Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical Ltd, founders of the popular Ubuntu Linux-based operating system, have today announced the creation of The Ubuntu Foundation with an initial funding commitment of US$10m. The Ubuntu Foundation will employ core Ubuntu community members to ensure that Ubuntu will remain fully supported for an extended period of time.
10 mil is a pretty penny. Im glad to see anything that advances Ubunutu, its a great distro. Since Canonical was funding it directly, the possibility of them pulling the plug was always in the back of my mind, and although Im sure they wouldn’t have, its good to see that its no longer a worry at all.
They do say that the first version the foundation will be releasing is 6.04 though, so it sounds like 5.10 is still going to be released by Canonical directly.
For better or worse, cash money is what OSS really needs to compete against entrenched competitors like MS.
10 million is a nice quantity to draw back on for support. Ubuntu is the best desktop distro around IMO and this will only help things in the future.
Does it make a difference if 5.10 is released by Canonical directly?
…not trying to be cheeky, just wondering. I don’t know the ins and outs of these politics, but Ubuntu is a nice distro, and anything that ensures it’s continued development– well, I’m not complaining.
— “Does it make a difference if 5.10 is released by Canonical directly?”
I doubt it. The comment was really meant to point out that it appears the foundation is not taking over everything immediatly. Makes sense, as 5.10 is already well on its way. A change of hands for 5.10 at this point would probably be detrimental.
Oh, and don’t forget to use the ‘Reply’ links now!
Ubuntu has generated such a splash in the gnu/linux community its great to see it being “officially” becoming a foundation backed project. Canonical have done a great job, but by having the Ubuntu foundation, there will be no fear of the project dying or being forced down a particular path. This is in the spirit of open source software, and I expect more great things coming from the Ubuntu Foundation.
I’m very happy that Ubuntu has come out of the gate, and done everything right. Since I’ve been using linux (1998) I’ve never seen any company so behind Linux as Cannonical have been, and I have a good feeling about this. Funny thing is, yesterday I just recieved my free Ubuntu cds; I ‘ordered’ 15 x86 versions, and 6 powerpc versions. I’m giving them to friends to try the ‘live’ option, and dropping them off at coffee cafe’s, music stores and colleges. It’s a good time to be using free software, and I think it can only HELP the world in coming together.
Employing people to work on this stuff can never hurt.
THey already where employing peopleto work “on this stuff”. Where have you been?
If Canonical keeps making such smart moves, it will be Ubuntu balancing Novell for Linux distro share…as RedHat floats away into Linux irrelevance on their multi-billion dollar dot.com balloon.
It’s always so heartwarming to see a smart $10 million organization have a greater impact than a $2.8 BILLION company.
-braddock gaskill
..good news for all Ubuntu users. 🙂 Hope the Badger release will be even better for us, users.
This again shows that Mark Shuttleworth really does care about the rest of us. He’s a good man, and by starting an official foundation, he shows that he’s serious about his commitment to Open Source and (K)Ubuntu in particular. Good job Mark! 🙂
Why not extend the support to bugfixes? I’ve never understood that. At the moment, only security holes are patched, but it’d be nice if small bugs were fixed too.
eg. The latest release shipped with AbiWord 2.2.2 — wouldn’t it be great if they updated through the bugfix releases, such as 2.2.3, 2.2.4 etc.?
They shouldn’t upgrade to brand new versions, as new features could impact stability, but they should at least take care of little glitches.
Here I am with GNOME 2.10.0 on my Ubuntu box; I want 2.10.2 as it fixes many, many bugs and memory leaks, yet I can’t use it unless I compile the whole desktop from source or change distros or whatever. It’s a shame it’s like that!
Because you don’t understand how this stuff works in the real world. A “bugfix” is a broad term for many types of issues in a program that aren’t necessarily “bugs”. Once you open up that can of worms then you might as well be another Sid.
If you want your “bugfixes” then then goto Breezy Badger or just compile it yourself.
Oh, by the way did you pay for that “support” you’re yelling about?
Yeah, but that’s the whole purpose of a stable release– it gives users a common and known configuration with packages that have all undergone testing to make sure they work well together. If you want a stable/tested configuration, stick with Hoary and get your security patches until October. If you want the latest and greatest, switch over to Breezy, but know you’ll have to deal with bugs and such.
And you’re asking about Gnome 2.10.2? What distro is using 2.10.2 already? I thought it just got released.
