A Software Populist Who Doesn't Do Windows
By ASHLEE VANCE
New York Times
January 11, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/business/11ubuntu.html?th&emc=th

THEY'RE either hapless pests or the very people capable
of overthrowing Windows. Take your pick.

In December, hundreds of these controversial software
developers gathered for one week at the Google
headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. They came from all
over the world, sporting many of the usual signs of
software mercenaries: jeans, ponytails, unruly facial
hair and bloodshot eyes.

But rather than preparing to code for the highest
bidder, the developers were coordinating their largely
volunteer effort to try to undermine Microsoft's Windows
operating system for PCs, which generated close to $17
billion in sales last year.

All the fuss at the meeting centered on something called
Ubuntu and a man named Mark Shuttleworth, the
charismatic 35-year-old billionaire from South Africa
who functions as the spiritual and financial leader of
this coding clan.

Created just over four years ago, Ubuntu (pronounced oo-
BOON-too) has emerged as the fastest-growing and most
celebrated version of the Linux operating system, which
competes with Windows primarily through its low, low
price: $0.

More than 10 million people are estimated to run Ubuntu
today, and they represent a threat to Microsoft's
hegemony in developed countries and perhaps even more so
in those regions catching up to the technology
revolution.

"If we're successful, we would fundamentally change the
operating system market," Mr. Shuttleworth said during a
break at the gathering, the Ubuntu Developer Summit.
"Microsoft would need to adapt, and I don't think that
would be unhealthy."

Linux is free, but there is still money to be made for
businesses flanking the operating system. Companies like
I.B.M., Hewlett-Packard and Dell place Linux on more
than 10 percent of the computers they sell as servers,
and businesses pay the hardware makers and others, like
the software sellers Red Hat and Oracle, to fix any
problems and keep their Linux-based systems up to date.

But Canonical, Mr. Shuttleworth's company that makes
Ubuntu, has decided to focus its near-term aspirations
on the PCs used by workers and people at home.

The notion of a strong Linux-based competitor to Windows
and, to a lesser extent, Apple's Mac OS X has been an
enduring dream of advocates of open-source software.
They champion the idea that software that can be freely
altered by the masses can prove cheaper and better than
proprietary code produced by stodgy corporations. Try as
they might, however, Linux zealots have failed in their
quest to make Linux mainstream on desktop and notebook
computers. The often quirky software remains in the
realm of geeks, not grandmothers.

With Ubuntu, the devotees believe, things might finally
be different.

"I think Ubuntu has captured people's imaginations
around the Linux desktop," said Chris DiBona, the
program manager for open-source software at Google. "If
there is a hope for the Linux desktop, it would be
them."

Close to half of Google's 20,000 employees use a
slightly modified version of Ubuntu, playfully called
Goobuntu.

PEOPLE encountering Ubuntu for the first time will find
it very similar to Windows. The operating system has a
slick graphical interface, familiar menus and all the
common desktop software: a Web browser, an e-mail
program, instant-messaging software and a free suite of
programs for creating documents, spreadsheets and
presentations.

While relatively easy to use for the technologically
savvy, Ubuntu - and all other versions of Linux - can
challenge the average user. Linux cannot run many
applications created for Windows, including some of the
most popular games and tax software, for example. And
updates to Linux can send ripples of problems through
the system, causing something as basic as a computer's
display or sound system to malfunction.

Canonical has tried to smooth out many of the issues
that have prevented Linux from reaching the mainstream.
This attention to detail with a desktop version of Linux
contrasts with the focus of the largest sellers of the
operating system, Red Hat and Novell. While these
companies make desktop versions, they have spent most of
their time chasing the big money in data centers. As a
result, Ubuntu emerged as a sort of favored nation for
those idealistic software developers who viewed
themselves as part of a countercultural movement.

"It is the same thing companies like Apple and Google
have done well, which is build not just a community but
a passionate community," said Ian Murdock, who created
an earlier version of Linux called Debian, on which
Ubuntu is based.

Mainstream technology companies have taken notice of the
enthusiasm around Ubuntu. Dell started to sell PCs and
desktops with the software in 2007, and I.B.M. more
recently began making Ubuntu the basis of a software
package that competes against Windows.

Canonical, based in London, has more than 200 full-time
employees, but its total work force stretches well
beyond that, through an army of volunteers. The company
paid for close to 60 volunteers to attend its developer
event, considering them important contributors to the
operating system. An additional 1,000 work on the Debian
project and make their software available to Canonical,
while 5,000 spread information about Ubuntu on the
Internet. And 38,000 have signed up to translate the
software into different languages.

When a new version of the operating system becomes
available, Ubuntu devotees pile onto the Internet, often
crippling Web sites that distribute the software. And
hundreds of other organizations, mostly universities,
also help in the distribution.

The technology research firm IDC estimates that 11
percent of American businesses have systems based on
Ubuntu. That said, many of the largest Ubuntu customers
have cropped up in Europe, where Microsoft's dominance
has endured intense regulatory and political scrutiny.

The Macedonian education department relies on Ubuntu,
providing 180,000 copies of the operating system to
children, while the Spanish school system has 195,000
Ubuntu desktops. In France, the National Assembly and
the Gendarmerie Nationale, the military police force,
rely on Ubuntu for a combined 80,000 PCs. "The word
'free' was very important," said Rudy Salles, vice
president of the assembly, noting that it allowed the
legislature to abandon Microsoft.

Without question, Ubuntu's rapid rise has been aided by
the fervor surrounding Linux. But it's Mr. Shuttleworth
and his flashy lifestyle that generate much of the
attention Ubuntu receives. While he favors casual attire
matching the developers', some of his activities,
including a trip to space, are hardly ordinary.

