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View Full Version : I really dont understand how ubuntu is developed



MONODA
January 12th, 2008, 04:26 PM
Could someone explain to me how ubuntu is developed. How do the developers and owners of canonical make any money??? And how is it all organized so that there arent many copies of the same part of the os? I was just curious.

23meg
January 12th, 2008, 04:50 PM
Could someone explain to me how ubuntu is developed.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment

binarybit
January 12th, 2008, 06:42 PM
How do the developers and owners of canonical make any money???

Last I looked into it [about a year ago]... I don't think they do... At least not at present.

From the figures that have been put up, or talked about in the past, I think Canoncial is going through $10 million/year of Mark Shuttleworth's money.

I think the business plan was to generate income via selling support contracts on desktop Ubuntu, but that was changed to the server-side, and/or the corporate-side. Either way, it will be years before Ubuntu Server can generate enough credibility to be pronounced in the same sentence as RedHat Server.

In the meat time, I think the plan is to just float Canonical and expand the user-base of Ubuntu Linux.

23meg
January 12th, 2008, 07:00 PM
From the figures that have been put up, or talked about in the past, I think Canoncial is going through $10 million/year of Mark Shuttleworth's money.

That's the Ubuntu Foundation, not Canonical.

http://www.ubuntu.com/news/UbuntuFoundation

steeleyuk
January 12th, 2008, 07:04 PM
Canonical do sell support contracts for desktops. If you buy a Dellbuntu computer, you get offered a range of contracts.

mips
January 12th, 2008, 07:12 PM
Then they also make money on customised migration stuff I "think". They have done a few big rollouts for some govs where the solution was custimised.

az
January 12th, 2008, 08:53 PM
Could someone explain to me how ubuntu is developed..

Ubuntu is a distribution which contains free and open source software written by thousands of developers.



How do the developers and owners of canonical make any money???

The business model for Canonical (and all other free/libre open source businesses) is of services and support.

If you buy an OS to run software for a particular task (example, running a database for your business), you will still pay someone to make sure that the database doesn't go down. With FLOSS, you don't have to pay for ownership of the software to use it, and you can pay whom you like to maintain it.




And how is it all organized so that there arent many copies of the same part of the os? I was just curious.

There are many versions. What's the problem with that? If they serve a purpose, they gain a community and grow. If they are useless, they fall by the wayside and go away. Just like any other kind of software.