The Ubuntu project is getting more and more fishy. After extending business partnerships (Dell, HP, ASUS,ETC...) and establishing it name as a leading Linux OS and base, Ubuntu has taken a new path and that is the commercial one. Mark Shuttleworth, Benevolent Dictator for Life, 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 (2008+ 5 years = 2013 ). He regarded Canonical as positioning itself as demand for services related to free software rose. This strategy has been compared to Red Hat's business strategies in the 1990s. However, in an early 2009 New York Times article, Shuttleworth said that Canonical's revenue was "creeping" towards $30 million, the company's break-even point. In 2007, Canonical launched an International online shop selling support services and Ubuntu branded goods; later in 2008 it expanded that with a United States-specific shop designed to reduce shipment times.At the same time, the word Ubuntu was trademarked in connection with clothing and accessories. (interview at http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/may/22/internet.software )
Canonical is a multinational after all employing staff in more than 30 countries and maintaining offices in London, Boston, Taipei, Montreal, Shanghai, São Paulo and the Isle of Man and the guys working for it are actually employees of multinationals or came from a multinational background namely John D Bernard (LG and Sony Ericsson) and Jane Silber (Teijin Ltd ). In fact, The new shifts that Ubuntu has been taking goes in this vein. It is gradually distancing itself from the FOSS community. Take this, for instance, Ubuntu’s de facto spiritual leader, Mark Shuttleworth, has announced that key parts of Ubuntu 13.04 will be developed in secret has announced that key parts of Ubuntu 13.04 will be developed in secret. The move towards secret development is just for testing grounds. And By the time Ubuntu 14.04 LTS rolls around, it is planned that the core work on 13.04 will allow Canonical to produce an OS that runs equally well on laptops, desktops, smartphones, tablets, and TVs and that's just the beginning of the road because Ubutnu will no longer be a FOSS in the near future, but probably the will maintain a second-hand version of it for us
Consider yourself warned