Slashdot Mirror
Is Ubuntu Selling Out or Growing Up?
AlexGr notes an article by Jeff Gould where he says "
Sometimes I wonder whether Ubuntu is really an open source software company any more.
Yes, yes, I realize Ubuntu is not a company at all but a free Linux distribution, GPL'd and open source by definition. But still, the Ubuntu distro is sponsored by a traditional for-profit company. The answer that has recently emerged to this question is, "yes and no."
Yes, of course, because Ubuntu's web site promises that the distro "will always be free of charge, including enterprise releases and security updates." But Ubuntu the enterprise ecosystem — understood as the collection of desktops and servers running Ubuntu in a given organization — is not."
Since Canonical is a for-profit company, this raises an interesting question. Namely, how exactly are they making money? Their wikipedia entry only indicates a couple of minor proprietary products, neither of which I've ever even heard of. Is this one of those internet boom style companies that only makes money in theory, or do they actually have an income source?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Nowhere the GPL forbids making a profit from GPLled software, as long as you adhere to the conditions of the GPL.
Yes, of course, because Ubuntu's web site promises that the distro "will always be free of charge, including enterprise releases and security updates.
Disclaimer: I am not god.
We may not be created equal
But we can be treated equal.
You can't have everything for free.
But you're right to focus on those Canonical bastards. They don't even post all their bank account and password details!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Shuttleworth has never pretended Ubuntu was purely about being nice to the community - he always planned that one day it would bring some money in.
It follows that Canonincal has to offer something that they charge for. And seeing as they've pledged that the distribution itself remains free, it makes sense that the things they charge for are the kind of things a business might need and might be prepared to pay for - support and bells and whistles that aren't in the free version and frankly aren't terribly relevant to the individual with one or two systems.
Ubuntu is a distribution, not a company. Canonical is the company.
Redhat.
"when life gets complicated, I like to take a nap in a tree and wait for dinner" - Hobbes.
You sir, are an idiot.
The general vision and direction of Ubuntu is where it has to go to start getting mass support. And who cares? Even if Ubuntu starts to do evil things, all would never be lost in the open-source community.
Open Source isn't some hippy anti-capitalist religion. Its a way of doing business. If you alienate or disqualify companies who want to make a profit from being "true open source" then I and many like me will have to go back to releasing proprietary software only. What pap! When people like this get to air their views, this whole free speech and the internet thing have gone too far.
You may want to boot a Ubuntu disc and run ``sudo update-grub''.
so boot with the live cd and fix grub.....:).......the great thing about linux is that you can do things like that.
Canonical needs a revenue source. It wants to derive revenue from support contracts, and is using an enterprise software tool as a carrot. Landscape isn't part of Ubuntu, anyway, it's a separate product. What's the big deal?
My blog
Does the submitter of this story understand the distinction between free as in beer, and free as in speech?
They are questioning whether or not Ubuntu classifies as open source, because the parent company might want to make money. The entire preposition here is flawed and silly.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I dunno, maybe it's because I've been a slackware user since version 8. Linux isn't referred to as Linux anymore.
That doesn't mean your computer is bricked.
Boot to a Live-CD. Chroot, go into grub, have it setup the MBR, and presto!
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Mod parent informative
So his complaint amounts to: "Sure they give you the source code for all distributed binaries, but they don't give you the source code for a subscription-based online service that they run."
For those of us who believe in software freedom, the question is really "does software freedom extend to web services?" Is providing someone with a web service akin to providing them with a binary? That is, you should give them access to the source code (where I'm using "should" as shorthand for "it's the free software thing to do").
The fact is that this is a point of contention in the community. It was debated considerably during the writing of GPLv3. Both sides have valid points: on the one hand, an online service isn't distributing software to end-users. On the other hand, this may be a "loophole" that allows companies to modify free software, but deny the eventual users of that software the ability to use the changes or further modify the code.
The author was inherently assuming that not providing code for web services was non-free. But really that's an unfinished debate, and he should have pointed out the nuances.
An open source project having roots in a for-profit company is not a problem.
If they start data-mining Ubuntu computers for profit or something just as devious - THAT's a problem.
I'm going to use Ubuntu as long as it remains free of evil and cost. If one of those changes, I'll move along to a different distro, but as long as they have the most easy to use open-source desktop environment and continue to develop this project as quickly and as beautifully as they are I'll continue to use it - simple as that.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
I RTFA, and I think this guy is an idiot. The method Canonical wants to use to make money is pretty much the method I hear OSS people talk about all the time -- selling support, as opposed to product.
/. post be "Some random tool thinks Ubuntu isn't OSS"?
But then I got to wondering -- who is this tool? There's no Wikipedia entry for him, and googling doesn't really produce anything helpful. So should the title of the
The free community support is on par, if not better than many of the other free distros, not commercially backed. Just because they offer commercial support, it is no reflection on the distro itself, and just because they offer products like Landscape it again doesn't really mean much.
It's not like Suse or Redhat that have (or had) significant differences between the free and commercial versions of their products.
