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Interview With Mark Shuttleworth
suka writes "The founder of the Ubuntu project argues in a recent interview with derStandard.at that the time for mass consumer sales of Linux on the desktop has not yet come. He goes on to talk about the integration of proprietary drivers, the One Laptop per Child project, and 'great applications' from Microsoft."
http://derstandard.at/Text/?id=2845484
He sounds pretty cool, for a communist!
Remember kids, when you download GNU/Linux, you're installing with Stallman, who is the new Stalin!
derStandard.at: So are we going to get pre-installed Ubuntu on Dell computers?
Mark Shuttleworth: Well - time will tell.
derStandard.at: Are there active talks on that?
Mark Shuttleworth: I would not comment on any conversations underway.
What a long winded way Mark has of saying "We're talking with Dell right now."
All he says about Microsoft is that they make some "great applications". I can only assume he's talking about Office, or Visio or something.
All he says about OLPC is that he's afraid they'll be criticized for not getting the machine down to $100 yet, and that he'd be happy to help any governments run Ubuntu on the thing if that's what they want.
And all he says about integration of proprietary drivers is that they're willing to do it to make software work. So there's no news on ANY of those fronts.
Much more interesting is what he says about the new truly Free distro that's coming out. It will contain no media, no documentation, and no firmware for which source is not provided. There won't be a video clip unless you can get the materials used to make it. No PDFs without the source documents needed to produce them. Now THAT is a wonderful thing to contemplate.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"That's a mouthful considering it's coming from someone who, if we want to be brutal, did little but repackage someone else's hard work. "
To quote Yoda:
"And that is why you fail"
To think that in 2007 we are still seeing people with that mindset when it comes to open source software is really shameful. It is long past the time for the open source crowd to learn that usually the tech is the easy part of product development. The long and grueling hours is actually making it work and be useful for a wide variety of users. Anyone who has ever actually developed and shipped a real world commercial application knows this very well. Too many open source people have never learned this basic truth of software development.
Shuttlesworth is independently wealthy.
Well I think that is a little bit unfair.
History shows that it is not the product or the core engine itself that causes something to have an effect but the way it is sold, the way it is packaged and the way it is marketed.
Let's face it, yes Ubuntu may have borrowed a lot but it also has pioneered a lot and I am not speaking strictly technically - though they have done that as well just look at their source control tool developed for Ubuntu.
What mark has done very well is build up a community and give a sense of purpose and advancement something that was seriously lacking in the Debian base from which it was born.
Again Mark is a businessman and he realizes that Technology without implementation is nothing. This interview itself does not really speak of much new things but it would be an injustice to say that Mark and the Ubuntu project did not pioneer or do anything of significance.
Software Defined RFID - The Rifidi Emulator
First of all, while he may be repackaging a lot of what Debian has done, he was a Debian developer through the 90s. (source) Second, he made his money in internet security certificates, so I highly doubt wide-spread desktop linux would hurt him financially. And third, you have to realize that there are tons of people out there who find that Windows works just fine for them, and you don't fix something unless its broke. This is why Dell has been hesitating, they don't feel that the investment is worth the risk.
Insightful? Shuttleworth is independently wealthy from a previous internet business, and his mission from day one has been a mass Linux desktop. Don't believe me? Look at Bug #1 in Ubuntu "Microsoft has a majority market share". Ubuntu isn't market-driven. Shuttleworth has said that he'll support the distribution himself out-of-pocket if need be.
I don't think those concerns are valid, nor do they reflect much knowledge of the situation.
How many CDs will it take to ship all of that?
I dunno... probably somewhere around 21.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Not to be rude, but, here, have a free CR/LF (free as in beer).
http://www.intellipool.se/ - Intellipool Network Monitor
I hope you realize that is the story of every distribution. The amount of work put in is practically nothing compared to all the work that goes on upstream, even if you're talking about someone like RedHat that really contributes an awful lot of code (although they also contribute a lot of awful code - I'm talking virt-manager here right now, although it's hard to tell where virt-manager's fuckups end and libvirt's begin.)
Shuttleworth is losing money hand over fist on this whole Ubuntu thing, so I don't think you can really apply that argument to Ubuntu.
"Hand over fist" might be an exaggeration, but in the interview he reveals that he is still funding Ubuntu.
The impending release of the all-Free distribution of Ubuntu proves, IMO, that Shuttleworth "gets it". People complained that it wasn't Free, so he's making a Free release. Give 'em what they want.
