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This is not the first time that Canonical has been found wanting when it comes to contributions to big FOSS projects.
In a report released by the Linux Foundation in August last year, listing the major conributors to the Linux kernel, Canonical did not figure in the top 30. Indeed there was no mention of the company anywhere in the list.
While the biggest percentage (18.2) came from individuals who had no corporate affiliation, Red Hat again stood out next with a contribution of 12.3 percent.
And in a keynote to the first Linux Plumbers Conference in Portland, Oregon, in 2008, kernel hacker Greg Kroah-Hartman cited statistics that showed Canonical's contribution from the 2.6.15 kernel to 2.6.27-rc6, was 100 patches.
This was against a total of 99.324 patches; Canonical's share was 0.1 percent. Red Hat was the top contributor from among distributions, with 11,846 patches. Novell had 7222 patches.
Debian and Gentoo, both non-profits, contributed 288 and 241 patches respectively. Canonical, owned by a multi-millionaire, contributed 100 patches.
Canonical derives the base for Ubuntu from the Debian project. It takes liberally from many free and open source software projects to produce a distribution.
While this distribution is available for free download, Canonical is also basing a business on it, and developing ways and means of making money off Ubuntu.
Nothing wrong with that. But it is reasonable to ask - how about giving back a little more?
