| Xandros co-founder dies at 59 |
Sep. 08, 2005
 Dr. Frederick H. (Rick) Berenstein, co-founder and chairman of Linux desktop company Xandros Inc., died of brain cancer in New York Tuesday. Berenstein was instrumental in convincing Wall Street of the financial viability of the open source software business.
Xandros makes a desktop Linux operating system aimed at both corporate and home users that runs Microsoft Office, among other software. In December 2004, the company announced a deal with low-end computer maker Microtel to supply fully loaded (with Xandros Desktop software ) Linux computers and sell them via Wal-Mart's online store for $200. Xandros markets its own software online and in retail stores.
Berenstein was an early investor in companies such as Ximian and CodeWeavers and was co-founder of Linux incubator Linux Global Partners. He was a vocal proponent of free and open source software (FOSS) in the Eastern investment community and, in the late 1990s, was able to pursuade a number of deep-pocket investors to put their money where the open source software was.
"Dr. Berenstein's passing will not affect the operations of the company in any way," a Xandros spokeswoman told eWeek.com. "As his illness progressed, he had turned over his responsibilities to others in the company."
"Fortunately, Rick laid a solid foundation by assembling a talented management and Linux team over the last two years that has been executing on his initial vision," CEO Andreas Typaldos said. "Our public profile ... will remain the same. Xandros has always been a team effort and collective vision, not centered around a particular person."
Berenstein, whose doctorate was in psychiatry, was considered a candid speaker and savvy dealmaker. Regarding a 2002 legal dispute with Linspire (then known as Lindows), Berenstein was quoted in IT Manager's Journal: "OK, I'll tell you about Linspire. When they were Lindows, they wanted to build an operating system in which the user would simply log in as a root user all the time. They couldn't get anybody to help them; nobody thought that was a good idea. They came to us, and we said, sure, we'll help you, but we also don't think it's a good idea. So we gave them our Mercedes engine, and then they built a jalopy around it."
Read the full eWeek.com story here.
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