Talk:Canonical (company)

Embrace and extend?

I've reverted an addition about "controversy" and accusations of "embrace and extend" tactics, because there didn't seem much to back it up. Firstly, it used "weasel words" like "Some argues that"[sic] (see Wikipedia:Avoid weasel terms), which have the effect of shirking discussion of who says it, and why; then, a reference was added which looks to me more like the middle of a flame-war than an "Insight on Canonical's contribution model" — at best a heated political debate.

All that being said, I've no idea whether the alleged "controversy" does actually exist, and there may be a better reference out there, and a notable person or group who has made the accusation. Google is a bit of a blunt instrument for this, because "canonical" is a rather common word (especially in geek jargon), so I could only try [unsuccessfully] to use things like "Canonical Ltd" "embrace and extend". So, anyone with further insight on this, feel free to contribute it. - IMSoP 14:49, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

What's the objective?

That's something interesting to discuss, but definitely not in the main page (thanks IMSoP).

• On Ubuntu wonders if Ubuntu is "good" or "bad" wrt Debian and argues the Ubuntu is trying to get more independant from Debian.

• Is Ubuntu a debian derivative or is it a fork? discusses the same issue.

• In [1] it is said that Mark Shuttleworth said: "Canonical does aim to make some money in support. Additionally, he hopes to get some government grants to build localized distributions".

• Tom Lord mentions Bazaar as a "takeover" [2] ("Arch has been a successful project, culminating ultimately in its "takeover" by Canonical corp. who have adopted it as a cornerstone of their business."). The exact reasons for the fork are difficult to figure out ([3], [4]).

• [5] makes a parallel between Canonical's LaunchPad and Google's way to give acces to data, and the freedom-related issues. Possible consequences are mentioned, although no real conclusion is reached. He mentions decentralisation as a fix.

• The fact the company develops unreleased ASP (Application_service_provider) software (LaunchPad, Rosetta, Malone) is disturbing. This is considered a non-free practice by some, for example Affero designed a derivate version of the GNU GPL to address this issue - this license is considered as a prototype for the GNU GPL version 3 by the FSF. I remember about LaunchPad being freed in the future, I cannot find references to that.

--

Anthony Towns, the Debian release manager (who is also the author of "On Ubuntu" linked above), comments at [6] that Shuttleworth's statement about "planning" to free LaunchPad is very vague. Thayvian 05:12, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

There's also some potentially relevant information on Mark Shuttleworth's Ubuntu user homepage: [7], see eg the answer to 'If you don't make a commercial "Ubuntu Professional Edition", how can Ubuntu be sustainable?' which talks a little about the Ubuntu Foundation/Canonical distinction, although not in great detail. Thayvian 07:09, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

The "Bazaar" that Tom Lord talks about was a fork of Arch with a more user-friendly command-line interface (that was at least one reason for the fork AFAIK), but in any case, the Bazaar that is currently used (formerly known as Bazaar-NG) is a completely different application. 213.118.38.76 (talk) 16:03, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Profitability?

At its current definition, this looks more like a charity donating money for free software efforts. Any information on the profitability and where revennues are coming from will be highly appreciated. (not precise, I understand such information may not be public yet)

Information on profitability has not been released. Canonical earn revenue from providing support, training and certification of Ubuntu. See http://www.canonical.com/support for example dsas 18:12, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

The interview at http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/9927/1090/ (entitled "Ubuntu is not a charity") is one of several which answer this question unambiguously Mdz 23:41, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

How do they get money? I got a bunch of free Linux Cds! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Realg187 (talk • contribs) 04:30, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Because, they expect that each person that receives a cd will use it for him and probably many others, passing it along, which will then generate publicity for the ubuntu name, and will get recognized. So basically, it's not profitable to ship cd's in the short term, but in the long term it will really help, especially when everyone will know the name and corporates will be like hey, let's use that, I use it for my computer. Basically, that's what they're doing/trying to do. 98.21.62.209 (talk) 21:45, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Damn't, I edited it without logging in first... gah, why can't wiki just remember me forever.

