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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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
You haven't said anything that is insightful or surprising to anyone with two neurons to rub together. Ubuntu isn't going to drop the normal Ubuntu distribution. They're simply also making a truly free distribution to satisfy those people who demand such a thing. At some point in the future at which the normal distribution does not outshine the Free-as-in-speech distribution, there will be no need for the nonfree. But until that day - and I suspect it will be a painfully long time coming - it's wonderful (IMO) that they are taking both approaches.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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! \ \\//
Fluendo is developing/selling (has to sell them due to royalties) MS codecs for Linux. Also they are working on legal DVD player. Morever gstreamer has DRM stack in it, for HD/BlueRay protection schemes. If any distribution put money to pay for licence fees for codecs, they can release those codecs bundled. There's nothing to stop them, however nobody would like to use DRM unless it's enforced, and with a typical Linux distribution you can't enforce that.
In past it was not possible for computer manufacturers to offer Linux because they were not enough consumers to choose Linux over Windows and Windows might charge them with higher oem licenses. However today they see that people would like to buy pre-installed Linux boxes, and computer manufacturers yet see that they can support them as well. Dell will soon bundle his own build of Fedora if I'm not mistaken. Maybe they will offer other distros as well. Then we'll see if Linux is already lost, or you're talking non-sense.
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.
Perhaps one (arguably) good opportunity for the platform has passed. Speaking as somebody who works with a dual-boot Vista / Gentoo system, I can say from personal experience that if Microsoft keeps taking their operating system in its current direction (very shiny, DOG slow in comparison) Linux might find itself with a good many more such opportunities in the future. To be perfectly honest, I'm finding that with Linux it's actually easier to accomplish most tasks that are more complex than, say, word processing because the operating system stays the hell out of my way, unlike Vista. I, for one, see good things in Linux's future.
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.
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.