If you never talk to Canonical, or give them a penny, you will still have a completely open, free Linux distribution. The services they charge for is just the icing on the cake that among other things help enterprises feel better about using Ubuntu and the products they promote can be written by anyone with an itch to scratch and released under the GPL.
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
I'm a little confused - how can Ubuntu be "growing up" and still suffer the most juvenile string of unprofessional release names?
I'm personally waiting for "Homoerotic Horse" to come out before I start pitching Ubuntu to professional clients. Because that's classy.
So, a company can't be "truly open source" if it makes money; i.e. is commercial.
Why?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Software as a service style support. There's their pricing. They also have a merchandise store. This is just like RedHat's model, what's so surprising? Also, Shuttleworth chucked a ton of change at them initially if my memory serves correctly.
My work here is dung.
If you choose to pay for support then you get support AND you get to use proprietary software to manage your servers. Just because they make Ubuntu free they should also make their specialized software free too? That's like getting a free car then complaining when you have to pay for gas.
They have to make money somewhere. Everyone knows Ubuntu is free because it's a hook to get companies, eventually, to sign up for support. So what?
Let me be the first to ask the submitter: What are you talking about Willis? Put down the hashpipe, get out of your parent's basement for a spell, enjoy the fresh air and learn about products vs. companies.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
They are growing up, and selling out in the process.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
with For-profit companies? Even living on the street is not free you know, you have to make money somehow. IMO open-source by itself is fine, free is definitely not a given.
the great thing about linux is that you can do things like that.
That's a completely foreign concept to someone who would say
All I know is that upgrading to Hoary bricked my PC, I can't even boot into XP anymore
I've been bitching about XP's contiunually rebooting until it "catches" and reaches the desktop while Mandriva boots right up with no complaints, but I finally found our why it was doing that.
The power supply was on its way south. My PC is now truly bricked, at least until I replace the power supply.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
That a non-trivial amount of free software users claim they care about "Free as in speech" but really want "Free as in can I crash on your couch?" There is a mentality among people like this that free software CAN'T cost money, and that for-profit operations are bad and such.
I think it is one of the problem OSS faces in terms of getting more companies to adopt that style. For every person that is actually honest about simply wanting the freedom to modify their software, but being perfectly ok with still paying for it, it seems there is at least one person who just wants a free lunch, and only spouts OSS dogma because they believe it'll lead to them getting more for free.
After reading the article, it appears that his gripe is that Canonical has a closed-source proprietary systems management function that you have to pay for if you want to use it. Oh, the horror! They actually want to make money, and even worse, aren't a "pure" open-source company!
Maybe I'm unusual for thinking this, but if you're going to have a support personnel and professional programmers on staff, it follows that you need a revenue stream, since most of them are real big on getting paid. There is no gun being held to the head of any one to purchase this. From my own experience, many businesses feel more comfortable paying for support and tools. You can tout "free" all you want, but "who do we get to support it - guaranteed" is a big part of the thinking. Shuttlesworth may be willing to support this, but he doesn't have unlimited resources. He has a lot, but not unlimited. He's also not immortal. So it makes sense for Ubuntu to be able to support itself.
A large part of the FOSS movement is about making money. The FOSS philosophy posits that freely distributing code and encourage others to share and share alike creates more value than closing it off and slapping a price tag on the bits. While "everyone can review and modify sourcecode" is true in principle--not everyone has the knowledge or desire to do so and are willing to pay people to modify code how they want it.
Also, enterprise customers want support contracts and they'll pay quite a lot for that.
Canonical ain't a charity organization. They're in it to make money, and they intend to get it by paid support contracts and maybe change orders. I don't perceive that as selling out--it's right in line with what FOSS represents.
I wish I could mod the submission down as troll.
expandfairuse.org
if people didn't make a profit from OSS, then htf would it exist. Please point me to an industry that exists without somebody making money.
The author of this article is basing his entire argument on the assumption that Ubuntu and Canonical are the same. He creates this assumption early on by saying that Canonical owns the rights to the name, and offers support contracts. Therefore, Ubuntu is Canonical. He then points out that Canonical is not purely open source, as they produce some proprietary software and charge for it. His argument is NOT that because Canonical tries to make money, that they aren't open source. Making money has nothing to do with being open source, it's the licensing.
However, I disagree with his assumption that Ubuntu and Canonical are the same. They are not the same. Ubuntu is an open source operating system. The fact that it is supported by a company who may produce proprietary software is irrelevant. Do I think it's hypocritical that Shuttlworth is evangelizing open source while at the same time selling proprietary products? You bet. But that doesn't change the fact that Ubuntu IS open source. By his logic, SuSE is not open source either because the company that owns and supports it, Novell, also has associations with proprietary products (and a deal with the ultimate proprietary software company).
The article is fairly confusing. It's not until more than half way down that he actually gets to the point. Simply, Canonical makes a proprietary application for managing Ubuntu systems. The rest of the time, he keeps building up his argument that Ubuntu is Canonical and goes on and on about how Canonical is trying to make money. All this time I'm thinking "There's nothing un-open source about making a buck!". But still, his Ubuntu is Canonical basis is flimsy. The article is really nothing more than a headlines grabber. Say something outrageous, the OSS fans go nuts, you get lots of page hits and ad revenue. The typical Slashdot sensationalist article.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
Red Hat anyone?
