“Recently, Ubuntu founder and Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth spoke with The 451 Group at length about Dapper, Ubuntu, and the trends and development of the open source and free software movements as they relate to enterprise information technology. Last week, we ran Part I of a multi-part series in which The 451 Group presents Shuttleworth’s comments along with insight and commentary from 451 Group analysts who cover the worlds of open source and enterprise software.”
i think novell should buy canonical.
i think novell should buy canonical.
Why not? They’ve bought everyone else. However, Novell have a tendency to have problems with every company they purchase…….or rather those companies have problems with Novell…….
Edited 2006-06-03 17:50
“Why not?”
Because we would loose diversity for the sake of one company. If Novell were to buy Canonical either Ubuntu would be merged with SUSE, or they would end up with a common base. If anything has happened to SUSE since Novell purchased it, it would be that now it reflects Novell’s experience at making business oriented software as well as their inexperience in making software for your everyday home user. [Ku|Xu|U]buntu is more attractive for use on the home desktop imo, and I’d hate to see that change since we’ve already got plenty of business software providers.
When Mandriva bought Conectiva and Lycoris they ate up two companies that made products I preferred over what Mandriva had to offer, the same holds true today. Besides gaining some customers from the two companies purchased, Mandriva hasn’t experienced any significant changes to it’s products that couldn’t have happened without buying up these two companies. They may have acquired some of the minds behind the other products, but no revolutionary new software that they currently use.
Rather than seeing all the Linux distributions eaten up by a small handfull of companies, I’d much rather see Linux keep up the diversity which gives it so much strenght.
Because we would loose diversity for the sake of one company.
The ‘why not’ was a slight joke, based on the fact that Novell have a very poor track record of acquiring companies and making them work. Wordperfect, Silver Stream……. The list goes on.
I guess then they would have a product that would run good on Sun Sparc servers.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=14632
Edited 2006-06-03 18:36
Dekstop linux…
because of what Mark Shuttleworth said:
people will choose Windows for convenience or out of laziness, Mac for its UI and Ubuntu for its righteousness.”
WTF does righteousness have to do with Technology? Maybe Ubuntu should come with a sticker that says, no animals were harmed in the making of this product and that would be RIGHTEOUS.
because of what Mark Shuttleworth said:
You go ahead and erase Ubuntu. But while you’re doing it, go back and reread the article, because the comment you quoted was not made by Shuttleworth.
You! Higher mammal. Can you read?
Seriously, though, what part of “As Rachel Chalmers said in her comment to Part I” do you not understand?
It is as if comprehensive reading has just evaporated from most people’s skill set lately. Maybe, stephanem, you should spend more time actually reading and UNDERSTANDING the article before spouting off.
>WTF does righteousness have to do with Technology? Maybe Ubuntu should come with a sticker that says, no animals were harmed in the making of this product and that would be RIGHTEOUS.<
I have to agree, perhaps a new amendment is in order
Seperation of the church of technology and polotics.
It sounds like he’s starting a cult lol
don’t get me wrong, i am pro linux but that was a pretty strange statement, makes me question his motives.
Edited 2006-06-03 17:11
There is no seperating politics from anything. As long as people and societies are involved in something, politics will be inextricably intertwined with it. Only fools will pretend it doesn’t matter.
Software, as it becomes more critical to society, will become increasingly political. Windows isn’t just a product, it’s a product by an American monopoly. The significance of that fact is huge. If you’re a Chinese IT person interested in national security, the politics of Windows matters. If you’re a humanitarian interested in disseminating computers to developing nations, the politics of Windows matters. Heck, if you’re a red-blooded capitalist interested in the continued existence of a free market in the computer industry, the politics of Windows matters.
Pretending otherwise is ignorant.
PS) Do I have to point out the irony in the original poster’s statement? Uninstalling Ubuntu based on the comments of the person who funds it? That’s not the actions of someone who is apolitical, that is a symbolic political gesture of opposition to somebody else’s politics!
Edited 2006-06-03 18:33
Far have we come. Which OS we choose has now become a lifestyle choice.
I think Microsoft should buy Canonical and embrace and extend and lock Linux.
Clearly you have no comprehension of OPEN SOURCE
If Microsoft or another company was to buy a Linux company, they would indeed own that company…
They would not however own Linux. Or in fact, would they own that companies distro.
You see, ANYONE is free to modify Linux and release there own version, but no-one can “lock” it, as the source is freely available.
Linux cannot be owned by any company, therefore it cannot be locked.
i think canonical shoul buy novell.
I completely agree. Once N has been purchased and absorbed then RH.
i think canonical shoul buy novell.
:-). Ubuntu is flavour of the month so this must be popular looking at its mod points.
Considering that ubuntu has been a damn good distro since Hoary, and there has been steady news about it for over 18 months, this annoying “flavour of the month” thing is getting pretty old, don’t you think?
18 months is a bit exaggerated though.
But repos seems to work better with Ubuntu than with Fedora (but then, beating yourself with a hammer is likely to make more sense than using Fedora).
But if you have the time and the will to do it, compiling from source is still the best way to get a system running properly. Unfortunately it takes quite a while.