This guy will become soon Linux’s #2 “superhero”, just behind Linus himself. It is great to see such commitment and, most importantly, they not only talk but also manage to put an excellent Linux distro out.
Now, if only I would receive the CDs I ordered 4 months ago…
> This guy will become soon Linux’s #2 “superhero”, just
> behind Linus himself.
Nothing against Mark because I don’t know him but your comment is embarrassing. It makes one believe that ‘money’ makes this possible, e.g. someone becoming a superhero by buying the hearts of people….
No, I was refering for the whole package, money is a part of it, but the quality of Ubuntu and the nice way he has been developing it is the most important.
The speed which Ubuntu went from an unknown distro with a weird name to one of the most popular and maybe the most “respected” distro is remarkable and unprecedent, IMO..maybe only Gentoo could be compared to that, but still, Gentoo missed badly a proper business plan and roadmap, such as Ubuntu’s.
I think I ordered my Hoary CD’s 4 or so months ago still nothing.. Man I just want my x64, x86 and PPC ones
distro and even Mark cannot veto it?? ( Nautilus browsing mode comes to mind)
distro and even Mark cannot veto it?? ( Nautilus browsing mode comes to mind)
Come on guys, is it really so difficult to go the File Management options and click Browser mode???
I mean, its nice that Linux is so easy to use nowadays compared to a few years ago but don’t be lazy.
I’ve seen people who loved Ubuntu but took it off of their machine because of the browsing mode. It took them longer to replace Ubuntu then th 3 seconds required to switch the mode!!!!
Nautilus default look is the same on every gnome based distro i’ve tried so far, so what’s the big deal??
dont touch spatial – it is cool, get used to it!
i got my cds the other day so i should think rodrigo should get his soon, and he can go back to putting on plays with the little women…
and in case his name doesnt come from “little women” i apologize…
i am a debian guy and wish ubuntu had stayed a bit more debian-ish but that is their choice and we will see what happens….
“If you want your “bugfixes” then then goto Breezy Badger or just compile it yourself.”
Ah, use an unsupported testing release to get bugfixed packages. With that, and your attitude, it’s no surprise Linux still has sub-5% of the desktop market after, what, 15 years of development!
“Oh, by the way did you pay for that “support” you’re yelling about?”
Er, no, a man paid 10 million dollars for it. Can we get out of the can’t-criticise-anything-whatsoever-if-I-didn’t-give-them-money mode?
It is nice to see such a commitment to a project, but he would do the whole OSS movement a way greater favor, if he didn’t invest that money in the 5000th linux distro, but in improving existing applications to become enterprise ready.
Look what quanta has become, since the main developer has time to work fulltime on it. And with 10M you could sponsor a lot developers for some years.
Ubuntu employs a lot of the best developers in the community to work fulltime. Because of this, Ubuntu isn’t just “the 5000th linux distro,” it is arguably the best linux distro.
But what is “arguably the best linux distro” worth, if there are so many apps that just suck and aren’t ready for every day use? There are so many apps out there that have really big potential but lack manpower or time of the main developers.
Btw: ask some slackware or suse zealots what the best linux distro is (just to name 2 distros). This is just your point of view
> Ubuntu employs a lot of the best developers in the
> community to work fulltime.
Can you name some of the so called ‘BEST DEVELOPERS’ ? I know a couple of them and they are not better or worse than anyone else who works on Open Source.
You should have checked before posting.
Mark Shuttleworth pays bounties for many software packages to be improved. Pluss he does in fact pay devs to work full time on programs he cares about.
Please look before you leap.
Ubuntu rules!
I know that a lot of money is spent on development – good coders cost a lot of money (unless you’ve got dirt on them or something). How about marketing?
Windows and MacOS did not where they are by just coding. Windows made strategic alliances with manufacturers (which then turned into strategic blackmail) and the MacOS got it’s good rap from cool, functional (some would say expensive) hardware and it’s UNIX goodness and stability.
Now – we’ve got three major companies (IBM, Novell and Red Hat) supporting and selling Linux – now ubuntu gets a nice a cash flow which stands to improve the coding and usability of linux – but without marketing it’s all for naught. linux is used predominately by admins and hobbyists – in order to make a dent in the OS market you need to market it to the mom and pop, kids and granma users. If you can make it user friendly for them, and provide the apps you need aggressive marketing – which has not happened.
Now – we’ve got three major companies (IBM, Novell and Red Hat) supporting and selling Linux – now ubuntu gets a nice a cash flow which stands to improve the coding and usability of linux – but without marketing it’s all for naught.
