Ubuntu

Canonical serious about business, Asay hired as COO

If people thought Canonical was nothing more than that fun company with the cute and easy-to-use desktop version of Linux that was the pet project of its benevolent dictator, Mark Shuttleworth, then today they heard that needle sliding on a record sound. Stop.

In December, Canonical announced that Shuttleworth was stepping down from his role as CEO and COO Jane Silber was moving up, but no hint was given as to who would be filling her shoes. Today, the company sent out a press release announcing that the role would be filled by long-time open source business strategist, Matt Asay.

Some of us feel quite a familiarity with Asay; we’ve been following his CNET blog, The Open Road (and linked to it prolifically when breaking open source news hits). He also is a regular speaker at open source events — I recently saw him at the inaugural LinuxCon in late September 2009.

Asay leaves his position as VP of Business Development for Alfresco, a Maidenhead, United Kingdom-based open source content management software company. Prior to that, Asay was one of the founding members of Novell’s Linux Business Office in 2002 and was an early influencer and participant in the company’s shift to open source. In 2003, he founded the Open Source Business Conference, and he has served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence for Thomas Weisel Venture Partners, focusing on open source investment opportunities.

Before Novell, Asay was General Manager at Lineo, an embedded Linux software startup, where he ran Lineo’s Residential Gateway business. He is an emeritus board member of the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

Convinced of his cred?

Asay blogged about the move today, sharing his feelings and providing a skeleton outline of his focus and motivation for the move and what he’ll be tackling at Canonical.

My guess is that the Ubuntu community is cheering on this move — bringing onboard an open source ambassador who also understands the business side is a strong move for the company that has been gaining momentum in Linux distribution market-share. But as a blogger, Asay is not without his critics, and I anticipate seeing a couple of public displays of distaste for the selection. What do you think?

Canonical has a couple of key releases coming up, including the April launch of Lucid Lynx (10.04) that might serve as the first test of Silber and Asay’s leadership. It will be interesting to watch.

And a shout-out to Brian Proffitt, who said in his blog what I didn’t have the guts to say to the folks at Canonical: Please, for the sake of open source bloggers collective egos, keep the man busy!

Can Ubuntu Linux become a Windows killer?

There have been a number of articles written recently talking about Windows 7 being a Linux killer.

• Windows 7 as “Linux killer”? How times have changed!
• Windows 7: Microsoft’s Linux killer?
• Windows 7 The Linux killer and Ubuntu Going Mainstream

Linux was thought to be a player in the netbook business, but a Spring 2009 NPD Group study shows that Windows has a 90% share of the netbook OS market. It seems silly to be talking about any Windows desktop operating system as a Linux killer. There are so few Linux client operating systems deployed compared to Windows that this discussion is off target, especially because it appears that Windows 7 is an improvement over Windows Vista.

Today, about 25 or 26 paid Windows client operating systems are shipped for each paid Linux client shipped, according to IDC. Paid Windows client operating systems have more than 90% market share while Mac and Linux make up most of the remaining share. The market share lead that Windows has over Linux is not expected to change much for the foreseeable future.

There are about 30 times as many paid Windows client operating systems in use as there are paid Linux client operating systems deployed. And there are about 13 times as many non-paid Windows client operating systems in use as there are non-paid Linux clients.
Continued »

LinuxCon: From desktop discussion to community involvement

LinuxCon 2009 wrapped up on Wednesday evening with an Intel-sponsored party at McCormick and Schmick’s in Portland, Ore. This was the final, and flashiest of three evening events that occurred during the course of the event. Monday night featured “Bowling for Penguins” at Grand Central Bowling, a fundraiser for Defenders of Wildlife that raised $3,000. Tuesday night featured a Linux Fund hosted dance party sponsored by SourceForge and iXsystems, and in possibly the most hero-worship twist (or is it twisted hero-worship?) of the conference, live streaming of Linus Torvalds playing billiards was broadcast via Linux Pro Magazine.

All agreed that these events were good fun. The VooDoo Doughnuts and local wine/beer/vodka/sake tasting was also a smash hit for those attending. For those unable to attend, the livestreaming of keynotes offered by Linux Pro Magazine was appreciated. The recorded kernel panel discussion is now available for on-demand viewing.

Nonprofits using Linux to stay competitive
Beyond the kernel roundtable, the most popular keynote was given by the vice president of information services at Sesame Workshop, Noah Broadwater. If you’re unfamiliar with hearing about Sesame Workshop in tech circles, think Elmo. The group won an Emmy for New Approaches in the Children’s Daytime television category for their associated websites, Web casts and interactivity. Broadwater explained how his organization reuses older Solaris boxes as a testing environment and open source software in the development itself. Using this approach, the nonprofit’s Emmy-winning website came in under budget at less than $3 million. The Sesame Workshop holds onto their new development advances for a two-year period and then contributes them back to the community, in an effort to protect their work from big-budget competitors.

The future of Linux on the desktop
One of the broad themes that was touched on at the conference was Linux on the desktop. Multiple speakers discussed the topic, giving predictions for its success and advice to the larger community about how this might be realized. IBM’s vice president of open source and Linux, Bob Sutor talked about the options - the desktop goes away as people begin to expand their use of mobile devices or the Linux desktop could eventually gain parity with Windows and Mac. Perhaps, as Windows declines in popularity with each more complex release, we could see a rise in Linux desktop popularity. Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier, openSUSE community manager talked about the lack of marketing and suggested that shipping Linux pre-installed on more laptops would be one way to make it accessible to more users. Then there was the entire Moblin track at the conference, presenting the “future” of Linux on the desktop. Finally, Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of the most popular Linux desktop flavor, Ubuntu, spoke at the conference. He advocated having a shared cadence and coordination between projects and distributions, as well as improving quality and design.

“We definitely shouldn’t give up the desktop,” Shuttleworth said. “This is one of the most exciting years for the desktop in living memory.”

More on Shuttleworth’s talk can be read in an article by Sean Michael Kerner at internetnews.com: Shuttleworth: Don’t give up on the desktop.

Diversity in the Linux community
Another broad theme was that of diversity in the Linux community. Carla Schroder wrote on Monday afternoon that the Linux “community” didn’t look very diverse. And the topic of the involvement of women in the community was brought up more than once. Starting with Linux Foundation President Jim Zemlin’s keynote in which he pointed out that there is a 100:1 ratio between men and women in the Linux community. But the incident that got the most attention was Shuttleworth’s gaffe during his keynote. ( Full disclosure: I was not present at the time of Shuttleworth’s presentation, and therefore cannot speak to the specific wording or context, but others were.) His statement of women not understanding Linux was enough to get a quickly drafted letter from “Geek Feminism” blog author, Kirrily Robert.

Community sharing
I can’t begin to cover all the things that went on at the inaugural LinuxCon. Most agreed it was a good time and well done. For some other perspectives, here are some other attendees opinions and blogs following the show. I will update it or you can add new links to blogs in the comments below.

Practicality shines at LinuxCon 2009 by Phil Odence, Black Duck Software

LinuxCon Review: It’s all about community by Dawn Foster, Fast Wonder Consulting

LinuxCon Audio Diary 1 and LinuxCon Audio Diary 2 by Dan Lynch of Linux Outlaws