Announcing Launch of ($10m) Ubuntu Foundation

[Daniel Robitaille]

Dennis Kaarsemaker wrote:
> On vr, 2005-07-08 at 12:14 +0200, Benj. Mako Hill wrote:
> 
> 
>>I hope you join me in thinking this is fantastic news for the Ubuntu
>>community on a number of different levels.
> 
> 
> Absolutely amazing!
> 

Very interesting and positive development indeed.


 > Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical Ltd, founders of the popular Ubuntu
 > Linux-based operating system, have today announced the creation of The
 > Ubuntu Foundation with an initial funding commitment of US$10m.

assuming the initial cost of Canonical/Ubuntu until now was in the $10m range 
(where that number in my mind come from...I must have heard it in an interview 
somewhere), I guess that means Mark just doubled his investment.


 > The Ubuntu Foundation will employ core Ubuntu community members

Lucky guys! :)


 > As a first step, the Foundation announces that Ubuntu
 > version 6.04, due for release in April 2006, will be supported for
 > three years on the desktop and five years on the server.

That's a great news.  Some of us couldn't easily promote Ubuntu in their 
workplace since the 18-month supported period was simply not enough, and at 
par with other non-enterprise offerings (like Mandrake/Mandriva), which is far 
short from enterprise editions some management-type look for.  I guess we have 
been waiting for this  kind of announcement ever since last fall when the 
concept of an Ubuntu Enterprise was described in one small paragraph on the 
web site.

I wonder if that means that the development paced of Breezy+1 will be a lot 
less spectacular and radical than for Breezy since you want a rock solid 
release for 6.04. Get most of the new features  and architecture shifts out of 
the door for Breezy, and concentrate more on the fine-tuning, little details 
and hard to find bugs in Breezy+1 since that release will be around for a very 
long time.


 > The Ubuntu Community Council will act as the advisory board of the
 > Foundation. Current members of that Council are Benjamin Mako Hill,
 > Colin Watson, James Troup and Mark Shuttleworth (Chairman).
 >

and since us, the community members, control appointments to the Council, we 
suddenly become a lot more important in Ubuntu-land on the long-run.  I guess 
that's the first important and visible benefit received for being an official 
member (most of us are still waiting for our ubuntu.com addresses).  Really 
interesting.


All around I would say we are receiving very positive vibes with this 
announcement, and it is a good sign that we still have a lot of good times 
ahead for all of us.

Thanks Mark.


-- 
Daniel Robitaille