Question [LWN.net]

Question

Posted Sep 15, 2004 19:06 UTC (Wed) by ccyoung (guest, #16340)
Parent article: Ubuntu 4.10 Preview released

Everything sounds good, but is this a volunteer or business effort? What is the business plan here? How are these guys going to make money? Are they sponered?

If they have a good distro, I'd like them to stick around for a while.

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Question

Posted Sep 15, 2004 19:37 UTC (Wed) by mmarsh (subscriber, #17029) [Link]

Well, the distro is "owned" by Canonical Ltd. according to their web site. On the Canonical homepage:

"Canonical Ltd. is committed to the development, distribution and promotion of open source software products, and to providing tools and support to the open source community."

So it sounds like their business model is custom tools and support.

Question

Posted Sep 15, 2004 19:45 UTC (Wed) by holstein (subscriber, #6122) [Link]

It do looks like the idea is "tools and support", while trying to build a community :

Ubuntu is a community driven project. It is with and through community feedback and participation that Ubuntu is directed, improved, and brought forward.

In the Community section.

Question

Posted Sep 15, 2004 21:18 UTC (Wed) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link]

I'm not sure myself how the finances are supposed to work out, but I do know that Canonical have hired an impressive selection of core Debian developers, so they certainly understand about getting the right people for the task at hand. Having these people all paid to work on Debian stuff will be good for Debian as well as Cononical/ubuuntu. The only problem is if the project doesn't work out - we might end up with a lot of DD's out of a job at the same time...

Question

Posted Sep 15, 2004 21:49 UTC (Wed) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

It is a mixed commercial and community project funded by Mark Shuttleworth. There is a monolithic service company rather than the many-and-varied service providers we are trying for with UserLinux. Mark owns the service company entirely - I discussed this with him a while back, apparently he doesn't believe in employee stock as he wants full control of any company he does.

Thanks

Bruce

Question

Posted Sep 16, 2004 8:16 UTC (Thu) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link]

and you, bruce, would've had a lot more people and companies on your side
had you played ball with a representative group.

i totally agree with you that a central company is not optimized for the
market. but you really need to let go of your personal vision being the
end result, as pretty much all of us have. you had the opportunity to
provide great things to many in the form of a coordinated service based
concept. that part of user-linux i totally grok. instead you decided to
try and force your personal vision upon the world.

but you are no more effective than ubuntu because of your position. if you
wish to form something that is seriously world changing, get in contact
with me and we can expand the horizons of user linux to include a far
wider group of interests.

btw, goo luck in hawaii later this year, and i'll see you january in the
islands. maybe we can talk then?

Question

Posted Sep 16, 2004 12:56 UTC (Thu) by louie (subscriber, #3285) [Link]

All great work has a central vision. :)

Question

Posted Sep 20, 2004 2:10 UTC (Mon) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

get in contact with me

So far, I haven't locked anyone out of the project nor have I discouraged anyone from taking on an ambitious task as long as it doesn't block the critical path to make this upcoming release. My policy is "show me". Do what you want within UserLinux or elsewhere, and make it work, and there's a much better chance that I'll believe in your vision.

If instead you want to send me a really long rambling email about what is wrong with Linux, as a number of people are wont to do, I will attempt to read it (some of them are impenetrable), but in general have not been able to generate a coherent plan out of such things.

Thanks

Bruce