shuttleworth

It's official. Mark Shuttleworth (Ubuntu) and I are going to be in Buenos Aires on August 14 through 15. I'm corresponding with several of you about putting together a community event there (or more). Mark is obviously the big draw, so let's put together some cool gatherings to welcome him to Argentina. (I also have some business meetings planned with an Alfresco partner during the days, but there should be time for community events.)

I think it would be very interesting to have some of the following:

Correction 8 p.m. PT: I included the wrong duration for regular Ubuntu releases. It's 18 months.

Canonical plans to release Hardy Heron, its newest version of Ubuntu Linux on Thursday, and Chief Executive Mark Shuttleworth isn't being shy and retiring about it.

"This is our most significant release ever," he said in an interview.

Ordinarily I avoid publishing such marketing superlatives, but Shuttleworth is right. Hardy Heron, also called version 8.04 for its April 2008 launch date, is Canonical's proof-in-the-pudding moment that will show whether the company can grow beyond its subsidized roots … Read more

eWeek has put together a solid list of the top-15 open-source business influencers in the industry today. It's much the same that I would have devised had I come up with such a list. Names like Linus Torvalds (Linux), Mitchell Baker (Mozilla), Mike Milinkovich (Eclipse), and Larry Augustin (most startups known to humankind) make the list. Also John Roberts of SugarCRM, who was really the one who made commercial open source as big a topic as it is today, at least beyond Linux and middleware.

But the list is also notable for its inclusion of some people that might … Read more

Judge: Wikileaks gets its domain name back http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9883240-38.html

First spam felony conviction upheld: No free speech to spam http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080302-first-spam-felony-conviction-upheld-no-free-speech-to-spam.html

Vista prices fall even further http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9883961-56.html

Pirates find proper way to crack Vista’s activation schema http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/03/0622230

More audiobook publishers drop DRM: Will Audible follow suit? http://www.boingboing.net/2008/03/03/more-audiobook-publi.html

Nine Inch Nails uploads new album on Torrent sites http://torrentfreak.com/nin-uploads-new-album-on-torrent-sites-080303/

Fan-funded music http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13526_1-9882091-27.html… Read more

I am fortunate to count Mark Shuttleworth as a good friend. He's the sort of person who is always genuine. I never get the sense that he's taking shortcuts with me or with the business that he's forming around Ubuntu (i.e., Canonical).

This authenticity in his personality is hugely important for an opportunity looming for him and for Canonical. Like a few big open-source projects and companies, Ubuntu sits at the nexus of various other open-source communities. Unlike perhaps any other, however, Ubuntu has Canonical, a company with a social purpose as much as a corporate purpose.

Herein lies the opportunity, as Mark implies in a conversation he had with Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation:

...(It) seems to be that recognizing that enhancing the productivity of collaboration between different groups is a real way to boost the platform as a whole. And at Ubuntu we feel this very, very keenly because not only do we want to collaborate with other upstream projects like Apache or X or Open Office, but we also very much want to be part of and collaborate with Debian which is a very large project in its own right.… Read more

I nearly cried (really) when I read Mark Shuttleworth's eloquent and searing analysis of the United States financial crisis. He doesn't necessarily call it such, but he points to my country's failure in economic leadership...and the adverse consequences for the planet.

Underlying it all is a too-easy addiction to credit:

To make matters worse, a series of financial innovations created a whole industry designed to help people go back into debt on their houses. I remember trying to watch TV in the US and being amazed at the number of advertisements for "home equity withdrawals". They made it sound like turning your major personal financial asset - your paid-off house - into an ATM machine was a good thing. In fact, it was a means to spend all of your primary store of wealth. And with inflated house prices, it was a way to spend money that you did not really have. A convenient way to get into a deep, dark hole of family debt.… Read more

Canonical Chief Executive Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu version of Linux, called Tuesday's interest-rate cut the "most extraordinary failure of economic leadership in recent years."

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke cut interest rates 0.75 percent on Tuesday, but Shuttleworth derided the move as "press(ing) the 'emergency morphine' button" in a blog posting that indicates the open-source software executive also has an interest in macroeconomics.

Markets "are smart enough to see that all Bernanke has done is cover up the symptoms of malaise," he said and offered a gloomy … Read more

I really liked this InformationWeek article with Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu. I liked it in part because I think Mark is an exceptional person. But I also liked it for its insight into why Ubuntu has done so well.

Hint: It has a lot to do with making a very geeky thing (Linux desktop) less geeky.

IW: Why are you concerned about ease of use when many Linux developers see it as a lesser issue?… Read more

Canonical plans on Thursday to release "Gutsy Gibbon," the Ubuntu Linux version 7.10 that the company hopes will lay the foundation for a serious push into the server and other markets six months from now.

That's when Gutsy Gibbon's sequel, "Hardy Heron," is scheduled to arrive. Gutsy Gibbon will have the usual Ubuntu support life span--18 months--but Hardy Heron will be the company's second version to feature long-term support, which lasts three years for the desktop product and five years for the server.

Some of the Gutsy Gibbon work involved introducing new … Read more