Thursday’s Keynote speaker at the MySQL Conference was Mark Shuttleworth talking on The Ubuntu Project: Improving Collaboration in the Free Software World.
Ubuntu from Canonical Ltd is fastly becoming one of the most popular Linux Distributions, based on Debian. Here were some notes from his presentation. Mark had some really powerful one or two line slides that typified both his presentation intention and the goal of Ubuntu.
Delivering on the Promise of Free Software
- MySQL levelled the playing field, individuals could use MySQL to build applications that could now compete in the industry.
- Apache, Python and Linux made it all possible.
- This has provided the Opportunity and passion to build software that can serve a purpose.
- Ubuntu is the continuation of levelling the playing field. Making always available at no cost.
- Whatever your vision, you have the opportunity without financial limitation.
- To be a pioneer in new fields, open source freedom enables the opportunity to anybody.
The New Deal of Free software
* Different Economics
- Ubuntu is world class and free of charge.
- Important to recognise the governence.
- We don’t build 99%, it’s built by communities. We want to maintain good healthy and open relationships with the communities of software developers and contributors.
* Different culture
- Transparency. You can participate, you get to see how the software is built. Difficult for co-ordination of people worldwide, the advantage is you get to be people in the public space everywhere.
- To be able to try, experience to express their own inspiration.
Our vision is to build a complete community-driven distribution that can grow and substain itself through support and services.
Self substaining at a professional level. Community Driven.
- The Ubuntu Proposition
- Genuine Freedom and Flexibility
- Zero Licensing Fees
- Certification: Hardware, Softare, Skills
- Superb Commercial Technical Support
- Standards Compliance
- Internatiolzation and customization
- Collobaration to the Core
We do the best work when we focus on extreme challenges.
Mark made a great comment about the Chinese Version, What was in English on any pages, for Mark was the saving grace, but for the Chinese user, that was the wall, so a committed emphasis on Internationalisation was important.
Ubuntu as you know it today is widely rated #1 desktop Linux with millons of users globally, with complete office and home desktop distributions. We started on the desktop, we are continuing to expand into different variants including the enterprise. The next release in June 2006 – Dappy – 6.06 will includ LTS (Long Term Support) 3 years for Desktop, 5 years for server.
We maintain relationships with the community ecosystem.
- Looking the the User Relationships.
- Prime focus is simplicity. Also Comprehensive and Community, Current.
- For the business relationships, wanting to offering Tiered Partnership Program and Extensive Global Solutions Provider Network.
Free Software Relationships
- Close to upstream (e.g. MySQL, Apache, Firefox etc)
- Close also to other distributions (both debian based and not). We want the best of their work to also be part of what’s available to all.
- Need to ramp up the collaboration of projects especially between projects. Check out launchpad.net
Site – Much easy to colloborate across projects - With MySQL and Ubuntu you have freedom to deploy without asking permission, and support when and where you need it
- A key is make packaging ubuntu and mysql the best getting contributions from the community. Expresses most powerfully what MySQL can do.
Beating history into submission
- We judge ourselves by history. We should look at our strengths. we should ask “What futures are enabled.”
Free software enables a different economic paradigm.
Embrace it.
A question from the audience was where does the name Ubuntu come from. The Answer was.
Ubuntu is common to many African languages. It means “human-esse”. The Ubuntu root is common to a lot of words. Some means included “The way we look after other people defines who we are. ”
Kubuntu – Has a meaning “For Humanity”.
