Slashdot Mirror
Canonical Seeks $32 Million To Make Ubuntu Smartphone
nk497 writes "Canonical has kicked off a crowdfunding campaign to raise $32 million in 30 days to make its own smartphone, called Ubuntu Edge, that can also hook up to a monitor and be used as a PC. If it meets its funding target on Indiegogo, the Ubuntu Edge is scheduled to arrive in May 2014. To get one, backers must contribute $600 (£394) on the first day or $810 (£532) thereafter. Canonical will only make 40,000 of the devices."
~nt~
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Would rather have a http://pomegranatephone.com/
An I.T. motto in the hands of an idiot is a dangerous thing...
Actual link to indiegogo page, which is missing from FTS
http://igg.me/at/ubuntuedge
How can PCPro get page hits and ad impressions by linking to the IndieGoGo page?
Canonical has bullshitted too much in the past to be taken seriously about this. Several times, they've announced that new products from major vendors (Asus, Dell) would run their version of Linux. Never happened. They need to STFU until the product ships.
In order to meet the target, they have to sell at least 38096 of those 40,000 phones after the first day, and 1906 on the first. They have to sell at least 39,507 of them to meet their goal, if they're all at the higher price.
Ambitious goals.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Just bought a Z10 and I'm loving it. Everything that a smart phone should be and the battery life kicks ass. If I wasn't so paranoid about erased data being recovered I would probably sell my S3... so it'll sit on the shelf with the other antiquated hard drives and peripherals.
It seems like a bit of a break with their philosophy. About Ubuntu says "The vision for Ubuntu is part social and part economic: free software, available free of charge to everybody on the same terms." Sure, they're talking about software there but a not exactly affordable phone for $600-810 still feels a bit odd.
1 MILLION DOLLARS PER DAY, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Anyhow, enought with the screaming, as of now it has 50% of its first day's goal, but I guess it has to do with all the news that have been going around
What's not to love about this? A open source phone on an open hardware platform, with an open design and development process, on a converged OS. If they pull it off, it's the nirvana of phones. And there's no risk to you to contribute and help make it happen. With such an ambitious campaign, if they don't raise they funds it doesn't cost you more than about 5 minutes and 5 clicks. If they do raise the funds, well, Joy!
It's not a good form factor like the Psion Revo or HP 200LX. I don 't think I really want another smartphone, I barely use the three that I have.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I have been waiting for Microsoft to do this very thing with Windows on an x86 "phone" device. I still run windows mobile 6.5 which is the closest thing to the Ubuntu goal. If Ubuntu gets there before Microsoft, I will adopt Linux on my phone and not look back.
Simply stated, I want a native code development environment and I want complete interchangeability between desktop and mobile environments.
I'm very excited about this product!!!
That means that there will be a rather limited user base, so there will be quite limited interest in developing applications for this thing. And that, in contrast, means that it will be mostly interesting to people who are eager to develop applications for their own use, but not interested in marketing them.
If they want this thing to fly, announcing right away that they are killing the project after initial delivery seems quite silly.
Get hourly updates featuring
-Vague laws misinterpreted by engineers to be threats to privacy/civil liberties
-The latest release of every obscure Linux distro and its shortcomings compared to 10 other distros
-Factually spurious articles about the death of the IT industry.
-Philosophical flame wars about the validity of alternative energy/electric cars
-Mental masturbation regarding drones/macs/climate change
-Hypothetical discussions of Rasberry Pi created by Arduino driven 3-D printers purchased with BitCoins.
-Windows 8 trolling
Fully compatible with
¦Android
¦BlackBerry 10
¦iOS
¦Nokia Asha
¦Sailfish OS
¦Windows Phone
¦Windows RT
¦Bada
¦BlackBerry OS
¦Grid OS
¦Linux
¦Mer
¦S40
¦Brew
¦SHR
¦Symbian
¦webOS
¦Tizen
¦FireFox Fone
*Unicode support included in a future update
Welcome to Capitalism in the 21st Century: socialize risks, privatize profits (hey, it worked for many US companies in 2008).
This opinion (mine) applies to all crowdfunded projects, but this one takes it further.
