Mark Shuttleworth on the future of Ubuntu

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The life of South African Mark Shuttleworth has been a kind of geek dream: found and sell Internet company for $500+ million in mid-20s; spend $20 million to become the second space tourist; and create a GNU/Linux distribution with a cool name that has become the most popular on the desktop.

Here, he talks to Glyn Moody about Ubuntu's new focus on the server side, why Ubuntu could switch from GNOME to KDE, and what happens to Ubuntu and its commercial arm, Canonical, if Shuttleworth were to fall out of a spaceship.

I believe you made about $500 million when you sold the certificate authority Thawte Consulting to Verisign in 1999. Creating a GNU/Linux distribution is not the most obvious follow-up to that: what were the steps that led from the early part of your life to the current phase?

I have a belief that we should all paint our lives as boldly as we can, and we should explore the things that are the most interesting to us personally. I'm always disappointed when I see people asking the question: "What's going to be the next big thing? What career should I choose? Where will the most money be paid?" It's impossible to know what the future holds, but it's very possible to know what you might be personally interested in. So after Thawte, I spent some time setting up the [Shuttleworth] Foundation and some time setting up the [HBD] Venture Capital group, which I wasn't going to run personally, but which I thought was a good thing to have, and put a team in place to do that. And then I thought: what are the most interesting challenges out there, what are the opportunities that I'm sort of uniquely positioned to do? And the opportunity to go to Russia and train there and then fly was the opportunity that I chose. After that, it was more difficult. There were three things that I was looking at. Each of them was exploring the impact of the Internet in society and in commerce, but in different ways. And of all of them, [Ubuntu] is the project I thought was the most interesting, the most difficult, the biggest scale project. And ultimately, if we succeed, the one that will have the biggest impact. So I took this one on.

Given that Ubuntu's roots are on the desktop, what's behind the recent shift in strategy to address the server side too?

That's not a change in strategy, it's more a pull through. We started with a very narrow focus on the desktop, and that allowed us to punch in. As we've penetrated the industry, there's a natural pull through where someone who's started using us on their desktop has now started setting up Ubuntu on a server. You could always run Ubuntu on a server; there was never a significant reason not to. That body of users has now reached a critical mass on the server, and so our server work is now more responding to that than a shift in strategy. We continue to make the desktop our labor of love, the server requires a very enterprise-oriented approach. We've built out a dedicated team that just handles that. We haven't re-assigned people who are desktop specialists and asked them to test a server.

You're not worried you're spreading yourselves to thinly?

That is a risk, and that's something we discuss here a lot. There are benefits to offering a platform that can be used in both configurations. We see companies often saying: "We love your desktop. We would definitely choose your desktop if we could also use you on the server." Companies don't like to introduce arbitrary diversity in technology. Everybody has heterogeneous systems, but they don't like to make that situation worse without a very good reason for it. Ubuntu is a very good server for certain use-cases now, just like Ubuntu is a very good desktop for certain use-cases. Our challenge over the next couple of years is just to broaden the base to which it appeals on both fronts. On the server, it's very much a question of taking time to build the portfolio of relationships with other vendors. There are a lot of applications - what we call solutions - which are now free software-based: standard web-serving, mail-serving and so on. Ubuntu does very well for those. Increasingly, the challenge for us now is to build out the portfolio of non-free software certifications, everything from Oracle through SAP and thousands and thousands of pieces in between. That will take time; it's not something we can achieve overnight.

One of the interesting things you've floated recently is the idea of coordinated releases amongst GNU/Linux distributions. Where did the idea come from, and what would the benefits be?