Oh noz! Someone wants to make money!
For fuck's sake. It's never good enough, is it? Like the binary drivers thing or countless other trifling irrelevancies before it, this is a classic example of why open source has as many detractors as it does supporters â" the polarising ideology of its most ardent supporters. To these types, if you are not with them, you are against them, an open source hater and betrayer of the cause.
:|
But seriously â" let's look at Ubuntu for a moment. It's one of the freest and most principled distributions of Linux out there, building off the same dogmatic (some would say excessively so) tradition as Debian. A default install of Ubuntu does not contain any non-free software (in that most pedantic sense), but a lot of distributions make no such distinction. So to try to paint it as the product of some evil conglomerate is disingenuous at the very least.
The fundamental issue here is in their dogmatism, open source's most ardent supporters become like the architects of a communist régime, where all enemies are members of a bourgeoisie that only ever gets bigger. At first it is just the most blatant offenders â" wholly proprietary companies like Microsoft. Then it is companies like Apple, whose commitment to open source is, shall we say, pragmatic. Finally they come for the most well-intentioned - companies like Canonical, who are behind Ubuntu. Why? One can only assume that it stems from some frankly communistic hatred of money.
This is misguided, because in the real world, even free is not free. As we are well aware, many open source contributors are paid to work on open source projects by their employers - IBM, Novell, Apple, Sun. And indeed, every open source contributor that is not still living with their parents has to work to live. Money buys food and shelter; money buys the free time to devote oneself to contributing to open source. And it buys things like the thousands of Ubuntu CDs that get pressed and distributed for free. Yes, someone had to pay for those.
Ideology is our enemy. The wars of the 20th century were wars rooted in ideology; in the 21st century, religious ideology seems to have once again reared its ugly head. If we were to try to think a little more pragmatically and a little less ideologically; in terms of shades of grey rather than black and white, then the world would genuinely be a better place.
I stopped at Ubuntu Breezy. No emacs tells the whole story.
You'll spend most of your time using apt to a URL and fixing
depencies.
Call me crazy, but I regard for-profit organization initially not with hatred, but suspicion and skepticism. Here we have Canonical, they support Ubuntu, which I and many other people enjoy and like. Shouldn't that be worth some moral credit? Have they done something horrible and evil that outweighs the good of supporting Ubuntu?
Don't get me wrong, I hate Microsoft, but I hate them for REASONS. Namely, they're products aren't very good and are often very bad, they're a convicted monopolist, and they engage in a wide variety of Anti-competitive business practices. Not just "because," but because of reasons that I can articulate in a reasoned argument.
Why should I hate Canonical?
Or there'll be no OSS?
What a rediculous article
It's not only diculous, it's re-diculous!
They must really feel the ridicule, I guess.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I think you mean "Hardy". If not, for the love of the gods, install an upgrade, man!
If you are using SATA drives, pay close attention to how your drives are mapped by linux. I ran into the same problem recently with Gutsy, turns out that Linux and the Bios disagree with how to order my SATA drives. Updating grub to use the linux-side hard drive numbers fixed it.
HTH
I don't want to RTFA because it seems the summary ...well, summarizes it all.
There's nothing wrong with trying to make money off of F/OSS software. In reality, here on Earth, people need to provide for themselves and their loved ones. Ubuntu is embracing a very unique model in that they give away software, and even hire coders to work on the software they give back to the community. Who cares if they charge for support? There is still a HUGE, FREE community backing it. You don't have to pay Canonical for support to use Ubuntu. Of course, the option is there, which is nice for some individuals and companies.
They aren't stealing open-source code and making it proprietary (COUGHlinksysCOUGH), they aren't even charging for updates that come from paying people to find/fix them, and they're even contributing back to the most pure OSS Linux platform IMHO (Debian). What is the problem here?
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
I googled 'Jeff Gould Peerstone Research' (minus the single quotes) and found:
http://www.glgroup.com/Council-Member/Jeff-Gould-110923.html
CEO
Peerstone Research
Member of the Technology Council
Jeff Gould is the Chief Executive Officer and Director of Research at Peerstone Research. He produces primary research and independent analysis focused on enterprise applications software, middleware software and server hardware.
Mr. Gould uses proprietary primary research to identify and quantify the impact of emerging user trends on enterprise applications, middleware stack and server hardware vendors. The Application Vendors inlcude: ORCL, SEBL, SAP, LWSN, MSFT, QADI, MANU, ITWO Software Stack Vendors: MSFT, ORCL SUNW, BEAS, IBM, NOVL, RHAT, SAP (Netweaver); and Hardware Stack Vendors include: IBM, DELL, SUNW, HPQ, UNI, INTC, AMD. (This is me - Update Profile)
Employment History 2001 - present CEO
Peerstone Research
1995 - 2001 Editor in Chief - International Editions
InformationWeek Magazine
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
I respectfully disagree
a: you can have the systems without the support (aka support it yourself), and
b: selling support is infinitely greater than charging for the distro. People always need support. People don't always need more copies of the distro. Distro free also = no piracy.