He also specifically says that a lot of people have a lot of success installing Ubuntu on relatives' computers. So clearly he doesn't think that it's completely unready for the desktop. I think he sees it more as an impossibility in marketing at the moment, and I agree.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They call me the wookie man, I guess that's what I am
Yes, that would be great.
Linux is great, I use Ubuntu, but that is one funny photo. It's like he's posing for a catalogue or something. Or maybe: 'Shuttleworth, for men. The new Open fragrance from Mark Shuttleworth'
A review by Richard Stallman said: 'It smells like GNU piss, and did nothing to cover up my body odour!'
His comments on Beryl/Compiz are quite telling. That's a fork that should never have happened. Also interesting are snippets about Canonical customers (from the article):
We all like to think that Ubuntu costs Shuttleworth a fortune but they're obviously meeting with some success. This is something I've worried about before: what happens when Shuttleworths' money runs out? Seems that we needn't worry for much longer. :)
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
I don't mean to troll but the "truly free distro" as you describe it doesn't sound very wonderful to me. I'm not quite the average consumer, but 90% of the things I use my PC for are non-free by your definition. You won't see any mass-adoption unless the free distro could provide the same or better functionality and be user-friendly. Unfortunately, I don't really see that happening unless current trends change drastically. This is probably why Ubuntu is moving in the opposite direction from "completely free" and is gaining popularity as a result.
To me, "truly free" sounds nice philosophically but not practically.
I feel compelled to chime in -- I'm an Ubuntu user who had hopped around from Red Hat to Fedora then to Mandrake, finally settling in with Ubuntu starting with Hoary or Breezy, I think. Simplistically, yes, all they do is repackage someone else's work, but as far as I'm concerned, they've put together something better than the other distros I've tried.
The argument about whether Linux is ready for the desktop has been going on for quite a few years now. I'm about as tired as the next Linux Fanboy about hearing that next year will be the year of Linux. Hasn't happened yet. If it did, it would be a gradual shift, not an overnight "whoa!" type of thing.
For me, Linux has been ready even before Ubuntu made things easier. Then again, I didn't mind doing the extra work of running through config files and doing BASH basics. I'm not a Linux/unix expert by any means, but I don't mind a little adventure or two. (Not daring enough to try Gentoo)
What Ubuntu did was make things a LOT simpler. For multimedia stuff, I still turn to an ubuntu guide (last time I tried automatix, I don't think it worked properly...but a while ago). Otherwise, it's synaptic for a few other things and I'm set to go. I try to write down all the extra apps I install so I don't forget next time I have to do a clean install/upgrade.
Now to the whole business side of things -- Ubuntu is one of the free ones. Yes, they offer paid support, but this doesn't seem like the same business model as what MS uses. I'm not really sure what money Canonical will be milking by releasing version after version. The software will always have improvements, and in that sense, won't ever be absolutely "done" -- it isn't like making macaroni and cheese, dude.
Linux (especially Ubuntu) is ready for my desktop. Most other people, on the other hand, won't "switch" without being given a compelling reason to do so. That's unfortunate.
Ok, I'm just a developer, but I've used Linux off and on for various things over the years, and I'd like to think I have a pretty good feel for what Linux needs to really take off on the Desktop (and no it's not there yet, but it's getting closer every day). There are essentially three different flavors of "desktop market", and you really need to cover at least two of these three in order to have an impact.
The first market, and the one that Linux is more than capable of supporting as it stands now with little trouble, is that of the enterprise desktop, which is distinguished from the enterprise server by the fact that the likes of the CEO and marketing department would be running these systems, rather than the IT guys. The main problem with this market is one of image. You need to actually convince the CEOs that Linux on their desktop is just as good or better than Microsoft. To a great extent IBM, Novell, and other major corporations are doing a very good job of getting the word out, and I think we're really seeing progress on this front.
The second market, and once again, one that Linux can handle without much problem is that of your typical non-technical home user. The problem with this market is that it needs to be easy. Dead easy. One button, very small words, short sentences easy. For an example of how to handle this market perfectly, see the install process of the latest beta of Ubuntu (7.04). The key to winning over this segment is to first get a distro that is so simple they never have to use the command line to do everything they need on a day to day basis. This means, they need to be able to setup and install new hardware and software, perform updates, and configure everything from GUI without any particular technical knowledge outside of that supplied by said software/hardware. Once you've got the distro nailed, have some technical user install it for them the first time and get them using it, once they use it on a day to day basis, become comfortable with it, and realize it's better than what they had before, they're sold. Distros like Ubuntu are making headway in this market, but still have a little ways to go, I think this is the source of at least part of the comments in TFA.
