How does Ubuntu make $$?

[baracuda68]

( About the title... guess it should be the Pounds sign , not Dollar ;) )
Hi.
I don't know a thing about business.
How does Ubuntu (and I guess other LInux distros) make money?
Printing, making and shipping FREE CDs , no ads on ubuntu pages(thank god!)
The company cant live on donations alone, can it?
All the developers aren't all volunteers, right?

How does Mark Shuttleworth survive, and how will Ubuntu survive?

Just wondering...:p

[ynnhoj]

maybe they have a money tree..? :D

[Outrunner]

Umm, I think Mark Shuttleworth has quite a bit of money at the ready, if you know what I mean. I don't know about the rest.

[jpeddicord]

http://canonical.com/services

and namely

http://canonical.com/services/support

and partly what Outrunner said. ;)

[zekopeko]

i think that most of the developers of programs/distributions have full/part time jobs and are contributing to the free software world in their spare time.

but alot of them are also getting paid jobs from companies which use linux as their platform. i know that google, sun, novell and probably a lot more are paying developers to work on openoffice.

you can make money in F/LOSS world either with support or by getting paid from customers that use the platform ie. google, sun ,novell, red hat, ibm are all investing money in free software because they uses it for their services.

google uses linux, php, mysql on their servers and are building their software on those platforms so it's in their interest to support free software

[Adamant1988]

The truth is, right now, they don't really make much at all, for all we know. Canonical currently offers support options at a fairly steep price ($240 a desktop, I think) so, hopefully they would be able to make a little on that. Anyway, past that nothing major happening.

[reidms]

I thought they had an easy button...

[jgrabham]

Donations?

[madmetal]

Donations?


+1 ;)
i think community should work more on this..
canonical though has paid services , sponsors and paid partners certificates and so..

[BOBSONATOR]

I thought they had an easy button...

Lawl

[bonzodog]

Currently, Ubuntu pays its developers and funds the Ubuntu foundation through Canonical, and it has £10 Million set aside.

Mark made his fortune through the sale of Thawte to Verisign for something like £100 Million.

Ubuntu is currently a 'philanthropic venture', but he has plans to make it profitable.

Also, Mark cleverly set-up Canonical on the Isle of Man, which is a tiny island between Ireland and the UK. It's a crown dependency and is popular with companies as it has no Corporation Tax.

As it's also not a part of the EU, it means it is *totally* protected from any future software patent laws that Europe might introduce.

[baracuda68]

Currently, Ubuntu pays its developers and funds the Ubuntu foundation through Canonical, and it has £10 Million set aside.

Mark made his fortune through the sale of Thawte to Verisign for something like £100 Million.

Ubuntu is currently a 'philanthropic venture', but he has plans to make it profitable.

Also, Mark cleverly set-up Canonical on the Isle of Man, which is a tiny island between Ireland and the UK. It's a crown dependency and is popular with companies as it has no Corporation Tax.

As it's also not a part of the EU, it means it is *totally* protected from any future software patent laws that Europe might introduce.

Sounds like a smart man...

[barbedsaber]

They sell ubuntu branded things at highish prices, I am seriously considering buying an ubuntu lanyard.

[jespdj]

See Wikipedia: Mark Shuttleworth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shuttleworth)

According to Wikipedia he sold his company Thawte for US$ 575 million in 1999, so he is incredibly rich, he can easily afford to fund Ubuntu. :)

[3rdalbum]

Canonical currently offers support options at a fairly steep price ($240 a desktop, I think) so, hopefully they would be able to make a little on that.

I thought that was cheap compared with Red Hat and Novell, but I don't remember what those two corps charge.

Canonical also makes money from customizing Ubuntu for specific organisations, and providing support for developers who will use Ubuntu as a base. This is where JeOS and Embedded Edition come in - these systems won't earn Canonical a cent in end-user support, but will probably earn them a fair amount in supporting developers who will use Ubuntu in VMs and embedded devices.

[ssam]

Donations?

i think you mean donations (http://www.ubuntu.com/community/donations)

also see this thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=625206)

[Ebuntor]

Sounds like a smart man...


Indeed, ingenious. Must be very expensive to have an office on that island. :)