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Lindows Changes Name to 'Linspire'
Robert Nicholson writes "As previously covered, Lindows has decided to change its name thanks to Microsoft legal threats. Well it has just announced the new name - Linspire - clever, huh? There's a site at Linspire.com. The full story and the history behind it all are covered on Techworld."
In other news, the lawyers for Winspire Success Seminars get their pens ready...
The fine folks at Mozilla have decided to join forces with the Linspire team.
Please await *drumroll* LinFire 0.9 any day now..
"It came to me in a moment of Linspiration"
please change me. - sig
What a Linsipid name. In my opnion it sounds like the name of a cheesy fly by night telemarketing company.. or a group that sell motivational self-help tapes to desperate and simple-minded middle management types.
Not that I could do any better, I'm sure... but Linspire really sounds boring.
I mean, do I install it on my computer, park it in my driveway, or drink it from a fancy bottle?
:rolleyes:
Linspire. Whoever thought that up needs to get more linspired. Jeeeebus O'Reilly McChrist in a dead DeLorean.
This post made with the Dvorak layout.
"Friends don't let friends use QWERTY"
It sounds like a Korean car. I'm going to spend the next hour cringing. Really surprised they didn't go with LinDOS (a previous candidate) or something with a modicum of coolness. I guess the company isn't shelling out big bucks for its marketing department.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
L'inspire? What is that, French? Aren't they the enemies or something now?
They might as well have saved us a step and just named it "Freedom Linux" before we do it for them.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
"Microsoft actually thingks they can claim the rights to "Lin---s"? Talk about power hungry."
Well, they probably don't think they can claim the rights to it so much as they think their lawyers can beat up Lindows' lawyers. And Lindows seems to agree. Yay capitalism, where even the law is privatized.
Well, the name "Lin---s" was kind of obviously flipping off Microsoft, especially since they had a poorly-drawn hangman on the website for it with every letter crossed out except "D", "O" and "W". I mean, come on. Michael Robertson is good at criticizing Microsoft and pissing in their Cheerios, but he's not good at coming up with with clever names, I guess (I'm not going to go for the obvious parallel). I think he just should have taken absurdity to its ultimate edge and called the damn thing Linfox.
;)
I was one of the people who said that you couldn't possibly come up with a more asinine name than "Lindows". Here we all are, eating our words.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
L'inspire est le trademarke pour le Parlement du Francias! C'est et desitenement immedinantre! Alors!
"Lindows" was just a PR move and the trademark equivalent of cybersquatting. Let's not forget that the founder of the company got his start by registering mp3.com as well as slight variations of the URLs of other major sites and convincing a VC to fund him as a company. Yet again, though, his strategy worked pretty well.
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
It's a bit weak.
Actually, it really sucks. Sorry, Michael Robertson, but you could have done better.
"LindOS" cuts it better.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
But seriously how many average joe's just walk to best buy and buy a copy of windows OS and install it on their PC. Let's face it, most people just use the OS their PC came installed with.
Given this fact, I fail to see how the name Lindows, was any beneficial. I mean, most people don't even know what an OS stands for, so what are the chances they go to buy Windows OS and install it on their own, and Now take a percentage of those extremely small nos. who will be fooled by the Lindows boxes sitting next to Windows boxes.
And the ones who are comfortable installing their own OS, any ways are not likely to be misled. So the name choice was unfortunate to begin with. All it did was gave them a lot of publicity (which is not a bad thing) but I really wonder how many customers really bought it think it to be windows.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
Only 45 hits on Google if you search for "linspire" at the time of writing. I wonder how many hits there will be tomorrow at the same time.
Anyway, they seemed to have known this for quite some time. From a whois on linspire.com and linspire.org:
Record created on 15-Jan-2004.
What are these see-through things in most of the outside walls of my house called?
Silly rabbit
> I doubt there's a single company that could handle being dragged through the world's courts by Microsoft,
It was a PR Stunt from the very beginning. If they were really scared of MS' Legal Dept, they would have never picked "Lindows" in the beginning.
And since they made the slashdot frontpage again, their plan is working great.
I think Microsoft's reasoning was "---" stood for "dow", which was still, somehow, theirs.
I guess in that case, bleeping out cusswords or saying f--k is the same as just saying / writing them. The FCC should take note of the case to further censor the public.
As far as Lindows Inc., they apparently are going to keep the company name. With M$'s reasoning, I'm surprised they aren't trying to convince people that Lindows really means Microsoft and they should change their name to nothing, since all names really mean Microsoft. I'm getting images of that scene in Being John Malkovich...
... to try the new LDE with Lmail, Lword, Lonqueror and Lxmms. Not to forget Lozilla-Lirelox.
Lat least lhey lon't lave lo lange lilo's lame!
Solly, lounge got louse.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
ok, i'll stop.
I bootleg Fizzy Lifting Drinks.
So, as expected, Microsoft played its part in this little Kabuki drama, and Lindows aka Linspire got its free publicity. And bully for them, I guess. But to suggest that they picked the name for any other reason is sheer folly.
sulli
RTFJ.
>This led to the daft situation where Lindows renamed itself Lin---s, complete with new website. Microsoft, unbowed, then incredibly claimed that Lin---s was its trademark as well.
>This one just makes me say wow... Microsoft actually thingks they can claim the rights to "Lin---s"? Talk about power hungry.
The name still infringes on Microsofts rights. Notice that there are common characters in the names:
wINdowS
lINSpIre
I suspect this conflict will lead to product confusion and continued loss of sales by Microsoft until this evil Linspire changes its name to resolve the conflict.
Holes
"Windows" is not a common noun in countries that do not have English as an official language. Among European countries, only the UK and Ireland seem to speak English in the trademark office.
It took tremendous Linsight to come up with the name "Linspire". I find the whole story quite Linteresting. Thanks for the Linformative links.
---------------------------------------------
SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm sure they were linspired by the linvoices from their legal department.
So who wants "clever" names for products? The plethora of "clever" naming in the computer world is nothing but a source of confusion for the actual users. Give users names like "Adobe photoshop" and they'll be much happier than "Adobe super-fire bird".
This lesson needs to be taken to heart, keep the clever code names internal, use sensible naming for actual products.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!