I want Canonical to make a profit. I want bug 1 (MS everywhere) to be fixed. I want ethical high ground. I would prefer that Ubuntu called itself a GNU/Linux distro, I am uneasy about mono. I think Freedom is a concept not just a practicality, and I do not think anyone ever got Freedom easily, but it is worth effort to gain, and effort to keep. Ubuntu One is a nice facility, I hope it will be successful, including attracting revenue. And ideally later made open maybe. The groundswell in some hardware towards light hardware including maybe ARM stuff is wide open for Ubuntu and difficult for Windows, and a (limited) strategy move from OO and Gimp defaults makes good sense in those areas, and does not limit anyone.
The idea that Canonical will be getting money from Yahoo (MS) by default is neat. And anyone who is going to discuss GNU/Linux things is likely to to be avoiding it by choice anyway.

Mark Shuttleworth has presided over what seems to me like miracles, and I cut him a real lot of slack so Canonical gets my vote and my effort and money too, in this real world, for a long time.

Exactly, and this is where the risks I mentioned in my other post, until there is a consistent cross distro platform that ISV’s can be sure is the same across many/all distros so their software will function the same on all Linux OS’s then it is always going to be a longer more risky process for ISV’s to build/test/deploy for Linux.

“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” — Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

At what cost are we willing to “defeat” MS as the incumbent behemoth? Is becoming the restrictive thing that FOSS is trying to make irrelevant, really the price we are willing to pay to reach those who couldn’t care less, even after being educated as to the why of it?

OOo can save in MS formats per default, if one so chooses. I think a short instruction is better than just accept to save per default in a closed, undocumented (or badly documented in case of OOXML) format. Tools –> Options –> Load/Save –> General –> Always save as. ODF is a truly open and accepted international standard. .doc/.xls/.ppt and OOXML are MS ways of stifling data interchange. Project Renaisance will provide OOo with the much vaunted Ribbon. In my opinion just a different way of presenting options, not necessarily a beter one.

“I want to continue to restrict myself with iTunes!” I think in this case it shouldn’t be FOSS trying to accomodate that wish. The tools to do so are already there in the form of OS X and Windows. We can only point out that there are less restricted (and qualitatively better) players on the market and welcome to you once you choose to leave iPod/iTunes behind.

Same with gaming. It is the PC gaming community who chose to use only DirectX games. They made their bed and have to lie in it. The PC gaming community could reverse this trend within a year if they really wanted to. Just stop buying DirectX games and ask every game publisher on earth to bring out OpenGL X-platform titles. Of course it is not going to happen. Gamers want effortless entertainment and going with the status quo gives them that. Lobbying for X-platform games is too involved.

Not to mention the added risks of commercial software development for Linux.

What added risk? No more risky than developing for Mac. The MS realm is also not risk free. Building a business is risky, no matter what platform.

I used to be the kind of Linux zealot who wanted everybody on Linux. These days I’ve mellowed considerably. If someone cares about what usages terms are on his day to day computing, he will convert to Linux by himself. If not, why save people from the proprietary clutches against their will.

We need to market Linux, but not in terms of what other OSes can do. We need to clearly state what Linux is, what it can do and why we think it should be used as a day to day OS. Marketing it as a worse-than-Windows Windows replacement is not going to cut it.

A noble statement and one I also share as I have recently left Ubuntu for Fedora.

I’ll keep an eye on it however because whilst I agree any attempt to work with MS will result in nothing good, I do believe that large scale acceptance of Linux is dependent on the support of commercial software vendors.

I see your point and I think it is valid. I think MS is threatened by Linux, and I think they have reason.

I do still believe that the main reasons (however misguided) for a majority of people not using Linux as a desktop OS are:

1. The business users are so used to MS Office and Outlook that changing to something else is confusing, not to mention that having to remember to save the OpenOffice doc as an MS Word doc before emailing it, etc.

2. The iPod/iPhone etc user who now can’t live without iTunes, how on earth will they buy music and sync/update their device… or the die hard Blu-ray watchers who can’t legally play a blu-ray using open source software.

3. The die hard gamers who are always playing the latest games… yes I know there are some quite good Linux games, but when their peers are all talking about how cool the latest Mass Effect or something is and all they have to say is they have been playing Nexuiz, it seems to lack something to a serious gamer.