Ubuntu is taking off because of grassroots efforts by the community, which is also how Firefox became so popular. Also, what other distribution gives away free, profesionally pressed CD-ROM’s? That’s damn good marketing I’d say.
Novell and Red Hat will certainly keep a large portion of the server market for many companies. But it’s a very poor choice for the desktop and doesn’t have a community to push and support it like Ubuntu does. Not to mention Ubuntu is the only free one.
But I guess it would be nicer if they throw some of
those money to debian. Ubuntu after all is a debian
derived distro.
“Gentoo missed badly a proper business plan and roadmap”
oooooooOOOOOHHHH i think DR had a perfect business plan and a roadmap to where he was going
M$!
oh and i think quite likely one of the most UNrespected distros for taking debian and essentially forking it instead of trying to help fix….
I agree with the last part. I wish Ubuntu had pushed a lot of their patches and updates to Debian proper (mostly the kernel, which for me works with my SATA CD-ROM properly right out of the box, with Debian I have to upgrade the kernel immediately due to a bug with nv_sata in the 2.6.8 that Sarge comes with). I still use Debian Proper because some of the underlying software that I use a lot (mostly Xmame) in Ubuntu is still ancient by comparison (Xmame is still at 0.86 there and Debian has 0.96 (which is at least only one version behind)). Now that Sid has gnome 2.10.1, I enjoy it fully. Though some of the organization of the menus are a bit better in Ubuntu (like where they moved Synaptic) but I can live with that.
I always thought that part of Ubuntu/Canonical’s plan was to add upstream fixes to Debian. I did notice that finally some of their changes to Synaptic happened. Very recently, though I don’t know if that’s due to Ubuntu, or Synatpic’s developers. (I’m talking about when applying the changes, it no longer does it in a mini terminal screen.)
I forgive u
http://people.ubuntu.com/~scott/patches/
I think that moving Ubuntu to a foundation is not only great, but necessecary. Why? With the rise of GNU/Linux and its challange to Microsoft, it makes is a very big target. So, if Ubuntu was to all ways be a product of Canonical, Microsoft could come after them, but if Ubuntu is a product of a non-profit foundation, it makes it a harderd target to come after.
~Alan
Just downloaded the Live CD and Im running ubuntu now. Nice distro, I’m impressed! They keep the desktop as clean and simple as possible which is great.
and not live only of security fixes, don’t get me wrong with the actual release cycle it’s a good thing, you can live with a extremely stable system until the next release, and if you want updates you can do a dist-upgrade and everything “should” work well(maybe only manually installed packages can be a problem)
But in three years maybe there should be bugfixes, or at least major releases updated (think of x.org, kde or gnome) when they are stable, or we’ll get another debian.
I think that there should be a balance between a stable and an updated envrionment.
(it’s only a minor problem, but see what happened with firefox in hoary, that couldn’t access mozilla update because of the version, it was a minor problem, with a simple solution, but still annoying, maybe it could have been easier to update the whole firefox instead of doing security fixes)
Stallman is the men.
But I like Shuttleworth too
Ubuntu doesn’t come ready for use. Mepis does, with Mepis you hit the ground running and never look back. I’ll never understand how this one distro became Linux golden boy.
Mepis was out long before this. I don’t know somethings fishy about all this. Maybe I’m just to parinod because of Microsoft. (I can see Ubuntu go the way of Microsoft)
This was originally supposed to be an ubuntu news, but if you need to start a flame war to bring atention to that crappy distro that claims to be user friendly then here u go…
I installed Mepis about two weeks ago just to give it a try,
Hardware support for my pc was ok but then…
I saw the ugliest most cluttered kde desktop I’ve ever seen
Updating or even installing new programs from the default mirrors was a nightmare, I’ve never seen so many error messages on synaptic before(Unless enabling the Debian Repositories that changed almost all packages from MEPIS to Debian)
If u don’t like Ubuntu don’t use it, but I’ll take my (K)Ubuntu anytime
Although Ubuntu is not compatible with most of my hardware, it’s probably the best (or one of the best) linux distro.
This news is important because we’re sure that Ubuntu will always remains free of charge.
http://www.cafepress.com/ubunto
“UBUNTU FIND ICH SCHEISSE” is no complement, unless I’m missing something in translation.
“I find Ubuntu to be shit…”
The real cafepress store is at http://www.cafepress.com/ubuntustore
Hey your starting the flame fest here. Not me. For all its worth ubuntu is no better than Mandrake, Fedora, or Gentoo all of them you have to fix to before you can use it.
