Mark Shuttleworth on patents, tablets and the future of Ubuntu | Hacker News Reader

Mark Shuttleworth on patents, tablets and the future of Ubuntu

techcentral.co.za

76 pointsmacco11 comments

This article shows Mark Shuttleworth to be outside of the normal range on honesty when he first claims to be short Apple (i.e. financially interested in Apple losing value, and not just as a competitor) and then goes on for a couple of paragraphs about how important and powerful it is --- and how much people like its products! (Even though he thinks it's going to decline.)

It is my opinion that he is out of the norm in the positive direction, i.e. he has much more integrity than the average person.

The other really important data point in here, to me, is that it sounds like Ubuntu has still not yet reached cash-flow positive. My early fear was that, since there was no immediately plausible roadmap to profitability, Mark would give up on the project after it remained unprofitable for a number of years. The fact that Ubuntu continues and indeed dominates, despite continuing to lose money, is a testament to his fortitude.

(I am not affiliated with Canonical Ltd. and I have publicly criticized Mark pretty harshly in the wake of the "explain what we do to girls" flap.)

It is completely off topic, but since you professed different opinion I would like to know if saying: "I might be able to explain to my GF what I am doing.", would be OK in your opinion?

What If I said it, since my GF is not very computer literate? I just believe that using completely neutral language does not solve the problem of e.g. racial and gender inequality. In fact I find it hypocritical. There are many problems in human interactions. However I believe that we are doing it wrong, we need to be more creative. Just mending the same symptoms all the time is giving us diminishing returns.

Portraying all friendly groups of people in media as interracial mix, does nothing to alleviate racism. And also beating manliness out of western men does nothing to help women in areas where they are really in dire need of help.

There's a difference between saying that your girlfriend is not a Debian Developer and saying that girls are not Debian Developers. His statement, intentionally or no, implied that girls were not capable of understanding technical matters until someone puts an easy-to-use face on them.

I find most of the rest of your comment incoherent, so I won't try to respond to it.

I'm running around advocating Ubuntu to non-tech savvy people (friends, family) and everyone who had it installed is completely satisfied with it, because the essentials (Browser, Skype) work very well. And seeing that I can't help but wonder when it will reach the tipping point where you'll see the Ubuntu-desktop on more and more computers and, gasp, even on TV.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system... there's still a long way to go, but I'm optimistic. And yeah, I really enjoy Unity. I'm a Mac user 50% of the time and an Ubuntu user the other 50. And after learning some shortcuts I actually miss Ubuntu features in Lion. Let's hope they continue improving.. (One issue that probably needs work is battery consumption on laptops.)

(Btw. thinking about buying a netbook for a longer trip now and it's sad that they all come with Win7 preinstalled now..)

For your netbook, download Wubi (http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/windows-installer). It's a Windows installer for Ubuntu. It's incredibly easy to use.

"For your netbook, download Wubi (http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/windows-installer). It's a Windows installer for Ubuntu. It's incredibly easy to use."

It's also unreliable.

I used wubi to install Linux on my Windows 7 machine, and it worked well...for a while. At some point, Ubuntu installed some updates, and then told me it needed to reboot. I rebooted, and Ubuntu never successfully booted up again.

The culprit, I think, was an update of grub, but I'm not 100% sure. Be careful with wubi.

It's sad that the interviewer didn't ask Mark about pre-installed Ubuntu computers for the consumer market. Mark only mentioned the increasing uptake of Ubuntu in the corporate sector. So I guess we are not going to see any major manufacturers selling consumer Ubuntu laptops any time soon.

I know there's System76 in the US, but there's nothing here in the UK. I've only found some small obscure websites selling Ubuntu laptops, but they are generally more expensive than the equivalent Windows machines. Dell used to sell some, but stopped for some reason (bullying by Microsoft?).

Why don't Canonical themselves sell Ubuntu machines?

I remember there being a supplier called EfficientPC operating out of the UK but I'm fairly sure my dev box was their last sale before closing down. I'd also be a happy customer of machines pre-installed with Ubuntu.

It would probably be fun to start a business doing just that no? Canonical provide a lot of support for the OS itself so we'd have to source parts, put together the boxes, sell them and market them.

Ubuntu UK Podcast recently reviewed the Meenee laptop. http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004GGBUJY/ Said it was good for the money. Hinge a bit flimsy, not quite able to push full screen iPlayer. Basically a laptop size netbook, with price to match.

Dell still sells a few, but they're hard to find. There's a 12" Latitude with Ubuntu pre-loaded, though.

There is a lot of momentum atm around reforming patents, with the TIL story, businessweek, Mark Cuban, etc. but I feel that despite all the attention there doesn't seem to be an end-game, ie. some sort of 'beginning of the end' for software patents or patent reform

What would it take to get this issue to the next step - ie. a house or senate committee investigation. Perhaps a petition signed by industry leaders and software developers? More lobbying?

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