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But somehow I feel ... dirty ... reading it

Indeed, it all does seem a bit incestuous. But look at it from this perspective, finally there is a glimmer of hope that the myriad of distros is counter to a cohesive development of Linux, not just in the traditional "coding" development but in market development, tools, drivers, applications, the list goes on.

Someone on here recently made a very insightful remark that "A distro a day keeps adoption at bay" or something like that. Well, here's some good news that speaks to that bit of wisdowm.

After reading Linspire's FAQ on the agreement, as well as the comments in this thread, I am left pondering

What does Canonical get out of this? On the surface, it seems that it is only Linspire that profits from the association.

What does Canonical get out of this? On the surface, it seems that it is only Linspire that profits from the association.

Canonical get a fast-track to one-click installation of proprietary and/or pay-for apps on the Linux desktop. This is in line with Mark Shuttleworth's aim of making the next version of Ubuntu really multimedia-savvy, and it further solidifies Ubuntu's rep as the desktop Linux of choice for non-tech types and those arriving from Windows. Canonical also get to add the Linspire outfit to their growing portfolio of derivative distros, perhaps bound to Canonical's proprietary Launchpad bug-tracker.

So I'd say Canonical get quite a lot from this, aside from whatever financial details may be involved. As always, though, one might ask whether what is good for Ubuntu is necessarily good for everyone else. We've yet to hear any reaction from Debian, for example, or from competitors to Ubuntu like OpenSuSE.