The third market, which is the hardest one for Linux, and also the most critical right now, is the power user and gamer market. In order to win this market, Linux needs two things, it must support the latest and greatest in graphics cards out of the box (look to intel for some interesting developments in this department), and it must encourage game developers to produce cross-platform games. Now, the second of those two requirements can be mitigated by using things like Cedega to run non-ported games, but in that case graphics cards need to be fully supported in order for the games to play on par with the windows counterparts. To a certain extent this market revolves around hardware support, followed by market demand. Intel and AMD are positioning themselves to be strong players in this arena, in particular the moves by Intel to package Linux drivers with their Windows drivers on new graphics cards, as well as to open source graphics drivers is very encouraging. AMD (ATI) has recently started to release drivers for their cards if not at the same time as the Windows ones, at least in the same time frame, and adopting a common versioning number for all the drivers has also helped in comparing support progress. Once the hardware support is in place, it's just a matter of demonstrating to manufacturers that the user base is sufficient to justify the cost of developing on Linux. One of the best ways to do that would be to get a large enough portion of the casual computer user population switched over to Linux.
If linux can get a large enough portion of two of these markets, or even a relatively small portion of all three, it will have enough momentum to finally interest the likes of Dell, and HP. From that point forward, it's just a matter of free market dynamics.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
"I feel Linux to be perfectly ready. It is the consumers who have lots of catching up to do."
Yep. Adding a Samba user in the KDE control fails silently - this was known to be broken in 2005 and is still broken - doesn't look like anyone is interested.
Sure, _I_ can add one in an eyeblink at the command line with smbpasswd or pdbedit, no big deal, but there's still careless crap like this all over the various Linux desktops and it's a showstopper for Joe Average-would-be-Linux-user.
I use Linux (and contribute) for pretty much everything now except for a few games but lets have a bit less of that "consumers will have to catch up" BS - it's Linux that has to catch up if it wants to gain real credibility on the desktop.
Right. Makes me think of Carl Sagan, who was (is?) often criticized for 'not having done any real discoveries or advances in astronomy', he was only a good 'popularizer' of astronomy and science in general, as this was a trivial or nonimportant thing.
Making something popular is sometimes very important, as it draws needed attention to a subject. In Sagan's case, maybe he didn't do a nobel-worthy discovery, but how many great scientists are there now, that were inspired by his work? how many of today's great scientific minds wouldn't have turned that way without his incredible talent for communicating his contagious passion for science and discovery?
I think a similar kind of credit is due to the ubuntu project. Maybe they didn't rewrite the kernel, but they made linux slick and easy to install and accessible to a LOT of people who draw attention (and indirectly resources) to linux. I know in my case, it helped me get a lot of friends interested in linux, who had previously tried it but found it too confusing.
There are many ways to contribute to a project, besides coding.
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
"The time for mass consumer sales of Linux on the desktop has not yet come."
No. It's past.
Linux missed the window. 2003-2004 was when Linux on the desktop might have made it. WalMart, Dell, and HP all had supported Linux offerings. Microsoft XP was stale and buggy, while Longhorn/Vista was stalled. Firefox worked great, OpenOffice worked OK, and things looked good for desktop Linux. That was the big opportunity.
The window closed when playing DRM-protected video content on PCs became important to the average consumer. Linux couldn't keep up in that area, because the proprietary codec vendors didn't all support Linux. As Microsoft and Apple took control of video formats, Linux was squeezed out. Neither iTunes nor Microsoft video codecs are available for Linux.
I had real hopes for Linux on the desktop, but it's not going to happen now. Focus on the OLPC software; that might make it.
I suggest we call one of those platforms "Ubuntu". Another one might be called "Fedora", and yet another would be "SUSE".
Goofy names, I suppose, but I don't have the expertise (or patience!) to create my own platform, so I'll settle for using one of those.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
What I enjoy about Mark's comments int he inteview (and in others) is that he tends to be genuine, calm and honest in his talkings, and uses very few corporate buzzwords. Maybe that's because he rolls his own distros, cigarettes and whatnot, but it's refreshing to see an important IT headcheese soundling like you're talking to him as a person and not a bot.
Here's wishing Ubuntu a long, prosperous future! \ \\//
One has to wonder if there's a financial motivation behind this--ie. where does Shuttleworth make his money and would his commercial profits and revenues be at all threatened by widespread deployment of desktop Linux solutions?
