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Michael Robertson Sued Over Missing Linspire Cash

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Fri Oct 03, 2008 04:39 PM
from the transparency-whether-you-like-it-or-not dept.
Government The Courts Linux Business News
An anonymous reader writes "Blogger and ex-Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony reports that Michael Robertson has been sued by a Linspire shareholder to get to the bottom of what happened to Linspire's assets. One hundred shareholders have been left uninformed as to what happened to the company and its assets after Linspire was sold to Xandros a few months back."
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[+] Linux: Xandros Reportedly Buys Out Linspire 153 comments
2muchcoffeeman writes "Former Linspire president and CEO Kevin Carmony — whose relationship with his former employer has turned acrimonious, to say the least — reported on his blog that Xandros and Linspire signed an agreement in principle for Xandros to buy Linspire June 19. Carmony includes a scan of the memo to Linspire shareholders announcing the deal, which requires the former Linspire company to change its name. According to the memo, the stockholders voted to change the company's name to Digital Cornerstone, Inc. Despite the wording of the Linspire memo to stockholders, this deal apparently came as a surprise to Carmony and other stockholders. Some here may remember that both Xandros and Linspire signed patent protection deals with Microsoft in 2007."
Firehose:Michael Robertson Sued Over Missing Linspire Cash by Anonymous Coward
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Michael Robertson Sued Over Missing Linspire Cash 25 Comments More /

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  • Isn't it obvious? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 03 2008, @04:43PM (#25250821)

    He freed the money as part of his Open Vault Software initiative.

  • What assets? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Onaga (1369777) on Friday October 03 2008, @04:45PM (#25250837)
    Linux isn't profitable...

      • Re:What assets? (Score:4, Informative)

        by wastedlife (1319259) on Friday October 03 2008, @08:21PM (#25252565) Homepage
        OEMs. A lot of the cheap-ass linux desktops at Fry's and Walmart used to be sold running Lindows/Linspire (I think gOS and Xandros have stolen that market). Also, I believe they were looking to sell their "Click N Run" package manager for use in Ubuntu and possibly other distros.

  • ...other than the caption in the article, "Michael Robertson - Greedy, crook or just incompetent?"

    Then I found this earlier entry: http://kevincarmony.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2008-07-12T08:40:00-07:00&max-results=7 [blogspot.com]

    It gives details on the company's structure and what Roberts was doing to steal money from the company. Interesting stuff.

  • Ummm... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Darkness404 (1287218) on Friday October 03 2008, @05:13PM (#25251081)
    I fail to see how Linspire was ever profitable. It didn't offer anything revolutionary and was basically Debian/Ubuntu with a few extra features that no one cared about. Can someone please enlighten me on how Linspire was ever a force in the market?

    • Re:Ummm... (Score:5, Funny)

      by ari_j (90255) on Friday October 03 2008, @05:20PM (#25251137)
      It doesn't matter - if it was bought out, the shareholders are entitled to value for their shares, no matter how little that might be. Wouldn't you be pissed off if you held a couple thousand shares and got deprived of your $1.25?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Vectronic (1221470)

      I don't think Linspire was every really profitable, nor was it ever a "force in the market" this is just about a couple shareholders wondering where the money they thought they were going to get...went...

    • I fail to see how Linspire was ever profitable. It didn't offer anything revolutionary and was basically Debian/Ubuntu with a few extra features that no one cared about. Can someone please enlighten me on how Linspire was ever a force in the market?

      I believe they made their money with OEMs and retail stores that were stupid enough to by their products and attempt to resell them.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by whoever57 (658626)

      I fail to see how Linspire was ever profitable.

      Didn't Linspire get $20M from Microsoft for changing its name from Lindows?

