Linspire 5.0 Free For Limited Time

drunkennewfiemidget writes "The people at Linspire are giving Linspire 5.0 away for free (digital download only) until September 6th. Simply go to purchase the $49.95 digital edition, and then enter coupon code 'freespire' to receive a $49.95 discount." From the site: "'Freespire' was the term Andrew Betts gave to a private project he had been working on. The project comprised various open source components, taken from the freely available source repository for the Linspire operating system...Linspire has no problem with anyone using the open source code from our operating system - in fact we applaud such projects. The name Freespire, however, did create some confusion in the short time it was used...We thought it would be fun, for all of those who were looking at this project to experience a true 'Freespire', to give away a free digital copy of Linspire for a few days!"

Comments

Credit Card Information?

[ClaraBow]

Does anyone know if one needs to provide any personal info to download the software, like your credit card #?

There are easier ways to do this

[Jailbrekr]

They'd get alot more attention if they did a gpl'ed version that was free and available as a torrent. This is nothing more than a not so subtle attempt to pump the number of installs that they can claim are currently running. Marketing ploy anyone?

Re:There are easier ways to do this

[badboy_tw2002]

Marketing ploy? Advertizing your product by giving it away in order to spread word of mouth.....uhhhhh, DO YA THINK? Of course its a marketing ploy, and a good one if you ask me. (Downloading right now...) Its a company, they want to make money. Don't act surprised.

AFAIK they can't GPL it because of non-free portions of the distro (JVM, Flash).

Re:There are easier ways to do this

[drsquare]

Because you don't need to:
1. Find the drivers.
2. Download them.
3. Use the command line to use them.
4. Exit X and use some complicated program to install them.
5. It JFW.

Same with all that other crap. Yeah if you were a computer nerd you could spend a while downloading and installing it all, but if you're not a technical genius, you want something that just fucking works, so you can concentrate on important stuff, like actually using your computer.

Worth it?

[OnceWas]

From what I have read, people haven't been all that impressed with Linspire. Even if it's free, is it worth the trouble with all the other distributions out there?

Re:eh?

[hoka]

I believe that the way it works is that you must distribute source to those people that you distribute binaries to. So if say you use something for internal use only within a company, you arn't required to publish the source. And it probably isn't a big deal for them to have a source cd or source download available. Let us also not forget that not everything used in most distros is GPL, as there are plenty of Public Domain/BSD/LGPL licenses out there.

Re:eh?

[martalli]

Apparently the GPL parts of the repository are free, so people could use the repository to build their own project, much as White Box Linux has used the RHEL repositories to create a similar, entirely free distro.

Moreover, the maintainers apparently have a good humor about the confusion over the Freespire project. Another company might have just served a subpoena to Andrew Betts, asking for trumped up damages and whatnot.