Mepis, Lycoris, Linspire, PCLinuxOS all these can be used from the get go. That’s why I don’t understand why ubuntu has become the darling of Linux. There’s linux distro’s out there that are far better.
Then explain what makes(to your opinion) Mepis better than (K)Ubuntu I already mentioned some of the things I didn’t liked about Mepis, and I don’t count bundled propietary software as a valid one just in case
The osnews’s linux community is so full of frustrated souls so eager to defend their chosen distro like it was their mother than it gets lost in the debate. Ubuntu is truly free so all the work that goes there is available to your darling distro so stop crying, babies !
It is a reminder though that Linux still depends on the goodwill of a few well heeled and/or smart people.
Thank you Mark, I am sure you won’t regret it.
I agree that Mepis certainly isn’t the best distro. It couldn’t even recognize my common Intel Pro 1000 Ethernet adapter. Boom, dead in the water. Without internet connectivity, how is anyone supposed to download drivers or do any updates? I also agree that Synaptic “got broke” out of nowhere and the KDE interface is absolutely disgusting. Even Windows is more minimalistic.
Give me Ubuntu any time.
Robert
I think creating a foundation is great news…
Now if only the other “free” distros could do something similar…
Mepis and all the rest I mentioned did what Ubuntu is doing a long while ago. Theirs just something fishy there. At first they didn’t tell about the guy behind it, and there logo.
Just something wrong with the whole picture. I am sorry if I offend you are anyone. I know Mepis doesn’t work for everyone and it’s all Linux, which is a good thing.
When I went looking for a distro I looked for one that was ready to go and Mepis fit the bill.
There’s just something there that doesn’t add up. These other friendly distro were around before and this new one comes in and sweeps everyone away; yet this type of distro has been around and still is around.
Maybe it’s just the Monk in me coming out.
Mepis and all the rest I mentioned did what Ubuntu is doing a long while ago. Theirs just something fishy there. At first they didn’t tell about the guy behind it, and there logo.
Just something wrong with the whole picture. I am sorry if I offend you are anyone. I know Mepis doesn’t work for everyone and it’s all Linux, which is a good thing.
When I went looking for a distro I looked for one that was ready to go and Mepis fit the bill.
There’s just something there that doesn’t add up. These other friendly distro were around before and this new one comes in and sweeps everyone away; yet this type of distro has been around and still is around.
Maybe it’s just the Monk in me coming out.
Yep, you’re definately right. Ubuntu is a huge conspiracy 😉
The thing is that the experience gained by those other distros is the very reason why ubuntu is so popular…
Ubuntu was concieved to be a user friendly general purpose distro from the begining…
Has a clear idea of the overall goals of the project, something that many of the older distributions lack…
Maintains a regular release cycle…
It uses the debian Core but remains updated (Each new release is more updated than Debian testing, at the time of release)
When a new release arrives they just don’t inmediatelly pull the plug on the older one…
PS: I’m a native spanish speaker, just in case my english needs improving…
Where do people get it from that Ubuntu is a user-friendly desktop distro? It’s aimed at people with a modicum of experience. (yeah sure it’s friendly for them I hear you say)
I for one, a noob when it comes to Linux but not inexperienced at computers, couldn’t figure out how to get any of my fat-partitions mounted, not even from a CLI.
And when I tried to get wireless support, I followed the instructions that came with the source. Unsuccesfully, because a gcc wasn’t installed by default in Ubuntu, so make install didn’t work..wtf?
After that, I was clueless how to get programs, as
I for one, a noob when it comes to Linux but not inexperienced at computers, couldn’t figure out how to get any of my fat-partitions mounted, not even from a CLI.
You could have set the mount point during instalation and we would’t be talking about this now…
If you want to set up that partition now here’s a tip
* select applications > run application
* run gksudo nautilus
* Find create a folder /win-c or whatever path u want
* Find the file /etc/fstab and add the line like this
/dev/hdaX /win-c auto exec,umask=000 0 0
BTW: Windows does’t even reads any FileSystem other than Fat, Fat32 and NTFS out of the box…
If only this foundation would go around to different hardware companies asking them to also build drivers for the Linux platform…That would be cool.
How ungrateful, Hey- it’s free be happy
I think that this is good news for those who use this particular distribution of linux (personally, I use windows, but I can certainly understand the logic and wisdum behind this choice).