Canonical asks desktop users to "pay what you think Ubuntu is worth"

[KiwiNZ]

I will donate nothing. When I asked shipit for 400 CD's of 4.10 for my soldiers when I was in the military they declined me. I think *buntu used to be a great distribution until they started with six month release cycles,stopped shipit and started to change the direction the distribution was heading. Now it is continuing to head toward being another distribution that will come, and possibly go.

What is *buntu worth? I do not know, I have been using Debian since 2002 before *buntu was born. I tried various releases of different *buntu distributions to see how they have changed, and I am no longer interested in their future. They declined a shipment of CD's to the soldiers which I cared for. I forgive them, but I did not forget

I will however support those that use Linux, and possibly help with any issues that they may have.

And where do you think the funding for the free CD that Canonical sent for about 7 years came from ?

[Statia]

According to The Register, who are normally knowledgeable and reliable:

Initially, most of those cents came from founder Mark Shuttleworth, the South African software entrepreneur who launched Canonical in 2004 with his own personal fortune. Since then, the privately held company has built a growing international business based on Ubuntu support and related services. But although it is thought to bring in eight-figure annual revenues, it has yet to achieve profitability.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10...oad_donations/

[mips]

I will donate nothing. When I asked shipit for 400 CD's of 4.10 for my soldiers when I was in the military they declined me. I think *buntu used to be a great distribution until they started with six month release cycles,stopped shipit and started to change the direction the distribution was heading. Now it is continuing to head toward being another distribution that will come, and possibly go.

What is *buntu worth? I do not know, I have been using Debian since 2002 before *buntu was born. I tried various releases of different *buntu distributions to see how they have changed, and I am no longer interested in their future. They declined a shipment of CD's to the soldiers which I cared for. I forgive them, but I did not forget

That's a rather infantile way of looking at things. I can imagine you were not the only turned down for bulk requests like that, imagine a 100 people asking for big bulk shipments. Someone has to pay for it. How many of those 400 CDs you requested would have been put to use anyway instead of being used as coasters?

No individual was stopped requesting a cd (or a few) for personal use and their friends. You could have easily told people about it and if those 400 people were really interested they could have applied individually. At one stage I think I got 20 cds but a lot went to waste, that's the only time I ordered more than I needed and never again.

[Paqman]

I will donate nothing. When I asked shipit for 400 CD's of 4.10 for my soldiers when I was in the military they declined me.

So you burned your own images, right? Or did you storm off in a huff to another distro where you'd have to, er, burn your own images? 400 CDs is a lot, the kind of amount someone planning to sell them would ask for, so I'm not surprised they turned you down.

I never use the download page on the website, but I'll probably fling them some money when I next upgrade. They've provided me with a good product for many years, it's only fair. I've bought stuff from the shop before but only a small fraction of that would have gone into actual development.

[JDShu]

And you know this how?
Is this based on the information from a four year old interview Mark Shuttleworth gave?
Since 2009, Neither Canonical or Mark Shuttleworth have said absolutely anything in regards to whether or not they are making profitable money.
Yet, since that time, he has moved out of the CEO postion and the new CEO, Jane Sibler, seems well and content for a CEO running a drowning firm.

I know this because they have not told us that they are profitable. This is extremely obvious. Imagine if Canonical was profitable. Would they tell us?

Yes.

Of course.

The whole point of Canonical is to show that the Linux Desktop is a market worth targeting. If there was a single instant that Canonical is nearing profitability, then you can be absolutely sure they would tell us and there would be a lot of fanfare.. In fact, if there were reasonable projections that they'd be profitable within a year, then we would know.

Since that hasn't happened yet, I know that Canonical is nowhere near profitable yet.

They are hiring, and I haven't seen any signs of downsizing(Kicking Kubuntu development out doesn't count as that makes sense from the Ubuntu flavor standpoint, it makes Kubuntu no different from the other flavors such Xubuntu or Edubuntu), In fact they've upsized(if that's a word) and expanded themselves. Typically, what they're doing now is not consistent with a company draining cash(And that's regardless of whether or not someone keeps pumping liquidity into that company).

Companies spending lots of money they may or may not have chasing profitability is extremely normal. So no, it is not "regardless of whether or not someone keeps pumping liquidity". The fact that they can reliably get money means that they will continue to spend money expanding their business. Companies go bankrupt when they are unprofitable and nobody is willing to lend them any money.

[vasa1]

I know this ... I know that Canonical is nowhere near profitable yet.
...

I'm not really curious to know how you know that.

[pompel9]

Maybe I will donate in the future.

I will buy a t-shirt and the beanie hat from canonical store soon. I hope they make money from this, if not they should get higher prices.

[JDShu]

I'm not really curious to know how you know that.

Wow.

[shreepads]

Wholly approve of this, and not the Amazon ads in desktop search rubbish...

Now if they would just give three more options
- FFS Stop Making The Desktop Even More Amazing (TM) And Get Basic Hardware Compatibility, Bugs And Features Working
- Please Stop Merging The Desktop Environment With Your Planned Tablet/ Smartphone Environment Convergence Rubbish
- Contribute To The Debian Mothership

And yes, please give some options other than Paypal...

I will drop some cash into the hardware compatibility & community one for sure...

Hmmm can I put a negative value in the 'make desktop more amazing' option??? :-p

[stinkeye]

I just donated because I tried quite a few times to get Linux running but
never succeeded until I used an Ubuntu live CD.
Appreciate the work they put in, creating a distro that allowed me to completely switch to Linux.
They may have changed their focus slightly but the whole PC industry is changing focus.