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Ask Ubuntu Founder (And Astronaut) Mark Shuttleworth
Mark Shuttleworth isn't one to rest on his laurels. Founder of Thawte Consulting, Shuttleworth has used the wealth generated by Thawte's 1995 sale to Verisign to start a venture capital firm, to further South African science education (and education in general) with his eponymous foundation, to push for the acceptance of open source software in South Africa, and to become the first citizen of an African country to visit space with his 2002 flight to the International Space Station aboard the Russian Soyuz shuttle -- basically, to live life as a Neal Stephenson hero might. His latest project is Ubuntu Linux, a Debian-based distribution designed for ease of use, extensive language support, and thorough cooperation with the larger Debian organization. Mark's agreed to answer questions from Slashdot readers about these projects -- Ubuntu seems to be chief on his mind -- so please add your questions below, one per post (but as many questions as you'd like). We'll forward 10-12 of the best to Mark for his answers, and post them verbatim as soon as they're ready.
A lot of Americans, unfortunately, focus on the continent of Africa as "poor" or "third world" - which isn't the total truth. How do you think the various nations of Africa (together or separately) will change this image by embracing technology? How are they already doing so?
Also, becoming aware of your financial resources, I can't help but wonder whether Ubuntu is intended to be a money maker, or it seen as a gift to the community?
(My new Athlon 64 system is coming any day now, and I've decided to try Ubuntu first. So far, it looks very nice from afar.)
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Do you have any pet projects you are funding
or want to fund that might provide a living for
a software engineer? And on a related note, do the
core Ubuntu developers get paid?
What were the major hurdles you encountered while developing this Debian offshoot and what sets it apart from the original?
Put identity in the browser.
How are the nations of Africa working together to promote technological growth? Are there any common intiatives in place or will there be or are the nations still working independantly instead of building a common infrastructure? Are the current methods succeeding or do you beleive there should be change to the way the continent is approaching their technological challenges whether they are seperate or cooperative.
After I installed your distro recently, I was impressed by the attention to graphical detail. The gdm login screen, the default theme and the wallpapers chosen for the desktop were all very nice.
One thing that stood out was the choice to eliminate desktop icons and change the required trash icon into a panel applet. Why was this choice made?
Put identity in the browser.
Who is the blonde?
On your website, you "encourage [your] developers to keep track of their patches using the Gnu Arch Revision Control System and to publish their patches that way." What made you decide to use Arch instead of Subversion, Darcs, or any of the other new revision control systems?
This might be a bit of a sensitive issue, but do you plan to make money off this project, and other open source projects eventually, or is the funding a (VERY GENEROUS!) gift to the community? I assume that profitability would be a long long long term (10+ years in the computer industry!) goal of any project, but I get a sense "profitability" is not monetary only in this case.
I read that you guys are rebuilding your own version of all the debian packages you use instead of using vanilla debian. Apparently this means that Ubuntu will not work with general debian apt repositories. Is this true? If so, what is the reasoning behind this and will you in the future be considering changing this policy?
"Luke, I am your node.parent();"
I'm curious to know how business and individuals have responded to the open source campaign you started. Has there been any interesting success or failures that have encouraged/discouraged your campaign?
I'd also be curious to hear from fellow slashdotters who may be from South Africa. How has his push for open source made inroads in the computer community?
I am interested because I recently find myself in a situation where I will be promoting open source in my own community.
Would you be willing to branch out from education into heatlth care open source projects? I know people in South Africa, Kenya, Zambia, Ethiopia, and other countries who would be willing to participate.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Would it be possible to have an Ubuntu install CD which checks a Windows or Linux installation, migrates its users/files and "converts" their system to Ubuntu? I realize there are some hurdles to overcome this in the Windows world but it seems feasible from one distro to the next. What do you think of the idea?
Thanks in advance.
Hi Mark, as with any (F)OSS project you're almost entirely depending on volunteers. That's OK for popular projects, but to work on, say, an admin or accounting back-end someone still needs to do the heavy lifting without the promise of the kind of glamour and street cred that the likes of Firefox offer.
Have you found a way to get support for the less sexy projects and if so, how?
Insert
How does Canonical plan on making money? Ubuntu seems to be completely and utterly free, in both senses of the word. In my mind at least, the 'services will pay for development' business plan for Free Software went out of style when the dot-com bubble burst. How will your company be different?
I've been a Red Hat/Fedora user for years now, but I decided to give Ubuntu a try, as it had some of the most recent packages included (Gnome 2.8 and Evolution 2.0) by default. Needless to say, I was very impressed by the polish of a pre-release version, and I have switched my workstations at work, and my Linux boxes at home over to Ubuntu.
I was, however, disappointed by the lack of "corporate" tools currently included with Ubuntu. All of our client machines here are currently running Fedora with a customized install script written using kickstart, so when a machine dies,I can pop in the custom install CD and have a blank machine back on the network in 5 or 10 minutes. Are there are plans to include kickstart-like features and NIS support inside of Ubuntu's installation routines? I would switch our entire company over to Ubuntu in a flash if that were the case. I'm sure other companies would enjoy seeing the addition of such features as well.
--It's Pimptastic!--
Hi Mark,
This is a question combo suggestion.
I'm a programmer from South Africa, working in the Bay Area.
I had dialup Internet in South Africa already in 1994. However since then not much has changed. In fact Internet access is appalling. Its very expensive compared to the average income of middle class, and ISDN or ADSL is just too expensive and at the same time pathetically slow.
Internet access is really holding our country back! I believe it is critical to schools and families to have access to better Internet.
As a South African entrepreneur and someone who is successful in the IT world, have you ever given this problem any thought, or considered starting an initiative to provide better access to the Internet?
Kobus