Sponsorship

This article seems very consistent with the other things Mark Shuttleworth has said and done in the last few years. He clearly believes in copyright assignment and finding ways to monetize FOSS on the desktop.

He is clearly frustrated that FOSS is a cost center rather than a profit center for companies. For example, Google and Facebook spend money on FOSS to support their operations, but they don't directly make money from FOSS. It is an expense for them, like air conditioning or health care.

Shuttleworth seems to think that using copyright assignment, companies can offer premium version of their projects alongside open source ones. This would allow them to generate a revenue stream of their own.

It would have been nice to have fewer, longer excerpts from the speech. Having just a few whole paragraphs would probably have been better. But it's not like the content of this speech should surprise anyone. He's been saying these things for years. It's kind of like seeing "breaking news: Pope thinks Jesus is a great guy" in the headlines.

P.S. I don't think I agree with Mark... copyright assignment seems to separate communities into first-class citizens who get the profit from selling proprietary licenses and second-class citizens who never will. But that's another issue and it's been discussed many times elsewhere...