Of the binary distributions *Ubuntu is clearly much better working than most.
Here: http://osvids.com/
Saw it, just pointless eye candy + OSX’ exposè feature rip-off. E.g., isn’t playing video at the edge between two desktop pointless? Only shows “I can do that”. “What is it good for?”. “I don’t know”.
When Mandriva bought Conectiva and Lycoris they ate up two companies that made products I preferred over what Mandriva had to offer, the same holds true today. Besides gaining some customers from the two companies purchased, Mandriva hasn’t experienced any significant changes to it’s products that couldn’t have happened without buying up these two companies. They may have acquired some of the minds behind the other products, but no revolutionary new software that they currently use.
Neal Saferstein
He is applauding laptop support. Maybe, he has a right to, but it does not work on my Acer TravelMate 8104. I got an ATI card.
Really, then, your problem is with ATI –they’re doing as little as they can for open source, making a lot of us with their hardware cramp. Once they release the drivers that work, we’ll feel some relief.
Your problem has nothing to do with Ubuntu.
This article has an interesting discussion on Canonical’s business model. I’ve noticed that Ubuntu’s “Shipit” service has restricted the orders to ten CDs maximum. Now they say: “We will consider special requests for larger quantities under special circumstances.”
https://shipit.ubuntu.com/
https://shipit.kubuntu.org/
https://shipit.edubuntu.org/
It looks like Canonical has decided to cut down any unnecessary costs. Hurrying the development of the Ubuntu Live-CD with a GUI installer also seems to have similar reasoning behind it because now they don’t need to ship two separate CDs (the installer & the Live-CD) and this should be cheaper.
Let’s just hope that Canonical’s business model succeeds and they can keep developing Ubuntu and shipping free CDs for many years to come.
BTW, there’s also paid support available for non-profit distros like Debian. http://www.debian.org/consultants/
The eye candy isn’t all pointless – it makes the active Window stand out more and the like. Anyway, there will be more use for hardware-accelerated compositing as the technology matures.
And also, some people do like eye-candy, Mr. Party Pooper.
lol, I was joking about the politics thing….. sorry if I didn’t make that clear.
The stack of free software for Linux is so valuable that, a partnership of a strong community with like-minded commercial backing can produce a top-quality OS on the revenue of support contracts alone. Thousands of free software enthusiasts have known this for years, but Mark Shuttleworth was the first person to actually try it. Everybody else wants the satisfaction of selling a copy of their distro for $89, which has kept these companies from gaining the momentum Ubuntu has achieved. The licensing fee is a drop in the revenue bucket for Red Hat, but it’s shot in the foot.
Of course, Canonical was, up until now, in the investment phase of the process, but with the release of Dapper, Ubuntu is now intended to win contracts and begin to support itself. Success is far from guaranteed, but I don’t really see it failing. Ubuntu has a pretty streamlined development process, and it doesn’t take too many servers at $750 per year to pay for its continued development.
If Ubuntu keeps doing what it’s doing, Canonical will be flush with cash well before Rascally Rabbit arrives.
This is a criticism of Ubuntu/Canonical that I have never understood. Mark Shuttleworth made $560 million before his 27th birthday (Wikipedia). He’s clearly a natural businessman and a very, very smart guy. He knows how to make money, and believes that Ubuntu is a going to do that for him. And he’s clearly a far better judge of that than any of us*, so why does everybody have a problem with Canonical?
* N.B. If you happen to be worth a couple of hundred million, please ignore this statement.
In Denmark we call it “Janteloven”.
That one is probably the reason why people criticise *Ubuntu, Canonical and Shuttleworth (funny name, though – sorry.. have to write this -> He can shuttle his worth back and forth any way he wants to *sigh*)
Making oodles of money selling a business during the .com era “bubble” is no sign of savviness as a business person. It’s more a sign of being in the right place at the right time. If he tried to start that same business today, he would have most likely faily miserably.
I remember GIs (privates no less) running around at Ft. Hood talking about their “investment portfolios” during that period. I even met a few who had made millions just in stock trades in the past *3 months*. That’s on 20-someodd thousand dollar a year income. Now, granted, most of them lost all their money when things burst because they had absolutely no clue what they were doing, but it still speaks volumes for the necessary intelligence/business sense required to make lots of money during those times. Too bad I decided to go to university instead of opening my business back then, I could have sold it for millions just on the business plan alone.
All that being said, from everything I read Mark is a really sharp/smart guy, and he knew when to “get out” instead of being flushed down the toilet like most other people in that time period. Congrats to him, and congrats to his job with this distro (and all the people involved in it!) Keep up the great work.
You make it sound like he won the lottery or something. I think it’s more substantial than that. To me, the point is: “He did it”. That makes him pretty smart, clever or whatever you want to call it. I know you eluded to this. But, you bordered on just calling him lucky.
It’s frustrating to me when people look at other people’s success and think that they somehow didn’t/don’t deserve it. The fact is that most successful people do deserve their success. They either worked hard for years, invested in their own ideas and made good decisions or knew how to sieze an opportunity.
I’m not saying that you didn’t giving Shuttleworth credit. I’m just saying you could have done it without all of the stipulations.
