LINUX DISTRIBUTOR Linspire has shown what it is costing it to sign a deal with Microsoft over patents.

This morning a press release winged its way from Linspire which said the outfit was "joining the current efforts to improve the ability of OpenOffice.org users to work with the Office Open XML format by increasing the interoperability between ODF and Open XML".

On July 10, Microsoft announced that Asian Linux distributor Turbolinux is the latest Linux company to join its Ecma Open XML-Open Document Format Translator Project.

"Former arch rivals Linspire and Microsoft have continued their recent rapprochement with a collaboration to improve interoperability between OpenOffice.org's Open Document Format (ODF) and Microsoft's Open XML."

After months of hard work, Linspire is proud to announce the beta release of CNR.com. On the 23rd of January, 2007, Linspire announced for the first time that they are working to extend their CNR (Click 'N Run) website for other popular Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE and Debian. The CNR service has already been available
for all Linspire and Freespire users. Kevin Carmony, the President and CEO of Linspire Inc., stated that he had enough with complaints from MS Windows and Mac users about Linux, and that there are too many distributions and each one has a different way of installing software: "When we started Linspire, we knew that we'd need to overcome this complexity. This led to Linspire's CNR ("Click 'N Run") technology."

n an interview today with Linux-Watch, controversial Linux leader Kevin Carmony confirmed rumors that he had resigned as CEO of desktop Linux vendor Linspire on July 31 [...] Carmony also said his resignation, contrary to some rumors, had nothing to do with any disagreement with Linspire's primary owner Michael Robertson, or with fallout from either of Linspire's recent deals with Microsoft.

On July 5, Microsoft quietly released a "Covenant to Customers" to clear up how it is handling its patent deal with Linux distributor Linspire. Instead, it did little but puzzle and annoy members of the Linux community.

According to multiple sources close to Linux distributor Linspire, former CEO Kevin Carmony was not the only executive to leave Linspire at the end of July.

When I was CEO for Linspire, I started work on CNR.com. The goal for CNR.com was to become the central repository for all desktop Linux software for all of the most popular Linux distributions. I wanted to move heavily in this direction, because CNR was the one area where Linspire had a technological and branding advantage, and was also the one area where Linspire could actually make money.

The no-lawsuit agreement reached in June between Linspire and Microsoft earlier this year is almost useless to Linspire customers because of tight restrictions on what the deal covers, according to a high-profile open source legal commentator.