[PULL QUOTE: That's really what Ubuntu's all about. We want to express fully the real nature of free software, as a true commercial, economic entity in its own right. END QUOTE]

What I'm really, profoundly interested in, is how a different approach to technology makes new things possible. The business model of the proprietary software industry is licensing software to new customers or updates of software to existing customers. You make money when you have a new version. So there's an imperative both to release new versions and to have a whole bunch of new features in those versions, specific features that you articulate in advance. In the free software world, we don't have that to cloud our thinking. We accept that development goes at the pace that it goes. If we operate on a basis that we only integrate new features into the platform when we consider them ready, then we can effectively release the platform at any time. When you look at the world though those glasses, it makes sense then to articulate not that you'll ship the product when you have certain features, but you'll ship it at a certain time. That's actually really useful to all of your users, because they can plan for a particular time. This wasn't our stroke of genius: GNOME was the one that really championed this idea. We took the fairly radical step of saying we could do that across the whole ecosystem. The reason that is radical is because when you're one project, you can make decisions for yourself. But obviously as Ubuntu, we aggregate everyone from the Linux kernel to the GNOME project through the Firefox web browser and the Apache web server, and a ton of stuff in between. So people said: "How on earth will you tell them when to ship their stuff so that you can ship what you want?" We've simply taken the view that we have a very carefully-managed release process, and a new version from one of those projects just doesn't get in unless it's ready at the time it needs to be ready for us to have confidence that it can be integrated and tested. What this has really done is it's separated, very elegantly, the processes associated with R&D, which is focused on what new features we're going to develop, and how to manage that, which is very difficult to put on a particular schedule, from the process of integration, testing and distribution. Now, if I look at a company like Oracle or Microsoft, they have both of those responsibilities. So you end up in this horrible situation where they start saying now: "you'll have the next generation file system in this version and it'll ship on that date." And then reality intervenes, and that puts them in a very awkward situation. We just don't have that. To come back to the original idea, we try to understand what's the essential difference between the way we produce software and the way other people produce software, and what becomes possible because of that, that wasn't possible before, both economically and technologically. That's really what Ubuntu's all about. We want to express fully the real nature of free software, as a true commercial, economic entity in its own right.

Have you had any feedback yet from the other distributions?

Not yet, no. This is something that we've only just started articulating. My hope is that other distributions will see the benefits of synchronizing all of our releases. It doesn't matter whose cycle we converge on, but the idea of synchronizing releases then cues all of those thousands of other projects, that if they want their latest technology shipped by a particular date, if they're able to get it done by a particular time, then that will happen not just with Ubuntu, but with a whole bunch of different platforms. I think it's a powerful idea. There are commercial interests that might block it. It will be interesting to see if the other commercial distributions are nervous to put themselves in a situation where they really are being compared, apples to apples. We'll see.

Given that more and more computing will be done in the cloud, is that going to be a threat or an opportunity for Ubuntu?

It's a real opportunity, both on the server side and on the client side. To build a server-side cloud infrastructure, you want an operating system which is not licensed per seat or per processor or per machine or per instance. It is simply freely available with all of its updates, and Ubuntu meets that. You can go from a hundred instances in the cloud to a hundred thousand instances in the cloud and legally pay Canonical no more money. You will probably want to have some sort of support relationship with us, but that's entirely separate from the actual licensing of the platform, and it's not required in any way. We cut a deal to support you in the way that you need support. So, economically on the server side that's a very big winner, and Ubuntu is seeing a lot of adoption and traction there. You also want something that can be shrunk down so that in your cloud server you only have the pieces which you really need. Every extra piece is an extra piece of disk space that's not being used; it's an extra piece of memory that's not being used. It's an extra thing that can have a security issue that's not being used. And so you may as well get rid of it. Ubuntu's very modular - probably the most modular of the commercial platforms; this comes from our Debian heritage. On the client side, for cloud computing you really want something that "speaks the Internet", and does so very well and very securely, and speaks the web very well and very securely. Ubuntu running Firefox is a really compelling option there. So I think there's a good chance that the next YouTube is running in the cloud and running on Ubuntu.

One of the versions of Ubuntu is Gobuntu, which has no non-free elements whereas Ubuntu does have some. Where do you stand on the question of including proprietary elements in a free software distribution? [PULL QUOTE: But we are willing to put in drivers that are not yet open source, because we figure it's more important to give everybody's grandma the opportunity to actually run free software applications on a free software environment, even if they need some proprietary drivers to get their hardware going. That puts us squarely in the pragmatist camp rather than the purist camp. END QUOTE]

