What if Canonical is not around?

[boyluv2000]

Hi All,

This is my first post. I am a moderate IT user who is planning to slowly migrate into the Linux world :). I have been reading on the history of Linux and Ubuntu, and am now using 10.04 LTS regularly. Nice experience so far. I plan not to try 11.04 due to its reputation.

I just have noobish thing to ask on the "longevity" of Ubuntu. The names Shuttleworth and Canonical sound like they are synonymous to Ubuntu. What if they are not around? What will happen to us users?

[Random_Dude]

You mean if Canonical stops developing Ubuntu?
Probably the community would pick it up. But there are plenty of good distros, some of them as user-friendly as Ubuntu, so it would probably be easy to switch.

Cheers :cool:

[el_koraco]

I just have noobish thing to ask on the "longevity" of Ubuntu. The names Shuttleworth and Canonical sound like they are synonymous to Ubuntu. What if they are not around? What will happen to us users?

Shuttleworth put 10 million dollars (pounds?) into the Ubuntu Foundation, the purpose of which is to keep financing the Ubuntu project if Canonical goes belly up. But I don't see that as a danger, Shuttleworth came into the business as a rich man, thus not needing to turn a quick profit, so Canonical has quite a bit of time on its hands before it starts making some dough.

[frankbooth]

I don't think Mr. Shuttleworth is worried if Canonical is profitable or not (money wise), he's got enough money :).

He just seems like a cool guy who believes in Linux and wants it to become bigger, with the help of Ubuntu.

[Spice Weasel]

All the work is done by the community anyway. =\

[8_Bit]

Canonical was not Shuttleworth's first venture. He still makes money in other ways. I guess that's why Canonical has survived this long and may continue to do so.

[grahammechanical]

I would not describe myself as an IT user or even a computer enthusiast. I own a computer. I use it at home for a project that I am working on. I use 11.04. I know of no reason, other than taste, not to use 11.04.

I have more than one derivative of Ubuntu on my hard disc. I like to test the latest Ubuntu before I upgrade my working installation to the latest. I know that others like to stick to Long Term Service releases. That is also a good way of working.

The other day I was curious about the differences between the Linux used by Ubuntu and the Linux used by Fedora. I found this on Wikipedia under Fedora


According to DistroWatch, Fedora is the third most popular Linux-based operating system as of June 2011, behind Ubuntu and Mint
Did you note the date? If you listen to some people you would think that Ubuntu was a dead penguin. Apparently not! Linux Mint is a rolling distribution. There is some talk of Ubuntu doing the same thing. In which case we will be using the latest without knowing it.

Regards.

[ZarathustraDK]

If Canonical goes belly-up for some reason (I don't see it happening) then the users will pick up the project. If the project goes belly-up, the users will probably move to some other distro.

The point of all these dystopian "if"'s is to show that nothing is really lost if everything Ubuntu shipwrecks all of a sudden one day. The software is still there to be expanded upon, the users are still there for other distros to soak up. It's not like a car-crash where people loose their lives or incur property damage. Open Source is immortal in that way.

Of course there'd be damage to reputation, perceived value and other such flimsy notions that sales-types love.

[HermanAB]

May Linux distributions have come and gone over the decades, but Red Hat for example is a 2 billion dollar company, so it is not going away any time soon - ditto for Novell, IBM, HP, Oracle...

[ninjaaron]

moderate IT user

what's that?

[Paqman]

I don't think Mr. Shuttleworth is worried if Canonical is profitable or not (money wise), he's got enough money :).


I suspect he devotes a great deal of worry to making sure that it does. People like him don't start projects with the intention to fail. I'm sure he's always expect a hard climb in the early days, but I'm sure his intention is to prove that desktop Linux can make money.

[BrokenKingpin]

As other stated the community would probably pick it up. I would be hard to say how well it would last though.

I personally would probably just go back to Debian, or maybe openSUSE.

[Dragonbite]

May Linux distributions have come and gone over the decades, but Red Hat for example is a 2 billion dollar company, so it is not going away any time soon - ditto for Novell, IBM, HP, Oracle...

Um... Novell is gone (as of this year).