“You make it sound like he won the lottery or something. I think it’s more substantial than that. To me, the point is: “He did it”. That makes him pretty smart, clever or whatever you want to call it. I know you eluded to this. But, you bordered on just calling him lucky. ”
In all essence, he did win the lottery, and that was absolutely my intent to make clear, hence I wrote what I wrote. I did not “border(ed) on just calling him lucky”, however. I specifically wrote he seems to be a sharp/intelligent fellow.
Again, like most people in that era who made big money, it didn’t matter if you were smart or stupid, if you “won the lottery”, you “won the lottery.” The lottery doesn’t discriminate based on intelligence or some kind of sense of entitlement where you *deserve* to win. Mark got EXTREMELY lucky. Tell me with a straight face, and with all honesty, that you think selling a company which sells signed certs named “Thawte” or whatever it was called is worth 500+ million. That’s nuts. Absolutely nuts. He *got lucky*.
“It’s frustrating to me when people look at other people’s success and think that they somehow didn’t/don’t deserve it. The fact is that most successful people do deserve their success. They either worked hard for years, invested in their own ideas and made good decisions or knew how to sieze an opportunity. ”
Nobody said he didn’t deserve it as you suggest. I’m sure the guy is a hard worker blah blah blah and deserves his 500 million. I won’t speak to what I think about the free market rewarding somebody so much money that he cannot possibly spend it all without insanity, but hey, he “earned” it, even if “earning” it simply means starting any random company during the .com bubble era and selling it to any other random company with lots of cash.
Nobody is saying he’s not a hard worker and so forth.
I will, however, make a point. You say the “most successful people do deserve their success.” You seem to be an idealist, that’s quite good, I wish I had the same ability. However, let me show you a optimistic but realistic view. Successful people have learned to manipulate those around them in order to be successful. In Shuttleworth’s case, he manipulated a big company into paying a gazillion dollars for something that can be done with a 500$ (back then 1000$) pc, and about 2 hours worth of coding. 500 million for that *idea* basically. The reward really overshadows the accomplishment, imo. Let’s look at some other successful people. Britney Spears, we all know she’s super duper talented and deserves her millions, right? Hell no, she looks good (to some.. apparently most) but she can’t sing worth a damn, her music is very likely not written by her (both music and lyrics), and her success simply hinges on the huge marketting machine which manipulates youth (her label) basically telling people “you like her music and lyrics, plus she’s hot. Buy her music at 20 dollars a cd!” They do, in droves. Do you *really* mean to say she is somehow deserving of her millions? I mean we’re talking more money than Martin Luther King ever made, by far. More money than just about any of the heros in the 9/11 made or will *ever* make, for *anything* they do, more money than probably anybody you have ever known will make, etc. I can think of a LOT of people who *deserve* at least a moderate amount of success.
That’s not how it works though. A few people *get lucky* and make 99% of the money in this country. The rest of us run around praying to “win the lottery.” Success isn’t tied to blood, sweat, and tears like it used to be. It hasn’t been that way for a long time, and that’s why a lot of the things are as screwed up as they are. Shuttleworth may not be an example of this, maybe he really did deserve 500 million+ dollars for basically an idea. Who knows, I’m not in a position to make that judgement. I’m just saying it’s not as rosey as you make it seem to be.
“I’m not saying that you didn’t giving Shuttleworth credit. I’m just saying you could have done it without all of the stipulations.”
By making this statement, apparently you are missing my point. I’ll say it again, Shuttleworth seems to be quite an intelligent fellow. I still don’t think he *deserved* 500 million, but hey – he got lucky! There is ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong with that.
Some people win the real lottery too, is that a bad thing?
OK. I don’t want to go around in circles on this. We’re not that far away on this. You make some good points. All I’m saying is that he took an opportunity that you and I and practically everyone else in the world had the same opportunity to take. But, he’s the one that did it. You can’t call him lucky for that. And, for that matter, I don’t think you can call Britney Spears lucky either. I don’t like her stuff. I would never pay money to hear her sing. In fact, I might pay money to not have to hear her music. But, I don’t think of people like this as lucky. Anyone can put together the same combination. No one is stopping you from doing it, since you know how it is done.
On pretty much everything thing else I agree with you.
Hehe. you, myself, and practically everyone else in the world didn’t have the same opportunity. I graduated from HS in 2000, and went to uni. No starting a business for me, and 2001 *poof* it’s all gone.
You’re right though, about nobody stopping me from *doing it* because I have, I own my own data center now. Oddly enough though, even with something to show for my business, including success, nobody has offered me 500 million dollars.
Timing is everything, and so is luck!
Other than that, it seems we agree!
Cheers,
David
Making oodles of money selling a business during the .com era “bubble” is no sign of savviness as a business person. It’s more a sign of being in the right place at the right time. If he tried to start that same business today, he would have most likely faily miserably.
He still has failed miserably. Until a steady revenue stream comes in that makes Canonical self-sufficient he simply hasn’t got himself a business. At the moment it is a project of Mark’s that he is willing to sensibly invest reasonable amounts in because he feels that it will turn into something in the long haul.