Interesting thoughts on the Ubuntu forums-- Shuttleworth going after MS?

[Curlydave]

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=49946
Kleeman:

There was a very interesting talk by Mark at Debconf5 which was to an audience of many important Debian developers (including the DPL Brandon Robinson).

http://linux.blogweb.de/uploads/02-U...ttleworth.mpeg

I guess what he was trying to achieve was to make peace with Debian after all the aggro recently

It raises in my mind a number of questions which were not very clear from his talk. The main one is:

What is the eventual aim of Ubuntu?

It seems clear that Mark is running the show (paying 20 top Debian developers) so his motivation is clearly central. I was surprised when he said that services by Canonical were not very important to the future as whenever he has been questioned about this in the past he has said this is the revenue model.

It was also clear that he is quite idealistic about the future of software.
It was also sort of clear he does not need any more money.

So here is my guess: He wants to knock off Microsoft as the leading software distributor and that this is a business/philanthropic aim perhaps in the mould of a modern politically and socially enlightened version of Cecil Rhodes (I know. Rhodes was not very nice in several ways but the vision thing is similarly large).

Just a wild guess and possibly quite wrong but I guess my point after listening was here is one very smart and very rich guy spending a lot of time on one linux distro which has spawned from undoubtedly the most technically proficient and idealistic distro namely Debian. All a bit mysterious and fascinating!

Kleeman from the Ubuntu forums points out how Mark Shuttleworth has been personally paying developers significant ammounts of money to program and improve Ubuntu, which does not have any form of a commercial version and claims that it never will. Kleeman suggests that his goal might be to eventually deliver some blows to microsoft and Windows in the future. Shuttleworth, a millionaire is not gaining any money from Ubuntu, yet he's shelling out tons of money to promote its developments. Any thoughts?

[NeoSNightmarE]

Gotta respect that.

[junkman4547]

I don't necessarily want to see microsoft destroyed, just cut down to size.

[techieMoe]

I am probably not the only one who's a bit underwhelmed at a philanthropic effort to overthrow Microsoft. Of all the distributions of Linux that I would like to see take on Microsoft, Ubuntu is at the bottom of my list.

If they succeed, great. More people using his brand of Linux so that the direction of Linux is controlled by a rich guy with too much time on his hands... (gee, sounds a lot like Gates to me).

If they fail, Debian will continue on just as it always has, no harm no foul. I don't see this as any type of great revelation personally.

[carlosponti]

i dont think toppling the M$ empire and replacing it with ubuntu empire is all that great either. i just would like to see that people realize they have a choice and M$ has to work to earn thier money. btw the M$ label is just laziness on my part i have been up since 6 and its not almost 9 and i am exhausted.