Ubuntu debuts its Upstream Report [LWN.net]

Ubuntu debuts its Upstream Report

Posted Oct 2, 2008 2:27 UTC (Thu) by nevyn (subscriber, #33129)
In reply to: Ubuntu debuts its Upstream Report by kragil
Parent article: Ubuntu debuts its Upstream Report

Canonical isn't making money.

Not true.

They loose lots of money .. (on a pretty consistent basis so far)

Possibly true, although as a private company only they know.

So up until now Ubuntu is essentially a charity organisation that sends out CDs to everyone

So you agree, they are spending money ... just not on development.

and develops a _very_ popular distro.

I think we've established that they mostly market a distro. ... and as to how popular it is, well popcon vs. smolt stats. are pretty close. So let's just say "one of the popular" distros.

So you're argument (or "logic" as you say) is that it's fine for them not to participate, even though they are one of the popular distributions, because they are spending that money on PR/marketing ... but it wouldn't be fine for Red Hat or Novell to just stop paying developers to participate upstream and instead just spend that money on PR/marketing?

Or maybe you're just saying it's fine if noone grows the pie but just spends all their money on trying to grab as big a slice of the current pie as possible?

That's fine, I guess, you can have that opinion ... but given that I actually like Linux, and want to see it improve faster (and I'd kind of prefer having a job) personally I'll choose option B. Which is pointing out how Canonical are hurting the community and need to change. As did Greg, probably for the same reasons.

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Ubuntu debuts its Upstream Report

Posted Oct 2, 2008 4:13 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

if you don't think that marketing a distro, especially to people who have trouble with existing distros isn't growing the pie then you are being blind.

it's not a zero-sum game, ubuntu's gain doesn't directly cause RedHat loss

Ubuntu debuts its Upstream Report

Posted Oct 2, 2008 4:39 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

" Canonical isn't making money.
Not true.
They loose lots of money .. (on a pretty consistent basis so far)
Possibly true, although as a private company only they know."

As of May 22, 2008 Mark was quoted in an interview as saying that Canonical was "not close" to breaking even. I can't imagine a more qualified opinion on the matter than Shuttleworth.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/may/22/internet...

This interview is also interesting to note that because Mark talks about the future of software as "unlicensed" software. That is a bit of an odd way of describing FOSS if that was his intent. Everywhere else I see the phrase "unlicensed software" used it is used in the context of some sort of licensing violation. I'm pretty sure that Mark doesn't mean to imply that the future of software is going to be the use software in violation of the license that it is offered under.

-jef

Ubuntu debuts its Upstream Report

Posted Oct 2, 2008 8:21 UTC (Thu) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]

> > and develops a _very_ popular distro.
> I think we've established that they mostly market a distro.

Who established that? you? Then you're part of a vocal group of people, but where others (me included) take objection to that opinion. Ubuntu develops a popular distribution by integrating different packages for a target audience of computer non-experts desktop users better than their competitors. This integration and smoothing work is *not* just marketing -- and it doesn't matter that you and others want to debase that important work that's part of our Linux eco-system.

For the record, I am not involved in Ubuntu and don't even use it. (I installed it once in a VM and recognized after a few weeks that it's not my style of distro.) But I've met many people who started to use Linux because of Ubuntu -- they tried RH and SUSE before, and Ubuntu was the first Linux distro that »did things right« for them. And just because of those newbies starting to use Linux, Ubuntu is a Good Thing(tm).