Without addressing these things in a mainstream sort of way I don’t think Linux will ever really actually be any more than an annoyance to MS.

Solutions :

1. By no means a full solution, but some ideas. Since we can’t force Office to support OO docs, then OO needs a setting allowing the default document format to be MS Word so new users don’t have to worry about converting, and the interface should have the option of having the same look and feel for maximum user comfort.

2. Convince Mac to give specs / allow open source software to connect to the iTunes stores and sync/update the iPods/iPhones…. not gonna happen as I understand. Seems the only alternative and it would be surrounded with legal and moral issues, but that would be to hack the iTunes protocols and pirate the connections, and crack the encryptions etc put in place around blu-ray movies… doesn’t really seem viable without people being jailed etc etc

3. Somehow convince all the game creators to ditch the easy DirectX MS road and focus on pure cross platform OpenGL games. Since most gaming consoles use OpenGL you would think this wouldn’t be that much of an effort since almost any game released for PC is also released for all game consoles… but try it, I have. Why would the game developers change when there is almost no market share reason for them too.. Not to mention the added risks of commercial software development for Linux.

I’m not saying there isn’t hope… but it seems to me without a Linux becoming an entity like that of MS windows its going to be a rough road.

I think here we have the answer. Canonical isn’t becoming the new Microsoft, they are well underway to become MS next victim.

The people at Microsoft aren’t evil. On the individual level they will be wonderful people. It’s just they are all locked into a soulless machinery that works in a certain way.

The problem with MS is their corporate culture. They can’t compete fairly. They are relentlessly predatory. If Shuttleworth thinks he can trust MS the Corporation to operate towards common goals, he is mistaken. MS has only one goal. MS on top, at all costs, raking in the revenue.

You don’t expect the mafia to be legit. You don’t hire cleptomaniacs to guard your shop. You don’t assume MS will play fair in business.

It’s why I’ve reluctantly abandonned Ubuntu after six happy years of use. I can’t make my computing freedom dependent on the decissions of naive people, who seem to trust a chronic predator.

In a way it is painful to see Ubuntu on the tipping point of market acceptance and me having to stop supporting it, not because it is becoming popular, but because it foolishly thinks that dancing with MS isn’t lethal. If I have to choose between mainstreaming Linux and software freedom, it’ll be software freedom.

As for MS not making their software for Linux because they live by the sales of Windows… wtf did they build a Mac version for? The argument seems pretty weak when MS are already building some of their better software to be available on a competitive OS.

What makes you think OS X is competitive to Windows? Apple was bailed out by MS in the mid nineties. Apple needed the money, MS needed the appearance of a competitor. Ever since they respect each others market boundaries.

OS X is not comparable to Windows. OS X is practically a firmware to operate overpriced Apple hardware. Windows runs anywhere, where there is an x86 processor. OS X only runs on a machine manufactured by Apple. It’s not a threat to MS OEM deals.

To MS OS X brings the semblance of choice and they most probably will still sell an Office license to a Mac user. Since Apple sells expensive lifestyle with a mediocre x86 PC thrown in somewhere in the innards, they are in a niche where they don’t tread on MS toes.

Linux on the other hand moves in exactly the same markets as MS. Linux has the potential to destroy MS OEM deals. That is why we have a Mac Office, but absolutely no native MS software for Linux. Linux is a threat to MS shelfspace.

Let me illustrate. Let’s walk in a computer shop. There are three computers on the shelf. One is a $ 650 midrange PC with Windows 7 Home Premium, the second is a comparable Mac for $ 1200, the third is the same midrange PC with Linux for $ 599. Tell me, which one is the biggest threat to the MS machine? The Apple or the Linux machine?

I saw that and have already registered my objections: http://www.theopensourcerer.com/2010/02/15/sam-varghese-got-it-wrong/

Ubuntu is a direct threat to Microsofts business model, selling a pretty old and grumpy OS for prime money when it really should have utility prices by now. What do Microsoft do with companies that threat their income, anyone?

Mono, Silverlight, Yahoo/Bing are all things that benefit Microsoft more than Ubuntu. Ubuntu should have tossed Mono out and clearly and clearly stated to Microsoft that if they wanted dotnet / silverlight on Linux they had better do it themselves. That way all patent and IP problems would be non-existent.