Shuttleworth Says Canonical Is Not Cash-Flow Positive

eldavojohn writes "Mark Shuttleworth, the millionaire bankroller who keeps Ubuntu going strong, has revealed 'Canonical is not cash-flow positive' just as version 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) of the popular Linux distribution is released today. In a call, he said he 'had no objection' in funding Canonical for another three to five years. He did say, however, that if they concentrated on the server edition of Ubuntu that they could be profitable in two years."

Comments

Re:Hands Down

[wytcld]

A single major advantage: It's Debian-based, but more current, better honed. I haven't run SUSE, but deb package management is far better than Red Hat's rpm, and that can be a huge advantage.

A disadvantage: There are some Debian-specific errors that Ubuntu has inherited. The installation routine for the server version, for instance, uses its own partitioner rather than one of the standard *fdisk variants. That partitioner doesn't write partitions on the cylinder boundaries with certain HP raid controllers, despite that HP certifies servers with them for Debian, and Debian and Ubuntu both list those servers as suitable. The result isn't obvious until your partitions go bye-bye when a write expects the partition boundary not to come before the cylinder boundary.

And then there was the OpenSSL bug where a Debian maintainer removed the randomizer. So there are weaknesses in Debian, but do they compare with rpm hell, or with the many adventures with Red Hat's aggressive patching of its kernels? If you're running Red Hat and compile your own generic kernels, that's not a problem. With Red Hat you really should. With Ubuntu I haven't yet had a problem running their kernel versions.

Here comes the cries for taxes

[tjstork]

You know what's going to happen, is that Open Source advocates are going to argue for public funding of open source projects because they can't make money giving something away for free, and there's never going to be enough donations or volunteers to pay the people you need to pay. It's going to be like public radio, all over again. They are too good to charge for ads, make billions of dollars merchandising Sesame Street, take corporate money anyway, and still run ads of a sort, and yet STILL look for public money and will probably look for a lot more once the Dems get in.

I imagine that, while Windows may stop because of WGA, Linux will periodically halt and start playing entertaining videos about all the buffoons that write it, as part of an NPR like Linux beggars night. Donate to Linux, and get a stack of 2nd tier magazines and a handy tote bag!