Earlier this week at the Desktop Linux Summit 2006, Linspire - the company formerly known as Lindows, until Microsoft paid it millions to change its name - announced the pending launch of two free versions of its paid-for Linux OS. The new free version, Freespire, is claimed to be unique for open source Linux distributions because, while one of the two is completely open-source, the other includes some proprietary software.
The inclusion of proprietary drivers and software, will, Linspire says, address the problem of limited native support for some hardware, file types and multi media formats, giving Linux users "legal out-of-the-box" support for MP3, DVD, Windows Media, QuickTime, Java, Flash, Real, ATI drivers, nVidia drivers, Adobe Acrobat Reader, third-party fonts and whole bunch more.
A list of the different proprietary Codecs, drivers and software used in Freespire will be made available at http://www.freespire.org/home/trademarks, along with the detailed licensing information needed to help others modify and redistribute the core Freespire open source code.
According to Linspire's president and CEO Kevin Carmony, the Freespire project "has six major goals for advancing Linux and open source software". These are to:
* Provide users freedom of choice by making available a "free marketplace" for all Linux software, including proprietary, open source, free and commercial products, plus provide easy access to this marketplace with open sourced tools such as CNR and apt-get. When necessary for the user experience, include proprietary software as an option in the core distribution, which will always be available for download at no cost
* Offer a very easy-to-use, yet powerful, Linux distribution
* Provide exceptional "fit and finish" with a professional and polished operating system
* Create a Linux that can expand more broadly to the masses
* Create an active community of developers and users
* Include worldwide language support.
As part of the Freespire project, Linspire's proprietary CNR (click and run) - a one-click management system for downloading and installing software - will be made open source to help "build a truly free marketplace" for all Linux software, whether proprietary, open source, free, or commercial.
Linspire says that many proprietary Codecs, drivers and programs will be offered in Freespire's core distribution, while a few that are more costly to license, such as for DVD playback, will have to be purchased and installed - via CNR, of course.
Linspire itself will continue to be developed as a commercial product aimed at consumers and novice computer users. Freespire, in contrast, will be targeted more at developers and those already into Linux, though the company says that it's expecting improvements to the Freespire OS to be incorporated into future releases of Linspire.
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