As most of you know who would be reading this post, Kevin Carmony left Linspire in the middle of last year just before Linspire 6.0 was released. He joined the Mitt Romney campaign, and he always has a few small ventures that he is working on.

Anyway, Kevin has his own blog. A few months ago he wrote in his blog that he was now using Ubuntu instead of Linspire. He said he liked it.

More recently, however, Kevin wrote another blog and speculated that Ubuntu would not do much, if anything, more with the CNR (Click N Run) Warehouse, in contrast to Linspire reports that Ubuntu and others would be using CNR.

Instead, Kevin notices that CNR is starting to have Windows applications on it and he expects to see more. In fact, in a follow-up chat on his blog with a few respondents, Kevin said that this kind of thing was typical from Michael Robertson - he dabbles in one thing, then goes on and dabbles in something else.

Finally, Kevin predicted that Linspire and Freespire will not even be around a year from now. Based on my own observations, I'd have to agree. Freespire 1 was very exciting and it looked very promising, but Freespire 2 was a big disappointment. Similarly, Linspire 5.0 was probably the peak of development. Linspire 6.0 was a disappointment to those who reviewed it. Given the pace at which other projects are moving - especially Ubuntu, I don't see Linspire or Freespire ever capturing a significant mind share.

Michael Robertson will almost certainly come up with another bleeding edge idea. He did have an interesting one in MP3, and even the Linspire idea had great promise, but it never got the interest of a sufficient community.

One last comment: early community interest seems to be the key factor on open software projects. Fedora and Ubuntu are successful because of solid backing but also because of a well engaged community. Linspire and Freespire certainly have had a dedicated community, but it has been a relatively small one, and virtually unknown to the broad Internet audience in comparison to many other communities.