Ubuntu loses its virginity, turns commercial

By Sam Varghese
Tuesday, 23 September 2008 04:53

Opinion and Analysis

From the time the Ubuntu distribution was first released nearly four years ago, the people behind it have tried to never put a foot wrong. Every single decision about the distribution has been geared to try and satisfy both their own brand of users and the general FOSS community.
Last week, however, Mark Shuttleworth, the head of Canonical, the firm that runs the Ubuntu project, made a decision that he will come to regret: to sell proprietary codecs for the distribution. Let me say it again - Shuttleworth will come to rue this move.

Under this plan, anyone who either buys an Ubuntu pack or downloads and installs it can go to the Ubuntu store and buy the codecs needed for a complete multimedia experience.

The marketing manager of Canonical, Gerry Carr, put his own bit of spin on the announcement by saying that, "It is important to us that no matter how you choose to access Ubuntu, pre-installed or as a free download, that you can have a similarly rich experience."

It may end up being an experience that only the rich among the Ubuntu users can access.

Proprietary codecs cannot be shipped along with distributions as they cannot be redistributed free. The solution which Ubuntu offered earlier was the download of libraries that make the playing of DVDs on Linux possible - with the mandatory warning that this could be illegal in countries like the US.

No matter the amount that someone will have to pay for downloading the codecs, this means one thing - Ubuntu is no longer free. It is a commercial distribution. One can indulge in semantics all one wishes but a distribution which cannot play a DVD is something that nobody will use these days.

And if you have to pay even a dollar for those codecs then the distribution ain't free. Let's get the blinkers off. Ubuntu has lost its innocence or what was claimed as its innocence and gone commercial.