Richmond wrote:
Shuttleworth: 'Don't trust us? Erm, we have root. You do trust us with
your data already.'
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20121008#feature
Mark's just keeping it real, as we say in the States.
If the fact that every OS vendor effectively has root on your system is
troubling, it's time to leave computing.
I went to the Ubuntu Developer Summit this last May, since it was
finally held in California for the first time in many years. UDS
happens twice every year right after a release, a week-long series of
work sessions to plan the scope and sequence for the next release six
months later. While I paid my own travel and lodging, most of the
attendees are either employees of Canonical or steady contributors to
the project, so most were fully sponsored by Canonical. In addition to
covering travel and lodging, Canonical also provides two meals each day,
with outside sponsors covering dinner most nights (Google uses a
customized Ubuntu across a wide range of ops, and to show their support
they not only catered dinner one night but threw one helluva party along
with it).
And all those UDS expenses are just two of the 52 weeks that make up
what it takes to deliver Ubuntu twice each year. All year long
Canonical has hundreds of employees to pay salaries to, in addition to
making upstream contributions to the kernel, Gnome, Libre Office, and
others, along with the other overhead that comes with running an
organization of that scope.
While Canonical does have revenue in the tens of millions annually it's
not yet profitable, so the difference is coming out of Mark
Shuttleworth's pocket.
Personally, I have no problem with someone who's been giving away
literally tens of millions of dollars (well, technically that would be
"pounds") every year to build up a great OS using opportunities to try
to make it profitable.
There's more to open source than just "gimme gimme gimme".
In fact, Ubuntu.com now has an optional donation page where you can not
only contribute to the project, but decide how much of your donation
goes to each of about a dozen categories, from hardware compatibility to
UI design and more.
If my shopping at Amazon can kick a few cents toward Ubuntu, I'm happy
to do so.
Anyone concerned about the built-in Amazon search can simply turn it off
in Settings.
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World
LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/FourthWorldSys
_______________________________________________
use-livecode mailing list
use-livecode@lists.runrev.com
Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription
preferences:
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
