So what do people think about askubuntu.com?
For those who don't know, this is (as far as I am aware) a for-profit ubuntu questions+answers site, created by Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood. The way askubuntu.com works is people contribute their free labor to the site by answering and posing questions; and the owners make money from advertising revenues.
As far as I am aware, no profits from the revenues raised from askubuntu.com are directed back into linux or open-source software...
I've heard Atwood & Spolsky say they want to "become a part of the fabric of the web" with their ever-growing number of q+a sites. My translation of that, is this: they want to hoover up a whole bunch of people who were previously donating their efforts to non-profit community-based efforts, and harness the efforts of these folk in order to make themselves a nice chunk of $$change$$. In the process, the world will somehow benefit, because what the world needs is more q+a sites...
It makes me kind of sad thinking that revenues raised from a site like askubuntu.com flow entirely into private hands, and nothing gets paid back to open-source projects. Of course, Canonical is a for-profit organization, and I am not suggesting they deserve or need donations. But why not donate a portion of the profits to e.g., Debian, or any number of other worthy open source projects in need of funding.
I'm curious to hear what people think. If I'm completely wrong in my perception of this situation, I'll be interested to hear it.
edit: I guess what creeps me out the most about askubuntu.com is the way they use feel-good phrases like "community driven" to describe their site... you could just as accurately describe the site as "profit driven" - but they'd never put a description like that on their site! They are draping their profit-based corporation in the language of open source and free software... hoping that the vague, feel good connotations of the phrases they are using will trick people into somehow believing that contributing to their sites represents some kind of social or moral good...
And as MooPi and PaulW2U point out below, they also seem to be using the "offical" ubuntu colors, and have incorporated the word "ubuntu" into their domain name. Then again, maybe they have Canonical's blessing..?
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