Talk:Canonical (company)

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This article was nominated for deletion on 23 March 2007. The result of the discussion was keep.

Embrace and extend?

I've reverted an addition about "controversy" and accusations of "embrace and extend" tactics, because there didn't seem much to back it up. Firstly, it used "weasel words" like "Some argues that"[sic] (see Wikipedia:Avoid weasel terms), which have the effect of shirking discussion of who says it, and why; then, a reference was added which looks to me more like the middle of a flame-war than an "Insight on Canonical's contribution model" — at best a heated political debate.

All that being said, I've no idea whether the alleged "controversy" does actually exist, and there may be a better reference out there, and a notable person or group who has made the accusation. Google is a bit of a blunt instrument for this, because "canonical" is a rather common word (especially in geek jargon), so I could only try [unsuccessfully] to use things like "Canonical Ltd" "embrace and extend". So, anyone with further insight on this, feel free to contribute it. - IMSoP 14:49, 9 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

What's the objective?

That's something interesting to discuss, but definitely not in the main page (thanks IMSoP).

On Ubuntu wonders if Ubuntu is "good" or "bad" wrt Debian and argues the Ubuntu is trying to get more independant from Debian.

Is Ubuntu a debian derivative or is it a fork? discusses the same issue.

In [1] it is said that Mark Shuttleworth said: "Canonical does aim to make some money in support. Additionally, he hopes to get some government grants to build localized distributions".

Tom Lord mentions Bazaar as a "takeover" [2] ("Arch has been a successful project, culminating ultimately in its "takeover" by Canonical corp. who have adopted it as a cornerstone of their business."). The exact reasons for the fork are difficult to figure out ([3], [4]).

[5] makes a parallel between Canonical's LaunchPad and Google's way to give acces to data, and the freedom-related issues. Possible consequences are mentioned, although no real conclusion is reached. He mentions decentralisation as a fix.

The fact the company develops unreleased ASP (Application_service_provider) software (LaunchPad, Rosetta, Malone) is disturbing. This is considered a non-free practice by some, for example Affero designed a derivate version of the GNU GPL to address this issue - this license is considered as a prototype for the GNU GPL version 3 by the FSF. I remember about LaunchPad being freed in the future, I cannot find references to that.

--

Anthony Towns, the Debian release manager (who is also the author of "On Ubuntu" linked above), comments at [6] that Shuttleworth's statement about "planning" to free LaunchPad is very vague. Thayvian 05:12, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There's also some potentially relevant information on Mark Shuttleworth's Ubuntu user homepage: [7], see eg the answer to 'If you don't make a commercial "Ubuntu Professional Edition", how can Ubuntu be sustainable?' which talks a little about the Ubuntu Foundation/Canonical distinction, although not in great detail. Thayvian 07:09, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The "Bazaar" that Tom Lord talks about was a fork of Arch with a more user-friendly command-line interface (that was at least one reason for the fork AFAIK), but in any case, the Bazaar that is currently used (formerly known as Bazaar-NG) is a completely different application. 213.118.38.76 (talk) 16:03, 1 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Profitability?

At its current definition, this looks more like a charity donating money for free software efforts. Any information on the profitability and where revennues are coming from will be highly appreciated. (not precise, I understand such information may not be public yet)

Information on profitability has not been released. Canonical earn revenue from providing support, training and certification of Ubuntu. See http://www.canonical.com/support for example dsas 18:12, 25 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The interview at http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/9927/1090/ (entitled "Ubuntu is not a charity") is one of several which answer this question unambiguously Mdz 23:41, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

How do they get money? I got a bunch of free Linux Cds! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Realg187 (talk • contribs) 04:30, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Because, they expect that each person that receives a cd will use it for him and probably many others, passing it along, which will then generate publicity for the ubuntu name, and will get recognized. So basically, it's not profitable to ship cd's in the short term, but in the long term it will really help, especially when everyone will know the name and corporates will be like hey, let's use that, I use it for my computer. Basically, that's what they're doing/trying to do. 98.21.62.209 (talk) 21:45, 4 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Damn't, I edited it without logging in first... gah, why can't wiki just remember me forever.

Reverted false claim in "Employees"

I reverted the edit from 09:40, 3 June 2007 by 70.137.157.244 claiming that one "Douglas Mallach" had been an employee since 2005; to my knowledge (as an employee) Canonical has never employed anyone by that name. If anyone wants to put it back the onus is on them to provide a citation. Colin Watson 08:04, 6 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Old Offices

The old offices (before the April 2007 move) - was this the Mossop Street address? Worth mentioning where it was? I only ask out of pure interest really, coz the company I work with recently moved into Mossop Street and witnessed "Fieldwave/Canonical" moving out ...

The address (if we think it's worth adding) is:

25-27 Axiscross House

London

SW3 2LY

Nearest tube station (well, it's about 1/2 way between South Ken and Sloane Square)

86.9.157.122 20:32, 10 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think something along the lines of:

Fieldwave Ltd., 3rd Floor, Axiscross House, 25/27 Mossop Street, South Kensington, London, SW3 2LY.
Fieldwave Ltd., 27th Floor, Millbank Tower, 21-24 Millbank, City of Westminster, London, SW1P 4QP.

Sladen 15:50, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Quality of information

A lot of almost certainly true but also unsourced information is being put in this article by Canonical employees and their close associates (full disclosure: were I to add more info, I would also fall in this category): most notably the entire "Offices" section, but also a fair bit of info about who has been an employee. One particular concern is the "$10m+" figure quoted for revenue. There's an HTML comment reading "Mark Shuttleworth, quoted in an interview as how much it was costing, needs finding" about this figure, introduced here. But is this the $10m figure Shuttleworth quotes as his initial investment in Canonical? That's very different from revenue. Thayvian 01:05, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

gobuntu

i just added gobuntu to the products. Gobuntu is a new variant consisting on free software/--Gustyfalcon 04:20, 16 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Employees

The list of employees seems unecyclopedic. I've removed all that did not have an Wikipedia article that I did not know of so the list is now a list of notable employees.

The following individuals were removed from the list:

Robert Collins, of Squid cache-fame. Employee no. 2 who has worked on GNU arch and Bazaar for Canonical (2004–).
James Troup, Debian FTP Master, in charge of server infrastructure at Canonical (2004–).
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. (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 Launchpad Marketing Manager, former Lugradio host.
Steve Langasek, Debian release manager. (2007–) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sladen (talk • contribs) 01:53, 12 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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, employee no. 1 (2004).
Jordi Mallach, Rosetta team member (2005-2006).
Jeff Bailey, Operation Manager, Global Support and Services. Also some distro team work. Former Debian toolchain and glibc maintainer. In charge of support operation in Montreal, Canada. (2005–2007); now at Google.

—mako ๛ 18:45, 11 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Picture of Shuttleworth used in German language Article

might be interesting for the English language article also.--84.157.255.75 (talk) 16:56, 4 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think there's a few shots of Canonical employees around; eg. 2007-11-canonical.jpg, or wiesbaden-mark-launchpad-big.jpg which I'm sure we might be able to get under a suitable license. —Sladen (talk) 17:10, 4 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]