[Cialug] Ubuntu in NYT

[Matthew Nuzum]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 12:26 AM, David Champion
<dchampion at visionary.com> wrote:
> Todd Walton wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 10:14 PM, Allen Kiddoo <adk at 52761.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Here tis the real thing on NYT site-
>>>
>>> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/business/11ubuntu.html?_r=2&th&emc=th
>>>
>>
>> Ah!  I had happened to read that story earlier today.  I agree, it's a
>> good write-up.  It gives a good overview of the state of Linux to
>> someone uninitiated, but without falling back to the same old cliches.

As someone whose parents still have no clue what their son does for a
living, it's refreshing to be able to point to some credible old-world
news source and say, "this is my employer, that's my boss, here is
what I do." I was not able to get my hands on a print version so I
printed out the single-page version as a PDF to hang on to. I'll be
printing one for my Dad (since he has no email nor any computer use).

>>  One bit of meat in there...
>>
>> =========================
>> "Mark [Shuttleworth] is very genuine and fundamentally believes in
>> open source," said Matt Asay, a commentator on open-source technology
>> and an executive at the software maker Alfresco. "But I think he's
>> going to have a crisis of faith at some point."
>>
>> Mr. Asay wonders if Canonical can sustain its "give everything away"
>> model and "always open" ideology.
>> =========================
>>
>> I think that kind of negative comment is a pretty easy thing for
>> someone in the peanut gallery to throw out there.

When I started with Canonical in July of '06 it was one of my
questions I asked. Mark has set aside a significant amount of money
into a trust that he will use to ensure Ubuntu is kept alive even if
he is not able or does not desire to continue funding the company. It
is not enough to fund all of the areas of development that we
currently do so I'd expect that some aspects to the company would have
to be paired down but it was enough to keep the Ubuntu product alive
for quite  awhile.

> Not everyone in the F/OSS community is thrilled with Mr. Shuttleworth... I
> posted a blog link a while back by one of the Mandriva staff, also pointing
> out that his business model is not sustainable, and my be hurting companies
> like Mandriva and RedHat who are trying to make their bread and butter on
> Linux services and support, who also give a lot back, but don't have the
> fortune of having a billionaire feeding them money.

His comments were pure bologna. I've heard some interesting and
reasonable (not necessarily justifiable) complaints but his "Ubuntu is
beating us because they have more money" argument just doesn't hold
water. I won't go there but it's a lot like me complaining that we all
have to use git because Linus invented it and its the only thing
blessed for kernel development.

 a. Complaining doesn't change anything
 b. If git's only merit were the pedigree then why do so many people
use it for their own projects
 c. Why the active oss and commercial communities sprouting up around
it (github for example)?

Having a BDFL does mean that an element of meritocracy and free market
is taken out of the equation but if the stuff were really bad it just
wouldn't matter, people would use other tools. But git, like Ubuntu,
is on the uptake. People like it. They want to use it.

-- 
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode, skype, linkedin, identi.ca and twitter