14 DAY TRIAL // Mark Shuttleworth is best known as Ubuntu lead developer and also founder of the Canonical Ltd. for promoting and supporting different free software projects, among which the Ubuntu series. He was born in Welkom, Free State, South Africa but he currently lives in London. He also gained fame in April 2002, when he participated as a civilian cosmonaut aboard the Soyuz TM-34 mission. Mark has completely covered his space trip by himself, paying almost $ 20 million for it.
His approach to the Ubuntu idea started even from the mid 90s, when he became a Debian developer. Fourteen years later, he was to announce the development through Canonical Ltd. of a new Linux distribution, named Ubuntu, based on Debian, but being more powerful and user-friendly. After that, he also founded in 2005 the Ubuntu Foundation, non-profit organization dedicated to supporting Ubuntu.
Mark has recently gave in interview for the phoronix.com where he talked about the Microsoft-Novell agreement, the Dell shipping Ubuntu news, the forthcoming Ubuntu 7.10 and many other interesting topics. Regarding the Microsoft-Novell, Mark wanted to emphasize the fact that he has nothing to reproach to the OpenSuSE community, but to the Novell management, which did not analyze very well the agreement. Mark said that he figured out Microsoft's intentions, of making an en-run around the rate of adoption of the free software using intellectual property restrictions, from the first time he heard about the partnership. He also said that that a collaboration between Ubuntu and SuSE is more than welcomed. He said he appreciates the work of the OpenSuSE community and that this one targets the same goals Ubuntu stands for.
Regarding the latest Ubuntu release, 7.04, a.k.a Feisty Fawn, Mark told Phoronix that some of the most interesting added features for the end users would be the Windows migration tool, which comes really helpful for people installing Linux as a dual-boot next to Windows, or the easy codecs installation. Codes have always been known to generate many intellectual property issues; this Ubutnu release aims to help the user make the best choice in the codecs matter. Asked whether the fact that he has a certain technical and financial wealth made Ubuntu so successful, Mark mentioned that, even though his reputation has helped the project to make a good debut, it was the entire community the one which made the Ubuntu famous and reliable.
Reaching the hardware drivers issue, Mark said a few things about the criticism Ubutu got for the use of restricted modules. He said that they did not put the proprietary software on the distribution CDs just for the pleasure of doing it, but mostly because they were forced to do it. Some binary stuff are illegal to redistribute, such as Flash or Adobe. Therefore, the Ubuntu community is trying to make the hardware vendors aware of the importance of distributing free software drivers. Feisty Fawn comes with a restricted driver manager that shows the user the proprietary hardware he's running and the problems that might occur with that.
Another topic Mark Shuttleworth expanded at phononix's questioning was the possible Java use in Linux and by the open source community now that Sun has open-sourced it by making available the OpenJDK. Mark claims that the open source community will have to give a thought to how the underlying ideas in Java could morph into more applicable ideas. He also said that he cannot tell for sure now if the open-source version of Java would be part of the forthcoming Ubutnu 7.10, Gutsy Gibbon due to some constraints on Sun's deliverance.
You can read the entire interview Mark Shuttleworth gave to phoronix here.