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The Business Model of Ubuntu
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Jul 31, 2006 08:11 AM
from the making-it-better dept.
from the making-it-better dept.
Andareed writes "Open-source software companies, such as Ubuntu (an open-source Linux distribution), are better able to respond to user request and bugs than traditional software companies, such as Microsoft. Simon Law, head of the Quality Assurance department at Ubuntu in a talk given to the UW Computer Science Club, explains why this is, and how Ubuntu is leveraging the open-source model. Simon explains how the QA department at Ubuntu differs from traditional QA departments, through its use of the open-source community at large. Most interesting is Simon's views on what motivates open-source developers to develop software, and how open-source oriented businesses (specifically Ubuntu) are making money."
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QA at Ubuntu? (Score:4, Insightful)
wireless has been a b*tch for me too (Score:5, Interesting)
I still don't understand why the latest stable ndiswrapper isn't included on whatever Ubuntu CD is offered on the website. That alone would probably solve most people's wireless issues. Everything needed to get wireless networking working should be on the CD. Not everyone has wired access, certainly not with city's and towns rolling out municipal wireless.
Re:QA at Ubuntu? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.getogg.org/)
This support isn't going to happen any other way. If you think it's simple to write drivers for your black-box wireless card, go for it! I think you'll find that it's not. We get the cooperation of all hardware manufacturers by only buying from those that cooperate. The ball is in your court.
Re:QA at Ubuntu? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:QA at Ubuntu? (Score:4, Informative)
Specifically, though, it's not wifi that's broken -- it's networkmanager. Which wasn't a default part of breezy so one can argue that nothing was really broken. I can no longer authenticate to a WEP network that requires a key, and that's with two different laptops, one using NDISwrapper and a Windows driver, one using a native Prism2 driver. On both, manually using iwconfig and dhclient works. I can live with that but it doesn't look good in a desktop OS. And it's not just me -- there are many bug reports (including mine).
Geez (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.wiisels.com/ | Last Journal: Friday January 21 2005, @12:20AM)
Re:Geez (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://twoturtlelovers.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday May 25, @03:01PM)
Sadly, the editor is not the only one that spells this wrong. Take a look at a google search [google.com]. approximately 25,000+ results can't be wrong, can they?
Re:Geez (Score:4, Funny)
(http://klowner.com/)
Video and no text (Score:1)
(http://elmuerte.com/)
Long live multimedia.
More Talks (Score:4, Informative)
Inaccurate (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Inaccurate (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://stylus-toolbox.sf.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday May 15 2007, @11:50AM)
Not true at all. If it weren't for the Ubuntu Technical Board [ubuntu.com], Ubuntu wouldn't be the highly polished, well-integrated desktop distribution that it is. They decide what packages make it into the distro, what features will make it into the release, and how the parts will integrate together. Additionally there are project-based teams [ubuntu.com] that deal with the nuts and bolts and local teams [ubuntu.com] that deal with the issues of L10n adn I18n. Some of these teams include people from Canonical, and others are comprised of strictly members of the community. It's not lopsided like some other Open Source projects with corporate backers, like OpenOffice.org or Mozilla or even the Fedora Core Project. In my mind, Ubuntu represents a good balance between community interest and corporate interest...the question becomes will Canonical, Ltd. make money on its investment or not?
Re:Inaccurate (Score:4, Informative)
(Last Journal: Thursday March 30 2006, @10:04PM)
Most people with insane riches want to be seen as philanthropic. Bill G. for example started a foundation where he funds initiatives related to education and health (a wide domain where he helps financing selected initiatives).
Mark on the other hand is more focused and is aiming at a specific and narrow problem domain in the technology sector. He wants to help Linux become a viable computing platform option for the average person, by providing both financing as well as leadership. Seeing that Slashdot is mostly comprised of people who have an education and "food on their table", the work of Mark will likely have a more direct impact on our lives than other initiatives, thus making the effort of Mark rather interesting in our little technology corner of the world.
Being an industry professional I am (as I believe many of you are as well) constantly consulted by friends and family about technical matters. If one day these people would be willing to start using a platform which I am familiar with, the effort on my part as well as those seeking help would greatly diminish and we would all be able to spend more time on stuff that matters. Ubuntu is in that regard an extremely interesting initiative to me personally and I commend Shuttleworth for incepting Ubuntu and his colleagues and the rest of the contributing community for focusing on the last 10% of what Debian is missing for wide spread adoption.
Matter of scale (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.dreamersrealm.net/~tree)
Just my US$0.02 worth.
Re:Matter of scale (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Friday October 08 2004, @04:53AM)
The reasons for faster response, from my point of view (having had a commit bit for FreeBSD for almost a decade now):
- The developers actually do support. They're in contact with the end users. And some of the end users are other coders, and are allowed to do things with the OS code. This allows them to send in suggestions for how to fix their own problem. As opposed to the rumours, we only use these as is less than half the time - yet they're useful for pointing out things.
