just not a very dynamic public speaker, ESPECIALLY for a consumer-type conference. As I have said, this summit is about the ability for Linux to move to the mass markets. I think everyone will agree, that is Michael Robertson's area of expertise, not Bruce's. I can't think of anyone who has championed the ideal of taking Linux to the masses more than Michael. He has the arrows in his back from the traditional Linux crowd to prove it! Bruce fired a few more in this week. =)
For the record, we offered Bruce the prime spot of closing the summit, but he said he didn't want to speak at all. That was his choice.
Michael Robertson was always the Keynote speaker at the annual MP3 Summit's, and did a great job. These summits were always very successful and no one ever accused MP3.com of not being fair to the many other vendors who attended the MP3 Summits.
Finally, of the 25 speakers suggested to us by the "panel," (Michael and I didn't even know there WAS such a panel!) we included 19.
As is obvious from the above changes, the show is only growing in status and support, not dwindling.
Kevin