[ Thanks to Rex
Djere for this link. ]
“I recently got into a friendly argument with a friend
of mine who is very much anti-Ubuntu. He believes that Canonical is
slowly but surely selling-out the GNU/Linux community to make a
profit. I completely disagree with him. I have watched several
interviews with Canonical’s CEO, Mark Shuttleworth, and I find him
to be as committed to the free software/open source principles as
anyone else. I also think that he has a very adventurous streak,
and he is not the type of person that likes to take the same
conservative routes that many others prefer. Given my analysis of
his personality, I was not at all surprised by Canonical’s decision
to replace Gnome shell with Unity, and to replace X Server with
Wayland. Ultimately, I do believe that profit is part of the
motivation, but I also think that there is a strong desire to
establish a reputation for boldness and to make Ubuntu stand out as
a GNU/Linux distribution. I like what they are doing because it
brings GNU/Linux a lot of attention and draws in people who are
curious. I want to eventually see GNU/Linux pre-installed on
computers at retail outlets so that the consumer has real choices.
The extent to which Ubuntu has helped to put GNU/Linux on people’s
radar brings us one step closer to making a GNU/Linux world a
reality”