Reverted false claim in "Employees"

I reverted the edit from 09:40, 3 June 2007 by 70.137.157.244 claiming that one "Douglas Mallach" had been an employee since 2005; to my knowledge (as an employee) Canonical has never employed anyone by that name. If anyone wants to put it back the onus is on them to provide a citation. Colin Watson 08:04, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Old Offices

The old offices (before the April 2007 move) - was this the Mossop Street address? Worth mentioning where it was? I only ask out of pure interest really, coz the company I work with recently moved into Mossop Street and witnessed "Fieldwave/Canonical" moving out ...

The address (if we think it's worth adding) is:

25-27 Axiscross House

London

SW3 2LY

Nearest tube station (well, it's about 1/2 way between South Ken and Sloane Square)

86.9.157.122 20:32, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I think something along the lines of:

• Fieldwave Ltd., 3rd Floor, Axiscross House, 25/27 Mossop Street, South Kensington, London, SW3 2LY.
• Fieldwave Ltd., 27th Floor, Millbank Tower, 21-24 Millbank, City of Westminster, London, SW1P 4QP.

Sladen 15:50, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Quality of information

A lot of almost certainly true but also unsourced information is being put in this article by Canonical employees and their close associates (full disclosure: were I to add more info, I would also fall in this category): most notably the entire "Offices" section, but also a fair bit of info about who has been an employee. One particular concern is the "$10m+" figure quoted for revenue. There's an HTML comment reading "Mark Shuttleworth, quoted in an interview as how much it was costing, needs finding" about this figure, introduced here. But is this the $10m figure Shuttleworth quotes as his initial investment in Canonical? That's very different from revenue. Thayvian 01:05, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

gobuntu

i just added gobuntu to the products. Gobuntu is a new variant consisting on free software/--Gustyfalcon 04:20, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Employees

The list of employees seems unecyclopedic. I've removed all that did not have an Wikipedia article that I did not know of so the list is now a list of notable employees.

The following individuals were removed from the list:

• Robert Collins, of Squid cache-fame. Employee no. 2 who has worked on GNU arch and Bazaar for Canonical (2004–).
• James Troup, Debian FTP Master, in charge of server infrastructure at Canonical (2004–).
• Michael Vogt, developer of Debian's Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) and the Synaptic Package Manager.
• Jonathan Riddell, former developer of Umbrello, who heads up Kubuntu development. (2005–).
• Colin Watson, Debian-Installer developer. (2004–).
• Adam Conrad, build daemon administrator (2005–).
• Fabio Massimo Di Nitto, Ubuntu-server lead (2004–).
• Kurt von Finck, former Gobe Software support lead, GNOME sysadmin, and free software advocate. One of the senior support staff in Montreal. (2006-)
• Kees Cook, Ubuntu security team (2006–).
• Oliver Grawert, Edubuntu lead (2004–).
• Bryce Harrington (2007-)
• Matthew Revell Launchpad Marketing Manager, former Lugradio host.
• Steve Langasek, Debian release manager. (2007–) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sladen (talk • contribs) 01:53, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
• Daniel Stone, X.Org developer, now at Nokia (2004–2006).
• Dafydd Harries, localisation and Rosetta, now at Collabora (2004–2006).
• Thom May, former Debian Apache maintainer (2004–2005).
• Lamont Jones, now back at Hewlett-Packard (2004–2004).
• David Miller of Bugzilla fame, employee no. 1 (2004).
• Jordi Mallach, Rosetta team member (2005-2006).
• Jeff Bailey, Operation Manager, Global Support and Services. Also some distro team work. Former Debian toolchain and glibc maintainer. In charge of support operation in Montreal, Canada. (2005–2007); now at Google.

—mako๛ 18:45, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Picture of Shuttleworth used in German language Article

Mark Shuttleworth

might be interesting for the English language article also.--84.157.255.75 (talk) 16:56, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I think there's a few shots of Canonical employees around; eg. 2007-11-canonical.jpg, or wiesbaden-mark-launchpad-big.jpg which I'm sure we might be able to get under a suitable license. —Sladen (talk) 17:10, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

new stats

http://www.internetnews.com/software/article.php/3780651 has quite a few stats on employees. --194.36.2.30 (talk) 18:36, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Is Launchpad still proprietary software?

