The story thus far for Canonical:

Young successful South African entrepreneur wants to give back to the technology that helped make him successful in the first place. He and a team of developers build a Linux distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux. He also starts a commercial company, the aforementioned Canonical, to help support and build an infrastructure around the distribution, known to the world as Ubuntu. Ubuntu grows in popularity, and becomes one of the premier desktop-oriented distros.

Most of us have heard this story before. Young cosmonaut makes it big in the rough and tumble world of the penguin. But now, in the midst of Canonical's first big event, the question becomes: where do Canonical--and Ubuntu--go from here?

The key, according to Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical, is to try very hard to keep to the company's core values. And having a back up plan in case the best-laid plans go awry.

For Shuttleworth, that plan is to maintain a separation between the commercial entity of Canonical and the Ubuntu community.

More Here.