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“The Gutsy Geeks” land an exclusive interview with Mark Shuttleworth

Posted by Scott_Ruecker on · 15 comments
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“The Gutsy Geeks” radio show (www.gutsygeeks.com) landed an exclusive interview with Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical, Ltd., founder of the Ubuntu Project.

“The Gutsy Geeks” radio show (www.gutsygeeks.com) landed an exclusive interview with Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical, Ltd., founder of the Ubuntu Project.

In 1999, the South African-born Shuttleworth, sold his company, Thawte, which provided digital certificates, for more than $500 million. After spending $20M on quick trip into space (Hey, who wouldn't?), he started the Ubuntu Project, named after the African word meaning "Humanity to others." Through Shuttleworth's tireless efforts -- not to mention being a darned good operating system -- Ubuntu has since become the most popular GNU/Linux distribution.

During the free-wheeling interview in which no topic was off limits, Shuttleworth explains his personal and business philosophies, the backstory behind the creation of Ubuntu and the business model for Canonical, the future of Open Source software and Ubuntu, and what we can look forward to in the future. The interview concludes with an unusual request, and one we can state, without fear of contradiction, that Mark Shuttleworth has never received before. You don’t want to miss it! You can listen to the interview in its entirety on: http://www.gutsygeeks.com/audio (08/29/09 program).

On the air since 2001, “The Gutsy Geeks” is the only weekly U.S.-based broadcast radio show (1100 KFNX-AM, Phoenix) with free and Open Source software and Linux as its exclusive focus.

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Comments (15)

mcady ·
The only interview I can remember that ever made me nervous... and we are still waiting on his pants.
tuxchick ·
Pants? You de-pantsed Mark Shuttleworth? How wacky! I bet you could auction them off for a nice fund-raiser.

OK I'll listen to the show, thanks to your clever teaser. Fiends.

BTW there is no link to the show.
tuxchick ·
Thanks Scott. I wonder about the pants...
tuxchick ·
Ok I listened. Good show, though enough of the suckup already. "Ooo mark we worship you!" ;)

I hope you specified outerpants.
tracyanne ·
After wading through a bunch of boring self congratulatory banter and ads, I finally got to the interview. Well actually, got so bored with the banter that I fast forwarded until I go to the interview, which as it turned out was quite unexceptional, and told us nothing we could not have read a dozen times already. I don't think I'll bother next time the not so gutsy geeks are linked to.
Scott_Ruecker Story submitter ·
Wow Tracy, you really thought it was that bad? I am sorry.
TxtEdMacs ·
Scott,

No!!! You truncated her post, that was the positive half.

YBT
Steven_Rosenber ·
As a journalist of sorts myself, I can vouch for the trouble you get when you run into a "rock star" type of interviewee. My main gig has never been conducting interviews, but I've done them with everyone from murderers (they always say they didn't do it; talk to them long enough and you'll start to believe them) to Ann Landers (sweetest lady ever ... and yes, I did ask about her feud with twin sister Eppie/Dear Abby).

The key with a guy like Shuttleworth is to have questions planned out in advance. Even if you get off-track for one reason or another, you have a roadmap to get you back on track.

I'm also a big fan of pre-taping and then editing. Personally, the worst thing in journalism I see are those live interviews on the network morning-news shows with "in the news" regular people that are "gets" for the various shows ("Today," "Good Morning America," etc.). The people aren't accustomed to being interviewed, they're sitting in the living room with a crew and remote questions coming from a host who's trying like mad to draw them out of their "normal-guy/gal" shell. It just makes me nervous. It's better to either interview people who are "used to it," or do those interviews pretaped and cut together the good stuff later.

I won't call it ironic, because it's not, but one of the easiest kinds of interviews (in a way) is with a member of the Church of Scientology. They're trained to look at your writing hand; when you start writing, they stop talking and don't start again until you stop writing, lest you miss anything they're saying right now when you're writing down something they said previously.

This is getting way OT ... but I'm sure Shuttleworth (and Jono and RMS and ESR and anybody else known by a single name or acronymically) must know that while they're rock stars in the open-source world, the other 99.99 percent of the planet doesn't know they exist. So it's a quixotic kind of fame if you buy into it. Maybe Linus has some traction outside the FOSS community. But not like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, who are pretty much pop-culture figures at this point. And no, Ballmer ain't there yet.

(p.s. can you tell the coffee is flowing?)
Read the whole comment
tracyanne ·
Well actually Scott, yes. In my day job I used to have to put up with similar twaddle on a daily basis (thankfully we've hired someone to do that now, and I don't have to put up with it), where well known people in the fitness industry (well known in the fitness industry) do similar "in depth" interviews with "rock star" fitness gurus.

The introductions, although better scripted, are of the same type of superlative driven, self congratulatory (look moi, look moi) banter, thankfully most of the time these fitness industry interviews are scripted, and do rather get to the point, even though they are filled with the same sickening ingratiating dribble.

Somehow I expected better, but got worse.

Based on what I heard on the Gutsy Geeks podcast, I'm not sure if their aim is to entertain or inform,... they did neither very well, and to my Australian ears came across as a couple of wankers.
TxtEdMacs ·
Ok, TA quit holding back, let's get to the criticism part. Stop with the nice words, though I understand you don't want to offend the jerks, since you heard you are on the list to be interviewed. Now come on, deliver the straight, unvarnished goods.

Your Buddy Txt. (aka YBT)
Steven_Rosenber ·
While I've taken a few-weeks break from listening to podcasts, I've listened to many in the past few months that focus on Ubuntu, and it's hard for the hosts to check their fanboy decoder rings at the door. There's a lot of praise and "that's cool," and a lot less constructive criticism about the distro.
gus3 ·
@Steven:

I've been using Ubuntu Netbook Remix off and on for a few months now. It's difficult for me not to share in the fanboyism, which is unusual for me, being a Linux user for 11 years and counting.

When I'm not running UNR on the Eee, I'm running Slackware.
Steven_Rosenber ·
What, Slackware Netbook Remix isn't good enough for you?
gus3 ·
Point me towards it, and I'll definitely give it a spin.

/me ducks

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