Ubuntu

Mr Green · 2009-12-17 20:12:47

http://lifehacker.com/5428949/mark-shut … ubuntu-ceo

Ranguvar · 2009-12-17 20:31:43

My second to last sentence here: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 85#p650285

...scary.

jusko · 2009-12-17 21:41:10

It doesn't seem that he'll be going far:

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/
http://blog.canonical.com/?p=307

Interesting that he makes the point that he'll be getting involved more in design & quality. In my opinion Karmic was a very slick release in those aspects --it will be interesting to see how far they can take it.

All the best to him & Canonical.

Gen2ly · 2009-12-17 23:16:59

Ranguvar wrote:

My second to last sentence here: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 85#p650285
...scary.

Indeed... ***bows*** Yes, Arch Nostrodamus.

Well, good luck to Mark, he certainly has brought Ubuntu a long ways. A little disappointed though, they said in the west, "A man never leaves his horse"...

Last edited by Gen2ly (2009-12-17 23:17:20)

flamelab · 2009-12-17 23:32:39

Let's see what will the policy of the new CEO will be.

tlvb · 2009-12-18 02:23:03

Interesting times are afoot. I wonder if it means any big changes to the general direction...

flamelab wrote:

Let's see what will the policy of the new CEO will be.

Developers developers develOuch that chair hurt!

wuischke · 2009-12-18 09:02:09

Hu? As jusko already said, he's going nowhere. He just leaves the business side to someone else and focuses on Ubuntu's design instead. I wouldn't call this "leaving your horse" and I doubt that the current COO (since the foundation of Canonical in 2004) who becomes now CEO will make things very much different.

The biggest difference is probably that she will care more about achieving profitability and less about the details of Ubuntu and that's OK, isn't it? I don't think the executives of Red Hat or Mandriva are evil when they follow the same motivation.

.:B:. · 2009-12-18 10:35:31

I always wondered how long it would take for Shuttleworth to realise he couldn't keep pouring money in it. Sure, he may be a millionnaire, but I doubt Canonical is running break-even at the moment. In that light the cutting back of the free CD service is not an unusual thing; it was an anachronism.

You still need lots of funding to take on a giant like Redmond. Red Hat and Novell have that (I think), and they barely made a dent in its monopoly.

pogeymanz · 2009-12-18 13:25:42

B wrote:

I always wondered how long it would take for Shuttleworth to realise he couldn't keep pouring money in it. Sure, he may be a millionnaire, but I doubt Canonical is running break-even at the moment. In that light the cutting back of the free CD service is not an unusual thing; it was an anachronism.
You still need lots of funding to take on a giant like Redmond. Red Hat and Novell have that (I think), and they barely made a dent in its monopoly.

Apparently Ubuntu is very close to sustainable, which I believe is the main goal. As long as it doesn't lose money, the developers will probably stick around.

Ranguvar · 2009-12-18 20:04:31

wuischke wrote:

Hu? As jusko already said, he's going nowhere. He just leaves the business side to someone else and focuses on Ubuntu's design instead. I wouldn't call this "leaving your horse" and I doubt that the current COO (since the foundation of Canonical in 2004) who becomes now CEO will make things very much different.
The biggest difference is probably that she will care more about achieving profitability and less about the details of Ubuntu and that's OK, isn't it? I don't think the executives of Red Hat or Mandriva are evil when they follow the same motivation.

I don't think they're "evil" either, but it is a step towards becoming the "super-distro company" who becomes the new Microsoft, as I described in the post I referenced.

Yes, he's staying with Canonical -- but he's leaving the business side, which is the side that needs moral leaders most.

.:B:. · 2009-12-18 20:51:10

pogeymanz wrote:

B wrote:
I always wondered how long it would take for Shuttleworth to realise he couldn't keep pouring money in it. Sure, he may be a millionnaire, but I doubt Canonical is running break-even at the moment. In that light the cutting back of the free CD service is not an unusual thing; it was an anachronism.
You still need lots of funding to take on a giant like Redmond. Red Hat and Novell have that (I think), and they barely made a dent in its monopoly.
Apparently Ubuntu is very close to sustainable, which I believe is the main goal. As long as it doesn't lose money, the developers will probably stick around.

If that is true that's great to hear. That also must mean quite a few companies/people are using their spin-off services.

wuischke · 2009-12-18 21:11:02

We're going a bit off-topic here, but my 2 cents:

Yes, the dominance of a single distribution is a very real threat to free software and Ubuntu is the only candidate for this position I see. I trust Google to use permissive (Apache/BSD) style licensing and closed software if it helps their goals. On the other hand, I don't believe they'll create their own distribution, but build on existing software. Canonical is incidentally a contributor to Chrome OS.

I don't think that Canonical will break their promise ("Ubuntu will always be free of charge...", "Ubuntu core applications are all free and open source.") and actively try to subvert free software development. But I'm sure they'll offer commercial/closed software (well, they already do) and their Cloud offerings will increase in importance for Ubuntu, although you can host everything yourself, if you want.

Being the dominant distribution however, closed software/commercial offerings will focus on Ubuntu, I fully agree with you. Take ksplice, where (of course) only distributions with a sufficiently high customer base are targeted and the only Desktop distribution is Ubuntu. (The rest is enterprise or server oriented.) I fortunately don't know yet of Ubuntu-centric software, but I can well imagine this to happen. (I buy closed source Linux games and had no problems so far.)

We'll see how this works out (I hope for the best), but I don't think Mark Shuttleworth's new position will affect the outcome.

P.S. I firmly believe Apple is evil, but that's a topic for another discussion.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-12-17 20:12:47

Ubuntu

#2 2009-12-17 20:31:43

Re: Ubuntu

#3 2009-12-17 21:41:10

Re: Ubuntu

#4 2009-12-17 23:16:59

Re: Ubuntu

#5 2009-12-17 23:32:39

Re: Ubuntu

#6 2009-12-18 02:23:03

Re: Ubuntu

#7 2009-12-18 09:02:09

Re: Ubuntu

#8 2009-12-18 10:35:31

Re: Ubuntu

#9 2009-12-18 13:25:42

Re: Ubuntu

#10 2009-12-18 20:04:31

Re: Ubuntu

#11 2009-12-18 20:51:10

Re: Ubuntu

#12 2009-12-18 21:11:02

Re: Ubuntu

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