Mark Shuttleworth’s evolving Ubuntu desktop war
Posted by: admin in Business and Politics
Mark Shuttleworth and Matt Asay Skiing Las Lenas
(Credit: Matt Asay)
I’ve been very fortunate to get to spend some time with Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu, during my trip to Argentina. Mark and I spent the day skiing in Las Lenas, with some soft snow by the middle of the day and a lot of great conversation throughout the day.
One question we discussed at length: what is Mark’s ambition for Ubuntu?
In trying to get at the answer to this question, InternetNews this day asks: why doesn’t Canonical work with SAP and Oracle to get them to support Ubuntu? But this sort of question doesn’t get anywhere near Mark’s ambition for Ubuntu. It doesn’t anticipate the intersection of the web and the desktop.
The more I talk with Mark, the more I think he’s a very, very smart person. He recognizes that Ubuntu needs to be more appealing on the desktop than the Mac to generate user adoption, but that’s not really where his attention is focused, so far as I have the ability to tell. He’s thinking bigger than desktop bits.
He’s thinking of cloud-plus-desktop bits. And this, my friends, is why Mark may end up winning the “desktop” war.
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