This is an advent calendar for techies. In the fully commercialized digital world, almost everything belongs to a large Internet corporation. Their software is neither open nor free. As an alternative, there is this small island of the open source world: software whose code is publicly visible and can be independently checked for possible security gaps and backdoors. Software that can be freely used, distributed and improved. Often the drive for work is simply the joy of providing something useful to society.
Short portraits of open source projects will be published on heise online from December 1st to December 24th. These are about the functions of the respective software, the pitfalls, the history, the background and the financing.
Short portraits of open source projects will be published on heise online from December 1st to December 24th. These are about the functions of the respective software, the pitfalls, the history, the background and the financing. Some projects are backed by an individual, others by a loosely organized community, a tightly managed foundation with full-time employees or a consortium. The work is entirely voluntary, or it is financed through donations, cooperation with Internet companies, government funding or an open source business model. Regardless of whether it is a single application or a complex ecosystem, whether a PC program, app or operating system – the diversity of open source is overwhelming.
December 19: Ubuntu
In the small market for Linux desktop operating systems, Ubuntu is the largest. The focus of the open source project is the Canonical company, which is developing Ubuntu together with a large community. The top decision maker is a “benevolent dictator for life”. Ubuntu is the most popular Linux desktop operating system. In relation to the overall market, the distribution is manageable. Linux has a market share of just two percent worldwide and throughout Germany. Within the Linux cosmos, however, Ubuntu is a leader. There are no reliable figures. If you look at the number of hits in the German-language articles on common Linux distributions as a guide to their popularity, you see the following advantage: Ubuntu is ahead (with around 17,000 monthly article views) ahead of Debian (12,000) and Mint (11,000). Ubuntu is a desktop operating system for end users, but it is also used on servers. The software is available under different, mostly GPL open source licenses.
Ecosystem and part of the Linux family tree
Ubuntu, for its part, is an ecosystem that has built-in a wide range of open source software: well-known programs such as the Firefox browser or the LibreOffice office suite are always supplied ready-to-use. Additional programs can be installed via an integrated software center. By default, Ubuntu uses the Gnome graphical user interface. But you can switch to alternatives like Xfce or Cinnamon. Ubuntu is part of the big one Linux family tree and a descendant of the Debian branch on which most Linux PC operating systems are based. Ubuntu, for its part, started a family and spawned several dozen of derivatives. These include versions initiated by Ubuntu developer Canonical, such as Ubuntu Studio, which focuses on audio, graphics and video editing. Linux Mint is an external Ubuntu fork. Ubuntu was developed by a former Debian developer, the South African IT entrepreneur and multimillionaire Mark Shuttleworth. In 1999, when he was in his mid-twenties, he had sold his IT security and consulting company Thawte to the US company VeriSign for $ 575 million. On October 20, 2004, he released Ubuntu, with the aim of building a Debian distribution that was easy to use even for IT laypeople. In the spring of that year he founded the Canonical company, which has been at the center of the Ubuntu cosmos ever since.
It’s hard to come up with numbers and background information about the company behind Ubuntu. Provider is loud Privacy policy Canonical Group Limited, based in London. The company is part of a small one Corporate cosmos. The parent company is Canonical Limited, based on the Isle of Man. The semi-autonomous island state in the Irish Sea is a popular tax haven, where it is difficult to research company figures. For the Canonical Group Limited in London are due to the British legal situation Annual reports accessible. According to the report for 2020 (“Group of companies’ accounts” dated June 26, 2021) the company had 441 employees and sales of 141 million US dollars with a profit of five million. When asked by Heise online, Canonical writes that the group of companies has a total of 750 people in more than 50 countries. The company does not reveal how high the total turnover is, but Canonical has been profitable since 2019.
Make money from related services
The company has a typical open source business model, comparable to the model of Automattic, the company behind the blog and web software WordPress: employees of the company develop and market the free software in collaboration with a community, Canonical earns money with related services and Products.
Among other things, Canonical works with various partners who offer Ubuntu support, as well as with PC manufacturers such as Dell, HP and Lenovo, explains the company. And Canonical is licensing Ubuntu with additional security features for use in embedded systems, for example in the area of software as a service or in the cloud area. Canonical also provides direct support and infrastructure for corporate customers on. Canonical said goodbye to a revenue model directly within Ubuntu Desktop last year: an Amazon integration that was introduced in 2012 after an Ubuntu update. A local desktop search came up with product suggestions from Amazon via the “shopping lens”. For this, Canonical was heavily criticized for years and even referred to as “spyware”. In 2020 the integration finally disappeared again.
Most of the Ubuntu development work is done by Canonical employees. When Heise online asked what part Canonical had in the code production, the company did not respond, but wrote that 50 employees were working on Ubuntu Desktop. Canonical estimates the size of the worldwide community at 50,000 people. They take on different tasks: They take part in code development, fix bugs, do technical documentation, organize local Ubuntu events or answer questions in Ubuntu forums such as Discourse.ubuntu.com.
No more Ubuntu Foundation
Originally there was a foundation for Ubuntu. Shuttleworth had the Ubuntu Foundation in 2005 founded and equipped them with seed capital of ten million US dollars. As Canonical Heise reports online, this no longer exists. The foundation was only a financial backup solution that was supposed to create trust. She should ensure that Ubuntu’s long-term support continues regardless of what happens to Canonical. In the meantime, this structure is no longer needed, since Canonical is profitable and can guarantee long-term support for the software itself.
Trademark rights are owned by Canonical
Power in the Ubuntu ecosystem is very much concentrated at Canonical. Most of all, Canonical holds Trademark rights on Ubuntu and related terms. This had caused displeasure in the past. In 2013 an activist from the US American Eletronic Frontier Foundation posted a script called “Fixubuntu” on a website that could be used to remove the integrated Amazon search. Canonical advised him that the use of the Ubuntu logo on the website and the use of the term Ubuntu in a domain name infringed Canonical’s trademark rights. After public criticism, Shuttleworth apologized and wrote that the company’s “unusually permissive” branding policy actually allowed such a thing.
the Administrative structure of the Ubuntu ecosystem, as described on the Ubuntu website, has several elements. There is thematic teams and about 200 national and local communities. The German Ubuntu community has found out about the association Ubuntu Germany organizes and operates, among other things, a German-speaking Ubuntu Wiki. This is the highest supervisory body
Ubuntu Community Council, which monitors compliance with a common code of conduct, settles disputes and organizes elections to subordinate bodies. The Council consists of eight people, including Shuttleworth and the chairman of the Ubuntu Germany Association, Torsten Franz. The council is elected in an online vote by the community. Anyone can nominate. However, Mark Shuttleworth decides who gets on the shortlist and can actually be elected.
There is also a technical expert body with six members, including Shuttleworth. If there is a stalemate in votes, Shuttleworth can decide. There are comparable structures in most open source projects. As the third governing body after the community council and the technical body, the “Governance” statement page Also on Ubuntu.com: SABDFL, an abbreviation for “self-appointed benevolent dictator for life”. That “self-proclaimed benevolent dictator for life” is Mark Shuttleworth, who, it is said, plays the “luckily undemocratic role of sponsor”.
The work on the series of articles is based in part on a “Neustart Kultur” grant from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, awarded by VG Wort.
(tiw)