Canonical Ltd.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Canonical Ltd.[1]
Type Private company limited by shares[2]
Genre Software Development
Founded 5 March 2004
Founder Mark Shuttleworth
Headquarters Europe (Registered: Douglas, Isle of Man. Operational HQ: Millbank Tower, London, United Kingdom)
Area served Worldwide
Key people Mark Shuttleworth
Products Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Launchpad, Bazaar, TheOpenCD, Gobuntu
Revenue Not released[3]
Owner Mark Shuttleworth
Employees 130 [4]
Subsidiaries Canonical UK Ltd.
Website www.canonical.com
Formerly "M R S Virtual Development Ltd".

Canonical Ltd. is a private company founded (and funded) by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth for the promotion of free software projects. Canonical is registered in the Isle of Man and employs staff around the world, along with their main offices in London and support office in Montreal.

Contents

[edit] Projects sponsored by Canonical

Canonical Ltd continues to back and has created several projects. Principally these are Free/Open source software (FOSS) or tools designed to improve collaboration between Free Software developers and contributors.

[edit] Open source software

[edit] Promotion activities

  • Software Freedom Day, which is held on the third Saturday of each September. Canonical Ltd was the primary sponsor for 2005-2006.
  • Go Open Source, a South African campaign to create awareness of, educate about, and provide access to open-source software. It is important, once awareness of OSS has been created, that interested parties have the ability to gain access to the software and services, and that they have access to additional resources for support and training. It ran from May 2004 to May 2006.
  • Geek Freedom League, The Freedom League is a South African project designed to bring together the best of the open source world and the massive country-wide community of people driven to introduce as many new people as possible to the use of open source software. Anyone with the passion and ability can sign-up and receive all the materials needed to convert as many people and computers as possible. People will be able to log their installs and track their progress.[10]
  • Freedom Toaster, kiosk-style machines located in South Africa designed to avoid costly and prohibitive download costs. Users provide their own blank CD media and after insertion they can choose a Linux distribution of their choice to take home.

[edit] Proprietary projects

Mark Shuttleworth with other Canonical employees. Discussing Launchpad at a design Sprint in Germany.
Mark Shuttleworth with other Canonical employees. Discussing Launchpad at a design Sprint in Germany.
  • Landscape[11], a tool for managing large numbers of Ubuntu-based systems via a web-browser.
  • Launchpad[12] a centralised website containing several component web applications designed to make collaboration between Free Software projects easier:
    • Rosetta, an online language translation tool to help localisation of software (cf. the Rosetta Stone).
    • Malone (as in "Bugsy Malone"), a collaborative bug-tracker that allows linking to other bug-trackers.
    • Soyuz, a tool for creating custom-distributions, such as Kubuntu and Xubuntu.
    • Code - hosting of Bazaar branches
    • Answers - support tracker
    • Blueprints - a tool for planning features of software
    • PPA - personal package archives

[edit] Business plans

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 and regarded Canonical as positioning itself as demand for services related to Free Software rose.[13] This strategy has been compared to Red Hat's business strategies in the 1990s.[14]

[edit] Employees

100+ Canonical employees photographed together during an "All Hands" company conference in 2007.
100+ Canonical employees photographed together during an "All Hands" company conference in 2007.
Notable current employees of Canonical include
Notable past employees

[edit] Offices

Canonical originally started as a wholly virtual organisation with employees working from home. The company now maintains a facility on the 27th floor of the Millbank Tower near Westminster, London.[15] In the summer of 2006 Canonical opened an office in Montreal, Quebec to house their global support and services operation.[14]

[edit] References

  1. ^ UK registered trademark #E4059218 "CANONICAL", filed 2004–09–29.
  2. ^ The Isle of Man Companies Registry, Annual Return 2005 for Company no. 110334C (non-distributable, available for a fee of £1.00)
  3. ^ Kirk, Jeremy. "Canonical chases deals to ship Ubuntu Server preinstalled", IDG News Service, 2007-10-09. Retrieved on 2007-12-12. "But enlargement of its enterprise support business could bring more contracts to Canonical, which is not yet profitable but does not release revenue figures." 
  4. ^ http://canonical.com/aboutus
  5. ^ UK registered trademark #E4059119 "UBUNTU", filed 2004–09–29.
  6. ^ UK registered trademark #E4541661 "KUBUNTU", filed 2005–07–08.
  7. ^ UK registered trademark #E4541678 "EDUBUNTU", filed 2005–07–08.
  8. ^ UK registered trademark #E5152467 "BAZAAR", filed 2006–06–21.
  9. ^ Canonical Releases Storm as Open Source |Ubuntu
  10. ^ :: Home |Geek Freedom League
  11. ^ UK registered trademark #E5152418 "LANDSCAPE", filed 2006–06–21, published 2007–08–06.
  12. ^ UK registered trademark #E6251219 "LAUNCHPAD", filed 2007–09–04.
  13. ^ Moody, Glyn. "'Linux is a platform for people, not just specialists'", The Guardian, 2008-05-22. Retrieved on 2008-05-23. 
  14. ^ a b Shankland, Stephen. Canonical seeks profit from free Ubuntu, C|NET, 2006-10-06. Retrieved on 2007-10-19.
  15. ^ http://bazaar-vcs.org/SprintLondonMay07 ("Where?")

[edit] External links

Free software Portal