Red Hat and others are potential buyout candidates just like Novell was. The chances are very slim (even if I think Red Hat is still working on making it to $1B in sales).

I think the bigger fear for Canonical would be if something nasty happened to Mark Shuttleworth. It could be terminal, long-term health issues or legal issues.

Not only could this siphon his available funds to health care or court costs, it could yank out his leadership role which has been vital to driving Ubuntu's success. What doesn't help is Canonical is not-quite-profitable but hopefully that will change soon. If something happened to Mark then there would be added inspiration to make it profitable at all costs quickly.

What would happen to Ubuntu?

Providing some good leadership takes up the torch then Ubuntu development might slow down a bit while things get sorted out and Ubuntu-ites figure out what this "new" (post-MS) Ubuntu is going to look like. When it reaches equilibrium it may not be as solidly #1 as it is now, but it would be competitive.

If bad leadership takes control, then people would jump-ship to others such as CentOS or Scientific Linux (community Red Hat clones), openSUSE or Debian for business stability in servers, desktops, etc.

If you think about it, Debian does not have a corporate sponsor and it is doing alright. CentOS, Scientific Linux and Fedora all have Red Hat support and openSUSE has Attachmate (the company that bought Novell) support.

Then there is always BSD which is, like Linux, Unix-based and very similar.

So in the short answer, things would change if Canonical was not around, but for those that are interested there are alternatives.

[Tristam Green]

All the work is done by the community anyway. =\

...and Red Hat.


/rimshot

[Spice Weasel]

...and Red Hat.


/rimshot

:p

It's funny because it's true!

[johnnybelfast]

Most of the apps and gnome etc are done by people outside Cannonical... So all that software would still be out there in the wild. It's just a matter of people taking the time to package those apps into something usable. As there are alot of packages I doubt there would be too many people willing to do all that work for free.

If Ubuntu stopped then everyone could just migrate to Fedora or another distro.

[MasterNetra]

Hi All,

This is my first post. I am a moderate IT user who is planning to slowly migrate into the Linux world :). I have been reading on the history of Linux and Ubuntu, and am now using 10.04 LTS regularly. Nice experience so far. I plan not to try 11.04 due to its reputation.

I just have noobish thing to ask on the "longevity" of Ubuntu. The names Shuttleworth and Canonical sound like they are synonymous to Ubuntu. What if they are not around? What will happen to us users?

Well its derivatives should be fine, aside from bcmwl-kernal-source being broken for a number of us, forcing a number us broadcom users to use 10.10's version if we want Wireless... Other then that its fine, Unity is just buggy and kinda unstable. Which I hope will be different in 11.10.

But yea like its been said, the community would pick it up, its not like proprietary software where if its dropped by the company, that pretty much it. Too many people like and use Ubuntu and with it being Open-Source it can easily be picked up, it may or may not have a name change though.


Most of the apps and gnome etc are done by people outside Cannonical... So all that software would still be out there in the wild. It's just a matter of people taking the time to package those apps into something usable. As there are alot of packages I doubt there would be too many people willing to do all that work for free.

If Ubuntu stopped then everyone could just migrate to Fedora or another distro.

Isn't most of the work done on debian, done by volunteers? Ubuntu is mostly debian with its own artwork, font, and some of its own software (software center), buts its mostly Debian under the hood.

[perspectoff]

Ubuntu is a derivative of Debian.

Debian existed long before Canonical started Ubuntu, and Debian is the largest Linux ecosystem, in terms of the number of derivatives (such as Ubuntu) that are based upon it. Debian is largely volunteer supported and maintained (although the core group of contributors that do the lion's share of work is also relatively small). Still, it is based on open source ideals and is not person-dependent but is software dependent. When one person leaves, it is possible for another to get involved and pick up without having (too many) lawyers trying to destroy the system.

You can create a system that is nearly identical to much of Ubuntu using Debian and a desktop of your choice.

Many of the Ubuntu developers are actually Debian developers.

The repository system is that of Debian, though Ubuntu has its own in parallel.

If Ubuntu disappears, just go to Debian entirely.

[walt.smith1960]

What Ubuntu has done for the Linux world IMO is to produce a distro that "just works" on a majority of Intel or AMD machines. And seems to have done a reasonable job of "herding cats"