Ask Ubuntu Founder (And Astronaut) Mark Shuttleworth

Mark Shuttleworth isn't one to rest on his laurels. Founder of Thawte Consulting, Shuttleworth has used the wealth generated by Thawte's 1995 sale to Verisign to start a venture capital firm, to further South African science education (and education in general) with his eponymous foundation, to push for the acceptance of open source software in South Africa, and to become the first citizen of an African country to visit space with his 2002 flight to the International Space Station aboard the Russian Soyuz shuttle -- basically, to live life as a Neal Stephenson hero might. His latest project is Ubuntu Linux, a Debian-based distribution designed for ease of use, extensive language support, and thorough cooperation with the larger Debian organization. Mark's agreed to answer questions from Slashdot readers about these projects -- Ubuntu seems to be chief on his mind -- so please add your questions below, one per post (but as many questions as you'd like). We'll forward 10-12 of the best to Mark for his answers, and post them verbatim as soon as they're ready.

Shuttleworth...

That's a good name for an astronaut I guess... Too bad the shuttle isn't worth flying...

Africa & the world economy

A lot of Americans, unfortunately, focus on the continent of Africa as "poor" or "third world" - which isn't the total truth. How do you think the various nations of Africa (together or separately) will change this image by embracing technology? How are they already doing so?

Hmm, I'm an Astonaut

I live in Aston Hall at Texas A&M, so...I'm an Astonaut TOO!

My question though, is what are the main goals of Ubuntu, I was a member of the ekkoBSD, and we died quickly because of lack of manpower, but moreso from lack of a definied focus.

It doesn't really matter where Ubuntu is today, where do you really see it going?

What's so special about Ubuntu?

This is a question that's sure to come up in many different ways, but I'd really like to know what is so special about Ubuntu that its purposes could not be as well served by contributing to the Debian tree? I'm assuming you have your reasons - is it about having control of the packaging, more frequent releases, what? Do you see Ubunutu supplanting Debian someday, or will it just be a branded form of the more open Debian (akin to Fedora/Redhat)?

Also, becoming aware of your financial resources, I can't help but wonder whether Ubuntu is intended to be a money maker, or it seen as a gift to the community?

(My new Athlon 64 system is coming any day now, and I've decided to try Ubuntu first. So far, it looks very nice from afar.)

FLOSS jobs

Do you have any pet projects you are funding
or want to fund that might provide a living for
a software engineer? And on a related note, do the
core Ubuntu developers get paid?

Hurdles

What were the major hurdles you encountered while developing this Debian offshoot and what sets it apart from the original?

Common Efforts?

How are the nations of Africa working together to promote technological growth? Are there any common intiatives in place or will there be or are the nations still working independantly instead of building a common infrastructure? Are the current methods succeeding or do you beleive there should be change to the way the continent is approaching their technological challenges whether they are seperate or cooperative.

Modifications

After I installed your distro recently, I was impressed by the attention to graphical detail. The gdm login screen, the default theme and the wallpapers chosen for the desktop were all very nice.

One thing that stood out was the choice to eliminate desktop icons and change the required trash icon into a panel applet. Why was this choice made?

The question on every male hetero /.er's mind...

Who is the blonde [ubuntulinux.org]?

Re:The question on every male hetero /.er's mind..

A more important question is: "After putting two hot chicks on the login screen, why did you have to ruin that picture with the dude? Have you considered a Lesbian-based distribution?"

Why Arch?

On your website, you "encourage [your] developers to keep track of their patches using the Gnu Arch Revision Control System and to publish their patches that way." What made you decide to use Arch instead of Subversion, Darcs, or any of the other new revision control systems?

The bottom line...

This might be a bit of a sensitive issue, but do you plan to make money off this project, and other open source projects eventually, or is the funding a (VERY GENEROUS!) gift to the community? I assume that profitability would be a long long long term (10+ years in the computer industry!) goal of any project, but I get a sense "profitability" is not monetary only in this case.

Going to space or fixing Earth?

As an astronaut, you must been drawn to the mysteries of the universe outside our own planet. But as a South African, you must also feel drawn to the problems facing your home continent (I KNOW this sounds very ignorant and Western, and I'm not trying to say "Africa is a place full of problems", I'm just referring to the huge problems that exist for a large portion of the continent).

Do you think space exploration can be justified when so many people here on Earth suffer? And why?
This is an important question to me, as I dream of space, and definitely think Mankind should explore all we can. However, I am having a moral problem (which I'm just ignoring at the moment, for the sake of continued dreaming) justifying spending huge amounts of resources when billions of people right here on Earth lack access to clean water, and millions are infected with HIV.

Debian packages

I read that you guys are rebuilding your own version of all the debian packages you use instead of using vanilla debian. Apparently this means that Ubuntu will not work with general debian apt repositories. Is this true? If so, what is the reasoning behind this and will you in the future be considering changing this policy?

my question for Mark

I'm curious to know how business and individuals have responded to the open source campaign you started. Has there been any interesting success or failures that have encouraged/discouraged your campaign?