I seem to recall that there are companies out there that have techs who know how to handle their own Ubuntu servers, no?
What really makes me wonder is that since it's open source, and people know what landscape is designed to do, why doesn't someone else start working on a GPL'd software that does the same as landscape?
This is why claiming it means anything remotely having to do with open source or not, is just plain stupid. As much as I love open source, not every program in existence must be open source.
... has been preaching all along? Namely it is making money off of support rather than the software itself. Oh No, Not That!!!
They sell support and merchandise along with a handful of proprietary products.
This earns them money just as it does for others. They're not microsoft as far as profits go so the anti-rich brigade has some time to go before they can start attacking Ubuntu, imo.
And I don't mean "free as in speech", I mean "free as in he's wearing out his keyboard but nothing of meaning comes out". There's no problem stated, as a result there's no conclusions, there's only a badly disguised attempt at trolling, which I even doubt is fully intentional and conscious.
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
You type an address, they mail you a stack of CDs - High quality OS, Applications, web based updates - And THEY PAY FOR SHIPPING. Not a single Virus, malware, trojan etc., How much more FREE can anything get?
I'll buy your brick at twice the market rate of $.50 cents per brick + Shipping charges.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
That would be true if Canonical charged per hour, they don't, they charge per desktop/server/year. That means that like ISPs its in their best interest to over sell their support capacity. So whats the best way to do this eh? Well I can bet you the answer is not the nightmare you suggested. PS: It sounds like your a bit sore over your local city council being screwed over by some consultants. Honesty have some faith, if it wasn't Linux they would have found something else to waste your property taxes on.
I don't even use Ubuntu, but this guy appears to be saying that they're not "open source" because they try to make money off support and don't give away the server side of their RHN-style web service. Really? So the two vectors through which open source companies are "supposed" to make money (support and value-adds) are no longer acceptable either? Fuck off.
Game... blouses.
So you want your Free as in Beer? The promise is that we'll have Free as in Speech, which is much more important.
The whole "Yes and no" of Ubuntu is what attracts mainstream users who use Linux not because of pragmatic decisions but because it is the best tool. Ubuntu is taking the best of open source and filling the gaps where open source simply is not for whatever reason. I am a person who praises Debian for sticking to fundamentals and I'm glad it's there, but open source on the desktop is a bit of a chicken and egg thing. Ubuntu is advertising the possibilities of open source to people who don't care about those fundamentals and just want to use their computer. These newcomers to open source don't quite know how to perceive the benefits of open source, and once they start using it for other reasons, they begin to see these benefits in real world every day use in the way that they wouldn't see it by observing the dogma. If these people wouldn't use open source before because they were missing a few pieces where they don't want to shell out extra money for more compatible hardware or take the time to figure out a few workarounds. When they come to see the benefits of open source then they will realize that Ubuntu is using proprietary bits as a workaround in order to make it easier for them, and they will come to see how the proprietary bits are actually holding them back from certain things. Then they will make up their minds, and that's fair enough I think. Ubuntu can be run without any proprietary parts, and since Ubuntu's increased popularity there have been more eyes on open source. The people who appreciate open source fundamentals are not going away or changing their minds, and the hard core floss idealists are not going to budge anyway. Do we really have to mark Ubuntu as evil, or can't we simply acknowledge it as another approach? I don't believe Ubuntu is taking anything away from open source. If that changes then we'll be more ready to deal with it, as more people will be more intimately familiar with open source, and that means they'll be in a better position to deal with it.
Twinstiq, game news
If a Wolf, drags a fresh kill to me, a stranded and starving human, and offers it to me to eat, does that make me a wolf?
This is the lamest article I have ever read.
Translation: "If you people would stop constantly acting like elitist, insufferable, holier-than-thou jackasses, maybe the masses would be more inclined to listen to you and use the software."
I couldn't agree more. *No one* is more irritating than the fanboi in full "blinders-on" mode.
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
You're an idiot. OSS isn't about not making money, its about freedom of information. Corporations and for-profits evil by default.
... selling out support contracts. Which is fair game all day long. In other news, the sky is often blue.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sorry, but I think it is high time that Taco and other editors did not pass this idiotic pseudo articles to the wider readership.
Anybody that starts with a premise stating that open source and making money are contradictory should no longer be allowed to spread his ignorance.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I think you're confusing selling out with being successful.
First: "Sometimes I wonder whether Ubuntu is really an open source software company any moreâ Why say that if you know Ubuntu ISNâT a company!!! Second: The whole POINT is that the company is separate from the software. HELLO!!! The company is there to allow the software to actually be taken seriously by intervals and business alike that want to use the software to get shit done. Like has been mentioned SUPPORT!! With out Red Hat and now Canonical Linux would still just be used by enthusiast and people with to much time on their hands. Granted I am one of these people, as I grow older I just want shit to work and I want to have support to know what to do instead of beating my head against the wall on some undocumented free software. Because of the support Red Hat and Ubuntu are used world wide in large organizations and that fuels more use and better software. Than in the end the little people get to use for free as well. But wait.. there are now better docs too! OMG what a great system. I know Garmin uses both Red Hat and Ubuntu internally, now tell me they would be without support.
