Meet Ubuntu Linux's new CEO (Q&A)
Submitted by srlinuxx on Thu, 03/11/2010 - 14:01
Jane Silber has been chief executive of Canonical for 11 days.
But she's no outsider swooping in to take over Ubuntu Linux's corporate sponsor. She joined Canonical in June 2004, two months after previous CEO Mark Shuttleworth founded the company with a few programmers he recruited from the Debian Linux project on which Ubuntu is based.
Since then Canonical has grown to about 320 employees and has made Ubuntu a major presence in the world of Linux--version 10.04, one of the important "long-term support" versions that arrives every two years, is due in April. It's an unusually sustained effort to make Linux a force on desktop and laptop computers, and among Canonical's accomplishments is a mainstream foothold on Dell PCs.
What hasn't changed is the company's insistence on making the version of its software it gives away for free identical to the product it supports commercially--a move that still contrasts with Linux incumbent Red Hat. And another thing: six years on, Canonical still is not profitable.
Being in the red now doesn't mean that the company--funded in part by Shuttleworth's proceeds from selling his earlier company, Thawte Consulting, to VeriSign for $575 million in 2000--doesn't plan to be in the black. Canonical has three main businesses: selling server management services to companies using Ubuntu Linux; working with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) such as Hewlett-Packard or processor companies that need help with Linux; and most recently, an Internet-based tool for buying and synchronizing music files and other personal data.
I sat down with Silber, who moved from chief operations officer to CEO on March 1, in the company's London headquarters.
T&A
How about some T&A heh heh I know, I'm sooo bad.
Torture & Aggravation ? Ubuntu intranet instead of Google gears
How the cloud has been changing? Still Ubuntu stayed with GCC Gnu/Linux. Its time for browser OS and its apps in packet switching?
Each local apps has its own baggage of codes that has to meet internet standards of codecs. Gears(a utility to work offline) took care of standards. Open Office had to use coLinux and browser both on the net? Text messaging(abbreviated and efficient decisions) had obsoleted Open office, long ago.
GCC Gnu/Linux is Torture and Aggravation for cloud computing? Stallman wants to go back to intranet, So does Ubuntu. Text messages are free. Where is the money for open office on paid intranet? Once email caught on, Novl knows Wordperfect was a bad investment and sold it.
Good Luck.