    • Re:Ummm... (Score:5, Informative)

      by AKAImBatman (238306) * <akaimbatman@ g m a i l . com> on Friday October 03 2008, @05:27PM (#25251205) Homepage Journal

      As I recall, Walmart shipped Linspire as the OEM OS for a while. Deals like that tend to infuse quite a bit of cash into a small company like Linspire. Michael Roberts might have you believe that they had hundreds of engineers pouring their souls into improving Windows compatibility, but that's most likely Roberts being Roberts. (Which is to say an extreme exaggerator at best, an outright liar at worst.) Their actual burn rate doesn't sound like it was all that high based on the descriptions of the company.

    • Click N Run (Score:5, Insightful)

      by HalAtWork (926717) on Friday October 03 2008, @05:44PM (#25251349)
      Click N Run was one aspect responsible for their fame. They would take the care to improve and provide pre-configured desktop software in an interface that made it easy to install the software. This was before Synaptic Package Manager was able to do the same thing. Also, before they were called "Linspire", they had the controversial name "Lindows", which connoted that they were trying to provide a Linux desktop that would do things most typical Windows users wanted. A lot of users tried to switch to Linux many times but were frustrated by the experience, so this really had the power to draw a lot of people in. I think that Ubuntu and Fedora succeeded where Linspire failed though.
    • Well there's their Walmart deal, I believe they also got some money out of Microsoft as well.

  • I worked for Robertson (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 03 2008, @05:26PM (#25251201)

    And this doesn't surprise me. He is a pretty shady character. He was the typical, ego-crazed rich guy who loved pushing everyone else around.

    Ever since he tried to defend running as root, I never trusted the guy.

    • Re:I worked for Robertson (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 04 2008, @12:08AM (#25253735)

      I worked for Michael Robertson at MP3.com. I was there pre-IPO. MP3.com was a wonderful place to work. My favorite gig ever. But dealing with Michael was the least pleasing aspect of the whole thing. He was incredibly arrogant, rude, and obnoxious.

      I'll never forget how he treated this intern kid who was somebody's personal assistant or something. He said he was looking for some big meeting or something. I knew there was a meeting going on in the main conference room so I pointed him that way and followed him there to make sure he found it. He went in to the meeting presumably already in progress and said "I'm so and so's assistant here for such and such meeting" and Michael said "No you aren't, get out!" The poor dude was crushed and I felt bad for having steered him into Michael's venom.

      I did ok financially out of MP3.com having sold the first quarter of my options as soon as they vested (the rest weren't worth much though) so I don't hold any grudge over money (although I know plenty who do and feel like Lindows and other ill-conceived ventures were funded using THEIR money after he cratered their stock options) I just feel bad for how he treated people.

      I once heard one of the tech guys complaining about how Michael loved to say "If I gave you a million dollars could you make this work?!?!" And of course they did because they were rock stars and of course he didn't because he was a bastard.

      Of course, Kevin Carmony was a douche and a half as well and I'm not surprised he had problems at Lindows. He definitely doesn't really get the Free Software thing or he never would have had anything to do with it. They were both trying to take advantage of the "suckers" who give their work away for free.

      Posting anonymously because lots of ex-mp3'ers read /. and I still have to work in this town.

  • Michael Robertson makes Charles Ponzi look legit. Investing in a Robertson start-up is moronic. You would get a better return if you had put $200K in an IndyMac savings account.

  • Every project this guy has touched has turned to shit.

  • Former Fan (Score:3, Interesting)

    by minus-sign (1371393) on Friday October 03 2008, @09:24PM (#25252959)
    I actually liked Linspire. The idea was simple and could have been very profitable: a Linux based OS that was professionally supported. You pay for patches and updates and know it retains support because, well, you pay for it. It didn't work out that way, but the theory was sound. Sorry to see its gone so very very bad.

    • Re:LNL (Score:4, Informative)

      by Gavagai80 (1275204) on Friday October 03 2008, @05:40PM (#25251325)
      Uh, Linspire was as much linux as any other distro. It was KDE with all the usual programs, though most of them renamed. It included proprietary codecs and a commercial dvd player, but was 99% open source and had a 100% open source derivative freespire.

    • They were trying to make money off of being "not MS and not Linux, either".

      How do they explain it "not selling"?

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