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Canonical Ltd.

Type	Private company limited by shares[1]
Genre	Software Development
Founded	5 March 2004
Founder(s)	Mark Shuttleworth
Headquarters	Europe (Registered: Douglas, Isle of Man. Operational HQ: Millbank Tower, London, United Kingdom)
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Mark Shuttleworth Jane Silber
Products	Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Launchpad, Bazaar, Landscape, Ubuntu One, Upstart
Revenue	$30 Million[2]
Owner(s)	Mark Shuttleworth
Employees	200+[3]
Subsidiaries	Canonical UK Ltd.
Website	www.canonical.com
Formerly "M R S Virtual Development Ltd"[4]

Ubuntu is one of the best-known products of the company.

Canonical Ltd.^[5] is a private company founded (and funded) by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth for the promotion of free software projects. Canonical is registered in the Isle of Man and employs staff around the world, along with its main offices in London, support office in Montreal and OEM team in Lexington, Massachusetts, USA.^[6]

Projects sponsored by Canonical

Canonical Ltd. continues to back and has created several projects. Principally these are free/open source software (FOSS) or tools designed to improve collaboration between free software developers and contributors.

Open source software

• The Ubuntu family of Linux distributions:
  • Ubuntu^[7], a Debian-based Linux distribution with a GNOME desktop.
  • Kubuntu^[8], the Ubuntu core system with the KDE desktop in place of Gnome.
  • Xubuntu, the Ubuntu core system with the lightweight Xfce desktop in place of Gnome.
  • Edubuntu^[9], the Ubuntu core improved specifically for educational or thin-client environments.
  • Gobuntu, a stripped variant of Ubuntu consisting entirely of free software.
  • Ubuntu JeOS, an efficient variant of Ubuntu configured specifically for virtual appliances.
• Bazaar^[10], a decentralized revision control system.
• OpenCD (now discontinued), a collection of high quality free and open-source software compiled for users of Microsoft Windows. The programs come with an easy-to-use graphical installer and run under Microsoft Windows and cover most tasks. Examples are the GIMP, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox and PDF creation software.
• Storm, an object-relational mapper for Python^[11], part of the Launchpad codebase.
• Upstart, an event-based replacement for the init daemon
• Quickly

Promotion activities

• Software Freedom Day, which is held on the third Saturday of each September. Canonical Ltd. was the primary sponsor for 2005-2006.
• Go Open Source, a South African campaign to create awareness of, educate about, and provide access to open-source software. It is important, once awareness of OSS has been created, that interested parties have the ability to gain access to the software and services, and that they have access to additional resources for support and training. It ran from May 2004 to May 2006.
• Geek Freedom League, The Freedom League is a South African project designed to bring together the best of the open source world and the massive country-wide community of people driven to introduce as many new people as possible to the use of open source software. Anyone with the passion and ability can sign-up and receive all the materials needed to convert as many people and computers as possible. People will be able to log their installs and track their progress.^[12]
• Freedom Toaster, kiosk-style machines located in South Africa designed to avoid costly and prohibitive download costs. Users provide their own blank CD media and after insertion they can choose a GNU/Linux distribution of their choice to take home.

Projects and services

Mark Shuttleworth and other Canonical employees discuss Launchpad at a design sprint in Germany.

• Landscape ^[13], a tool for managing large numbers of Ubuntu-based systems via a web-browser.
• Launchpad^[14] a centralised website containing several component web applications designed to make collaboration between Free Software projects easier:
  • Rosetta, an online language translation tool to help localisation of software (cf. the Rosetta Stone).
  • Malone (as in "Bugsy Malone"), a collaborative bug-tracker that allows linking to other bug-trackers.
  • Soyuz, a tool for creating custom-distributions, such as Kubuntu and Xubuntu.
  • Code - hosting of Bazaar branches
  • Answers - support tracker
  • Blueprints - a tool for planning features of software
  • PPA - personal package archives
• Ubuntu One, a closed-source service for file synchronisation and other uses where the server side software remains closed. Canonical was criticized by some users for abuse^[15][16][17] of the Ubuntu trademark for commercial exploitation, launching a proprietary service and going back on the Ubuntu promise to keep it free.

Business plans

In a Guardian interview in May 2008, Mark Shuttleworth said that the Canonical business model was service provision and explained that Canonical was not yet close to profitability. Canonical also claimed it will wait for the business to turn into a profitable one within another 3 to 5 years. He regarded Canonical as positioning itself as demand for services related to Free Software rose.^[18] This strategy has been compared to Red Hat's business strategies in the 1990s.^[19].

In 2007, Canonical launched an International online shop selling support services and Ubuntu branded goods; later in 2008 expanding it with a United States-specific shop designed to reduce shipment times.^[20] At the same time, the word Ubuntu was trademarked in connection with clothing and accessories.^[21]

Employees

122 Canonical employees photographed together during an "All Hands" company conference in 2007.

Current

Notable current employees of Canonical include:

• Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu project, former Debian maintainer of Apache and founder of Thawte Consulting (2004–).
• Matt Zimmerman, formerly of the Debian security team. Now Canonical/Ubuntu Chief Technical Officer (2004–).
• Scott James Remnant, formerly a Debian and GNU maintainer of GNU Libtool and co-author of the Planet aggregator. At Canonical, he has developed Upstart (2004–).
• Jono Bacon, of LugRadio fame. Canonical's new Ubuntu community leader. (2006–)
• Stuart Langridge, (2009–)

Past

Notable past employees:

• Ben Collins, former Debian Project Leader and kernel developer. (2006–2009).
• Dave Miller, known for Bugzilla, employee no. 1 (2004).
• Jeff Waugh, employee no. 3, GNOME and Planet aggregator developer, Business Development (2004–2006).
• Benjamin Mako Hill, Core developer and Community Coordinator (2004–2005).
• Ian Jackson, developer of dpkg and former Debian Project Leader (2005–2007).
• Lars Wirzenius, first contributor to the Linux kernel and Linus Torvalds' former office mate. (2007–2009)

Offices

Canonical started as a wholly virtual organisation with employees working from home. The company now maintains a facility on the 27th floor of Millbank Tower near Westminster, London.^[22] In the summer of 2006 Canonical opened an office in Montreal to house its global support and services operation.^[19] Taipei 101 is also home to a Canonical office.

References

External links

• Canonical.com, official site
• Ubuntu.com, Ubuntu home page

Free software portal