I thought that they had opened it. Should it still be in the proprietary section? 71.233.247.186 (talk) 01:10, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I believe that the Launchpad (website) article states:

At UDS Jaunty in late 2008, it was announced the Launchpad source code release would be on 21 July 2009.

—Sladen (talk) 01:15, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

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Misattributed projects

Freedom Toaster, Go-Open Source and Freedom Toaster were actually Shuttleworth Foundation projects, and wasn't implemented or funded by Canonical. The only link it has is that it was also funded by Mark Shuttleworth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JonathanCarter (talk • contribs) 01:15, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Those links have been on this page for several years, but I believe you're right. I've removed them now. -- Fluteflute ^{Talk Contributions} 21:47, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 07:06, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

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Canonical Ltd. → Canonical Ltd — Remove '.' and restore previous article title; the previous move had been performed on the basis of a '.' being present[8] in the company website copyright notice—on closer inspection these are merely end-of-sentence punctuation (full stops/periods). The subsequent tagging[9] with {{R from modification}} means that this will require administrator assistance. —Sladen (talk) 04:43, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Lubuntu

Lubuntu is now an official ubuntu derivant--193.212.101.196 (talk) 11:01, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Requested Move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: article not moved Armbrust, B.Ed. ^{Let's talk}_{about my edits?} 16:25, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

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Canonical Ltd. → Canonical Limited – The current citation purporting to support the company name actually says "CANONICAL LIMITED, One Circular Road, Douglas, Isle Of Man, IM1 1AF" and gets rid of the full-stop strangeness in the process. —Sladen (talk) 19:31, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Oppose - The WP:COMMONNAME appears to be Canonical Ltd., as seen in the company's website, Twitter account, LinkedIn account, and the copyright notice on the Ubuntu website and the variant editions (xubuntu, kubuntu, etc.). It is used much more commonly and is therefore more recognizable than Canonical Limited. - SudoGhost 19:43, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

[10] says "Canonical Ltd" (no full stop). [11] says "Canonical Ltd[end-of-sentence] Ubuntu and Canonical are registered trademarks of Canonical Ltd[end-of-sentence]" (no full stop). [12] says "Canonical Ltd.[end-of-sentence]" (full stop). —Sladen (talk) 01:37, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not following how a period at the end changes the fact that Canonical Limited is not the WP:COMMONNAME. "Canonical Limited" is not the common name, whether a period is at the end or not doesn't change the fact that I oppose this requested move due to Canonical Limited being an infrequently used title for the article's subject. - SudoGhost 02:18, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

It's the extraneous full-stop ('.') I'm trying to get rid of (and which isn't the commonname, although it does appear to crop up in some published uses). What solutions can you suggest that help achieve that? —Sladen (talk) 03:06, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Comment we should not really use shortended words or abbreviations, Ltd is just a shortened version of Limited and nearly all companies will shorten it in general use, doesnt mean we have to use it as an article title. Normally we would not included it in the title at all but we need to disambiguate from Canonical, but a quick look at the article and company website would show that the article should really be Canonical Group which is what this article is about. The website and references point to the Canonical Group. It would remove some obvious confusion between Canonical Limited (an IOM company) and Canonical Limited (a Welsh IT company based in Monmouthshire, Wales) The linkedin page referenced clearly says Canonical UK Limited which is at Millbank, London still not the same as the Welsh company. The canonical website legal bit says it the Canonical Group Limited. I know nothing about the company or products but it is clear that the article is about the Canonical Group and not the IOM (or is it Welsh) company. MilborneOne (talk) 20:07, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Canonical Group would seem to be logical and allow getting rid of the Limited/Ltd/Ltd.. Do you fancy proposing this? —Sladen (talk) 01:37, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Oppose as per SudoGhost. InverseHypercube (talk) 23:31, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Oppose, per WP:COMMONNAME, MilborneOne reasoning. --SF007 (talk) 23:46, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Headcount

Re [13], The figure 550 is used here: [14]. —Sladen (talk) 10:07, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

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Netplan is also a Canonical Ltd package/project I believe.

Canonical's "netplan" (https://netplan.io/) is another project. It creates a new mechanism for doing network YAML setup on Ubuntu machines, presumably because there were so many problems enumerating network config in Debian. Mcvoorhis (talk) 14:23, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

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