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DistributionsCanonical courts financial contributionsFinancial contributions are part of many free software projects. Users can, and do, contribute in lots of different ways, but helping the project keep the lights on and, perhaps, even cover some development time, is fairly common. Financial donations may also be used to champion certain features for a project; by ponying up some money, the donor may get some input into the direction of the project. The latter seems to be part of the motivation for Canonical's recent push to more prominently feature—but not require—financial contributions as part of the desktop download process. On October 9, Steve George, Canonical's VP of Communications and Products, posted a message to the company's blog that described the change:
Today, we're making it easier for people to financially contribute to
Ubuntu if they want to. By introducing a 'contribute' screen as part of the
desktop download process, people can choose to financially support
different aspects of Canonical's work: from gaming and apps, developing the
desktop, phone and tablet, to co-ordination of upstreams or supporting
Ubuntu flavours. It's important to note that Ubuntu remains absolutely
free, financial contribution remains optional and it is not required in
order to download the software.
![[Contribution screen]](/images/2012/ubuntu-contrib-sm.jpg)
It's a bit surprising to see a large, company-backed distribution looking for financial contributions, but George made it clear that there has always been a way to do so, "albeit in a not-easy-to-find spot on our website". He said that users have been asking for a simpler way to contribute money, so Canonical was making one available. Now, clicking through to a desktop download page brings up a web application (seen at right, click to see a larger version) that allows contributions of up to $125 in each of eight categories. According to community manager Jono Bacon, the application was inspired by the various Humble Bundles, which allow people to pay what they wish for computer games or ebooks. While the sliders used by Humble Bundles allow users to choose the amount to pay the authors, charities, and the company, the sliders in the Canonical application allow a choice of features contributors would like to put their money toward. The possibilities are:
To aid the user in evaluating how much to give, the application suggests products that would cost roughly the same as the total contribution. Those range from a "grande extra shot mocha latte chino" at $2, through a "pair of LP Matador bongo drums" at $100, up to "an eight year-old dromedary camel" at $1000. Visitors can either choose their donation level and contribute via PayPal, or click through a link to go on to the download. While Canonical undoubtedly does a great deal of work for the benefit of millions of Linux users, this is a rather unconventional approach. It is a little hard to imagine that it will generate a significant revenue stream, at least for an organization the size of Canonical. But the real value to Canonical (and by extension, Ubuntu) may be in the feedback it gets from users. The categories for features are fairly broad, but a consensus among users on one (or a few) of them is certainly useful information. The fact that those users are willing to pay something to make that vote makes the data all the more interesting. There have been persistent complaints that some of the other Ubuntu flavors, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu, and so on, have lacked for financial backing in comparison to the number of users they bring to the table. This effort would give those flavors an opportunity to send a message, for example. It would be great if the community were to get some visibility into the contributions. Canonical may be understandably loath to give out direct financial information, but there are other ways to do the reporting that would still benefit both the Ubuntu community as well as the larger FOSS ecosystem. Information on the "votes", perhaps as percentages of the number and dollar amount of the contributions, would be useful. That would help Ubuntu see places where more effort is desired as well as identifying potential trouble spots for other distributions and projects. According to George, the company is working on a schedule and format for reporting on the contributions. Canonical has pursued other non-traditional revenue sources in the past, so this could just be another. With enough different revenue streams, even if some are fairly small and unpredictable, the company could reach a profitable state. That can only be a good thing for the long-term prosperity of not just Canonical, but the Ubuntu distribution as well. Ubuntu has millions of users worldwide and the Linux ecosystem is richer for its presence, so anything that helps its continued existence is definitely a net positive.
Brief items Distribution quotes of the week
On Mon, Oct 08, 2012 at 08:48:40PM +0200, Thijs Kinkhorst wrote:
-- Steve Langasek
> I find it therefore doubtful that keeping the bottle logo solves any real world problem. I find it doubtful that getting rid of the bottle logo solves any real world problem.
Fedora has a huge history of "Hey this is a
great idea!" and getting a 30% solution put out with the idea that it
will become a 80% solution if people just wish hard enough... instead
the people who started it go off to new stuff that interests them and
the people who come after either throw away what was done before or
find that real life has other plans for them. And then infrastructure
gets handed the reigns of the nearly dead website, phone service, etc.
And when we say we can't support it.. we have to spend a year proving
that we can't get anyone to step up while everyone says "Geez
infrastructure can't do anything right."
-- Stephen J Smoogen
Perhaps some invalid data is better than no data at all.
-- Jesse Keating
Distribution News Debian GNU/Linux bits from the DPL: September 2012Debian Project Leader Stefano Zacchiroli has a few bits on his September activities. Topics include Google Code-In, Logo relicensing, and more.
Fedora Fedora 18 pushed back by one weekAlthough the meeting was to discuss the Fedora 18 Beta freeze, the decided upon one week delay will push the expected final release out to early December.
Newsletters and articles of interest Distribution newsletters
Garrett: Handling UEFI Secure Boot in smaller distributionsMatthew Garrett looks at UEFI secure boot in smaller distributions. "I've taken Suse's code for key management and merged it into my own shim tree with a few changes. The significant difference is a second stage bootloader signed with an untrusted key will cause a UI to appear, rather than simply refusing to boot. This will permit the user to then navigate the available filesystems, choose a key and indicate that they want to enrol it. From then on, the bootloader will trust binaries signed with that key."
Arch Linux switches to systemd (The H)The H reports that the latest installation image for Arch Linux boots with systemd. "Based on the 3.5.5 Linux kernel, Arch Linux 2012.10.06 is a regular monthly snapshot of the rolling-release operating system for new installations. Among the changes since the last snapshot are a simplified EFI boot and setup process, and the use of the gummiboot boot manager to display a menu on EFI systems. Additionally, new packages including ethtool, the FSArchiver tool, the Partimage and Partclone partition utilities, rfkill and the TestDisk data recovery tool are now available on the live system."
Page editor: Rebecca Sobol |
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