Very clearly, I'm a pragmatist. The non-free pieces of Ubuntu are nothing to do with Canonical's commercial interests. It's not like we've put pieces in there that suit us and don't suit anybody else. They're drivers for hardware where the manufacturers of that hardware haven't yet wrapped their heads around the idea of releasing the source code that makes their hardware work. They're not applications. We work with those vendors to help them understand that in fact it's to their advantage to make their source code open source. They will get much better quality. We have real examples of this. We have much better quality drivers with much better reliability that make their hardware more attractive to a bigger portion of the market. But we are willing to put in drivers that are not yet open source, because we figure it's more important to give everybody's grandma the opportunity to actually run free software applications on a free software environment, even if they need some proprietary drivers to get their hardware going. That puts us squarely in the pragmatist camp rather than the purist camp. Gobuntu is an attempt to create a version of Ubuntu that does away with that, but also that is specifically designed to be a platform where other ideas about Copyleft can be explored - this meme about collaborative creation of something is extremely powerful and software is just the tip of the iceberg - we've already seen Wikipedia. I think every industry is going to need to adjust its thinking to say: "How can this participative computing phenomenon energize us?" Gobuntu aimed to do that. People didn't really flock to it, so I think we will stop doing Gobuntu. People liked the idea, but not the people who would actually invest their time in it. I think it's too closely associated with Ubuntu. There's another one called gNewSense, which is exactly the same - Ubuntu with all the non-free stuff taken out. But because it's a separate organization, people feel more comfortable participating there. I don't mind, really.

On a related issue, do you worry that GNOME is becoming too involved and enmeshed with Microsoft technologies? If the patent problem with GNOME becomes too great, might you switch to KDE one day?

I think it's very healthy that we have multiple desktop platforms, and that they're both committed to free software and sources of innovation and inspiration and competition. We picked GNOME mostly because of its approach to the release cycle and because it had a real strong commitment back in 2004 to usability. Since then, KDE has also embraced the idea of usability as a primary driver, and they've done some really interesting things on the technology front. I keep a level of awareness of KDE, and I run KDE at home just to make sure I have a sense of where it's going and how it is doing. I like the rivalry. We might [switch]; it's good to have that option. As for patents in software, I think society does a very bad deal when it gives someone a monopoly in exchange for nothing. The traditional patent deal was you gave someone a monopoly in exchange for disclosure of a trade secret. You can't really have trade secrets in software. Of course, the entrenched interests like to frame this as "patents are all about innovation", when they really aren't. There's very strong, academic, peer-reviewed research that suggests that patents stifle the pace of change and innovation. The real insight with patents is that what society is buying with that monopoly is disclosure. And so the real benefit to society is accelerated disclosure of new ideas - not convincing people to invest. People have ideas all the time. You can't stop the human mind from innovating. People do research and development to win customers, that's what it's really about. It's not to file patents. So the entrenched patent holders really aren't doing much of a service to society when they articulate their position in very flawed terms. With regard to GNOME and Microsoft, I'm not concerned. My view is that to win, you have to have your own vision. You have to have a very clear idea of what you can deliver that's unique. You can't go around sort of chasing someone else's coat tails. So while I respect the people in the free software community who invest a lot of time in making compatible implementations of other people's technology, I don't think that's the real recipe for success for free software. We have to give people a reason to use our platform for itself, not because it's a cheap version of someone else's. And in fact, the real successes of free software have been the places where it has just blown away the alternatives. The Internet runs on free software, and not because it has copied anything from Microsoft. The proprietary software guys like to accuse free software of not innovating and not doing anything other than sort of walking down the same path that they've already walked, which is always easier. That's just not true, but guys like the Mono Project are reinforcing that stereotype.

Finally, one of the issues that has traditionally preoccupied the Linux community is: what happens if Linus falls under a bus? So I was wondering what happens to Canonical and Ubuntu if you fall under a spaceship or something?

Fall *out* of a spaceship! Well, I've made suitable preparations so that if I'm looking the wrong way when the bus comes, economically both Canonical and Ubuntu are fine: there are provisions in my will to make any additional investments needed. As to the other things that I do for the project, they will have to find someone else to step into my shoes. You know, there's a lot of good talent, and both technically and commercially and socially. I think the project would continue.

Glyn Moody writes about open source at opendotdotdot.