"Look, I have a very privileged life, right?" Mr.
Shuttleworth said. "I am a billionaire, bachelor, ex-
cosmonaut. Life couldn't easily be that much better.
Being a Linux geek sort of brings balance to the force."

The first installment of Mr. Shuttleworth's fortune
arrived after he graduated from the University of Cape
Town in 1995 with a business degree.

He had been paying bills by operating a small technology
consulting company, setting up Linux servers for
companies to run their Web sites and other basic
operations. His business leanings and technology
background inspired him to try to capitalize on the
rising interest in the Internet.

"I'm more of an academic than a cut-and-thrust wheeler-
dealer," he said. "I was very interested in how the
Internet was changing commerce and was determined to
pursue it."

Mr. Shuttleworth decided to start a company called
Thawte Consulting (pronounced like "thought") in 1995
that provided digital certificates, a security mechanism
that browsers use to verify the identity of companies.
As a 23-year-old, he visited Netscape to promote a broad
standard for these certificates. Netscape, then the
leading browser maker, bought into it, and Microsoft,
which makes the Internet Explorer browser, followed.

As dot-com mania surged, companies became interested in
this profitable outfit, based in South Africa. In 1999,
VeriSign, which manages a number of Internet
infrastructure services, bought Thawte for $575 million.
(Mr. Shuttleworth had turned down an offer of $100
million a few months earlier.)

Having owned all of Thawte, Mr. Shuttleworth, the son of
a surgeon and a kindergarten teacher, became very
wealthy at just 26.

So what's a newly minted millionaire to do? Mr.
Shuttleworth looked to the stars. Paying an estimated
$20 million to Russian officials, he secured a 10-day
trip to space and the International Space Station on the
Soyuz TM-34 in 2002 and became the first "Afronaut," as
the press described him.

"After selling the company, it wasn't a blowout yachts
and blondes situation," he said. "It was very clear that
I was in a unique situation where I should choose to do
things that were not possible otherwise."

In the following years, Mr. Shuttleworth set up venture
capital and charitable organizations. Through
investments in the United States, Africa and Europe, he
says, he has amassed a fortune of more than $1 billion.

He spends 90 percent of his time, however, working on
Canonical, which he considers another project that
challenges what's possible.

"I have done well with investing, but it has never felt
very fulfilling," he said. "I fear getting to the end of
my life and feeling you haven't actually built
something. And to do something people thought was
impossible is attractive."

CANONICAL'S model makes turning a profit difficult.

Many open-source companies give away a free version of
their software that has some limitations, while selling
a full-fledged version along with complementary services
for keeping the software up to date. Canonical gives
away everything, including its top product, then hopes
that companies will still turn to it for services like
managing large groups of servers and desktops instead of
handling everything themselves with in-house experts.

Canonical also receives revenue from companies like Dell
that ship computers with Ubuntu and work with it on
software engineering projects like adding Linux-based
features to laptops. All told, Canonical's annual
revenue is creeping toward $30 million, Mr. Shuttleworth
said.

That figure won't worry Microsoft.

But Mr. Shuttleworth contends that $30 million a year is
self-sustaining revenue, just what he needs to finance
regular Ubuntu updates. And a free operating system that
pays for itself, he says, could change how people view
and use the software they touch everyday.

"Are we creating world peace or fundamentally changing
the world? No," he said. "But we could shift what people
expect and the amount of innovation per dollar they
expect."

Microsoft had an estimated 10,000 people working on
Vista, its newest desktop operating system, for five
years. The result of this multibillion-dollar investment
has been a product late to market and widely panned.

Canonical, meanwhile, releases a fresh version of Ubuntu
every six months, adding features that capitalize on the
latest advances from developers and component makers
like Intel. The company's model centers on outpacing
Microsoft on both price and features aimed at new
markets.

"It feels pretty clear to me that the open process
produces better stuff," Mr. Shuttleworth said. Such talk
from a man willing to finance software for the masses -
and by the masses - inspires those who see open source
as more of a cause than a business model.

In his spare time, Agostino Russo, for example, who
works for a hedge fund at Moore Europe Capital
Management in London, created a program called Wubi that
allows Ubuntu to be installed on computers running
Windows.

"I always thought that open source is a very important
socioeconomic movement," Mr. Russo said.

Ultimately, however, parts of Mr. Shuttleworth's venture
continue to look quixotic. Linux remains rough around
the edges, and Canonical's business model seems more
like charity than the next great business story. And
even if the open Ubuntu proves a raging success, the
operating system will largely be used to reach
proprietary online services from Microsoft, Yahoo,
Google and others.

"Mark is very genuine and fundamentally believes in open
source," said Matt Asay, a commentator on open-source
technology and an executive at the software maker
Alfresco. "But I think he's going to have a crisis of
faith at some point."

Mr. Asay wonders if Canonical can sustain its "give
everything away" model and "always open" ideology.

Canonical shows no signs of slowing down or changing
course anytime soon.

"We already have a sense of where we need to compete
with Windows," Mr. Shuttleworth said. "Now the question
is if we can create something that is stylish and
stunning."

In his personal life, he continues to test what is
possible, requesting that a fiber-optic connection be
installed to his house on the border of London's
affluent Chelsea and South Kensington neighborhoods.

"I want to find out what it's like to have a gigabit
connection to the home," he said. "It is not because I
need to watch porn in high-definition but because I want
to see what you do differently."

He says Canonical is not just a do-gooder project by
someone with the time, money and inclination to tackle
Microsoft head-on. His vision is to make Ubuntu the
standard for the next couple of billion people who
acquire PCs.

_____________________________________________

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