http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZRDIYDV4

How are my questions… an attack? I didn’t do something silly like make a demand or suggest that users boycott Zareason. I didn’t call Zareason’s employees names. I did not disparage their existing product offerings in any way. I asked a set of questions about how Zareaon and Canonical’s business interact. If Zareason’s employees do not want to answer the questions…so be it. I will draw my own conclusions from their non-answers.

If you don’t care about how the money spent on a Zareason Ubuntu system goes.. then just ignore me. But I care about sustainability, and I will continue to ask questions which relate to the sustainability of Ubuntu. If you need to interpret those questions as an attack…you are free to do so. But the questions remain….unanswered.

Who is buying Canonical’s services and are OEM’s doing enough to help connect Canonical with customers? Workswithu writers have waxed eloquent in the past about the forward momentum of their partner strategy. It’s a completely valid subject for this blog. I question the assumption that Canonical has a viable partner strategy for either OEMs or the cloud.

See…a sustainable “partner” ecosystem works in business when your partners’ help drive sales of your products and services. Clearly Canonical is helping Zareason sell product by making Ubuntu available at no cost. Great for Zareason! But is Zareason holding up their end of the partnership and driving revenue back to Canonical in any way? Either as a customer of Canonical’s OEM technical services to help them build Ubuntu based product.. or helping end-user know about Canonical’s service offerings?

let’s look over the OEM landscape….
Dell is starting to bundle 30 days of Canonical end-user support in with netbook purchased with ubuntu 9.04. That is a very good thing. A service bundle means Canonical is getting some cash from each Dell system sold. And Martin here has already confirmed on his personal blog several months ago that Dell contracts directly with Canonical for some level of OEM technical services..but not at a high enough level for some unnamed Canonical employees’ liking.
Reference:
http://doctormo.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/ubuntu-and-dell-support-breakdown/

Also, System76 is offering Canonical support in their online sales system for server options (but not end-user desktop or laptop support yet).

HP has just announced they have punted their only Ubuntu offering.

And ZaReason….isn’t doing anything with Canonical support yet. And I think its important to point that out. If that doesn’t matter to you… I can’t make it matter to you. I’m not even going to try. But it matters.

And none of the OEMs are putting the online desktop training that Canonical has put together in front of customers at time of purchase as far as I know. How many people who buy OEM Ubuntu systems really know about that online desktop training course that Canonical has for sale in their online store? Its exactly the OEM customers who are going to benefit most from the purchase of the online training service. People doing self-installs of Ubuntu are less likely to need an initial training course to feel comfortable.

-jef”as far as I know.. the world is flat and the sun revolves around the earth”spaleta

I’m sure everyone enjoys hearing the bitter voices of those attacking businesses trying to expand the Linux user base, but for myself, I doubt that attacks do much to effect any kind of change.

What does work is when customers and businesses see a positive reason for change, not a negative one. So go ahead and keep trying guilt, shame, or anger to make your voice heard. I’m going to opt for getting people excited that there are companies dedicated to the Linux market (whether or not Ubuntu continues to exist or not).

“As far as you know”…. that’s an interesting turn of phrase which doesn’t actually provide any factual information that provides a basis for the statement. Back that statement up with a publicly archived statement from a Canonical exec. I’ve yet to see any Canonical step-up and comment on any of their revenue streams.

-jef”As far as I know…. the moon is made of cheese”spaleta

ZaReason and System76 will do what’s right for their business, that may or may not include taking your thoughts on the subject. But ultimately, it’s their business, not yours.

Canonical may be the center of packaging and branding, but you give a little too much weight to their activities compared to the community as a whole. As far as I know, their OEM services are pretty profitable.

Canonical is more than just another piece of the community, they are the center. Without Canonical the Ubuntu ecosystem falls apart along with your Ubuntu based OEM business. There’s really no getting around it. Canonical has to be self-sustaining for your own Ubuntu based business to flourish. And Canonical is not self-sustaining at present.

And as an OEM business partner , the best way you can help Ubuntu is to help Canonical by putting all of Canonical’s service offerings into your online product purchasing system. Not just support contracts… but also the training( like the online desktop training which is way way underexposed and is exactly the sort of thing new users could benefit from knowing about at time of purchase).

-jef

But there are many ways to be a good citizen in this society. And probably the smartest way is to produce: contribute code, development, etc. This is a win-win because it adds in-house expertise, it gives the house visibility and reputation, and it gives back to the community. RedHat is the perfect example IMHO. Any linux guru would recommend RedHat to an IT department because the Guru will know RedHat knows the OS inside out, since it is involved in many core projects in most if not all relevant areas.

This is nice in that you get back something from giving back yourself, it is a self-perpetuating beautiful cycle. This is probably one of the reasons for the tremendous success of Open Source development, even when the lack of license fees seems like “too much to give up” in principle.