Watching the Future of Ubuntu?

[vrkalak]

Is it just me, or is there a whiff of desperation these days around Canonical, Ubuntu's commercial arm? By that I mean that Canonical increasingly seems to focused on reaching profitability, and nothing else. The de-emphasis on community, the constant introduction of new services, and the increasing market speak are all in marked contrast to the Canonical of five or even three years ago.

Since Ubuntu is a privately-held company, its financial position is a matter of speculation. In 2009, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth stated that the company was "creeping toward $30 million," the point of profitability, but that was before many of its current services were introduced. Consequently, you won't find many -- if any -- analysts who believe that Canonical is profitable today.

Assuming that's true, then going into its eighth year, Canonical is fast approaching the make or break point. Were Canonical funded by angel investors, they would have become anxious for some sign of approaching profitability several years ago.

As things are, an eight year old company that has yet to announce profitability has a credibility issue. The lack of profits isn't likely to be fatal -- not unless Shuttleworth tires of bankrolling the company -- but it might make Canonical seem like a problematic business partner to other corporations. it could also be personally embarrassing to Canonical's executives, as others question their competence.

Under these circumstances, Canonical is unlikely to be profitable and not mentioning the fact. The pressure, as they say, is on.

When a company develops products or services, it has two major strategies. Either it can develop a single, unique product, or try to enter a number of existing markets.

Each of these strategies has advantages and disadvantages. A single, unique product can be immensely successful, but it can also fail miserably, especially if a rival beats you to market.

By contrast, developing several products is less risky, but can easily mean that you spread yourself too thin. Usually, too, developing several products means entering an existing market and facing the difficulties of convincing distributors not just to carry your offerings, but to promote them as well.

In developing Unity, Canonical might be trying the first strategy. But, if it is, the strategy is probably a long shot. Commercial distributions never make money on the software, and Shuttleworth has said for years that his business model was selling services. At the most, a unique interface like Unity is a selling point to make the services more attractive.

If Canonical has larger plans for some unique money maker, for obvious reasons it has yet to reveal what that might be. Instead, Canonical seems intent on exploring every possible niche, with an interface usable on every hardware platform, a cloud carrier, Ubuntu TV, an Android port, and probably several others that I haven't immediately remembered.

[MORE .... ]

To read the complete article > http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Bl ... -Canonical

[bimsebasse]

Personally I find Ubuntu's direction and aspirations very beneficial for the Linux community. We have Mint/Pinguy and other Ubuntu-based distros to take the steady course and respect the traditional interface paradigm and long-time users, and then we have Ubuntu to try and explore the limits. As long as all these experiments aren't completely at the expense of stability and meat and potatoes maintenance, then I can only see positive vistas for Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based distros coming from it. Just two years ago there were really too little separating Ubuntu from Mint and other offshoots, it's a different scenario now after Unity/Cinnamon/Gnome Shell and after Canonical started to push hard for mainstream success, both Ubuntu and Mint are coming into their own.

[tdockery97]

My concern with Canonical is that they are all but dumping their commercial product in hopes of gaining popularity in the larger private sector tablet/smartphone/settop box segment. I worked in the administrative field during my Navy career and in the private sector, and I can assure you that Unity will not fly in a business office environment. Show it to any proficient secretary and they'll run away screaming. If Unity turns out to be an utter failure, where will that leave Canonical to turn to?

[craig10x]

Getting use to unity really doesn't take much different effort that getting use to the mac (global menu and the dock bar)...and there are many businesses that use Mac instead of windows...so i don't think that secretaries would run screaming

As far as i know, they don't when they go from a business that uses windows to one that uses the mac...
No doubt, they quickly adopt to it...

I think ubuntu is putting out a very professional looking and polished product these days...one that can actually compete with windows and mac...
And personally, though i didn't think i'd like unity initially, i have been using it for about 2 months now and like it very much now...

There is mint and many other distros to present alternate desktops (and in fact ubuntu themselves of course with kubuntu, xubuntu, etc)

For themselves, i think they are definitely going in the right direction and should only increase the use of linux in the long run...