Shuttleworth: Reflections on Ubuntu, Canonical and the march to free software adoption

Mark Shuttleworth responds to critiques of Canonical's (and Ubuntu's) contributions to free software. "When Ubuntu was conceived, the Linux ecosystem was in a sense fully formed. We had a kernel. We had GNOME and KDE. We had X and libc and GCC and all the other familiar tools. Sure they had bugs and they had shortcomings and they had roadmaps to address them. But there was something missing: sometimes it got articulated as "marketing", sometimes as "end-user focus". I remember thinking "that's what I could bring". So Ubuntu, and Canonical, have quite explicitly NOT put effort into things which are obviously working quite well, instead, we've tried to focus on new ideas and new tools and new components. I see that as an invigorating contribution to the broader open source ecosystem, and I hear from many people that they perceive it the same way. Those who say "but Canonical doesn't do X" may be right, but that misses all the things we do, which weren't on the map beforehand. Of course, there's little that we do exclusively, and little that we do that others couldn't if they made that their mission, but I think the passion of the Ubuntu community, and the enthusiasm of its users, reflects the fact that there is something definitively new and distinctive about the project. That's something to celebrate, something to be proud of, and something to motivate us to continue."

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