Ubuntu how does it make Money

[Tobster]

I know Ubuntu is open source but like anything it needs to make real money for it to go on.

It must be almost impossible to break into businesses, to get a business to install Ubuntu because Directors tend not to be hot on IT and stick with what they know i.e Windows

I know that Ubuntu also get founds from donations and products like my Ubuntu book and mouse mat.

Ubuntu is an amazing distro I just find it hard to see how it can make money.

Thanks

Toby

[alex-desktop79]

It's non-profit.

[ehird]

And funded by Canonical.

[bluenova]

Donations (http://www.ubuntu.com/donations) and the support of Canonical (http://www.canonical.com/); the company that started the project.

[Tobster]

I found the whole thing amazing, it good to know that people are out there not take make money but out of love and yet make software that could earn them loads for free.

However Canonical need to make money out of her (her being Ubuntu) and it cant be easy with the way Windows (wrongly) controls the market

Thanks

Toby

[Circus-Killer]

true, it is non-profit. but, they still need to make money to pay for a number of things, such as servers, network connections, and everything else that allows the ubuntu community (forums, wikis, repos) to function.

now im not sure if conanical helps out with some of the funding, but i think they might. and yeh, they make some of that money off of selling murchandise. im also pretty sure they accept donations. also, many companies will also offer commercial support, which is also good at making-money.

just because it is free, and non-profit, doesnt mean that there is absolutely no money involved. if all income is spent on services they provide, then it can still be non-profit. and on a side note, free doesnt always mean free. for example, people can still sell copies of ubuntu at the price of the media and shipping.

there are tons of variations and possibilities when it comes to money in the open source world, and is actually quite an indepth topic which im too lazy and busy to get into. but i hope the points i touched on help. some of what i said might not be COMPLETELY accurate, but as i said, its quite the lengthy discussion to get into all aspects.

anyways, hope you enjoying ubuntu.
laters.

[Tobster]

Thanks

Yeah I love Ubuntu i'm hooked :)

[TheMono]

They make money out of support - you can have the product for free, but if you want Canonical to spend time setting it up for you and maintaining it, that's when you pay them.

It is a great arrangement. Those who don't need the support get a free OS, and those who do get a free OS and support no more expensive than any other OS.

The key is in the fact that if you use Ubuntu in your company, you don't have a lot of options for support other than Canonical and those certified by Canonical. So by giving away their product, they are attempting to achieve the most market share possible to widen the market for their support.

Mark Shuttleworth has suggested that he believes Canonical will be profitable within a couple of years.

[wieman01]

Ubuntu may be open source & free but Canonical certainly is NO non-profit organization. It's a profit-oriented "limited company", guys. Mark Shuttleworth may be generous but he not an idiot. He will eventually make money from it - he is a business guy despite the fact that his company is sponsoring Ubuntu.

The business model is simple: Give Ubuntu away for free & sell support to big corporations that hopefully employ people who are using Ubuntu on their home computers & hence are less afraid of change. They know Ubuntu & what they are to expect.

Canonical follows the example of RedHat & Suse whereas those 2 companies committed a fatal mistake in the past: They stopped supporting the community version of their operating system, hence their market share dropped because people prefer systems that they can use in the office as well as back home.

It's that simple. And clever. Nonetheless Canonical has yet to proof that they are able to make money. Otherwise Ubuntu's funds are at stake in the long run. But let's not meet trouble halfway!

http://www.canonical.com/support

[az]

Ubuntu is an amazing distro I just find it hard to see how it can make money.




It's not a question of being non-comercial, it's just a different business model.

For example, the Apache web server is free-libre software. It is not shipped to customers shrink-wrapped in a box at a certain cost per copy. It is freely available.

I am certain that your internet service provider offers web hosting packages, no? You would pay them a few dollars a month to provide you with the tools and access to create and host your own web page.

So, by running and supporting a web server, that is free, they are collecting money from you.

This is the business model for free-libre software - support and services.

Not only does the software perform up to world-class standards, you can add to the code, enhancing the software. Quite a few companies invest in this sort of software rather than paying heavily for licences and not being able to extend the software at all.

Those companies pay developers to add to the code. In a sense, every dollar spent on proprietary (not free) software pays for the same code that was written long ago. Just5 abotu every dollar that is spent on free-libre software goes into developing more code. That makes the sftware go Zoom!

[taurus]

Move to Cafe...

[Brunellus]

Lets' clarify some terms.

UBUNTU is the GNU/Linux distribution. It is governed by the Ubuntu Foundation, a non-profit group.

CANONICAL, LTD. is a for-profit, limited-liability company incorporated in the Isle of Man. It sells support services for the UBUNTU distribution. Many of its staff are paid to maintain and develop the software that comprises UBUNTU.

The idea is that Canonical, Ltd., will eventually be able to turn a profit supporting organizations which run Ubuntu.

[DoctorMO]

The other point to make here is that almost all of the work (the heavy lifting) is done by volenteers. either inside the community (such as art work and package maintainers) or outside such as Linux Kernel, GNU, Gnome, Xorg etc etc and each one of those may or may not have ways to fund their developers in turn.

Some things don't need money, some things do. it's easier if you have it but not impossible. and open source makes some things very easy.

If I understand the GPL correctly you should be able to sell ubuntu for a profit anyway; it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to do it in the UK or for that matter in Nigera

[Brunellus]

A significant amount of the work on key aspects of the OS *is* done by paid workers, though. IBM, RedHat, Canonical, Novell and others contribute to the kernel and other OS components because improving these components improves their own businesses.

The aim is to grow a whole new market; when the OS gains, all players in the market gain. There's no advantage to be had in staying closed off.

[DoctorMO]

Because the entry requirements are so low, new projects can quickly become complete, stable and well used. this promotes a rich softsphear which is mostly down to volenteers being able to add their ideas.

I won't say that big business doesn't move things forwards at a quicker rate; but without volenteers most of what is would never be.

[Gargamella]

this project may make canonical a more famous organization, they may make money by merchandising,and by "pay for support"...anyway i think this may be a wonderful thing for users and for Canonical

[dca]

I guess for an example: a big bank somewhere has a bunch of servers they want to run Linux on... They install Ubuntu, and pay Canonical for the support. It's no different than RedHat/Fedora - Novell/SUSE - Canonical/Ubuntu...

Interestingly enough, in the US, I know a TON of people who know their way around Linux. Either by 'play' or it's their livelyhood as an Admin. The tough call is the hardware support needed. Most of the Linux distro(s) installed on the server(s) I see are rock-solid, stable OS(s)... It's the HDD(s) crashing, blowing a chip, etc.