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The Man behind the distro
I just finished reading “Five Things I Like About Ubuntu Desktop Software – and Five Things I Don’t Like” by Eric Lundquist over at eWeek.com and had to pipe in with my 2 cents worth. Well, not the full two cents, as I’m only going to make a quick address to his fifth and final point on what he didn’t like.
His final point on the 5 things he didn’t like about Ubuntu software was the possibility of Ubuntu disappearing if Mark Shuttleworth ever decided to pack up and leave Ubuntu. The author’s hypothetical situation was that if Shuttleworth ever decided that he’d invested enough in the Ubuntu operating system and decided to stop, then Ubuntu may become a footnote shortly after.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that if the unlikely happened and Shuttleworth decides to fly away from the distro he’s been supporting for several years, the normal user wouldn’t even notice. Ubuntu has a huge following and a community that steps in where needed. I am not too familiar with the hierarchy behind the scenes, but I would imagine that some things would change for the major developers. But the distro would continue to stay strong.
Now I know there are a lot of Ubuntu haters out there that would love to see something like this happen, but even if the billionaire backer were to go away, Ubuntu is here to stay. It has too big of a user/developer base to just wither up and die.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I hadn’t noticed that Debian dried up and blew away after Ian left. Perhaps Mr. Lundquist is unfamiliar with the concept of “community” and how central a construct that is to both Debian and its derivatives.
I doubt it. Considering reports that Shuttleworth has shelled our roughtly $10 million a year of his own money to support the distro, how would it continue on? How would a community get behind a distro and support it well enough to offset that kind of money? It simply can’t. Ubuntu may go on, but it would be a shell of what it is now.
Shuttleworth has said from the beginning that he didn’t think that something you give away for free would work as a viable business model. He’s also said that it’s his goal to make Cannonical/Ubuntu self-sustaining and that he does not intend to go on supporting the distro forever. However, if this doesn’t happen, expect it to wither and die.
Is this cause for concern? No. There are plenty of other distros to use. Just because one distro shuts down, doesn’t mean Linux stops in its tracks. Users can easy migrate to Mepis, Debian, or even RPM based distros like Mandriva, OpenSuse, or something else altogether like Sabayon or FreeBSD. There are alternatives. In the histrory of Linux, major players have continually been dethrowned. Red Hat was dethrowned by Mandrake, who’s been dethrowned by Ubuntu. Someone else will come along and be a dominant player.
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It has too big of a user/developer base to just wither up and die.
Except that’s not really how it works. Full-time developers need to be paid, bandwidth isn’t free, (good) marketing isn’t free, Support staff doesn’t work for free.
Canonical has been operating at a loss since its founding, and this is no secret. The only reason it stays alive is because Mr. Shuttleworth is pumping $10 million a year into it (which suggests they’re bringing in less than that in gross revenue).
People grossly overestimate the abilities and resources of the community, and especially of part-time, volounteer, non-profession programmers, and grossly underestimate the effect of directed development, and the top-down cathedral model. It won’t last long without Shuttleworth, unless Canonical can become self-sustaining without relying on his deep pockets (court corporate customers, buy support contracts, buy the releases (even if you’re dist-upgrade’ing), you need revenue to pay expenses!)
People mention Debian as a counter example, but let’s face it, the Debian project as been largely irrelevant since Ian left (except for being used as the base for other distributions), and Gentoo although still developed has been largely forgotten since DRobbins left.
To LinuxLover, Red Hat was never “dethroned” they switched focus to the enterprise market, because nobody in the Linux business cares about desktop Linux (Red Hat’s CEO has said that Linux on the desktop has no future).