Ubuntu Hour - Toronto

[Aruna Hewapathirane]

Yeah, their business model is a little unclear.
>
>         Q: how do you make a small fortune in the Linux distro
>            business?
>
>         A: start with a large fortune.

I believe Mark Shuttleworth  earned his fortune the hard way, he founded
Thawte in 1995, which specialised in digital certificates and Internet
security and then sold it to VeriSign in December 1999, earning R 3.5
billion (about US$ 575 million at the time).
*Thawte was originally run from Shuttleworth's parents' garage*
In September 2000, Shuttleworth formed HBD Venture Capital (Here be
Dragons), a business incubator and venture capital provider. In March 2004
he formed Canonical Ltd., for the promotion and commercial support of free
software projects, especially the Ubuntu operating system. In December
2009, Shuttleworth stepped down as the CEO of Canonical, Ltd

Citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shuttleworth

>
> A really tough problem. ( Any problem has a solution ? )

> | that allows them to
> | keep supporting FOSS that being said it should not be at the price of
> | losing ones identity is all am saying ?
>
> The support for FOSS from Canonical is a little mixed.  Ubuntu is
> great as a poster child distro.  They've made Linux more approachable.
> But their support of the rest of FOSS has been pretty minor or even
> disruptive.
>
Yes they did make Linux more user friendly to the average non-technical
home user. I would not be typing this right now if it was not for Ubuntu
Karmic but with recent releases their sending local Ubuntu Unity Dash
searches to Canonical servers by default and Firefox tracking and
geo-location though I understand why from a business sense "I" am not
comfortable with.

The current CEO of Cannonical Jane Silber according to launchpad is
familiar with Catalan, Cherokee, Chinese (Simplified), French, Malay,
Sanskrit, Zulu. Some one who has this capacity and ability I feel will also
have the integrity and transparency to support the community needs and
concerns but then as a CEO one has a mandate and at times conflicts of
interest may arise ? So as usual the $.$$ and cents win !

I still have faith though and hopefully we will have less intrusive
behavior in the next releases.

> ================
>
> Your attempt to create an event is great.
>
> Is there any particular reason that being exclusively Ubuntu makes it
> better?

We have one hour and that is insufficient to do justice to all flavors of
Linux out there in the wild such as Slackware, Free BSD, Mandrake,
Backtrack etc. I don't think a given distro is better than another but over
time and use we tend to bond with a particular distro and certain distro
specific features and functionalities where we are thoroughly familiar with
the quirks ?

Anyone is most welcome to share experiences with distros that may not be
Ubuntu, we are inclusive and we try to support ! But please bear in mind
all we have is the ONE hour to get everything done :-)
>
> Certainly TLUG/GTALUG could use new initiatives.  By that, I don't
> mean that the old ones have run their course, but that innovation is a
> Good Thing.
>
> Having new things in different parts of the city from downtown might
> activate a new crowd (however good coffee and transit might suffer
> from that migration).
>
Good kofee can and will be arranged :-) and migration I hear tell is much
easier after a few beers !

> None of this is a request, only some possible ideas.  Certainly not
> intended to change what's already half-organized.

Ideas are always most welcome and where ever possible will be included and
implemented. I like to think of this as disruptive construction. remember
when skype was taken over by big blue ? And we thought oh-boy there go the
free calls ?  What happened ? The community is what happened and now we
have Viber, Whatsapp and so many others :-)

> --
> The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
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-- 
Aruna Hewapathirane
Consultant/Trainer
Phone : 647-709-9269
Website: Open Source Solutions
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