InfoWorld: New Day for Linux on the Desktop

"Now, I understand the principle that the kid who owns the ball gets to pick the game to be played, but that should happen before the players take the field. In the world of conferences, the time for directional changes is months before the show--before sponsors, vendors, and attendees commit time, money, and manpower in support of the event. Making radical changes at the 11th hour is just not good business.

"Likewise, when over 98 percent of the product you sell is created by others, it is not wise to do things that alienate these suppliers. Yet this turn of events generated significantly more bad feeling toward Lindows in the Linux developer community--which is quite a feat since Lindows has an uncanny knack for irritating the open-source community as it is.

"But the story does not end there. In true open-source style, a very active movement to turn lemons into lemonade is taking shape. In open source, a project that executes good concepts poorly is often replaced with a new project that aims to execute the same good concepts in a better fashion. In this case, the new project can be seen in the recent birth of the Desktop Linux Consortium (DLC), a neutral vendor organization formed to further the advance of Linux on the desktop. DLC members include SuSE, MandrakeSoft, DesktopLinux.com, KDE, and Ximian; Lindows is notably absent from the roster..."

Complete Story

Related Stories:

• CNET News: Advocates Join to Promote Desktop Linux(Feb 04, 2003)
• DesktopLinux.com: [DL.com] Drops Support for Lindows Desktop Linux Summit(Jan 17, 2003)
• Lindows.com: Linux Desktop Summit Coming in Feb. 2003(Aug 21, 2002)