Announcing Launch of ($10m) Ubuntu Foundation

[weasel fierce]

Fantastic news

[chadauld]

Great news indeed!

[aragorn2909]

Um, wow. I was pretty sure Mr. Shuttleworth was an astute businessman, but I am completely convinced of that fact now. Watching Ubuntu from (almost) its inception grow to where it is today, and now knowing the direction this os will take in the future, I have to admit that I am very impressed. When I first read the release, I was a little aprehensive. Ubuntu could easily take the path that Red Hat took, leaving it's non-enterprise users in the lurch (I use this for lack of a better word, forgive me, I think Fedora is an excellent distro with wonderful community support. No disrespect meant), but I was quickly reassured by the words on www.ubuntu.com 's main page:

Ubuntu will always be free of charge, and there is no extra fee for the "enterprise edition", we make our very best work available to everyone on the same Free terms.

I know I'm just repeating what most people here know, but the above statement has made all the difference to me in terms of migrating to open source, and ultimately, migrating to Ubuntu. The commitment and support that Mr. Shuttleworth and Ubuntu (as a whole) has shown myself and the Community, has been rewarded by our commitment and support of this distro. Without either, none of this would have been possible. I think we all should give ourselves a little pat on the back.

As a side note, its interesting to see that the ultimate target here is "proprietary platforms" (MS obviously, but I also read into this Apple). Kind of reminds me of a poster my high-school guidance counsellor had hanging in their office. "Better to aim for the stars and hit the moon, than aim for a pile of sh*t and hit it dead centre"