Canonical founder will wait for profits
By Michael W. Jones
The software company Canonical, developer of the Ubuntu operating system, is not yet turning a profit. But company founder Mark Shuttleworth is not concerned about that just yet. Shuttleworth, a self-made security industry tycoon, has lots of money left and is willing to wait for profits to flow. The Ubuntu operating system, by Canonical fiat, is given away free to users.
Shuttleworth, a South African, made the majority of his fortune when he sold his security company, Thawte, to Verisign for a reported $575 million. He started Canonical shortly thereafter with an initial investment of $10 million, saying at the time that he did not know if a company that gave away its product could ever be commercially viable.
The Canonical founder held a press conference last week during which he renewed his support for the open source tenets that underlie his company. In part, Shuttleworth said, “We continue to require investment. I can continue to be careful with my pennies as I make what I consider to be a good investment.” In so saying, Shuttleworth made it clear that he is willing to continue to support Canonical as a philanthropic venture at least in the near term.
Although an estimated 8 million users run Ubuntu, Canonical has yet to record a positive cash flow. The company has about 200 employees in Europe, the United States, and Taiwan. Shuttleworth said that the company has revenues of “several million dollars” per year, mainly from support contracts, but has never been profitable. He said he had no objection to continuing to financially support the company for the next three to five years.
Research from IDC shows that about 20 percent of large United States firms have at least Ubuntu installed somewhere in their company and that Ubuntu holds about a three percent share of the server operating system marketplace. Their foothold as an operating system is strongest in emerging nations, where users cannot afford the large fees to purchase proprietary operating systems such as Windows.
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Stumble It!
November 28th, 2008
As soon as Microsoft puts out its next disaster, Ubuntu will move from an alternative system to the only system on the market! Vista was the best thing that ever happened to Ubuntu and other Linux systems. Church groups and other charities replace Windows systems with Ubuntu systems to remain legal and oblige Microsoft’s usage contracts, thus spreading Ubuntu like wildfire! Soon, companies will have to install Ubuntu systems to make use of all the folks familiar with Ubuntu over all other systems. Whole governments are adopting Ubuntu systems as we speak, and many schools and colleges will soon, with pressure from the great republican depression, to cut costs. Microsoft crippled millions of potential programmers by patenting languages in current use, Europe and Asia did not! America will suffer for her greed! Ubuntu gives free access to those who wish to study it! When Microsoft finally disappears from the scene, a new age of computing will appear in America, and computing will be a fun technology once again, and unencumbered by the pablum fed to us by widows and such drivel as Vista!