Canonical Close To $30M Critical Mass; Should Microsoft Worry?

ruphus13 writes "Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical, claims that the company is very close to the $30M mark, at which point, they will be a self-sustaining company. While people feel that this should not worry Microsoft, the real question is whether a 10,000 person effort on a failure like Vista can actually be the paradigm of a long-term strategy. From the article: 'Microsoft had 10,000 people [the article is unclear whether these were all developers, or administrative and support staff were factored in] working on Vista for a five year period ... huge profits in any given year can mean relatively little five years on. Canonical's self-sustaining revenue may not be threatening — but it leaves one wondering how sustainable Microsoft's development process really is.'"

Re:Marketing MIA

[Anonymous Coward]

The longer you guys drag ass on marketing; the longer I get to keep writing code for Windows. Keep it up. I got bills to pay!

Re:Slashdot missing a story?

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, this is slashdot, the story will be posted. Around Friday.

Re:Sumbmitters? Editors?

[JavaTHut]

Hey, guys, my car goes from 0 to 120 in 3! That makes about as much sense as the summary.

Was a car analogy really necessary?

Re:Sumbmitters? Editors?

[geckipede]

This summary makes zero Ohms of sense?

Re:Marketing MIA

[Hal_Porter]

He has buxom virgin cheerleaders that work for him for free, the only problem is they are all male.

Re:Sumbmitters? Editors?

[MyLongNickName]

Can analogies are ALWAYS necessary. The only problem is this one made sense. Mod GP down.

best quote

[je ne sais quoi]

The best quote in TFA (the original NYT [nytimes.com] one, not the one linked to in TFS):

In his personal life, he continues to test what is possible, requesting that a fiber-optic connection be installed to his house on the border of London's affluent Chelsea and South Kensington neighborhoods.

"I want to find out what it's like to have a gigabit connection to the home," he said. "It is not because I need to watch porn in high-definition but because I want to see what you do differently." (emphasis mine)

From that alone, you can tell he reads slashdot.

The second best quote from TFA:

"Look, I have a very privileged life, right?" Mr. Shuttleworth said. "I am a billionaire, bachelor, ex-cosmonaut. Life couldn't easily be that much better. Being a Linux geek sort of brings balance to the force."

Kudos on reaching the self-sustainable mark Mr. Shuttleworth! Let's hope you really do make the world a better, more free, place.

Re:It could mean there is hope.

[canUbeleiveIT]

The fear never leaves the back of my mind that there will be a day coming when either Jobs or Ballmer or some US politician like Orin Hatch says 'If you are a Linux user, we will come find you, man, woman, child or company. You will use Windows pr you will pay fines, you will go to jail.'

That's doesn't sound far-fetched to me. Personally, I worry about my car not starting due to rogue clowns from outer space stealing my spark plugs.

Re:Um, no?

[Anne Thwacks]

RH and Microsoft do really compete in the server market

People use MS stuff on servers? Are they guilty but insane?

Re:Marketing MIA

[mixmatch]

Oh, but the irony of using a company's products to bring them down is so sweet!

Re:Marketing MIA

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't resist, it had to be said:

You're not the droid we're looking for.

Re:Marketing MIA

[vikstar]

But nevertheless, if you use your competitor's product to do your sales presentation, it doesn't look very good.

Oh, it looks damn good [gizmodo.com]... to me...