Comments on: Beyond Ubuntu: Canonical Pursues New Revenue Streams

By: Jef Spaleta

Jef Spaleta — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:24:08 +0000

Jepp:
UbuntuOne’s competitive advantage over other services revolves around deep integration of the underlying protocals and APIs that UbuntuOne makes use of into the Gnome desktop as a set of core technologies that all gnome application developers can pick up and make use as part of the upstream Gnome framework. I do not think UbuntuOne is meant to be competitive with what Dropbox is. With deep framework integrations UbuntuOne will be positioned to leapfrog over the filesystem folder layer completely and target onlines data services for individual applications or mashups between applications.

The discussions going on right now to integrate CouchDB based functionality into upstream Gnome is an encouraging sign that Canonical is serious about a deeply integrating data services functionality into the Gnome Desktop that UbuntuOne can tie into as an optional opt-in service. There’s real potential here for Canonical to offer something different as a web service if they can drive the necessarily clientside framework elements into the upstream Gnome desktop as core elements.

We’ll know UbuntuOne has succeeded when the the UbuntuOne branding starts to cause confusion among users as people start to make use of the services from Gnome desktops from other distributions.

-jef

By: Jepp

Jepp — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 23:30:25 +0000

How can UbuntuOne compete with Dropbox? It has better pricing and Linux, OS X, and Windows support…

By: neo

neo — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 10:52:53 +0000

“Shuttleworth has already said Canonical is now breaking even.”

No. He has never claimed that. Canonical is still operating at a heavy loss

By: Marx

Marx — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 05:20:09 +0000

@Fellini: While you are 100% right that the general desktop OS for the home user will never make money for Linux, I’m pretty sure Shuttleworth knew this from the beginning. I don’t think the strategy was to make money off of the OS from consumers, it was to make the best desktop distro possible to get the greatest Linux desktop mindshare. They want you to think Ubuntu when you think of desktop Linux. There’s a reason Microsoft practically will give away Windows to OEMs to make sure they install Windows on their computers. Once they have that mindshare it will make it much easier for them to penetrate the corporate desktop. I think the big key here is if they can add value to their server product to make it work with and increase the value of their desktop offerings much in the same way that Microsoft has the Windows, Active Directory and Exchange combo.

By: Beyond Ubuntu: Canonical Diversifies Its Revenue Streams @ OS-ING

Beyond Ubuntu: Canonical Diversifies Its Revenue Streams @ OS-ING — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:28:28 +0000

[...] At first glance, Canonical is an operating system company — built around Ubuntu Linux. But take a closer look at Canonical’s moves during the first half of 2009, and you’ll find the company has increasingly bet its revenue stream on cloud, online and consulting/support services. Here’s some perspective. [...]

By: Jimbo

Jimbo — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 12:48:42 +0000

“No doubt, Microsoft wants to crush Canonical before Ubuntu is a financially viable, self-sustaining operating system.”

Shuttleworth has already said Canonical is now breaking even.

By: F. Fellini

F. Fellini — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:46:45 +0000

@A User, what you say is true but not a sad truth. We all want free stuff but someone has got to pay for it. Shuttleworth has consistently made it clear he wants to see sustainability at Canonical. Red Hat believes that the business segment is the only place it can make a market, not the broader fragmented general applications desktop market (that includes the home user). If the pattern had not emerged before it should now be apparent. Software as a service and other value added services are what the proponents of free software had been talking about for all these years. This gets us beyond tooling difficulties to getting real work done, which is where we pay money. When you look at the complements model you see that free OS means more hardware and other complemetary products sold.

By: Simplicius

Simplicius — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:40:24 +0000

With regard to Canonical’s overall strategy, before we say anything let’s remember that it is *not* your average startup.
If Shuttleworth’s financial details as mentioned in the NYT a couple of months ago are true, he could keep on financing it for the next 50 years! This means that Canonical can take the long route, make mistakes, weather a few storms, etc., so long as Shuttleworth is committed to it.

By: Leo

Leo — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:36:44 +0000

@Joe: I think you are right. I can think of other successful open source companies (including JBoss, now under RedHat), but not Linux Distributions.

By: Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:24:48 +0000

@Leo: You say Red Hat is the “best” example of a company that’s fully supportive of community, self consistent and profitable.

I’d go one step further. I think Red Hat is the ONLY company that fulfills that statement. I can’t think of another open source company that’s consistently profitable. Am I overlooking anyone???