Paying 600 quid for a day-1 release of an unproved device is nuts!!! Not even the most rabid Ubuntu fanboy would shell out that kind of dough. Shuttleworth needs to understand that Ubuntu != Apple.
Did you even click on any of the links? The top result is the Wikipedia page on Canonical.
I will summarize for you: Their business model: selling services. They wanna be like: Red Hat. Profits: none yet, but Shuttleworth says they are getting close to break-even.
"In a Guardian interview in May 2008, Mark Shuttleworth said that the Canonical business model was service provision and explained that Canonical was not yet close to profitability. Canonical also claimed it will wait for the business to turn into a profitable one within another 3 to 5 years. He regarded Canonical as positioning itself as demand for services related to free software rose.[14] This strategy has been compared to Red Hat's business strategies in the 1990s.[15] However, in an early 2009 New York Times article, Shuttleworth said that Canonical's revenue was "creeping" towards $30 million, the company's break-even point.[16]
In 2007, Canonical launched an International online shop selling support services and Ubuntu branded goods; later in 2008 it expanded that with a United States-specific shop designed to reduce shipment times.[17] At the same time, the word Ubuntu was trademarked in connection with clothing and accessories.[18]"
The problem is that the 'enthusiasts' who would be contributing to this have just recently had several slaps to the face from Canonical in the form of window buttons, unity, unity & unity. And amazon shopping lenses. 'This is not a democracy' is still rings in the ears. Now Canonical realise that they need the enthusiasts, who's toes they stepped on, to help with this venture into the mobile space.
To be honest, I hope they succeed. I think the concept of a phone that doubles as a desktop could very well be the future of the desktop computer for many people. The hardware also looks very nice (which is a necessity to tempt anyone off android/ios) - I agree with Shuttleworth that mobile screen resolution is getting out of hand, and I'd much rather the colourful OLED displays than the ridiculously high res LCDs (which then look laggy because the graphics can't keep up - see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmywUhu2Pus) and a sapphire glass screen sounds interesting (though will it be as strong as gorilla glass - I doubt it).
I wonder how many of us would have paid up if Nokia had done this with the N950?
Yeah, how dare companies attempt to crowd source things! Damn, I just put up $200 to a Japanese animation studio so they could extend a sequel to a short they did, what madness is this!? Haven't people realized that rather than showing support for things they like and want, they should just shut up and take what's given to them?
Obviously, we're all supposed to just buy whatever Android, iOS, or Windows Phone is on the market. Choice? What nonsense!
Someone who wants to live in a world where the product they're proposing to build exists, I'd expect?
Because every company needs investors, right? Why can't those investors just be the first customers looking to get in early? How is this a bad thing?
What the fuck does this matter? Isn't something like this a perfect gauge for early-adopter interest?
Brilliant! You paid for their market research for them! You're so smart! Congratulations on your gift! I'm sure that one of the executives of the company really appreciates it! Want to give my company some money, too?
I don't respond to AC's.
"Canonical has kicked off a crowdfunding campaign to raise $32 million in 30 days to make its own smartphone, called Ubuntu Edge, that can also hook up to a monitor and be used as a PC."
Or, alternatively, some other shit:
"Specifications are subject to change."
So, you know, you could really wind up with anything. The campaign keeps talking about a prototype device, but unless I'm missing it, none of the videos actually shows a working phone - the brief plug-in desktop demo in the 'introducing the hardware' video is using a Nexus of some kind, I think.
So what they apparently have is some bits of code, some shiny renders, and an entirely notional spec sheet.
Those of us with some sense of fiscal sanity generally call that "investing". Crowdsourcing is unrelated to investing.
I don't respond to AC's.
If they would stop doing dumb shit with their server platform they would already be making money. Of course these days even RHEL wants to have a splashscreen instead of a boot you can watch.
They already hit the first million in just a few hours since the story hit the big media. Refreshing a few times, they seem to do about 200k$ per hour right now, so I guess they might easily sell the first 5000 phones at the reduced price. It was probably a good idea to trigger some people into a quick decision by lowering the price on the first day, so that they can realease a press release tomorrow saying they hit their first target. It will be hard to keep the same pace in the next 30 days, though ...