I also think he is overselling that point.
The point that Canonical tries to have it both ways - that (despite the clarity in distinguishing them in the OS) it isn't entirely opensource in practice, but it wants to act as if it were to market itself to opensource advocates - well, he has a valid point.
That said - it is, essentially, calling them on a marketing decision. Fair enough - they are allowed to make a marketing decision which is deceptive without being dishonest, he is allowed to call them on it.
But saying that they have a product which is not open source, and that in turn means they're selling out? Umm - no. Maybe it means they are not pure of heart and soul, but I'm okay with that. Most companies that support opensource aren't doing out of some deep, abiding divine spark. I seem to recall IBM has one or two closed source products lying around somewhere - .
There *is* a dichotomy between making opensource products and making a sell-able product, and I haven't seen a good way to make a profit *just* selling a useful product as open source yet, without incurring some kind of subscription based support service for it.
If someone can come up with a way to make GPL'd open source product so well made it doesn't *need* support, and still manage to sell the darn thing and make money at it, they will resolve this dichotomy. I'm not sure I see how to do it (yet), but it seems to me to be the problem that needs resolved.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
I described the effect which here is just beginning, in a recent post, and others indicated that Ubuntu was a likely candidate. When something is an underdog, people flock to it. When it then becomes "big" they start to turn on it. This is the first step: raising the question. People may react to that and stop believing it to be such a good thing, or if it continues to gain momentum, will become actively hostile. In the referenced posts, we talk about software. But I've seen the same reactions in people who were early adopters of some musical genres or musicians/bands who later became generally popular.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=536064&cid=23216760
Love the puppy, kill the wolf, even though the entire world of "man's best friend" originates with them both.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
And you're pretty damn naive if you think a per-machine support contract is buying you anything more than patch support and some phone-prole that knows how to use google.
If Canonical isn't selling hourly contracts they will be within the next year or two.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
Gobuntu
Ubuntu is building an incredibly huge following. Later on they can institute for fee services that rely on people using them since they are comfortable with Ubuntu.
Not too dissimilar to many companies giving software/equipment away to college and grad students, who train on it, and thereby later on use that product since they are comfortable with it.
Ubuntu has been the number one Linux distro downloaded for how many months straight now?
..........FULL STOP.
all of you need to see revolution OS, it explains how open source can thrive.
Of course, razor handles are laregely useless without the blade. Operating systems can be quite useful without support.
Worse, there's lots of community support out there for free. It'd be like someone giving away compatible razors that work with your free razor handle.
The razor blade business model only works when what you give away has extremely limited usefulness by itself.
For god's sake.
One of the reasons Shuttleworth founded Canonical was to fund Ubuntu. He tossed enough cash at the Ubuntu Foundation ($USD10 million) to make sure it would be viable for a good long time. He's smart enough to want to make sure Ubuntu keeps being funded, so he made sure there would be a steady stream of income.
He also founded the Shuttleworth Foundation, which is focused on education. One of the things you need for that in this day and age is....computers. If you don't want your child's education to be held hostage by a for-profit corporation, one of the things you need is a free-as-in-speech operating system to run all your important education software on.
Does anyone seriously think setting up this particular chain is an accident? An education foundation that emphasizes the need for Free software, a user-friendly Linux distribution, and a revenue source?
I'm as skeptical as the next guy, but Shuttleworth comes off as some kind of Heinlein-esque hero.
This is the voice of World Control. I bring you Peace.
I'll double that - as long as you don't charge what ebay sellers charge for shipping
(New PC for $.01 +shipping $450.00)
Although I'm not sure how financially well MySQL was doing before they sold out to Sun.
Still, you don't have to sell the PHB's on RedHat these days and no one questions whether you can get support. Now days fewer people question whether you can get support for MySQL and there are more PHP/MySQL jobs out there.
This is a good thing in my book. Being able to tell a company thinking about switching to Ubuntu and Google services that they can actually get as good or better support from Canonical than Google (sorry, Google but it's true...the plus side is you seldom much need service with Google products). Companies will pay a lot for a scapegoat. Even if they could hire in-house support for less. They'll still spend the bucks just to have a number to call and yell, "FIX IT OR YOU'RE FIRED!"
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
If you want a distribution that's produced by an "open" company I hear there's a nonprofit called "Software in the Public Interest" that puts out a Linux distro...
Bingo. I was starting to think I was the only one awake here. Gothmolly is pulling our legs. Hmmh ... Goth... Molly ... whaddaya suppose she looks like?
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
Who gives a fucking shit?
You tools beg and plead for someone to support the almighty Linux, but when someone decides to pick up Ubuntu and make an actual push into the market, you bitch and moan about them selling out?
Ubuntu would still be a piece of unknown software if it weren't for the cash moneys that were thrown at it. It will be cash moneys that continue to support and grow Ubuntu. And it will be the contempt of cash moneys (and the envy of those who have it) that will force the Linux "community" to eventually turn their back on Ubuntu and praise some other distribution.