"Person X isn't voicing the opinion of Linux that I want to hear. This obviously means that they're a paid shill in the service of $corporation."
Please develop some basic maturity. Shuttleworth is funding the most popular consumer-oriented Linux distribution in existence. I.e., he's paying for it himself. Why would he spout FUD about something which he himself is sponsoring? That's self-defeating behaviour.
That's a mouthful considering it's coming from someone who, if we want to be brutal, did little but repackage someone else's hard work.
Really? This sounds like yet more sour grapes from someone affiliated with Debian. In case you don't understand the difference between Debian and Ubuntu, allow me to explain it for you. Ubuntu is a project run by and for people who live above ground. As such, they don't foam at the mouth due to the idea of people using binary hardware drivers, and they also don't subscribe to a lot of Debian's other aberrant, regressive "philosophies" and attitudes, either. Shuttleworth has to pay official lip service to them occasionally, because as you say, unfortunately the development effort does consist of a few of the abovementioned troglodytes, and it's true that he does seem to care about not alienating them.
If Ubuntu, as so many people say, would be nothing whatsoever without Debian, then how come Ubuntu is so much more popular? Here's why. Ubuntu is Debian, without Debian's people, and without the conflict and terminal immaturity that those people generate and suffer from. Ubuntu is Debian with a neurotypical re-interpretation.
One of the main things I've seen a lot of members of the Linux community becoming increasingly shrill about in the last few years is people "stealing their code," and I think I'm finally beginning to understand why. It's because although the software that you write itself genuinely is technically better than what is being developed elsewhere, as people on the other hand, deep down, you yourselves actually realise just what chronically socially disabled, mind-bogglingly juvenile, generally detestable individuals many of you really are. It therefore quite logically follows that you're understandably terrified that the mainstream population is going to want to take the good that you do produce (your code) for their own use, while leaving the bad (you yourselves) as close to being entirely ignored as possible.
Here is how the free market works. Consumers by the goods that they want not the goods that the manufacturers think they should want. You don't have to like it but you need to recognize it. If Linux proponents do not get this then Linux will fail to capture the desktop. Period. End of story.
Now some things are inherently complex in nature and require a moderate amount of learning to do successfully and sometimes users need to be shown the possibility of a better way of doing things - where better is defined by the user, not the programmer. That does not in any way change the above. Most consumers buy computers to do something other than become deeply knowledgeable about computers. They will pick the solution that maximizes what they can get done while minimizing the amount of effort required to be devoted to activities other than doing what they actually want to do. That is human nature and it is not unreasonable.
People value their time. I've never used a Mac in my life but I know lots of people who do. If over the life of a machine they save 10-20 hours of learning curve by getting a Mac then they have made up the difference in price between that Mac and a Windows or Linux machine.
The attitude expressed by the quote above is why much software fails in the marketplace. It's also a major reason why we now have UI specialists - because too many programmers thought the user should be the one to adapt. Now most programmers no longer get to make those decisions.
What really puzzles me is why people want to write software for other people to use if they don't want to write the kind of software that those people actually want to use.
I haven't used Unix for about a decade. This week I had to do something on a Windows machine that I couldn't do with Windows. I decide to try running Ubuntu off a live dvd. Despite the long time since using Unix I was very quickly able to figure out what I needed to do, which included reconfiguring the package management and installing a package not included in the default configuration. Having done a lot of command line based Unix installs and configurations in the distant past I was very impressed with how easy it was for me to get the job done with Ubuntu. But I can tell you that someone without a Unix background would probably have given up. It's definitely getting there but Mr. Shuttleworth is right - it's not ready for the average desktop user.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
I don't think those concerns are valid, nor do they reflect much knowledge of the situation.
Seconded. I think it's also important to consider just how much Shuttleworth and Canonical have given, not only for Ubuntu but for Debian as well.
To characterise what they've done as 'ripping off someone else's work' does no justice whatsoever to the immense number of hours they've invested in:
Rest assured, this is not the work of a rip-off artist. If it is, then I wish someone would 'rip-off' my work early and often! 8^)
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Got Ubuntu? Then you're halfway to the answer.
Open your package manager; the one through System, but not the Add/Remove item! (the one with the big list, no icons)
Make sure to select All packages and scan the list; find every package that lists a Latest Version ending with '-ubuntu XX'.
