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I think Mark Shuttlesworth is beginning to see Ubuntu's success as his ticket to the open source world--including developers.

Yep, it was in poor taste. I think that as time marches on the Ubuntu craze will wind down and folks will see that Ubuntu has its share of bugs--just another distro.

Me? I switched to Slackware in September from Kubuntu and I ain't going back.

Maybe Shuttlesworth and company are becoming too familiar for their own good to everyone in Linux.

I see nothing wrong with anything Mark Shuttlesworth did. There is and should be at least a little competition between all the Linux distros for good developers. Mark saw the possibility that some Suse developers may not be happy with the Microsoft deal and he extended an invitation to them to come to Ubunu if they decided to jump ship. I don't understand why some people are so uptight about that.

He was morally RIGHT to try to poach the SuSe developers after the stupid stunt they pulled. That's what Capitalism is all about... and OSS is the key to employees working for more than just a paycheck and not able to adapt to the moral or ethical directions their companies take. It was a great shot across Novell's bow... They're trying to "have their cake" with Microsoft.. Somebody CAN and WILL relieve them of the COMMUNITIES developers if the bosses step out of line. That is a great "grown up" moment for OSS!!!

Samba was created before Suse had anything to do with it... it can go away just as fast... the beauty of GPL is that PROGRAMMERS are worth more that the "IP" of the source code... you can't seperate the two... like all the other tech companies (MS, SCO, SUN, JBoss, etx..) do and keep your company. Expertise and experience is the job qualifications, and there are more company "benifits" than just a paycheck... something OTHER than just making a buck.

Maybe. Then again, it's kinda like beauty, it's in the eye of the beholder. Personally, I wouldn't have done it. Not on their dime. I would have put up a website at Umbuntu inviting any and all developers reiterating my goals and priciples and had a media push to invite any willing developers to join the team.

Personally, I was more offended by Novell, but I'm still waiting to see what's going on. I've got three machines running SUSE enterprise and I have subscriptions till this summer. I'd rather stick with them, I do like SUSE.

Aside from everything, it makes me think about one thing I learned to try to always look at when it comes to something I depend on. It's the concept of never having a single point of failure. Even if you don't consider the Novell/MS deal, it still illustrates that at any time, Novell (or any single distributer) could make a deal or a decision that's detrimental to their customers. What happens then, where do you get support, how do you cope?

I'm thinking it might be better if I'm going to use Linux to hire my own Linux guy and roll my own distro or use plain Linux like Slackware or a community distro like Debian.

My hope of hopes is maybe when Solaris is GPLed I can start running it instead. I'd love to see what SUN's engineers could do if they had access to that huge pool of GPL software to improve Solaris (espcially in hardware support).

Nice post, the linked one. I especially liked the ad at the bottom: "Get Microsoft Windows Vista Business Upgrade License NOW!" Oh, the irony...

This is the grown up world - he's allowed to do what he did. It's his dime as well if he wants to offer people a job. I think it's kind of funny that people are using linux, software which Mark's company invests in, and they complain that he offers jobs to programmers. In the world I'm from, successful companies pursue employees when they feel it's important to their goals.

Mark's goals for Ubuntu are pretty noble, don't you think? I wish Mark were running Pharma companies so that everyone could benefit from affordable healthcare.


To Mark and all Linux developers and companies, people who take time to generate bug reports, and anyone else I forgot: Thank You for giving us a free alternative to proprietary software.

Anyway, sorry for the rant.

C'mon now, aint nothing wrong with offering a body a job. Maybe you aint looking for one, ok but never hurts to be offered. Treat your people right, don't be evil and they'll stay.

Who knows, enough people take that tack and honesty may even come back in style.

they are sour.

Nothing wrong with what Shuttleworth did. Any employer who has jobs available and knows of a talent pool that may have been recently shaken up does the same thing.

No-one can be told that Arch Linux is better than anything else. You have to see it for yourself.

So just exactly why is it that the FUD is about being "morally RIGHT"?

I honestly don't see why the GNU group forces people to go along with their social movement. Yes, Richard Stallman honestly and openly tells people this any time they ask, Free Software is a social movement.

Shouldn't we be free to choose, via a free market, not Free Software dictates?

Shuttleworth may have pulled a stupid stunt, he may have made a brilliant move, but he's free to make it, and we're free to agree or disagree.

Please, stop polluting the comment space with your inane rantings about your moral high ground.

Beta was technically superior to VHS. So was ED Beta superior to Super VHS. But they failed due to specific details. Get over it already, and let him do as he wishes, without telling the rest of us we've got to do.

I agree with tomcat and others - thank you for giving us, for free, something valuable that we can utilize. It might not be the best yet, but it doesn't cost us money. Heck, Shuttleworth will PAY for the CDs even!

Thanks to OSNews for hosting as well - we get quite a bit of news and a forum to sound off, too.