Kevin Carmony Questions and Answers

Chris Pirillo — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 06:52:42 +0000

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Prior to this video segment, I did another with Kevin, discussing what has has been going on recently at Linspire. After that, we opened things up to my chat room, and allowed them to ask Kevin some questions. I will put the questions into bold tags, and Kevin’s answers will be italicized.

Is it pronounced “Yoo-buntoo” or “Ooo-buntoo”? I don’t know for sure. I have always pronounced it “Yoo-buntoo”.

Is it true that Linspire began discussions of a sale with Xandros more than a year ago? Absolutely not. It’s been said that talks started over two years ago. Interesting, since I only resigned as CEO ten months ago. Michael claims that he’s gotten to know Andy from Xandros, and so on. However, Michael has always had nothing good to say about Xandros, and their management. It’s interesting that he now is touting their management as rock stars. It just doesn’t make sense.

Is Xandros going to honor the “Lifetime Insiders”? You’ll have to ask them that. They should, but I cannot say.

Would you work for Ubuntu, or stick with the Linux community and bring some of your ideas to fruition? I will definitely stay within the community. I don’t think I would actually go to work for Ubuntu. I am a big Mac user, as well as a Linux user. I am quite busy with my new venture, Dating DNA.

Does your former CEO position leave you at a liability? I think they’re asking if I can be held liable for speaking out now. The answer is no. I didn’t take any severance pay when I left Linspire. I didn’t sign any kind of waiver. I am a shareholder of the company, which gives me every right to complain. Most everything I am talking about has happened since I left the company.

Would you buy Linux stocks? I had RedHat stock for a long time, actually. I currently have Apple stock. My favorite Linux Distro is Ubuntu, which of course is privately held.

Would you support an OEM that uses Ubuntu as their operating system? Absolutely! Big time! I’d love to see more of that.

Why does Michael feel he still has control of the company two years after he left? He still owned the majority of the stock. Even though he had no operational role, he still was the controlling shareholder. That’s why he assumed he could do as he pleases. He would try to mix his companies together. I continually reminded him that Linspire had 100 stockholders, and had to be treated as a separate business.

Do you think the buyout will make the product better or worse? I think Linspire’s final chapter was just written. Xandros grabbed the product and the users for a song. I think it is simply a press release for Xandros.

Do you think Ubuntu will blow up in a big way like Mac OS X has? As soon as I left Linspire, I ran out and bought a Mac, and I also started using Ubuntu. I’d love to see the fit, finish and polish on Ubuntu that the Mac operating system has. There’s no reason that Ubuntu shouldn’t have that polish one day.

One ‘question’ I’ll answer that hasn’t been asked yet, but I’m sure will be later: Does the Microsoft deal awhile back have anything to do with me leaving or what happened with Xandros? No, absolutely it didn’t. That was all about the OEMs. It only affected Linspire as far as OEM deals. It doesn’t have anything to do with anything that has happened in recent months at Linspire.

I really appreciate Kevin taking the time to talk with us. There are a lot of rumors flying around, and Kevin certainly laid some of those to rest.

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Kevin Carmony Questions and Answers

Kevin Carmony Interview (Part 1)

Chris Pirillo — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 05:44:27 +0000

Kevin Carmony Interview (Part 1)

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I met Kevin Carmony a few years ago, when he was the CEO of Linspire. He now is off on his own, running a website called Dating DNA.

Kevin has a successful entrepreneurial past, including founder and President of NewQuest Technologies, Inc. NewQuest introduced one of the very first Microsoft Windows 3.0 products on the market–the award-winning personal information manager Ascend. Ascend received many notable awards, including Byte Magazine’s Hottest Product Award for 1992, Byte’s nomination for Product of the Year in 1992, and Computer Reseller News’ Software Star Search Award in 1991.

Kevin is also a published author and has co-owned a clothing manufacturing firm. He graduated in 1983 as that year’s Outstanding Business Graduate from the School of Management at Weber State University.

The reason I have him with me today is that there is some weird stuff going on with Linspire right now. Kevin knows more about that than I ever could, so I wanted to get him on air to talk with him. Kevin was the first employee at Linspire. He spent four years as the President, and the next two as CEO. He resigned only about ten months ago. His years as President were challenging for him. He was working under Michael Robertson at that time. Michael decided to move on to other ventures two years ago, and promised to stay out of the running of Linspire, leaving that to Kevin. For two years, Michael did just that.

During that time, Kevin came out with Freespire, among other things. About ten months ago, though, Michael and Kevin began having serious disagreements about what direction to take next. The biggest one dealt with layoffs. Kevin wanted to do things one way, he wanted to do them another. Since Michael was a non-functioning, non-executive chairman who did nothing with the company for two years, Kevin handled the layoffs the way he thought was fair. After more disagreements, Kevin resigned. To top matters off and make them worse, Michael then filed a police report claiming that myself and five other Executives embezzled the company to get severance packages for the people who were laid off. Michael tried to reverse the wire transfers of the payments. They sent 1099s to those people, so that they’d have to pay the taxes back to the IRS that they already paid via withholding. All in all, Michael and the new CEO of Linspire made those people’s lives a living hell.

At this point, Kevin couldn’t take it anymore. He began going public with what was transpiring. On June 30th, Kevin received a very short memo that went out to all Linspire shareholders. The memo stated that “The stockholders voted to approve…” the sale of all Linspire assets to Xandros. At that point, there was no mention of how much it was sold for or anything. As a major stockholder, I offered to purchase the company at fifty cents per share. With Michael refusing to state how much the shares are worth or were sold for, it stands to reason that there is something just not right.

Michael has publicly stated that the assets of his company were sold to Xandros after “years of frustration in trying to achieve the goal of desktop Linux.. Kevin contradicts this, and I have to agree. Just because Linspire, Kevin included, may not have succeeded as well as Ubuntu, does not mean that it’s impossible to achieve.

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Kevin Carmony Interview (Part 1)

Chris Pirillo » linspire

Kevin Carmony Questions and Answers

Kevin Carmony Interview (Part 1)