- The developers are allowed to prioritize their own time. This result in both higher quality code (developers clean up when they feel cleanup is warranted), and easy end user problems being prioritized. Especially in combination with developers doing support.
- Open source software is mostly designed based on what's technically reasonably easy, not marketing. This makes for simpler and more nimble codebases.
- Open source goes through evolution: Those codebases that aren't nimble mostly die. In closed source software, those codebases that sell can add more resources (programmers) to get around not being nimble.
I think these things are much more important. Especially the first two.Eivind.
Business model (Score:5, Insightful)
+3 Insightful? (Score:5, Funny)
No Bittorrent... (Score:5, Funny)
obligatory business model (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.asopos.nl/)
2. ?????
3. Profit!
X & NVidia Drivers (Score:2, Informative)
(http://beplacid.net/)
I have to say though, the Ubuntu forums is an awesome resource for fixing Ubuntu related problems. If it is any sort of testiment to the level of paid support then Canonical Ltd. (the commercial organisation behind Ubuntu Linux) are certainly on the right tracks.
Kudos to them.
Re:X & NVidia Drivers (Score:5, Insightful)
Review of the video. (Score:3, Funny)
1) 30s of video held at 15 degree angle (obviously setting up).
2) Nope, launch right into the talk. 20 minutes or so of ubunutu Q+A guy. (camera still at 15 degree angle)
3) Mildly interesting (and entertaining) Question & Answer session. Check out the guy's voice at circa 28 minutes! (camera still at 15 degree angle)
4) The interesting bit - ubunutu guy leaves & audience exits...hahaha - check out the nerds - especially the guy in shorts!
Where is the OSS love? (Score:1)
Thank you Captain Obvious (Score:1)
Ubunto (Score:2, Insightful)
IMHO, the problem with Linux for the desktop is users have no loyalty. Once something better comes along they drop thier old distro like a bad habbit. This ultimately makes it impossible for a distro company to be profitable more than a few years.
Natural Selection (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.lkmc.ch/)
Watch natural selection at work. It's a good thing. The problem with Windows is that its users do not abandon it if they find something better. Hence, no incentive for Microsoft to improve Windows (see: Vista).
Distros most certainly can have staying power, if they keep working on themselves and improving their distros. If they don't, good riddance.
First version of Ubuntu that works for me! (Score:1)
(http://fprintf.rchomepage.com/ | Last Journal: Friday October 13 2006, @02:33PM)
In Native format the Wireless works better and at least recognizes my USB Wireless adapter, though it gives me a Linux version of the BSOD when I try to connect... it just freezes the system entirely.
In VMWare mode it works perfectly, mostly since Windows is handling the Wireless connection for the system. I am not sure whether I'll use it, though, since it doesn't really offer me anything that I don't already have on Windows. In a way I wished that it shipped with Kdevelop or some other IDE so that we could use this as a way to entice young developers to begin coding on Linux rather than using http://kidsprogramminglanguage.com/ [kidsprogra...nguage.com] or the now free C#/VBasic tools offered by Microsoft.
better "business" model (Score:1)
(http://splat.justfree.com/)
personally, i like Slackware's "business" model/release schedule better.
ChanServ - Newb has joined ##slackware.
Newb: When is Slackware (choose ver. #) going to be released?
SlackPro: When Pat wants to.
better able to respond? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://sethlytle.net/)
but some things don't, and there doesn't seem to be any response at all from ubuntu. the biggest issue is a minute long hang during boot with the message "mounting root filesystem".
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1861
this thread is 18 pages long and started june 1st, and there are many other threads, bugreports, etc that are dealing with the same issue. there are a hundred "me toos", and one has to assume many people like me who haven't put their two cents in for every one who has. so i'm pretty sure it's not an isolated problem. and yet there is very little response from ubuntu. a few pages with sloppily put together work-arounds. but i haven't seen any sort of official statement on the problem or a commitment to fix it or a disclaimer in any of their pr that the problem exists, or even a statement of the scope of the problem (eg. which cpus are effected).
in some ways i'm very impressed with ubuntu, but responsiveness isn't one of them. in the gentoo world, there would have been a 10 page official document describing the problem, summarizing scope, offering work-arounds, and naming a team assigned to solving the problem.