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
Yes, unbelievable, isn't it? It's like when I went online to order a new laptop a few weeks ago - the private, for-profit company there also asked me for money. The nerve.
There is a lot wrong with android.
1. No good window managers, this means tiling and layering
2. Sudo not built in
3. Lack of normal linux desktop, including X. So I have to use VNC to get normal linux apps to display.
4. lack of decent package management. This means repositories and debs/rpms. This means being able to support dependencies.
You "purchased" an item. By giving them money for the laptop, they have a legal obligation to give you a laptop. Crowdsourcing is not "purchasing" anything. It's a donation, in the hopes that whoever you donated the money to will give you something in return.
I find it shocking that a web site (this one) with so many smart people having discussions can, at the same time, also be host to so many people who don't understand the basics about how money works. We've got crowdsourcing, bitcoin...
I don't respond to AC's.
One of the first things I did with my android smartphone was plug in a USB keyboard and mouse and wonder why they didn't "just work".
Re: sapphire: sapphire is one of the hardest materials there is, I think you could scratch the heck out of 'gorilla glass' with it. Just looked it up, gorilla glass has a "Vickers" hardness of 701 (max) vs. sapphire, at 2300.
That said, sapphire is more brittle and crack-prone, however. Apparently gorilla glass is treated to stop crack propagation. It's quite possible a hammer-blow that wouldn't damage gorilla glass would smash sapphire.
--PM
Motorola and ASUS already tried the "my phone is my PC" trick with their docking stations. Didn't seem like anyone wanted the concept, so what's different about this go-around?
Is the hypothetical Ubuntu smartphone worth this much? I can buy a Nexus 4 for half this price and hook it up to an HDMI monitor and a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
in a fucking heartbeat. But, Nokia had a long-suffering team creating wonderful Linux devices mostly ignored by the rest of the world (not to mention Nokia management). And a lot of those folks are now off at Jolla. Canonical, on the other hand, has no such history of actually shipping quality mobile devices, so it's a far riskier proposition.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
And in the end I'll get a product! Holy shit, it's like there's an actual transaction taking place!
But it's not a gift!
Are you offering something in return? Somehow I doubt it!
Yeah, but unlike most forms of capital sources, crowdfunding is interest free and risk-free (to the builder)
If he invested his own funds, there's a chance the project might fail and he would lose his hard-earned money.
If he tried getting the money from a bank, they would ask for a collateral and charge a big interest rate
Asking $32 mill from angel investors or venture capitalists would require him to sign 10% - 30% (guess) of the company to the investors.
Given the options above, the most profitable and least risky choice of capital is crowdfunding. As usual, dumb/ignorant people are being taken for a ride. These crowd-funding sites should give control of 2% to 5% of the company to the people who seeded the company.
No, it's not like an actual transaction. In an actual transaction, there's an agreement. This is just a gift. A gift is when one party gives something to the other party without anything expected in return. Do you really not know this...?
I don't respond to AC's.
What dumb shit do they do with their servers? There is no splash boot on any of my Ubuntu servers (10.04 and 12.04).
Last time we played around with getting service contracts for it we installed 10.04 and it had the splash boot, you could turn it off but that was a pretty bad sign.
It also wanted to install X and a bunch of other horseshit that does not belong on a server. Since then I have played around with the alternate CD, but i am not sure they support that.
Gnome? Last I heard they are porting Unity to Qt+
Isn't the ride why they contribute in the first place?
I doubt many people contribute to make a profit.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Except with crowd funding, you don't find out if you "like and want" the product until AFTER you've spent your money on it, when it's too late. You're just throwing money at a name...
With crowd funding, there's no motivation to make a good product, just one that barely meets the promised specifications, while spending as little of that advance money as possible.
The only places crowd funding make sense is where the traditional investment or bank loan options don't work... Products with a very small following that will only barely turn a profit NEED crowd funding to reduce the risk of a failure.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Legally it isn't even a gift, as it's taxed at disbursement time.
