Canonical (company)

Canonical Ltd.

Company type	Private company limited by shares
Genre	Software Development
Founded	2004-03-05
Founder	Mark Shuttleworth
Headquarters	Europe (Registered: Douglas, Isle of Man. Operational HQ: Millbank Tower, London, United Kingdom)
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Mark Shuttleworth
Products	Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Launchpad, Bazaar, TheOpenCD, gobuntu
Revenue	$10m+
Owner	Mark Shuttleworth
Number of employees	50+
Subsidiaries	Canonical UK Ltd.
Website	www.canonical.com
Footnotes / references Formerly "M R S Virtual Development Ltd".

Canonical Ltd. is a private company founded (and funded) by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth for the promotion of free software projects. Canonical is registered in the tax haven Isle of Man and employs staff around the world, along with their main offices in London and support office in Montreal.

Projects sponsored by Canonical

Canonical Ltd continues to back and has created several projects. Principally these are Free Software/Open Source software or tools designed to improve collaboration between Free Software developers and contributors.

Open Source software

• The Ubuntu family of GNU/Linux distributions:
  • Ubuntu, a Debian-based Linux distribution with a GNOME desktop.
  • Kubuntu, the KDE desktop on top of the Ubuntu core system.
  • Xubuntu, the Xfce desktop on top of the Ubuntu core system.
  • Edubuntu, the Ubuntu core improved specifically for educational or thin-client environments.
  • Gobuntu, a stripped variant of Ubuntu consisting entirely of free software.
• Bazaar, a decentralized revision control system.
• OpenCD, a collection of high quality free and open-source software compiled for users of Microsoft Windows. The programs come with an easy-to-use graphical installer and run under Microsoft Windows and cover most tasks. Examples are the GIMP, OpenOffice.org and PDF creation software.
• Storm, an object-relational mapper for Python [1], part of the Launchpad codebase

Promotion activities

• Software Freedom Day
• Go Open Source, a South African campaign to create awareness of, educate about, and provide access to open-source software. It is important, once awareness of OSS has been created, that interested parties have the ability to gain access to the software and services, and that they have access to additional resources for support and training. It ran from May 2004 to May 2006.
• Geek Freedom League, The Freedom League is a South African project designed to bring together the best of the open source world and the massive country-wide community of people driven to introduce as many new people as possible to the use of open source software. Anyone with the passion and ability can sign-up and receive all the materials needed to convert as many people and computers as possible. People will be able to log their installs and track their progress.
• Freedom Toaster, kiosk-style machines located in South Africa designed to avoid costly and prohibitive download costs. Users provide their own blank CD media and after insertion they can choose a GNU/Linux distribution of their choice to take home.

Proprietary projects

• Project Landscape, a tool for managing large numbers of Ubuntu-based systems via a web-browser.
• Launchpad (website) a centralised website containing several component web applications designed to make collaboration between Free Software projects easier:
  • Rosetta, an online language translation tool to help localisation of software (cf. the Rosetta Stone).
  • Malone (as in "Bugsy Malone"), a collaborative bug-tracker that allows linking to other bug-trackers.
  • Soyuz, a tool for creating custom-distributions, such as Kubuntu and Xubuntu.
  • Hosting of Bazaar branches

Employees

From the 2007 OSCON Mark Shuttleworth stated that Canonical currently employees 110+ people.

Current employees (incomplete list)

• Mark Shuttleworth, employee 0, founder and self-styled "SABDFL" of the Ubuntu project, former Debian maintainer of Apache and founder of Thawte Consulting (2004–).
• Robert Collins, of Squid cache-fame. Employee no. 2 who has worked on GNU arch and Bazaar for Canonical (2004–).
• Matt Zimmerman, formerly of the Debian security team. Now Canonical/Ubuntu Chief Technical Officer (2004–).
• James Troup, Debian FTP Master, in charge of server infrastructure at Canonical (2004–).
• Scott James Remnant, Debian and GNU maintainer of GNU Libtool and co-author of the Planet aggregator. At Canonical, he has developed Upstart (2004–).
• Jono Bacon, of LugRadio fame. Canonical's new Ubuntu community leader. (2006–)
• Ian Jackson, developer of dpkg and former Debian Project Leader (2005–).
• Ben Collins, former Debian Project Leader and kernel developer. (2006–).
• Michael Vogt, developer of Debian's Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) and the Synaptic Package Manager.
• Jonathan Riddell, former developer of Umbrello, who heads up Kubuntu development. (2004–).
• Jeff Bailey, former Debian toolchain and glibc maintainer. In charge of support operation in Montreal, Canada. (2005–).
• Colin Watson, Debian-Installer developer. (2004–).
• Adam Conrad, build daemon administrator (2005–).
• Fabio Massimo Di Nitto, Ubuntu-server lead (2004–).
• Kurt von Finck, former Gobe Software support lead, GNOME sysadmin, and free software advocate. One of the senior support staff in Montreal. (2006-)
• Kees Cook, Ubuntu security team (2006–).
• Oliver Grawert, Edubuntu lead (2004–).
• Bryce Harrington (2007-)
• [Matthew Revell http://www.understated.co.uk/] Launchpad Marketing Manager, former Lugradio host.

Past employees

• Jeff Waugh, employee no. 3 of GNOME and Planet-fame, Business Development (2004–2006).
• Daniel Silverstone, now at Simtech (2004–2006).
• Benjamin Mako Hill, Debian developer and former board member of SPI, now at MIT working on the OLPC. Core developer and Community Coordinator (2004–2005).
• Daniel Stone, X.Org developer, now at Nokia (2004–2006).
• Dafydd Harries, localisation and Rosetta, now at Collabora (2004–2006).
• Thom May, former Debian Apache maintainer (2004–2005).
• Lamont Jones, now back at Hewlett-Packard (2004–2004).
• David Miller of Bugzilla fame the first Canonical employee (2004).
• Jordi Mallach, Rosetta team member (2005-2006).

Offices

Canonical originally started as a wholly virtual organisation, all of the employees working from home. With no traditional office space at all, Mark Shuttleworth's living-room progressively found itself doing double-duty as a meeting space and administration location. In early 2005 Jane Silber located some office space within the desired five minute walking distance of Mr. Shuttleworth's London flat. Two years later, in April 2007, the London administration operation transferred to a much larger facility on the 27th floor of Millbank Tower near Westminster.

In the summer of 2006 Canonical opened an office in Montreal, Quebec to house their global support and services operation.

External links

• Canonical.com, official site
• Ubuntu.com, Ubuntu home page