seth
So ya (Score:1)
wow, the hate (Score:1)
Why Ubuntu is so great? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.mithrandir.net/)
The great paradigm shift with Ubuntu (and a few others, but I don't know them really) is that they took a top-down approach. Instead of taking the existing software as a starting point, they take the final result: if they want the desktop to behave some way (e.g: have hints for new users, give more visual feedback, make some apps easier to use), they'll modify GNOME appropriately. Mark Shuttleworth has a lot of money so the bounty system works just right. They also have integrated Ubuntu with Launchpad, their bugs/features request/apps discussion database/website (which code is unfortunately proprietary), so that it supports their mantra better (anyone who knows how to fill an HTML form can request a feature). But under the hood, it's still Debian. In fact, it's 90% Debian, 10% Ubuntu (Debian has done 90% of the road up, and the Ubuntu people 10% down). They couldn't do Debian's work better, but most Debian people wouldn't want to do Ubuntu's work (but some of them are both Ubuntu and Debian developers, quite a lot in fact). The accomplishment with Ubuntu is that it was the last piece of the puzzle needed for a community-made distribution (even if it's financed) to go mainstream. It has all the technical greatness of Debian (including the wonderful APT framework) with a great ease of use.
As a Debianist, I used to be quite against the Ubuntu hype. First, with their high dependancies and their oh-too-recent toolchain, they make
Well no, it's Debian plus a bit more. And the bit more is that it can go mainstream for the desktop use (and it has already started). My mom has been using Debian for almost 2 years now (of course I installed it, but she's using it) with no problem. However, she's totally insensitive to computer aesthetics and she doesn't care as long as she can use Thunderbird and Firefox. Some times ago, a friend of mine couldn't upgrade his pirated copy of Windows because of the WGA (maybe he could, but he's not tech-savvy at all, and I told him I wouldn't help him with Windows anyway). So I proposed him to test GNU/Linux, say in a dual-boot. He was like "no, I don't want no fuckin' dual-boot, I just want Linux". I was quite surprised, he doesn't know anything about c
Linux (Score:1, Insightful)
When is Linux going to "be ready"?
I dunno but I got a ton of work to do and I haven't got time for the pain.
Business model? (Score:3, Funny)
Can we please stop with the Ubuntu stuff? (Score:1, Insightful)
Manufacturer's Fault (Score:1)
As for other things people (in general, not necessarily here) bitch about, such as off-the-cd mp3 and dvd support, there are legal reasons that they cannot provide this - not b/c they are incompetent, or lazy, but they legally cannot do it.
One last note to people bitching about unsupported hardware, would you rather spend XX dollars on a new, supported wireless card, or spend XXX dollars on windows XP (or soon vista.....or not so soon, whichever)? The decisions is yours, but you are ignorant to blame Ubuntu, its Ok to file a bug report, but the blame goes to the manufacturers.
Ubunutu? (Score:1)
(http://www.cros13.net/)
Re:Sounds Swell... (Score:1, Insightful)
You expirience isn't everybody's expirience.
Re:wait with the legit first post please!!! (Score:1)
(http://7chan.org/ | Last Journal: Monday November 20 2006, @05:49PM)
Re:Shuttleworth (Score:2)
For $1.50 he'll give you the opportunity to download and beta test Microsoft Office.
Re:Shuttleworth (Score:1, Insightful)
What Do You Think Gates Does All Day? (Score:3, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Monday September 19 2005, @12:52PM)
Re:Shuttleworth (Score:1)
(http://www.commafruit.co.uk/ | Last Journal: Friday June 25 2004, @06:40AM)
Re:Shuttleworth (Score:1)
I sure hope this is a joke. But without proper moderation... Who can tell?
Re:Sounds Swell... (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Friday August 03, @07:08AM)
Re:Shuttleworth (Score:1)
Re:Shuttleworth (Score:1)
Re:Shuttleworth (Score:1, Insightful)
Say what you will about Microsoft.
Bill, on the other hand, knows pretty damn well what giving feels like, arguably more so than any one else does. Take a Look [wikipedia.org]
I don't know about you, but screw the "OS community", quite frankly, I'd think global health, education, and global development to be much more worthwhile causes. But then again, who cares about the helping people in need, who cares about starvation desiese and illiteracy, as long as your OS is free and open, and spiffy, right?
Re:Sounds Swell... (Score:1)
(http://www.jessta.id.au/)
You should take up the issue with the hardware company.
Re:Sounds Swell... (Score:2)
Re:Sounds Swell... (Score:2)
On my Dell Inspiron 1150 (which is, admittedly, a piece of crap), Ubuntu automatically recognizes and configures my video, audio, and network (Ethernet) hardware.
The latest and greatest Windows XP Professional, right from MSDN, does not recognize my video, audio, and network hardware. The network issue produces an interesting chicken-and-egg problem (how to get the network drivers on the system without having network drivers?), fortunately easily solved by my access to a second computer and a USB flash drive.
And no, Dell failed to ship me a drivers CD, which I didn't notice until my hard drive crashed, which left me having to reload the OS. Which only operated in 640x480 mode until I downloaded the appropriate video drivers.
So, when do you think Windows will catch up with Ubuntu? ;-)