Why Mark Shuttleworth thinks Ubuntu on phones will outclass Android

Is it bad for him to make $ ? Developping a linux distro costs money. Though I have never been a Ubuntu user, I wish he succeeds in that venture and be financially satisfied too. After all, his distro is yet more popular than any other, even Red Hat/Fedora and we must give him credit to have eased access to the Linux desktop in some way. Making $ through hard work is never to be criticized.

I agree with you mmset. It's great to see someone succeeding in FOSS and Linux ventures.

We can all be winners from this.

Phone revenue funding desktop and server development? Sounds good to me.

@steve_R,

> Phone revenue funding desktop and server development?

Nah, I rather think most 'o that revenue..... IF the Baboontu heavies get as much as they want(!).... WILL go right back into Shuttleunworthy'$$$ pockets. +1 hughesjr 'cause I think he's spot-on!

2c

There is a sizable hole in Shuttleworth's pockets to be filled from supporting Ubuntu this long. Free as in freeloader isn't very sustainable.

Quoting:There is a sizable hole in Shuttleworth's pockets to be filled from supporting Ubuntu this long. Free as in freeloader isn't very sustainable.

Exactly. Pretty much all the server and desktop support to date came out of his pockets. There is no evidence I've seen so far that Ubuntu has successfully generated a significant revenue stream. Yes, they do have some consultancy business from the enterprise, but their penetration into that market has been pretty minimal so far. There's no evidence that consumer sales via Ubuntu One have been robust either. Had they been I'm pretty sure the Ubuntu hype machine would have let the media know.

Say whatever you will about how Canonical is run, "Shuttleunworthy" is unfair at best.

I'm happy to see Canonical make money, especially if they're not stupid about it.

On the final Ubuntu UK Podcast episode this season, Alan Pope, who works for Canonical, says the company has somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 employees.

That was a bit of a stunner. I would have guessed < 100.

Mark Shuttleworth may be a lot of things, but stupid isn't one of them.

I'm actually not surprised by the number of employees. You need a fairly large number to build a serious consulting/support organization. The key is to keep them all busy will billable hours. When Canonical can do that they will be making money essentially the way Red Hat does. I also gather that they have a fairly large development/engineering staff.

It's funny because I note how at least a pair of you commentrs up above seem to have conveniently IGNORED the controversy with $huttleunworthy Baboontu's Spyware of about a month ago. RMS actually put out the call for users to actually REMOVE Baboontu then (http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do) , as much as you all love and adore RMS so much ;) I, for one, certainly don't see how it is NOT germaine the fact that a whole bunch of new Baboontu phone users may very well now be indirectly paying into and PERPETUATING this very Amazon Spyware via the selfsame Loooonity interface!! And avoiding this complex issue just ain't going to make it go away, sorry folks.....(sigh)

2 more c's

sigh...flufferbeer, nobody's forgotten anything. We're just staying on topic, and avoiding simple-minded binary mindsets.

What tuxchick said. Funny, I've been accused of being an Ubuntu hater on this forum before, but never of blindly ignoring things to support Mark Shuttleworth. That's really reaching.

All I pointed out was that Mark Shuttleworth has spent a whole lot of his own money to build Canonical. There is NOTHING wrong with recouping that investment. Whether his products are something I want to use or support is another issue entirely.

I used the word "stupid," didn't I?

fluffbeer, so what if Mark were to make money off this phone and recoup some of the money he has invested in Canonical and Ubuntu, what is the problem with that?

I don't use Ubuntu and most likely never will again but it does not matter to me if Mark makes money on the phone or the Amazon spyware. I still have a choice to use what I want use.

Hopefully some revenue gets reinvested back into upstream projects that I benefit from, but I won't hold my breath.

I hope many companies prosper using free software so that there is a diversity around the influence of upstream projects. I like Red Hat much more than Canonical as a company making money off free software, but even then I don't want to see a dominant grip on upstream by Red Hat.

Quoting: I don't want to see a dominant grip on upstream by Red Hat.

It seems to me Debian is the dominant upstream. Red Hat's influence waned when they switched from free ISOs to SRPMs. Check out this beautiful timeline of Linux distributions. It shows how Debian, Ubuntu, Slackware have spawned dozens of active offshoots, while RH-based distros have faded away, and Fedora is a minor player.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Dis...

@tuxchick I didn't mean upstream in terms of derivitive distros I was speaking more to Linux development. I might be misinformed but I thought Red Hat was significant player in supporting kernel development, GNOME, Pulseaudio, systemd, etc. The point I was trying to make was I believe the larger Linux ecosystem would benefit from more Red Hats paying people to work on upstream projects, rather than one big player.

We're all using/benefiting from the work of Red Hat, as @slacker_mike says. Many of us benefit from the work of Debian as well, but you really can't escape Red Hat if you're running Linux. They're everywhere.

You're right, slacker_mike.

This is how it should be: Red Hat works upstream. Unlike some other companies.

Shuttleworth is sure pushing out a whole lot of ideas for making money at present.

Only some of them sound like they could be successful.

Perhaps he needs to sit down with his engineers and marketing folks and try and nut out a coherent niche strategy. Throwing stuff against the wall in competition with a huge company like Google seems a tad naive to me.

It's his own money on the line (has he kept within that original $10 million target? I doubt it) so I'm pretty sure he spends a fair bit of time and focus on questions of strategy and the bottom line...