Ubuntu
Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 9:51 pm
Wooing "the community"
Ubuntu's gains come at a time when the commercial powers of the Linux realm are trying hard to engage the vast and amorphous group loosely known as "the open-source community." This band includes new and experienced programmers at major corporations, schools and cash-strapped start-ups, and it spans the globe. Harnessing its talents can make it easier to develop new features, find bugs, build a customer base and set development priorities.
Red Hat's community project, Fedora, has had some troubles, but the project and the company's relationship to it get "better by the month," Chief Executive Matthew Szulik said. Novell has launched a similar project, OpenSuse, and spokesman Kevan Barney said the company believes that it has "a much broader user community" than does Ubuntu. Even Sun Microsystems, which is making a version of Unix into an open-source project called OpenSolaris, believes that it can benefit from the approach.
But the project most likely to benefit from Ubuntu's success is Debian, a decidedly noncommercial project. Ubuntu is based on Debian's development version, called Sid, and Ubuntu programmers are collaborating well on the GNOME desktop interface software and the X.org low-level graphics support, Waugh said.
Quantifying Ubuntu's gains is difficult. For example, it doesn't show up in IDC's revenue charts, since it's available for free, even for those who want installation CDs sent to them. But there are some signs. For one thing, there are 60 people who are authorized to approve Ubuntu software changes and many more who supply them with the modifications. Ubuntu also distributed 1.4 million copies of its first version, called Warty Warthog. And it tops the reader interest charts at DistroWatch, a site that catalogs Linux distributions.
One thing Ubuntu lacks is commercial partnerships, but there are some early signs that's changing. VMware, whose software lets multiple operating systems run on the same computer, added experimental Ubuntu support with its new version 5 beta, citing customer demand. And Hewlett-Packard sells notebook computers with Ubuntu in Europe and Africa, with plans to expand to desktops in the region, spokeswoman Nita Miller said.
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Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:4536, old post ID:36149
Ubuntu's gains come at a time when the commercial powers of the Linux realm are trying hard to engage the vast and amorphous group loosely known as "the open-source community." This band includes new and experienced programmers at major corporations, schools and cash-strapped start-ups, and it spans the globe. Harnessing its talents can make it easier to develop new features, find bugs, build a customer base and set development priorities.
Red Hat's community project, Fedora, has had some troubles, but the project and the company's relationship to it get "better by the month," Chief Executive Matthew Szulik said. Novell has launched a similar project, OpenSuse, and spokesman Kevan Barney said the company believes that it has "a much broader user community" than does Ubuntu. Even Sun Microsystems, which is making a version of Unix into an open-source project called OpenSolaris, believes that it can benefit from the approach.
But the project most likely to benefit from Ubuntu's success is Debian, a decidedly noncommercial project. Ubuntu is based on Debian's development version, called Sid, and Ubuntu programmers are collaborating well on the GNOME desktop interface software and the X.org low-level graphics support, Waugh said.
Quantifying Ubuntu's gains is difficult. For example, it doesn't show up in IDC's revenue charts, since it's available for free, even for those who want installation CDs sent to them. But there are some signs. For one thing, there are 60 people who are authorized to approve Ubuntu software changes and many more who supply them with the modifications. Ubuntu also distributed 1.4 million copies of its first version, called Warty Warthog. And it tops the reader interest charts at DistroWatch, a site that catalogs Linux distributions.
One thing Ubuntu lacks is commercial partnerships, but there are some early signs that's changing. VMware, whose software lets multiple operating systems run on the same computer, added experimental Ubuntu support with its new version 5 beta, citing customer demand. And Hewlett-Packard sells notebook computers with Ubuntu in Europe and Africa, with plans to expand to desktops in the region, spokeswoman Nita Miller said.
Home site-download-FREE
Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:4536, old post ID:36149
