Matthew Revell

A few months ago, Linspire’s Kevin Carmony invited me to join the Freespire Leadership Board.

After some thought, I decided to join, even though I had no plans to switch from Ubuntu. Kevin assured me that the Leadership Board wasn’t about being a Freespire expert, champion or even user. Instead, it was pitched as a conscience for the project.

I think such a leadership board is a great way for Freespire to gain points with the different sections of the community represented on it. However, I’m not entirely sure how effective it can be. Freespire’s raison-d’etre is at odds with much of the FOSS community: to produce a free-beer Linux desktop that has many of the proprietary codecs/apps that ordinary users would otherwise miss. That coupled with some aspects of Linspire’s presentational style will always cause friction.
Now that I’m about to join Canonical, I’ve chosen to leave the Freespire Leadership Board. (It’s worth noting that no one at Canonical asked me to.)

The pragmatist in me agrees that Freespire’s approach will bring many people to Linux. The free software fan in me wonders at what cost.