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Chymera
November 3rd, 2007, 07:53 PM
ok, so ubuntu linux is free, and it can stay that way because none of the code is paid for, and therefore one may think the costs are close to nil....

But then again, think how much money is being spent just on maintaining this forum, hosting, domain, bandwidth, etc. (you can't expect to get those for free...), even more so, have you ever noticed how fast the download of ubuntu works? it's almost as fast as downloading from the official ms website, you can't really get that much bandwidth without paying a lot of money... Publicity campaigns, etc etc... Mailing services, dev-meetings ... I don't have any real idea of how much it would cost... but my 6th sense estimates something like 7*10^5 € per year... if not a whole lot more...

You cannot seriously expect to get that kind of funding from donations, wikipedia could barely get a multiple of that... And even if you would get lucky and get that ammount in some years, you couldn't really rely on that, one year with fewer donations could mean the burial of the project....So where is the money coming from? And why is it coming? There must be some constant source of income... and it most surely isn't the generosity of a predominantly mercantile world....

Steveway
November 3rd, 2007, 07:55 PM
Most of the money comes from Canonical wich gets it's money from Mark Shuttleworth.
He is a multi-millionair (billionair, depends on the used currency).
And of course; Donations and the shop and paid support.

p_quarles
November 3rd, 2007, 07:55 PM
You are aware that Mark Shuttleworth is a multi-billionaire, right? Most of the money in the Canonical Foundation was donated by him, and there's enough there to keep it running for a while.

23meg
November 3rd, 2007, 08:07 PM
Most of the money in the Canonical Foundation was donated by him,

That should be Ubuntu Foundation.

Canonical is the main sponsor of Ubuntu. Mark has also committed a pretty sum ($10M) into the Ubuntu Foundation (http://www.ubuntu.com/news/UbuntuFoundation), which means that there's enough juice to keep Ubuntu going for a good while even if Canonical withdraws from sponsorship, which is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future.

earobinson
November 3rd, 2007, 08:09 PM
http://www.ubuntu.com/community/ubuntustory/foundation

Gremlinzzz
November 3rd, 2007, 10:40 PM
Money is created by bank loans.say if a bank loans you 19.99 then they just added that to there books but the 19.99 doesn't really exist.so the government prints up promissory notes .that use to be for gold or silver but now a days its just for more promissory notes.so basically money comes from imagination.any questions hope not.:lolflag:

Gremlinzzz
November 3rd, 2007, 11:03 PM
Money is created by bank loans.say if a bank loans you 19.99 then they just added that to there books but the 19.99 doesn't really exist.so the government prints up promissory notes .that use to be for gold or silver but now a days its just for more promissory notes.so basically money comes from imagination.any questions hope not.:lolflag:

here found this any questions watch this vidio
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279&q=money&total=184957&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

NovaAesa
November 3rd, 2007, 11:07 PM
On a lighter note, my mother once told me that money *doesn't* come from the money tree.

NoVista
November 4th, 2007, 12:57 AM
That was a good link Gremlinzzz.
I'm an old currency trader, and that video pretty much tells it like it is.

P.S. You wouldn't have a few extra bucks I can borrow, would ya?

stinger30au
November 4th, 2007, 01:01 AM
those in the "underground" who work for linux run car/motorcycle "chop shops" and make amazing amount of dallrs to thow in the money pool for linux and they also make counterfit/bootleg dvd and sell them buy the boat load at the local garage sales and flea markets

:lolflag:


and if you believe any of that, you will believe anything

HumanAnarchist
November 4th, 2007, 01:37 AM
here found this any questions watch this vidio
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279&q=money&total=184957&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

Nais :popcorn: sad that not more people know what money in todays world really is.

Maybe in the not so distant future [post dollar crash] money could be something else. *hope*

http://www.yesmagazine.com/article.asp?ID=886

This is a nice read.

-ha-

Chymera
November 4th, 2007, 12:06 PM
i was aware of the current money system, and mind you the video has QUITE a few inaccuracies, but then again my question was related to the funding of ubuntu... 1o0x for the answers...

tehet
November 4th, 2007, 01:02 PM
There were some interesting statistics published, specifically about the 2.6.23 kernel.
http://lwn.net/Articles/247582/
The main contributors are companies like RedHat, IBM, Intel and Oracle. The article also gives a nice break down per kernel sub-system. But that's only one part of Ubuntu offcourse.

dptxp
November 4th, 2007, 01:57 PM
There were some interesting statistics published, specifically about the 2.6.23 kernel.
http://lwn.net/Articles/247582/
The main contributors are companies like RedHat, IBM, Intel and Oracle. The article also gives a nice break down per kernel sub-system. But that's only one part of Ubuntu offcourse.

I see a lot of names at your link, but I do not see any
Microsoft there :confused:

az
November 4th, 2007, 02:12 PM
ok, so ubuntu linux is free, and it can stay that way because none of the code is paid for, and therefore one may think the costs are close to nil....


To be correct, the code is not proprietary, but that doesn't mean that it isn't paid for. Most of the code in free and open programs is written by someone who was paid to write it.

The difference is that you can pay someone for the service of writing the code, but that doesn't mean that you own the code. If you have an itch, you pay to get it scratched, and everyone else with that itch gets it scratched, too.

The free-libre open source economy is a multi-billion dollar industry. Think of your ISP, your phone company, or any other IT-based industry. They all rely on free and open source tools and do contribute money into the ecosystem in one way or another.



But then again, think how much money is being spent just on maintaining this forum, hosting, domain, bandwidth, etc. (you can't expect to get those for free...), even more so, have you ever noticed how fast the download of ubuntu works? it's almost as fast as downloading from the official ms website, you can't really get that much bandwidth without paying a lot of money... Publicity campaigns, etc etc... Mailing services, dev-meetings ... I don't have any real idea of how much it would cost... but my 6th sense estimates something like 7*10^5 € per year... if not a whole lot more...

You cannot seriously expect to get that kind of funding from donations, wikipedia could barely get a multiple of that... And even if you would get lucky and get that ammount in some years, you couldn't really rely on that, one year with fewer donations could mean the burial of the project....So where is the money coming from? And why is it coming? There must be some constant source of income... and it most surely isn't the generosity of a predominantly mercantile world....

Canonical is a for-profit business. The goal is to offer services and support to make enough money to be sustainable. They actually do make some money providing services, but they still are probably some distance away from being sustainable..

tehet
November 4th, 2007, 02:23 PM
I see a lot of names at your link, but I do not see any
Microsoft there :confused:
They use Novell as a front :p

cogitordi
November 4th, 2007, 06:53 PM
here found this any questions watch this vidio
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279&q=money&total=184957&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

Thank you for the link. It doesn't answer the question asked by the creator of the thread, but I enjoyed learning from the video. I will pass the link to friends. :^)