Canonical Close To $30M Critical Mass; Should Microsoft Worry?

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Canonical Close To $30M Critical Mass; Should Microsoft Worry?

Posted by timothy on Tuesday January 20, 2009 @05:24AM from the so-you're-saying-shuttleworth-has-business-acumen dept.

ruphus13 writes "Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical, claims that the company is very close to the $30M mark, at which point, they will be a self-sustaining company. While people feel that this should not worry Microsoft, the real question is whether a 10,000 person effort on a failure like Vista can actually be the paradigm of a long-term strategy. From the article: 'Microsoft had 10,000 people [the article is unclear whether these were all developers, or administrative and support staff were factored in] working on Vista for a five year period ... huge profits in any given year can mean relatively little five years on. Canonical's self-sustaining revenue may not be threatening — but it leaves one wondering how sustainable Microsoft's development process really is.'"

12 of 625 comments (clear)

Re:Marketing MIA by Anonymous Coward · 2009-01-20 05:30 · Score: 4, Funny

The longer you guys drag ass on marketing; the longer I get to keep writing code for Windows. Keep it up. I got bills to pay!
Re:Slashdot missing a story? by Anonymous Coward · 2009-01-20 05:35 · Score: 2, Funny

Remember, this is slashdot, the story will be posted. Around Friday.
Re:Sumbmitters? Editors? by JavaTHut · 2009-01-20 05:48 · Score: 5, Funny

Hey, guys, my car goes from 0 to 120 in 3! That makes about as much sense as the summary.
Was a car analogy really necessary?
Re:Sumbmitters? Editors? by geckipede · 2009-01-20 05:48 · Score: 2, Funny

This summary makes zero Ohms of sense?
Re:Marketing MIA by Hal_Porter · 2009-01-20 06:06 · Score: 5, Funny

He has buxom virgin cheerleaders that work for him for free, the only problem is they are all male.

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Re:Sumbmitters? Editors? by MyLongNickName · 2009-01-20 06:06 · Score: 5, Funny

Can analogies are ALWAYS necessary. The only problem is this one made sense. Mod GP down.

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best quote by je+ne+sais+quoi · 2009-01-20 06:17 · Score: 5, Funny

The best quote in TFA (the original NYT one, not the one linked to in TFS):

In his personal life, he continues to test what is possible, requesting that a fiber-optic connection be installed to his house on the border of London's affluent Chelsea and South Kensington neighborhoods.

"I want to find out what it's like to have a gigabit connection to the home," he said. "It is not because I need to watch porn in high-definition but because I want to see what you do differently." (emphasis mine)
From that alone, you can tell he reads slashdot.

The second best quote from TFA:

"Look, I have a very privileged life, right?" Mr. Shuttleworth said. "I am a billionaire, bachelor, ex-cosmonaut. Life couldn't easily be that much better. Being a Linux geek sort of brings balance to the force."
Kudos on reaching the self-sustainable mark Mr. Shuttleworth! Let's hope you really do make the world a better, more free, place.

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Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Re:It could mean there is hope. by canUbeleiveIT · 2009-01-20 06:21 · Score: 4, Funny

The fear never leaves the back of my mind that there will be a day coming when either Jobs or Ballmer or some US politician like Orin Hatch says 'If you are a Linux user, we will come find you, man, woman, child or company. You will use Windows pr you will pay fines, you will go to jail.'

That's doesn't sound far-fetched to me. Personally, I worry about my car not starting due to rogue clowns from outer space stealing my spark plugs.
Re:Um, no? by Anne+Thwacks · 2009-01-20 06:41 · Score: 2, Funny

RH and Microsoft do really compete in the server market
People use MS stuff on servers? Are they guilty but insane?

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Re:Marketing MIA by mixmatch · 2009-01-20 07:38 · Score: 3, Funny

Oh, but the irony of using a company's products to bring them down is so sweet!
Re:Marketing MIA by Anonymous Coward · 2009-01-20 10:00 · Score: 1, Funny

Couldn't resist, it had to be said:
You're not the droid we're looking for.
Re:Marketing MIA by vikstar · 2009-01-20 10:33 · Score: 2, Funny

But nevertheless, if you use your competitor's product to do your sales presentation, it doesn't look very good.
Oh, it looks damn good... to me...

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The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.