Fuck - Ubuntu is nice, it's free, it's open source, and it happens to (essentially) have a corporate master now. Boo fucking hoo. We're still waiting for year of the Linux desktop, but at least with Ubuntu's recently popularity, more people will get the joke.
Mod this as troll or flamebait if you want, but the point is Ubuntu has had success, and now someone thinks that's inherently bad and worries that Ubuntu's clean and free spirit has somehow been tainted by corporate greed. Fucking retarded. Until you can buy Ubuntu+ for an added fee or some other such bullshit (don't think for a second that your fancy licenses will hold up to corporate lawyers), Ubuntu's success is nothing but a good thing.
Jeff Gould needs to grow the fuck up
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I reckon Ubuntu is still pretty much free. Shuttleworth is a venture captalist that saw the possibility for profit and success in investing in true open source. But he did invest money to make money. Make no mistake, Canonical is out to make money- but they are doing so in a very positive and giving way when it comes to the community.
That's why I am posting from an Ubuntu subnotebook.
Currently there are no business model behind Ubuntu and the distro will soon die. Sorry!
how in the hell is this a goddamn troll, no i'm not going to explain my position, some asshole needs read
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
Canonical was founded by the billionaire Mark Shuttleworth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shuttleworth
He's basically putting up all the money for the operation on the vague hope that it will pay off someday. They really don't have a business model, just a really generous investor/CEO.
So... it's basically a charity based operating system.
Which raise the point, why is this douchebag
http://www.interopnews.com/news/is-ubuntu-selling-out-or-growing-up.html
writing an article about how the company is "selling out" by making some very small moves to make money off of an operating system they spend large amounts of money on, and give away for free?
It kind of pisses me off that random internet idiots who don't make software for a living call anyone who tries to a "sellout."
The article mentions that they are trying to recoup a small amount of the money they are dumping into Canonical by selling some proprietary software.
So what? I'm sick and tired of internet morons tearing apart people that actually have to work for a living. It's not enough that they give away most of their software for free and under an open source license, but if they charge for *anything*, if you develop one line of proprietary code and sell it to make a buck, some random jerkoff will mouth off at you about how "software wants to be free," and you're "oppressing" them with your price tag and your non-gpl license.
Free software isn't a business model. None of the distros that don't make you pay money *per install* make any money. Canonical loses money, Suse loses money. The only people who make money making operating systems do so by selling some proprietary code, or (as with red hat) devising schemes to make people pay money for shrink wrapped copies of open source code. Ubuntu has by far taken the least obnoxious approach, i.e. giving away most of their software, and letting you use their repository for free updates (which others don't do), but developing some proprietary stuff they let you buy separately.
software support is more like insurance, it's there when you need it. you don't buy support and sit on the phone with them all day, you call support when you have exhausted all avenues or when you need to get things back up and running asap.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
If it is not already evident, I think the quotes below from previous columns by the writer clearly expose his bias.
From FLOSSing with jargon: ~ ~ From Do we want Europe regulating our software?: ~ From Has open source jumped the shark?:...meanwhile they are the distro making some of the biggest headway into the M$ pie. To put it simply... Ubuntu works... and it finally brings Linux to your average desktop/laptop user who didn't have any idea how to use Linux before. So call them a sellout... it doesn't matter. It doesn't change how they've advanced the OS and brought it into niches where Linux never set foot before (including pre-installed on Dell systems).
-Cnik
Jeff Gould seems to be making the simple mistake of assuming that Ubuntu == Canonical. Ubuntu is not selling out, that is obvious. He even points it out in his article quoting Ubuntus Netzero-esque slogan that "it will always be free".
Is Canonical selling out? Not by far. Canonical has never made the assertion that they will be producing software and services free of charge. Various websites will say the definition of sellout is an act of betrayal or "When a band changes themselves just for money or fame." Neither of these two statements apply to canonical.
I hate to be one of those /.ers that take a quote and pick it apart point by point, but I feel the necessity right now.
Deliver the worlds best free software platform? "Best" is objective, but they are delivering a free (beer + some speech) software platform. Is it for everyone? Yep! It has many translations and it's not limited to anyone acquiring it.
Supporting it? They have their free (beer) online forums that they host and pay the bills for. Notice that this bullet lacks the word 'free' (beer). They never claim to be offering support or extra functionality for free (beer) of charge. They restrict their free (beer) offering of product to the software platform they "make available".
Facilitate the continued growth of the free software community? They are doing that too! When developers of Ubuntu, either sponsored by canonical or on their whim, maintain or enhance the offerings of software in the "free software platform" that Canonical "makes available" for free (beer).
Jeff Gould, please take a moment to think about the entities you make broad sweeping comments about when you post articles on the internet. Your article title does not refer to the correct entity. I feel that you suggesting "Ubuntu" is selling out was done not as a misunderstanding in your subject matter, but as a way to get more readers, a trolling headline to get people interested in your misguided article.
So someone goes and makes the most successful desktop Linux distro to date, and the community's first reaction is "but is it still really open-source?" Yeah, that's a great first step towards wide Linux adoption.
