Canonical's business model?

> What is Canonical's business model? Long term? RedHat's agenda is fairly clear but I can't
figure out Canonical's business model at all. Perhaps I'm missing something obvious, but I
find myself pondering this every time they are brought up. 

I'm not sure it's much different than Red Hat's business model. I.e., sell support. If you
counter that Ubuntu can be used for free without support, well, there's CentOS, and I think
CentOS and Ubuntu being free are _good_ for getting paying customers, just like piracy helps
Windows - it increases market share, and once you have that market share, paying customers are
a part of it. In fact Ubuntu's model is the better one in that sense, since (just like Windows
piracy), the free users are experiencing your brand.

Aside from 'normal' paid support, there are also contracts for customized builds (in an
interview Mark or some other Canonical person said that this was more common on the desktop
actually). If you're using Ubuntu and want some modification of it, it makes sense to hire the
people who are the most expert at that, namely, the people making Ubuntu. This is also a
typical FOSS business plan.

Will this work? I don't know, but to have any chance of success Ubuntu must become a very
popular distro, and surprisingly enough it has achieved that goal. So it is at least possible,
and it'll be interesting to see what happens.