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

Posted by timothy on 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.'"

4 of 625 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Sumbmitters? Editors? by JavaTHut · · 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?

  2. Re:Marketing MIA by Hal_Porter · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    --
    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;
  3. Re:Sumbmitters? Editors? by MyLongNickName · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    --
    See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
  4. best quote by je+ne+sais+quoi · · 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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