Canonical Ltd.

Canonical Ltd

Type	Private company limited by shares[1]
Industry	Computer software
Founded	5 March 2004
Founder(s)	Mark Shuttleworth
Headquarters	London, United Kingdom
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Mark Shuttleworth Jane Silber (CEO)
Products	Ubuntu, Launchpad, Bazaar, Landscape, Ubuntu One[2]
Revenue	$30 million (2009)[3]
Employees	500+[4]
Subsidiaries	Canonical Group Ltd[5] Canonical USA Inc. Canonical China Ltd (Chinese: 科能软件股份有限公司) Canonical Brasil Ltda Canonical Canada Ltd Canonical Ltd Taiwan Br. (Chinese: 英屬曼島商肯諾有限公司臺灣分公司)
Website	www.canonical.com
References: Formerly "M R S Virtual Development Ltd"[6]

Ubuntu, the company's main product

Canonical Ltd.^[7] is a UK-based privately held computer software company founded (and funded) by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth to market commercial support and related services for Ubuntu and related projects. Canonical employs staff in more than 30 countries and maintains offices in London, Boston, Taipei, Montreal, Shanghai, São Paulo and the Isle of Man.^[4]

Projects

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

Open-source software

Mark Shuttleworth (standing) and other Canonical employees discuss Launchpad at a design sprint in Germany

• Ubuntu,^[8] a Debian-based Linux distribution with Unity (it formerly used GNOME) desktop
• Bazaar,^[9] a decentralized revision control system
• Storm, an object-relational mapper for Python,^[10] part of the Launchpad codebase
• Juju,
• Upstart, an event-based replacement for the init daemon
• Quickly,
• Launchpad^[11][12] a centralised website containing several component web applications designed to make collaboration between free software projects easier:
  • PPA, a special software repository for uploading software packages to be built and published as an APT repository
  • Blueprints, a tool for planning features of software
  • Code, hosting of Bazaar branches
  • Answers, support tracker
  • 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.

Other projects and services

• Landscape,^[13] a proprietary web service for centralized management of Ubuntu systems
• Ubuntu Software Center
• Ubuntu One, a service for file synchronization and other uses
• Canonical supplies some of the core engineering to Linaro which invests in upstream projects
• Ubuntu Advantage, In Japan, the support service sales by K.K. Ashisuto.

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. Canonical also claimed it will wait for the business to turn into a profitable one within another 3 to 5 years. He regarded Canonical as positioning itself as demand for services related to free software rose.^[14] This strategy has been compared to Red Hat's business strategies in the 1990s.^[15] 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.^[16]

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.^[17] At the same time, the word Ubuntu was trademarked in connection with clothing and accessories.^[18]

Subsidiaries

• Canonical Group Ltd is located in London.
• Canonical USA Inc. is located in Lexington, Massachusetts.
• Canonical China Ltd (Chinese: 科能软件股份有限公司) is located in Shanghai.
• Canonical Brasil Ltda is located in São Paulo.
• Canonical Canada Ltd is located in Montreal.
• Canonical Ltd Taiwan Br. (Chinese: 英屬曼島商肯諾有限公司臺灣分公司) is located in Taipei.

Employees

Ubuntu Developer Summit October 2011

Canonical has more than 500 employees.^[4] The head office is in London, previously on the 27th floor of Millbank Tower,^[19] but now on the 5th Floor of the Blue Fin Building, Southwark Street.^[20] In the summer of 2006, Canonical opened an office in Montreal to house its global support and services operation.^[15] Taipei 101 is also home to a Canonical office.^[21] There is also an OEM team in Lexington, Massachusetts, United States.^[22]

Current

Notable current employees of Canonical include:

• Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu project, former Debian maintainer of Apache and founder of Thawte Consulting (2004–). CEO until March 2010.
• Jane Silber, CEO since March 2010; formerly COO and leader of the Ubuntu One project
• Jono Bacon, Ubuntu community leader (2006–)

Past

Notable past employees:

• Ben Collins, former Debian Project Leader and kernel developer (2006–2009)
• Dave Miller, known for Bugzilla, employee no. 1 (2004)
• Jeff Waugh, employee no. 3, GNOME and Planet aggregator developer, Business Development (2004–2006)
• Benjamin Mako Hill, core developer and community coordinator (2004–2005)
• Ian Jackson, developer of dpkg and former Debian Project Leader (2005–2007)
• Lars Wirzenius, first contributor to the Linux kernel and Linus Torvalds' former office mate (2007–2009)
• Scott James Remnant, formerly a Debian and GNU maintainer of GNU Libtool and co-author of the Planet aggregator (2004–2011).^[23]
• Matt Zimmerman, formerly of the Debian security team. Worked at Canonical as Ubuntu Chief Technical Officer (2004–2011).^[24]
• John D. Bernard, was responsible for all major marketing deployments (2009–2012)
• Stuart Langridge (2009–2013)

References

External links

• Official website