Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Linspire Acquired By Xandros

San Diego-based Linspire, developer of the Linspire and Freespire Linux operating systems, has been acquired by Xandros, a developer of Linux management products. Xandros announced the acquisition this morning, but did not disclose financial terms of the deal. Linspire--formerly Lindows--developed a version of the Linux operating system geared toward consumers, for use on their desktop machines. Xandros said that it would continue to maintain Freespire as an open source project, but did not give any further details on the acquisition. According to a shareholder document leaked by former Linspire executive Kevin Carmony, the deal was structed as a sale of assets, and included all of Linspire's assets relating to developing, marketing, selling, and distributing its Linux-based products. Linspire was the creation of former MP3.com founder Michael Robertson, who initially named the firm "Lindows" but was then forced to change the name to Linspire in 2004, after settling a lawsuit filed by Microsoft.

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