On Monday 22 July 2002 01:06 pm, Derek Neighbors wrote:
> > The point, for me, wasn't to go to debian, but rather to test the
> > upgrade to Xandros from the dist Xandros is built on.
>
> I dont know why you advocate Xandros over Debian.  They are no better
> than other greedy get rich Linux investments.
>
> They are run by Linux Global Partners.  A little history would show you
> that LGP has screwed many a folk in the Free Software Community.  They
> were the first round funding for Ximian\Helixcode  who got fed up and
> left for
> Battery Ventures to buy LGP out.  They succeeded in SQUISHING the living
> hell out of GNUmatic (the company that did GNUCash).  I believe they did
> some damage and had lawsuits from a either Codeweavers and/or a company
> that did custom X servers (metrolink).
[snip]

[The following is *very* biased.  I worked for Xandros for a few months and 
may very well again in the future]

Xandros the OS and Xandros the company are both first rate.  All the people 
up to Ming Poon are die-hard geeks and/or engineers and care passionately 
about Linux and their product... perhaps *too* much as is evident by the 
constantly slipping release schedule (they won't release until it's 
"perfect").  The product itself is also very nice... the nicest integrated 
"Linux for the desktop" I've tried (although I haven't tried Lycoris yet).

Calling them "greedy" and out to "get rich" is unfair when you clearly have 
never actually met any of the Xandros people.  From Ming on down, they have 
their heads screwed on right.

LGP is.. well.. I honestly don't know.  You may have noticed I said that "I 
worked" for Xandros, not "I work".  That's because LGP didn't quite have 
the money that they said they would have on payday and I ended up working 
my last month for free (still hoping to get paid for that, though).

LGP is a venture capital outfit pure and simple.  They are out to make the 
big bucks and think they can do it with Linux.  They just don't seem to be 
all that good at it.  It does bother me that they like promising money 
quite bit yet fail to deliver at the last minute.

I think the Xandros people see LGP as a necessary evil.  To get a killer 
product out the door, you *need* a lot of people and that takes money.  
Even spending it on the "right things" (all engineers and QA people plus 
ONE marketing person) tends to burn through money at a high rate.

Hmm.. that was a lot more rambling than I intended (too tired).  Short 
summary: think what you will of LGP but don't blame Xandros for their 
parent's sins.
-- 
Kurt Granroth - "KDE -- Conquer Your Desktop"
KDE Developer/Evangelist | granroth@kde.org
http://www.granroth.org  | kurt@granroth.org