Shuttleworth bid to sell copyright policy

Sam Varghese
Wednesday, 11 May 2011 12:18

Opinion and Analysis

Ubuntu chief Mark Shuttleworth plans to make an all-out effort to sell his company's copyright assignment policy - which applies to code contributions to the project.

Shuttleworth admits his side of things has been poorly explained and that he needs to try and communicate better on this front.

He made the admission during his keynote to the Ubuntu Developers' Summit which is taking place in Budapest this week.

The experienced media operator that he is, Shuttleworth ensured that nobody would refer to this aspect of his speech by throwing out a figure of 200 million as being the number of users he aims for in four years - growth of nearly 1700 per cent, given that Ubuntu now has around 12 million users.

That number has been spouted over and over again in the tech media and his statements on copyright assignment have been totally ignored. Which I think is what he intended - copyright assignment is a ticklish issue from which he has shied away.

In December 2010 and again in January this year, I wrote to him, asking the same question: "If you're not planning to take your company's software proprietary, why are you insisting on contribution terms which explicitly give you the right to take the software proprietary?"

There was no reply. But now Shuttleworth has apparently decided that he needs to talk about the policy, albeit in his own rather roundabout way.

CONTINUED