College-Pages.com - Online Colleges, Degrees, and Programs
Ubuntu is free. People's time to help you manage your business servers should not be free-
This author is an extremist. Nothing useful in what he is saying.
How did this article get on slashdot?
If only they worked. Kibbutz is failing in Israel as more and more people move away from them. However spreading throughout the world are Intentional Communities and Communitarianism. I wonder how long these will last though.
FalconShould there be a Law?
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Yesterday my girlfriend bricked my car, I had to release the handbrake to un-brick it.
I really wish more people would RTFA. The main gripe seems to be with Landscape, which is an online service run on proprietary software. Launchpad is also proprietary, but Canonical has shown some signs of freeing it up.
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
You're right, people don't pay for support. Companies do.
I've personally known about such contracts. One example was for close to a million Euro in support, spread over 3 years, on top of a license fee of 800K. And for software (not Linux or Ubuntu) they did not even use for 2 years... Those who sign, don't really care, it does not come out of their own pockets.
Else there'd be no chess players, there'd be no amateur astronomers. No trainspotters.
None of which known for getting paid.
'cos OSS can be just a hobby, and people go to work so that they can afford to pay for their hobbies.
Also, there really is not much innovation going on in the Linux world, most linuxes cannot scale (thread/memory manage/schedule) to the levels of Solaris and AIX. So people use them for the small servers replacing Windows systems.
We want a really good Linux for the Laptop (Nvidia drivers, power mgmt, wifi) and this seems to be under threat, so please lets encourage those distros that help the laptop/desktop user, Ubuntu is one of the few that is innovating and helping the laptop/desktop user. I am a long time Linux laptop user and would like to stay so. Ubuntu looks like the best one out there, I have used RH, SUSE, Mandrake.
You, sir, are a fool. If you're incapable of performing even simple tasks that would mitigate the risk to your system, or making preparations to recover from a worst case scenario before a major system change, I have little sympathy for you. I'm sure you're a troll, but by all means keep bitching.
a tight-arse (British & Australian, very informal, American, very informal) a person who does not like to spend money or give it to other people. You won't get a drink out of her, she's a real tight-arse... This guy is a tight arse.... He gets free software... and wants someone to set his computers up for him for free... what the. Are you a dictator from a third world country or something???? seriously.... who in their right mind would expect someone to work for nothing otherwise????
Seriously, what an amazingly well-researched, and informed article! This seems to be the same level of quality and insightful, professional journalism as some of the "articles" that Maureen O'Gara and Daniel Lyons came up with.
And for those who can't tell, yes, I am being very sarcastic. I am also using the term " articles" very, very loosely!
I once had the opposite problem on one computer, Windows seemed to work fine, but Linux kernel panicked really often. It turned out to be dodgy memory, and I guess Windows just wasn't writing anything that important to the dodgy area. That's the only time Windows has been more stable than Linux for me!
The whole tone of this article sounds like it was written by someone who has never really understood open source or free software at all. He's certainly never read Stallman who makes it clear that free software does not imply that one can't make any money. I guess it's good to hear that this level of ignorance exists, but it did nothing to advance anyone's understanding of anything.
you mean the companies, like Gilette, that give away handles while King soopers, Safeway, Walmart, and Target produce generic blades with the same mounting?
Keep in mind that entire model of Gilette was based on safety razors i.e. this entire approach.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That's the MS business model, which is why MS is dumping money into Teh Vista and Teh Office. Get companies locked into your software, then charge them up the whazoo for not only support, but licenses as well, as you randomly change undocumented file formats on them and stop updating perfectly good software.
It's really great, because rather than having the up-front costs involved in planning out what you are going to do, then hiring quality programmers to implement it, spending time testing, etc... you just sucker people and companies into volunteering to test your software for you. Then when you get someone dumb enough to pay for support, they are really paying you to debug your code... something which would... ah... nevermind.
Closed source is a really lucrative scam, if you play your cards right. Just ask that armada of $100+/hour MS employees who have been raping the world for the past several decades (and have lots of happy botnet owners to show for their work).
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Huh? From Day One, Shuttleworth has made no bones abut the fact that he hopes to eventually see Ubuntu turning a profit. Idle curiosity: is that a bad thing? Or should they be forever beholden to a billionaire who could be hit by a bus tomorrow? I'm not sure why turning a profit has to be a bad thing -- frankly, I'd be ecstatic. After all, barring Segway, I'm unaware of most any dot-com era company that's still going without showing a profit. Would you wish the same fate on Ubuntu? [NOTE: this does not mean I condone in any way the closing of source, or making things proprietary. It does, however, mean that I hope a fully-open-source company can become a vibrant example to the closed-source community.]
Amen.
That's a feature. XP is not free software, so you are not free to use it.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Am I the only person who read this submission and immediately thought to myself "Why in hell is this trolling shite making the cut on /.?" I see absolutely nothing newsworthy about the submission and certainly nothing meriting any discussion.
Power does not corrupt - power attracts the corrupt.
