The Open Source Advocate

I wanted to share my response to some comments on my last post . First, thanks for your responses. Justin: "Free Software is not about technology or even about making the world a better place. It's about Freedom." Are you sure about that? What is the real reason we support open source? In my opinion it *IS* for the purpose of making the world a better place. If first-world countries spend resources to develop high-quality open source software, then all of humanity will benefit from that investment. Open source software is not always better quality than proprietary software, but I do believe it is always ethically superior. Lonnie: "I agree with what Justin Findlay said..." I also want to ask you what is the "big-picture" reason for supporting open source software? Please share your opinion. I agree with your description of the average user, and it is something that we need to keep in mind when making decisions about software. "Then she will com...

I appreciate the comments made by Lonnie and Anonymous. Let me address your concerns. First, I want to point out that 99.99% of the software available in Ubuntu (including the application repositories) will still be open source. However, the 0.01% of non-free software has a very visible impact on the user experience. If the average user can't listen to music, watch a movie, or play a 3-D game, then they will not get a chance to use the other 99.99% of free software that is included with Ubuntu. That is why Mark Shuttleworth said that shipping proprietary drivers is the best way to allow users to experience the rest of the free software stack. Lonnie - Yes, the people that will be attracted by this tactic will be the average computer user. They are looking for software that simply works well for them. If they can get that without having to pay for it, then they will use Ubuntu. These users will appreciate the great open source operating system they get for free, and would be willi...

I believe that Debian and Ubuntu are an example of mutual symbiosis . In other words, their relationship is advantageous to both entities. (Disclaimer: I do not claim to be an expert on this subject. I am just an observer) How does Ubuntu benefit from Debian? - Based on one of the best Linux distributions - Inherits over 15,000 packages (applications) from Debian - Great community and dedication to free software How does Debian benefit from Ubuntu? - Packages that are created/improved for Ubuntu can easily be made for Debian - Ubuntu provides patches for all of the packages that it modifies from Debian - Ubuntu has the best community around , providing support and goodwill - Ubuntu is growing extremely fast, and may become the Linux desktop leader - Canonical employs dozens of open source developers Mark Shuttleworth made an awesome presentation at a DebConf where he talked about the relationship between Debian and Ubuntu. Here is a video of that presentation . Towards the end...

Ubuntu is well known for its wonderful ease-of-use, especially for new Linux users. With every release, Ubuntu has been breaking ground by making Linux "just work" for millions of people. This tradition is set to continue with the next release (7.04), code-named Feisty Fawn. I recently posted about the need for Linux to strive for ease-of-use first , and then to become fully open source after that. The Chicken (user-friendly Linux) needs to come before the Egg (completely open source Linux). It appears that there are more and more people agreeing with that idea. For example, Eugenie Loli-Queru wrote an article entitled " A Call to Distros: Give Users What They Want ". In this article, she explains that Linux needs to be easier to use. She suggests that Linux distros should include important non-free software by default so that users do not have to "tweak" their systems just to watch a movie, listen to a song, or play a 3-D game. Well, Eugenia, your call ha...

I wrote the following comment in response to Matt Asay's recent post about Red Hat. Matt, "Red Hat has 30-40 of its best engineers working on the Xen project, helping to drive its innovation" "Oracle has approximately zero developers on Xen." I think from Oracle's point-of-view, they also have 30-40 of Red Hat's best engineers working on the Xen project, in addition to anyone else who contributes to Xen. Oracle's actions remind me of the nursery story, " The Little Red Hen ". The Little Red Hat said, "Who will help me improve this open source operating system?" "Not I", said the Oracle pig. "Then I will," said the Little Red Hat. And she did. The Little Red Hat said, "Who will help me improve these open source applications?" "Not I", said the Oracle pig. "Then I will," said the Little Red Hat. And she did. The Little Red Hat says, "Who will help me sell support for these produ...

I believe that contributing to open source software is the most efficient kind of charity and philanthropy. (I'll leave it to someone else to convince the IRS to give me a tax write-off for the hours I spend on improving open source.) To illustrate this, let us consider a hypothetical $25 million dollar donation made by both Bill Gates and Mark Shuttleworth . Bill Gates could use his $25 million dollar donation to donate free licenses of Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate ($400/each) and Microsoft Office Professional ($500/each) . At those prices, he could give away about 30,000 copies of that software. Many people would be able to use the software, but due to license restrictions, only 30,000 people could use the software at the same time. It is nice that Bill Gates decided to help these 30,000 people, but lets look at another way that this money could be spent. Mark Shuttleworth uses his $25 million dollar donation to build upon an existing open source operating system ( Debian...

The Register has posted an interview with Mark Shuttleworth , the founder of Ubuntu. Mark explains his opinion on the Oracle/Redhat news: "I think it's great that Oracle has entered the Linux market, but the specific tactic they have chosen is going to be very impractical," Shuttleworth said, in an interview with The Register at Google's headquarters. "It is really hard to maintain a fork of a binary platform. "Larry Ellison was basically saying that Oracle will keep Red Hat Linux the same but then also make it better. The end result of that will be death by a thousands paper cuts. There will be lots and lots of little incompatibilities. "So, practically, in two or three years, I expect them either to buy Red Hat and just say, 'Fine. This is our platform.' Or fork it and say, 'Here is Oracle Linux. We built it, and forget that compatibility thing.' Or to use something like Ubuntu where they don't have to rip the trademarks out a...

ZDnet recently published a great interview with Mark Shuttleworth about the business model of his company, Canonical. Shuttleworth deliberately is taking a different approach from those rivals, though: The free, downloadable version of Ubuntu is the same as the supported, certified version. In this article, Mark explains that creating a user-friendly Linux desktop is how his company will get a foot in the door of customers who will buy support for Ubuntu servers. This is not a new idea, if you compare it to how Windows is bundled for "free" on millions of PCs. Look how successful this strategy was for Microsoft; I believe it will also help Canonical to be successful. Once you have your product in front of so many eyes, you have already developed a large mind-share from potential customers. Another benefit of having a large desktop market-share is that it will encourage developers to create applications for the operating system, similar to what happened with Windows. Mark al...

Well, mine anyway. :) It turns out that Ubuntu has already implemented a feature that I wanted to suggest! It all started as I was admiring my newly upgraded Ubuntu 6.10 system. After a while, I decided that I wanted to install some new applications. In Ubuntu, the simplest way to do this is to click on "Applications -> Add/Remove". This will open up the "Add/Remove Application" dialog. To my amazement, a new column labeled "Popularity" had been added for each application. In this screenshot, I clicked on the "Sound & Video" label, and then clicked on the "Popularity" column to sort the applications in descending order of popularity. Each application is rated from 1 to 5 stars. The data for these ratings comes from a package called " popularity-contest ": "When you install this package, it sets up a cron job that will anonymously submit statistics about your most used packages periodically to the developer...