Ubuntu is not a charity: Shuttleworth

Sam Varghese
Monday, 26 February 2007 05:01

Opinion and Analysis

Microsoft Office 365

Alongside Ubuntu run the Kubuntu and Xubuntu projects - Ubuntu has GNOME as its desktop environment, Kubuntu includes KDE and Xubuntu uses xfce. Given that the six-monthly release cycle for Ubuntu is tied to the GNOME release cycle, it is but natural to expect that Ubuntu would be the favoured project among the three.

Shuttleworth indirectly concedes this is the case. "Most of the work that goes into the project, both from full-timers andvolunteers, is common to all of those flavours. We have two full-time Gnome desktop developers, and one KDE developer, and many community participants in both," he said.

"We do tend to define new functionality and 'ship it' when it's done for Gnome, but the KDE folks are getting better at making sure they include equivalent functionality in the same release or very soon thereafter."

While looking to make Ubuntu financially sustainable, Shuttleworth says it is financially feasible for him to continue running the project indefinitely. "However, it's unlikely that the Ubuntu project will still have the same impact in 20 years time that it does now, because the free software tidal wave will probably have run its course by then and redefined the software landscape. I'll fund Ubuntu as long as I think it is on track to sustainability and/or as long as I think it's a good philanthropic investment."

The exchange with Shuttleworth took place well before open source advocate Eric Raymond announced publicly that he would be moving from the Red Hat community distribution, Fedora Core, to Ubuntu.

Recently, Linspire and Canonical signed a deal whereby the latter would be able to use proprietary software from Linspire's storehouse. The storehouse is known as Click N Run. There was also an announcement that Linspire would adopt Ubuntu as its base. Both distributions have their roots in Debian.

Asked whether Raymond's presence on the board of Freespire (the community distribution sponsored by Linspire) had anything to do with the deal between Ubuntu and Linspire, Shuttleworth denied this was the case. He also negated the proposition that being associated with Linspire would tarnish Ubuntu.

"Linspire announced they would use Ubuntu as a base. As you know, Ubuntu is freely available and many people take it and modify it to make their own distribution. We encourage this and welcome it, from every quarter, even if we have a different philosophy to the people making those derivatives," he said.

"We can't and won't prevent derivation, and in fact we think it's one of the best things about Free software. Someone whochooses to use an Ubuntu derivative is getting something that, for their purposes, is more useful to them than Ubuntu is, and rather than getting upset at that we are grateful that the derivative is putting in the effort to keep those users happy. Besides, we may get a few good patches from the derivative!

"So Linspire decided that Ubuntu is the best basis for their next couple of releases. I don't see how their decision could tarnish Ubuntu in the slightest. We couldn't stop it if we wanted to. And I'd prefer to have a good working relationship with a derivative than to snipe from a distance about how they do things that we disagree with.

"Second, Linspire announced that they would make CNR available for Ubuntu users. Interestingly, there's quite a lot of interest in that from Ubuntu users (not so much from developers). I'm happy for those users to be getting what they want, and it's no work from our side to make that easy for them.

"And Eric Raymond's work with Linspire has no relevance whatsoever."