Couldn't agree with you more. If a company like Ubuntu, who gives away a TON of effort and information are considered evil for making a bit of profit through related services, then who, exactly, is not evil? The company that gives EVERYTHING away doesn't make a profit and ceases to exist. So, in this idiot's opinion, it would be better for Ubuntu to just cease to exist rather than make a bit of money. Lame. The parent couldn't have said it better....FUCK OFF.
Open source refers to the software NOT the company. The company is free to make money through selling support for the software which is an entirely different thing.
---DISCLAIMER - I AM NOT AN UBUNTU USER---
---I primarily use Fedora-----------------
Since when is turning a profit selling out? By your logic, any company that ever turned a profit on open source software is a sell-out. They provide software for free. They charge money for services (support, landscape). What IS an open-source company anyway? Companies themselves cannot be open-source, only software can do that. We use the term 'open-source company' to refer to such as Canonical, Redhat, etc as a matter of convenience - as a shorthand for a more complicated idea. It does not, itself, have any real meaningh though. Even if you accept that Ubuntu is merely a brand name for a product provided by Canonical, that would not make Ubuntu any less open-source, even if Canonical also sold Vista licenses, or its own proprietary brand of Unix. Even accepting Ubuntu as a brand for Canonical, conflating its open source status with some ideological evaluation of whether or not Canonical's service offerings are true embodiments of open source ideals is silly. The questions and answers involved in the evaluation of Ubuntu as an open source entity are fairly simple, and straightforward.
1) Is Ubuntu available under an Open Source License?
Yes.
2) Is there any part of Ubuntu itself that is NOT available under that licesne?
No.
If I were to write closed-source packages for Slackware, or to offer paid enterprise support for Slackware, along with enterprise services (something like RHN or Landscape), that would not make Slackware any less Open Source.
Your argument seems to be that Ubuntu is not Open Source because Canonical and Mark Shuttleworth are making money off of them, and that they charge money for services ins a manner more in keeping with traditional business practices.
The implication that RedHat is not Open Source (for the same reasons) is also silly.
The one and only meaningful definition of whether or not something is open-source, is whether or not its source code is licensed and released under an open source license. The rest is a business model, and does not have direct bearing on whether or not the brand is Open Source so long as the GPL (in this case) is appropriately adhered to.
Just my $0.02
Just this one, you guys really ought to RTFA. Every single poster here, with the solitary exception of JustinOpinion, has completely missed the point.
The author is not complaining about Cannonical making money in general. He's also not complaining about them making money off of support.
What he's complaining about is them writing and selling a network managment tool (Landscape) that requires access to a server for which they are not providing the source code. The server of course will not talk to you if you haven't paid up. Basicly, the Landscape clients may be free, but the program itself is not.
This is arguably against the spirit of the GPL (and the spirit of "umbuntu"). Its essentially the same business model as any MMO.
However, it is *not* a complaint about the meer concept of making money of of Free Software. Its a complaint about their methods of doing so in this one instance.
So which one is your girlfriend? Your left hand or your right?
Personally, my right hand is the wife. But, as usual, things eventually start to get boring with the wife, so sometimes I have to sneak out behind the wife's back and resort to the girlfriend (left hand).
The density of fud present in a sentence like this is staggering: "Yes, of course, because Ubuntu's web site promises that the distro 'will always be free of charge, including enterprise releases and security updates.'" OOOh Canonical might change their minds. What's so stupid about such speculation is that They don't get to change the past. So even if they immediately pulled the plug on giving away Ubuntu, the existence of earlier releases--and their accompanying GPL status--is not nullified. It can't be. So some ideologically passionate Ubuntu user group could (and I predict would) immediately open up a distribution spot giving away GNUbuntu or somesuch. GNUbuntu (Gnubuntu's Not Ubuntu) would just be a repackaging of previously existing open sourced code with any non-GPL parts expunged. Problem solved.
yes. that's all I'm going to say in all comments from now on.
You have misunderstood the word 'bricked'.
look it up
If the computer boots to the point where GRUB errors can be received, its not bricked.
Is that you, UbuntuDupe?
Put identity in the browser.
Ubuntu is good for users that are just transitioning from Windows or Mac OS. It's easy to use, easy to find things. Also, It's available in either 32-bit or 64-bit versions.
Before I post my opinion, I want to disclose that I am no expert in licensing or open source for that matter, but I currently have a dual booting system with Windows XP and Kubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 and I spend 99% of my time on the latter, and I have deeply set intellectual and emotional opinions about both operating systems.
:-)
Open source wouldn't be a feasible marketing strategy without any hand-in-hand efforts to monetize from it. If the GPL forced free stuff to be abolished from stuff that costs money open source would still thrive, but would never become the norm.
I believe that (a small) part of the spirit of the GPL is not to "trojanize" free code with costly code, but to "trojanize" costly code with free code. That way no one is forced to pay when they don't need to. Righw now, almost everybody in the world can get a Linux distro that is both very usable and hardware compatible. If it needs to eat a golden hamburger to stay alive, so be it! If anyone has any words of wisdom on this matter I'll be happy to listen. I still feel like I misinterpret the GPL, even though I spent a long time reading the GPL-3 doc in my Hardy install