Ubuntu and Mozilla, Together?
I was reading this interesting article by someone on buntfu called “Ubuntu and Mozilla: The inevitable alliance“. There isn’t a way to comment on the actual article, there is no author links/names and it is in a sense simply idle speculation.
But right down there are the bottom of the page is some interesting misconceptions about the nature of Google, Canonical and Mozilla. The old chesnut that confuses Ubuntu with Canonical, the former is a foundation which was never used and the later is a privately held business in the Isle of Man (UK) which controls the entire business and community. Mozilla is a Corporation and a Foundation (in multiple parts) and Google is a share held corporation with a responsibility to it’s share holders only.
It’s possible that Canonical could be sold to Google, but Mark would either want serious control or some sort of section that allows design and implementation of features to roll through. I think the job of Ubuntu isn’t finished yet and I don’t think Mark is ready to simply sell for cash (more? what ever for?) or give up control.
The combination of Mozilla and Ubuntu? Well both have really weird trademark policies that cause grief, which plenty of delicate discussion was needed to resolve. So I suppose they’re common in that sense, but otherwise? Mozilla focuses so much of it’s efforts on the Windows platform that their Linux releases seem more like the personal project of a handful of people, or at least that’s my perception given how much faster Windows Firefox via wine is compared to native Ubuntu Firefox.
I can see the commonality, I just think it’d take a bit of shifting in the industry to end up with the two in a closer relationship. People are already mooting moving to Chromium as the default web browser in Ubuntu and there are plenty of other web browsers in the repository that are moving to webkit and away from gekko.
To sum, I think all these organisations are very different beasts with different primary goals, I can see closer relationships, but merging or buying would seem unlikely at this time.
Tags: canonical, chrome, google, linux, mozilla, Ubuntu
True, I switched to Chrome as soon as it was stable enough…the other webkit browser to look at is Arora IMO…
I’d hate anything to happen to Canonical…if it goes down, then Ubuntu will be in a bad shape; even as a community project.
So much misinformation. Mozilla a foundation? All people working on Mozilla are employed by Mozilla Corp, a privately held company. And the people employed by the charities are paid by gifts from mozilla corp to the charity (thinking of mozilla europe). So you have a non-profit body, employing nobody, owning two for profit companies, employing everyine. Isn’t cutting the story short a bit wrong?
then, Ubuntu foundation, ruling Ubuntu? Check wikipedia – the foundation was setup, but was *never* used, it is completely dormant. And Canonical has full control over Ubuntu, and has proved several times that it could do unpopular changes to Ubuntu without the agreement of the community (see mako’s last post about ubuntu store, think about the motd advertising for landscape). There is ongoing confusion purposely made about this – look at canonical booths always labeled “ubuntu” on events, canonical jobs being advertised on ubuntu.com/employment, all canonical events being tagged “ubuntu”. Reason given to me at the time was that “nobody would know what canonical is, the buzzword being ubuntu”.
Remember this:
“Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical Ltd, founders of the popular Ubuntu, a Linux-based operating system, have today announced the creation of The Ubuntu Foundation with an initial funding commitment of US$10m. The Ubuntu Foundation will employ core Ubuntu community members to ensure that Ubuntu (www.ubuntu.com) will remain fully supported for an extended period of time [...] It’s important for us to distinguish the philanthropic and non-commercial work that is at the heart of the Ubuntu project, from the commercial support and certification programs that are the focus of Canonical Ltd.” said Mark Shuttleworth
As of today, the foundation doesn’t employ anyone, and the distinction between ubuntu and canonical is blurred on prupose.
Also remember, Mark is not CEO anymore. I wouldn’t bet he still has 100% control over Ubuntu.
I would really appreciate if you could post a new story regarding this. I have grown extremely tired of reading people writing “Ubuntu is run by a not for profit organisation”. It is just untrue. Ubuntu is run by Canonical, and Canonical, although giving a lot of power to the community, has the final say in what goes into ubuntu and what doesn’t. It is *not* a community-run project, even if the comunity as a lot of input.
“Mark would either want serious control or some sort of section that allows design and implementation of features to roll through”.
No, Mark Shuttleworth would want serious money.
The day Ubuntu is sold to Google, Microsoft, or anyone else, is the day I rm -rf /* and install straight Debian and then spend a sh*tload of time re-configuring it like my installation of Ubuntu is. Once I do that, I should be set. Thank Goddess for Remastersys.
What for?
“In 2003, the Mozilla project created the Mozilla Foundation, an independent non-profit organization supported by individual donors and a variety of companies.” – http://www.mozilla.org/about/history.html
I don’t know anything about the rest of the stuff you said, so don’t ask me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation
You could have googled…
I agree a lot on the “Mozilla focuses so much of it’s efforts on the Windows platform that their Linux releases seem more like the personal project of a handful of people” part. It’s pathetic from a company that’s supposed to support open-source stuff.
Ubuntu relies on Debian, probably more than Canonical. Ubuntu also relies on RedHat, who employ a lot of the upstreams, also probably more than Canonical. Ubuntu will be fine without Canonical, I hope it just merges into Debian if Canonical were ever to go down the gurgler.
Why not invest that time starting now instead of rushed if Ubuntu is ever sold.
“True, I switched to Chrome as soon as it was stable enough” [2]
Firefox on Linux really sux at performance
I switched to Linux as soon as there was a development version of Chrome available. It’s impossible to use Linux with things such as Firefox and Pidgin. Now that we have Chrome and emesene, things are much better. =D
Actually, I did google it… just didn’t look at the wikipedia article (specifically, I googled “Mozilla Foundation”).
As stated in the wikipedia article, the Mozilla Foundation controls all activities of the Mozilla Corporation, and all profits that Mozilla Corp. make are to be reinvested into Mozilla Foundation. What I take from it is that Mozilla Corporation does all the “business stuff” (keeping the website up, etc.), and Mozilla Foundation does all the, erm, other stuff(? organizing projects, making sure Mozilla Corp. is doing the right thing, etc.).
I really don’t see where the story was cut short, though. He said, “Mozilla is a Foundation and a Corporation”, which is correct in a sense. Are you responding to this blog post or the story that this blog post is a response to?
Uhm…. Ubuntu relies on a lot of Canonical paid for infrastructure in the form of all the services that Launchpad provides.
-jef
anything, but no chrome on linux!
google knows already enough of my life :p
then, if someone wants to install it, he’s free to do it, but I believe that firefox and many other browsers are nearer to ubuntu’s philosophy…..
And actually, I find Firefox very fast on Ubuntu (maybe my 3 pcs have steroids, if nobody else think that FF is fast..), and in any case, in the long term it’s lighter than Chrome
@Leolas Try Chromium and see the difference compared to Firefox.
I recall hearing (I think at UDS Barcelona?) that the reason Firefox for Windows was so fast is due to code profiling. Mozilla releases a Windows build that’s been profiled so the branch detection is fairly accurate…good optimisation. Generic Linux builds don’t have that level of optimisation because there are so many distros to optimise for. Someone from Canonical was talking about profiling some packages in Ubuntu to improve compiler optimisation down the line for those packages. I think Firefox was one of them.