Ubuntu's not GNU/Linux?

Matthias-Christian Ott ott at mirix.org
Sat Apr 17 11:14:45 UTC 2010


On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 02:26:14PM +0200, Hugo Roy wrote:
> Again, I personally have no problem with that. My main problem are:
> * Ubuntu One is proprietary server
> * The Front page says Open Source instead of Free Software
> 
> But I don't think it's worth having that discussion. Canonical has made
> their choice on that. Let's talk about important issues like Ubuntu One.

Canonical tries add sources of revenue other than services. They made
this shift (as far as I can tell from the press) after Jane Silber
became CEO and Matt Asa became COO.

They want to make money by proprietary cloud services (like Ubuntu
One), selling proprietary software (see their shop) and other
immaterial commodities (music, films) through their store. They try
to imitate Apple in this respect.

Their Music Store contains music in patented formats, their Software
Center was named Software Store in past and I saw screenshots which
showed a price tag in the user interface which is an indicator that
they either want to sell proprietary software or want to make it easy
to company which sell proprietary software to install it on Ubuntu.
Moreover, their cloud service isn't Free Software and it took years
with Launchpad to be released under a free licence.

The changes of the user interface and their branding and corporate
identity in Ubuntu 10.04 are a clear indicator for this change of
their business model.

Since I saw what is coming in Ubuntu 10.04 and what happend to
Canonical, I can't recommend to install Ubuntu.

Regards,
Matthias-Christian



More information about the Discussion mailing list