Novell, and thus SuSE in the shape of OpenSuSE is baked by even deeper pockets than Ubuntu as is Fedora (Redhat).

If we move away from those three distros: Fedora, OpenSuSE and Ubuntu you tend to be moving into nerd-land with a less than pleasant average support for newbees. Geeks are in most part excellent supporters for newbees, nerds are, well, nerds. They seldom have the ability to let go of their nerd behavior and speak a language that average Joe understand.

And in that context, that of the nerds, I agree that it all boils down to jealousy on their part. Their feelings for their preferred distro is hurt by the success of others because others may not be sharing the same love for it as they do.
They are the same people that completely misses the fact that Ubuntu has made Linux known to average Joe.

My job as an Ubuntu Geek is to give support to newbees and along the way educate the new users of Ubuntu about the history of GNU and Linux and Free Software. And to help them understand that the term FOSS is the newer term invented to make GNU/Linux and Free Software an acceptable choice for companies and home users alike.

Do you know how much Shuttleworth is paying out of pocket every year just to keep Ubuntu going? Asking him to pay more money…to lose more money… funding Ubuntu operations is a bit much.

He’s paying far more than his fair share of the cost of keeping Ubuntu up and running. Who else is paying? Are the OEMs who are making a profit from selling Ubuntu pre-installed hardware paying? Is Amazon.. who is making a profit from selling bandwidth and cpu time from Ubuntu EC2 cloud images paying for Ubuntu development? Is Rightscale which is making a profit from providing cloud management services for Ubuntu cloud images paying for Ubuntu development? All these other businesses… making money by leveraging the no-cost acquisition model for Ubuntu…while Shuttleworth loses money…and you want him to pony up more cash? Are you as a user, paying anything for Ubuntu development? Are you purchasing any of the Canonical support services that help pay the salaries of the core Ubuntu developers? To ask Shuttleworth to spend more on Ubuntu development, when so many other stakeholders are not paying their fair share is a bit much.

-jef

IMO, Mr Shuttleworth needs to put some more money into Ubuntu/Debian infrastructure and Linux development in general if he wants to get deserving credit and praise.

Second, GIMP takes about 15 meg. It takes under an hour to download 15 meg on a modem. Africans will have no problem AT ALL installing GIMP on their Ubuntu systems.

I, too, will wait until 10.04 comes out, but with Microsoft having its representatives *inside* Ubuntu and using their participation in Ubuntu as a vehicle to taint other distros, such as Debian, it will take a major clean up effort at this point.

What Jono tried by bringing Microsofters into Ubuntu was noble and generous if not exceedingly naive. It’s time to face the facts that it was a mistake and that they are causing a lot of damage with ripple effects far outside Ubuntu.

The largest group harmed by the removal of Gimp and the affliction of mono has had *zero* voice, *zero* input: those without ready access to broadband. That includes nearly all of Africa, including hi-tech South Africa where TCP over carrier pidgeon beats Internet for throughput. It also includes large parts of the U.S. In those areas without broadband, and even those areas without *good* broadband, what’s not on the default CD might as well not exist. And what comes on the CD by default is what they will have to use, no matter how inappropriate, simply because it’s there.

So if no professional grade digital photo management software is included, those regions are denied use of those resulting skills for school, hobby, business or government work.

Shouldn’t a distro “Linux for Human Beings” aim to reduce or eliminate the digital divide rather than expand it? Removing Gimp expands. How much is up to argument, but that the gap expands is incontrovertible.

Shouldn’t a distro “Linux for Human Beings” aim to increase or establish digital independence and economic self-sufficiency rather than work to eliminate it? Giving new users an ultimatum of either not programming or else share-cropping on Microsoft technology is not a way to establish self-sufficiency or independence. Maybe that is the goal of adding mono, to bring these nations, many of which are just leaving a colonial or post-colonial stage, into a new, digital colonialism.

During years I’ve followed how Microsoft and it’s allies leverage everything they can to force and sneak in their technologies and “standards” to destroy competition. If there’s a way to use Mono related technologies to their advantage, they will use it. They have top strategists planing these things all day long, and unlike most of the free software community, they also plan long term – place hooks so to speak.

Microsoft may not yet know how exactly they are going to use Mono to their advantage – and to disadvantage of the free software community. And they don’t have to. They may just play things into certain direction, which they know is changing the playground to their advantage. New factors can be brought into play, which the free software community isn’t able to anticipate now. One beautiful day the community may find that they don’t have much room left to manoeuvre.

I’m going to wait until Ubuntu 10.04 comes out, and then, if Mono still isn’t rejected, I’ll start to look for a new Mono-free distribution for myself – unless it’s somehow proven by then, that Mono isn’t in any way harmful to Ubuntu and free software in general.

Ubuntu has been utterly contaminated with mono, an aptly named disease.