I expect something in return. I am not guaranteed to get it. And if I don't, then I will keep that in mind if they ever try to do another kickstarter type project. It's an investment in whatever the person who started the drive is pitching, and the ultimate cost is in their reputation. Succeed and your reputation looks good, fail and people will question your future efforts.
In the meantime, I have backed many projects that have succeeded. And I'm happy to do so, as it lets things with very narrow target audiences actually come to fruition.
Private, for-profit companies have been doing pre-orders for years. There's nothing new here.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
And they are putting their reputation on the line.
Or sometimes the product is already done and designed, but the funding will allow for addition of a few features and an actual production run. If they can meet what they promise and still show a profit, well, good for them I suppose.
Which could easily be the vast majority. And even this handset thing could be a flop. They may never even go forward with it if the indiegogo fails. IMO, it's a great way to let early adopters throw their hat into the ring and let Canonical go through the process once before investing big into it.
As an individual, I cannot invest in that manner. I can only hope that my interests align with the investors at some point and I get what I want. But rarely does that ever actually happen.
Crowdfunding is unrelated to investing, but it does let me push towards the goal of getting what I want when all the investors turn it away because the return on investment isn't a percentage they approve of.
A shame what happened there.
"Holy shit, it's like there's an actual transaction taking place!"
I have no points, but that's friggin funny.
Thanks for the laugh.
Yes, exactly what we need: Another poorly built gadget for people who already own 2 or 3 smartphones, plus at least one desktop and laptop, and want a new overpriced piece of silicon to, after a week or so of post-adquisition rush, collect dust on their shelves and end up in a landfill a year later. Woohoo!
A pre-order is very different from a donation.
I don't respond to AC's.
Whoa, you don't get the money back if the product doesn't ship? Now I'm really laughing.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Did you actually look at the IndieGoGo page? A few people are throwing free cash at a millionare's company, sure. But most of them are pre-orders.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
It will be brown. Nobody will want to buy a brown cellphone.
Stop your bitching.. you get a keychain and a t-shirt if you donate!
Canonical, the company behind the world’s largest selling smartphones Ubuntu Margin, has launched the biggest ever crowd-funding campaign to hire and pay employees to develop, market and support innovative technologies developed by Canonical through other crowd-funding campaigns. The campaign, called Ubuntu Much, aims to raise an unprecedented $100 million over 30 days on Indiegogo, for a limited salary of its 10 employees who would work exclusively on core Canonical technologies. http://www.damnocrazy.com/canonical-launches-biggest-crowd-funding-campaign-raise-100-million-pay-employees/22
There is such a thing as too much choice, particularly for mobile platforms. Too many differing options tends to put more work on the app developer, which tends to push them towards pursuing only the top one or two platforms for reasons of practicality and feasibility. If Windows Phone is having trouble being relevant despite Microsoft's significantly greater influence and financial resources compared to Canonical, imagine how tough it will be for Ubuntu Phone.
Besides, I kinda want to see Canonical fail for all their arrogance at thinking they're the next Apple and almost ruining the desktop Linux landscape with their shitty design decisions.
Sounds like you're trying to work outside of how Android is designed as opposed to working within the system. I'm not even talking about a walled garden at this point - Android works in a particular way, just like Ubuntu works in a particular way. Trying to use Linux apps designed for a desktop interface instead of just using the Android-equivalent apps seems to be missing the point. Not to mention increased stress for no real gain.
Actually they are placing a $600 bet that they'll get a product in return that will be the envy of all their friends and will also be a really nice smartphone that's also a really nice full-fledged computer. People place bets much larger than that thousands of times a day in Vegas, where the odds that they'll win aren't nearly so good. Heck, people place bets much larger than that thousands of times a day on all kinds of investment opportunities. It's their $600 and they're taking a chance with it. There's nothing new at all about people spending their money that way.