I'd also be curious to hear from fellow slashdotters who may be from South Africa. How has his push for open source made inroads in the computer community?

I am interested because I recently find myself in a situation where I will be promoting open source in my own community.

Health care open source?

I do a lot of work in South Africa and other parts of Africa with health care information systems. There is a pressing need for open source information systems for AIDS treatment and also health system management. The existing proprietary solutions are expensive, not suitable, not customizable, and don't build local capacity.

Would you be willing to branch out from education into heatlth care open source projects? I know people in South Africa, Kenya, Zambia, Ethiopia, and other countries who would be willing to participate.

The Digital Divide

Ubuntu [ubuntulinux.org], SchoolTool [schooltool.org],Translate.org.za [translate.org.za] are some of the projects you support that seem to tackle the digital-divide head-on. Do you have any views or ideas on how to make Internet access cheaper so more people in developing countries can have access to it? More specific, any plans on convincing the South African government that not over-regulating the telecoms industry will be good for everyone?

What do you think of this idea?

I switch from distro to distro whenever I find one that is better than the current one. I just moved from Slackware (with dropline gnome) to Ubuntu because of the latest gnome and kernel. My brother is so impressed with Ubuntu that he's switching from Windows. Well he's also partly unimpressed with Windows security. He's currently backing everything up and the transfer of files and all is rather tedious. We thought of an idea to make the process faster and would like your opinion on it.

Would it be possible to have an Ubuntu install CD which checks a Windows or Linux installation, migrates its users/files and "converts" their system to Ubuntu? I realize there are some hurdles to overcome this in the Windows world but it seems feasible from one distro to the next. What do you think of the idea?

Thanks in advance.

How do you get support for the less popular work?

Hi Mark, as with any (F)OSS project you're almost entirely depending on volunteers. That's OK for popular projects, but to work on, say, an admin or accounting back-end someone still needs to do the heavy lifting without the promise of the kind of glamour and street cred that the likes of Firefox offer.

Have you found a way to get support for the less sexy projects and if so, how?

Everything free - what's the business plan?

How does Canonical plan on making money? Ubuntu seems to be completely and utterly free, in both senses of the word. In my mind at least, the 'services will pay for development' business plan for Free Software went out of style when the dot-com bubble burst. How will your company be different?

Was it worth it?

Two questions:
1)Asking you "was it worth it?" is going to get an affirmative answer regardless of how you really feel so let me ask you, what happened on the flight that made the trip worth $20 million?

2)How much would you pay to go up a second time?

Corporate Usage

I've been a Red Hat/Fedora user for years now, but I decided to give Ubuntu a try, as it had some of the most recent packages included (Gnome 2.8 and Evolution 2.0) by default. Needless to say, I was very impressed by the polish of a pre-release version, and I have switched my workstations at work, and my Linux boxes at home over to Ubuntu.

I was, however, disappointed by the lack of "corporate" tools currently included with Ubuntu. All of our client machines here are currently running Fedora with a customized install script written using kickstart, so when a machine dies,I can pop in the custom install CD and have a blank machine back on the network in 5 or 10 minutes. Are there are plans to include kickstart-like features and NIS support inside of Ubuntu's installation routines? I would switch our entire company over to Ubuntu in a flash if that were the case. I'm sure other companies would enjoy seeing the addition of such features as well.

Internet Access in South Africa

Hi Mark,

This is a question combo suggestion.

I'm a programmer from South Africa, working in the Bay Area.

I had dialup Internet in South Africa already in 1994. However since then not much has changed. In fact Internet access is appalling. Its very expensive compared to the average income of middle class, and ISDN or ADSL is just too expensive and at the same time pathetically slow.

Internet access is really holding our country back! I believe it is critical to schools and families to have access to better Internet.

As a South African entrepreneur and someone who is successful in the IT world, have you ever given this problem any thought, or considered starting an initiative to provide better access to the Internet?

Kobus

Ubuntu target is... ?

I'm curious who you see as the Ubuntu target user/audience? It seems that from the ease of use, and "price", that you are trying to target the audience that doesn't care for Microsoft, or that is trying to do things and can't afford Microsoft.

With that, I'm a little curious as to why Ubuntu has chosen Gnome as the desktop? On older machines (such as my HP Kayak), Ubuntu runs passingly well, but simply having an option that probes the machine and then picks a desktop like XFCE or IceWM using a similar theme to the Gnome one would help refurbished/recycled machines really shine.

Similarly, it would seem that there are some software choices that could be tuned as well. As much as I like to use Open Office on my newer machines, selecting a more modest office offering for lower specification machines seems like a reasonable option.

Interested in your thoughts on this...

Re:Dear Mark

Because Debian gives you a choice of "unstable" and "outdated software"? (I use "unstable" quite happily but I can see it would make some people nervous. There's a market for a stable but cutting-edge distribution.) Because "contributing to Debian" means a long, painful "democratic" voting process? Because Debian has a sucky installer and suckier system-management tools?

Have you used Ubuntu or any of the other Debian clones? You'd know the difference.