Ubuntu Foundation
New Ubuntu Foundation Announced
Since I've been named to the advisory board, I might not be exactly the most unbiased observer around here, but hey. Opinions obviously my own and not necessarily those of Canonical or the Foundation, etc., etc.
I'm pretty happy about this development, really. Once the press-release gubbins is stripped away, the greatest benefit I see is that it explicitly calls out the rationale for the Foundation as the "philanthropic and non-commercial" nature of the Ubuntu project. Any time a company decides to contribute to free software, or perhaps especially when one starts up that way, people - rightly or wrongly, but naturally - have concerns about its motives; I hope it will alleviate many of those concerns to have Ubuntu explicitly separated out a bit more from Canonical, and perhaps attract more developers who previously didn't want to feel as if they were doing unpaid work for a company. There are a number of precedents for the company/foundation model: Netscape/Mozilla and Red Hat/Fedora come immediately to mind. The Mozilla Foundation is in good shape these days (after a somewhat shakier start), and while it's too early to tell in the case of the Fedora Foundation it's certainly got considerable momentum behind it.
The five-year support thing is something we've been talking about since the very first company meeting, but it didn't make sense to introduce it until we'd been around long enough and doing a good enough job that people would actually believe that kind of talk from a start-up. I'm hopeful that it will get us into the sorts of mainstream corporate environments where they won't open the door to people who only do support for 18 months. Plus, from a purely selfish point of view, it's good to know that my employer plans to be around for the next five years! :-)
I don't know yet whether I'll be employed by the new Foundation or continue to be employed by Canonical/Fieldwave. Obviously I'll still be accountable to the same man at the top no matter which. Still, interesting times, and - with any luck - in a good way.
Since I've been named to the advisory board, I might not be exactly the most unbiased observer around here, but hey. Opinions obviously my own and not necessarily those of Canonical or the Foundation, etc., etc.
I'm pretty happy about this development, really. Once the press-release gubbins is stripped away, the greatest benefit I see is that it explicitly calls out the rationale for the Foundation as the "philanthropic and non-commercial" nature of the Ubuntu project. Any time a company decides to contribute to free software, or perhaps especially when one starts up that way, people - rightly or wrongly, but naturally - have concerns about its motives; I hope it will alleviate many of those concerns to have Ubuntu explicitly separated out a bit more from Canonical, and perhaps attract more developers who previously didn't want to feel as if they were doing unpaid work for a company. There are a number of precedents for the company/foundation model: Netscape/Mozilla and Red Hat/Fedora come immediately to mind. The Mozilla Foundation is in good shape these days (after a somewhat shakier start), and while it's too early to tell in the case of the Fedora Foundation it's certainly got considerable momentum behind it.
The five-year support thing is something we've been talking about since the very first company meeting, but it didn't make sense to introduce it until we'd been around long enough and doing a good enough job that people would actually believe that kind of talk from a start-up. I'm hopeful that it will get us into the sorts of mainstream corporate environments where they won't open the door to people who only do support for 18 months. Plus, from a purely selfish point of view, it's good to know that my employer plans to be around for the next five years! :-)
I don't know yet whether I'll be employed by the new Foundation or continue to be employed by Canonical/Fieldwave. Obviously I'll still be accountable to the same man at the top no matter which. Still, interesting times, and - with any luck - in a good way.