Ubuntu – Money and power

There is a real risk of fragmentation in the Ubuntu camp.

• All is not well in the world of Linux open source as the relationship between the money and the code seems to be breaking down.
• Ubuntu is a desktop operating system based on Linux that is open and free.
• Although it is open and there is a community around it, it is effectively controlled by Canonical, a loss making company that writes the vast majority of the code.
• It is able to do this as Canonical is owned and financed by entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth who has the means to pump money into dreams.
• He has long been a supporter of Linux, but more recently the relationship between Canonical and the community appears to be coming unstuck.
• The main bone of contention seems to be the most recent release by Canonical of Ubuntu that prioritises convergence (PC, tablet and phone) of devices over backward compatibility.
• This disagreement has been simmering for a while but the release of Ubuntu 13.10 seems to have brought this to a head.
• Criticism from the community has been harsh and tempers on both sides have become somewhat frayed.
• From my perspective the direction that Canonical is taking in terms of promoting device convergence is the right one.
• Stubbornly sticking to a desktop only version of the code will only result in rapid obsolescence.
• Furthermore, Mark Shuttleworth pays all the bills at Canonical and as a result he is perfectly entitled to take the code in any direction that he sees fit.
• The end result could easily be a split where Canonical takes the code in one direction and the open source community goes in another.
• This would be bad news for both the open source community as it would lose a major source of free code and engineering resource.
• From Canonical’s perspective, it would lose its image as a real player in the open source community and would become just another vendor of professional software services.
• This fracturing could also dent its chances in China, where the Chinese are looking at adopting Ubuntu as the basis of their own ecosystem for Digital Life services.
• The best solution would be for the two sides to make up but engineers can be unbelievably stubborn when it comes to their creations.