Each of those packages has the Ubuntu team's fingerprints on it, and those changes are fed back to the community. (upstream patches; whether upstream uses them or not)
I'm sure there's some clever shell-command that will do something like this for you, but I would gladly defer that honor to someone that's done it before.
Even if you're not impressed with the results, consider that Ubuntu has put Linux “into the limelight” like no other distro before it. (with the possible exception of RedHat)
Power to the penguin!
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
I'm a guy whose been using Linux since Red hat 5.1 and who webmastered a fairly popular Linux website pre-dotcom bubble era to evangelize Linux. I see how the good reputation of Ubuntu is spreading quickly nowadays, moreso than Red Hat has ever achieved. Mark Shuttleworth is making a positive difference in this world by funding Ubuntu, and I see how Linux is really being seriously considered by pedestrian users who thought Microsoft was their only option.
Naysayers and unbelievers be warned. Shuttleworth is onto something with Ubuntu. To steal a quote from Isaiah in the Old Testament: "Those who mock will mourn"!
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
He did not say Ubunto was not ready for the desktop, he said the market was not ready for Ubunto!:
I certainly would not push the large IT companies to put Linux on consumer PCs, because I understand that in their business, the cost of a user accidentally getting Linux, thinking that they get cheap Windows would be a problem for the companies selling the computers. So I don't think it is really ready yet for mass consumer sales of Linux on desktop.
This is not a quality or ease of use issue, it's one of familiarity. Here's what he thinks of the "ready" issue:
So there are lots of places where Ubuntu is relevant for ordinary users. But not everywhere, I absolutely would agree to that. But it's certainly good enough for me and I'm a pretty demanding user.
In other words, it's ready. There's a big difference between "eating your own dog food" and using something that's good enough for your own demands. It should be obvious where Mark sits.
There were lots of nice material in this interview and it's too bad the submitter had to focus on the bogus issue above. That Google uses Ubunto for all of their developer desktops is news to me. Other traction, like airline pilots using Ubunto for security reasons is great to hear about. Mark's goals, particularly his desire to promote free software are also news to me because I have not paid attention. This is all good news.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Linux Advertisement 1.
INT - MARY'S HOME OFFICE.
[Mary is seen banging her hand down on her desk]
MARY:
Damn!
[John comes into the picture]
JOHN:
Hey Mary, what's wrong?
[In a frustrated voice]
MARY:
My computer is as slow as molasses...
and all those pop-ups...
I can't get any work done.
JOHN:
That's because you're using Windows XP and Internet Explorer.
[Intrigued, Mary turns to John and looks into his eyes]
MARY:
Go on.
JOHN:
I use Linux and I'm never going back. No more blue-screens-of-death, re-boots, re-installs, pop-ups, virus attacks and no more spy-ware.
MARY:
But I'm not a geek.
JOHN:
Linux isn't just for geeks anymore and it's free. You can share it with your friends, too.
MARY:
Sounds great. How do I get copy?
JOHN:
I'll bring the disks and install it for you on Saturday.
[Mary is now elated]
MARY:
Sounds like a plan. Can I go down on you?
JOHN:
Sure!
[Fade to black]
VOICE OVER:
Linux...Look for the Penguin.
SFX: Zipper opening
MARY:
Oh John, I never knew.
SFX: Slurping sounds.
The interviewer asks some very good questions about the weak areas in Ubuntu-Canonical's business strategy and Shuttleworth has to dodge many questions and hide behind half-truths, handwaving and his usual marketing gobbledygook.
Ubuntu allegedly has a "policy of not doing our own software development, but only packaging what others have developed" -- with the few rare exceptions like the Upstart init system. Ubuntu-Canonical doesn't hire any top developers to do upstream development like some other commercial distros, Red Hat and Novell, do. For this precise reason, the GNOME hacker Jeff Waugh had to leave Ubuntu when he wanted to concentrate on developing GNOME.
Given this background, I'm inclined to believe that Shuttleworth is heavily distorting the reality when he claims that a lot of KDE 4 development is now happening inside of Ubuntu. This is one of the several points where I would have wished the interviewer to be a bit tougher and to push a bit harder in order to dig out the truth behind Shuttleworth's marketing talk. Of course, if Ubuntu-Canonical has indeed changed their policy lately and if they are now hiring KDE developers to do upstream development for KDE 4, then this revelation would have greatly added the news value of the interview. It's unfortunate that the interviewer didn't push this question (and some other questions) any further but, instead, left Shuttleworth's dubious claims open for speculations.