So you didn't actually install the server version but the desktop edition. The server version does not have a boot splash and does not install X (unless you tell it to explicitly).
you could run a normal desktop inside android.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.com.darkside.XServer and others.
you could also install debian inside android.. ubuntu has been pushing in speech of having same apps run both in desktop and phone mode though.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Eh? Investing makes sense when you want a return more than you care about the means by which it's derived. Crowdsourcing makes sense when you want a product to exist more than you care about a return -- it's useful for projects which simply won't generate a return, where the end result of the project (the product, media, &c being generated) is the goal in and of itself. They're different things, and one can reasonably choose either of them depending on their goals.
I don't know where you get the idea that anyone conflates the two.
You can install X applications without full X. Then you run them remotely and X runs on the local machine instead of the server.
Please tell me you just admin windows machines.
No real gain?
Having the hundreds of thousands of applications available is no real gain?
The entire point is to be able to hook up an external monitor and use it as a desktop. At that point you want a desktop interface.
Actually the default server CD. The Server alternate does what you are talking about.
I want someone to crowdfund production of a smart device that can be a phone, or plug into a screen to serve as a desktop, but is also a mesh network node accessible by other units and potentially other devices, under certain conditions. I would also be fine with them deciding to take longer than 30 days, if they would charge less, and make more units. It wouldn't necessarily have to be wafer-thin or satisfy other trendy aesthetics, because battery life and not using conflict minerals would be more important. Is this an impossible dream?
The question is whether placing a "pledge" in a crowdfunding campain and then having the campaign succeed is a pre-order or a donation.
Kickstarter now have the following in their terms (iirc they didn't initially)
"Project Creators are required to fulfill all rewards of their successful fundraising campaigns or refund any Backer whose reward they do not or cannot fulfill."
Indigogo has a similar statement
"You agree:
1. All Perks must be lawful and otherwise comply with this Agreement.
2. To fulfill all Perks and to respond promptly to all questions and comments regarding Perks. If you are unable to fulfill a Perk, you will work with the Contributor(s) to reach a mutually satisfactory resolution which may include, without limitation, issuing a refund promptly."
So it seems pretty clear to me that on the major crowdfunding sites making a pledge, selecting a reward and having that pledge accepted into a successful campaign is a pre-order not a donation.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I USED to admin Windows servers, mainly because I had to for a while (a job's a job). Then I got out of that god-awful business and work as an embedded engineer because it's what I spent ages doing engineering for at college. Figured I'd actually put the degree to use. :)
We use CentOS here. Fowarding X programs is common for some of us, but a lot of other people often request VNC connections so that they can work on the machines remotely like they do with our Windows servers. Who am I to tell them to do things differently?
People are porting traditional Linux applications to Android at a very rapid rate. You can even get Octave working on Android now through the store. But Android is NOT A DESKTOP OS and it seems more trouble than it's worth to try to force it to be one. Better to just use Windows or a Linux distro on a compatible touch device if that's your goal.
OTOH, being abroad the US, here in Europe I patiently waited *one year* for this very same Dell Ubuntu laptop to become available, then the day before I was going to buy, the product disappeared, apparently because the work to homogeneously bring Ubuntu along with adapted drivers etc. had stopped in Dell, and the resulting product was becoming one-year-obsolete now (was delivered with last years's Ubuntu version).
So, indeed I had my money in hand, and the whole thing crashed, although not by Ubuntu's fault...
(I bought a mac, yes. Will retry in a couple of years...)
Herve S.
There has never been an alternative cd for the server edition, it's only the desktop edition that has an alternative.
Well the sysadmin should tell them No. They can install an X server on windows.
My goal is to have one computer running multiple interfaces. So when docked I want normal desktop linux, when in phone mode I want android.
Aha, but I'm not the sysadmin. Besides, the sysadmin doesn't care. His job (apart from the necessities of keeping the system running) is to ensure people can do their jobs and to help facilitate this goal. If it means people can use VNC sessions similar to Windows' remote desktop, so be it. The best way isn't always the best way - particularly if the goal is still achieved.
Well the only company right now who seems to be interested in that idea right now is Canonical, but I don't have much faith with them as they've yet to turn a profit (and so don't have much in the way of proven business capabilities to rely on).
Having said that, the idea of a phone being able to turn into a desktop via a dock is probably going to increase in popularity so it wouldn't surprise me to see Android eventually take on that ability. Just not yet.