Canonical Ltd.

infobox company
company_name = Canonical Ltd.
company_
company_type = Private company limited by shares [The Isle of Man Companies Registry, Annual Return 2005 for Company no. 110334C ("non-distributable, available for a fee of £1.00")]
genre = Software Development
foundation = 5 March 2004
founder = Mark Shuttleworth
location = Europe "(Registered: Douglas, Isle of Man. Operational HQ: Millbank Tower, London, United Kingdom)"
key_people = Mark Shuttleworth
area_served = Worldwide
products = Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu, Launchpad, Bazaar, TheOpenCD, Gobuntu
revenue = Not released [cite news |first=Jeremy |last=Kirk |authorlink= |author= |coauthors= |title=Canonical chases deals to ship Ubuntu Server preinstalled |url= http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/10/09/Canonical-chases-deal-to-ship-Ubuntu-server-OS_1.html |format= |work= |publisher=IDG News Service |location= |id= |pages= |page= |date=2007-10-09 |accessdate=2007-12-12 |quote=But enlargement of its enterprise support business could bring more contracts to Canonical, which is not yet profitable but does not release revenue figures. ]
num_employees = 200+ [cite web|url=http://canonical.com/aboutus|title=About us|publisher=Canonical Ltd|accessdate=2008-10-10|quote=Founded in late 2004, Canonical Ltd is a company headquartered in Europe with over 200 employees working in 23 countries (and counting).]
subsid = Canonical UK Ltd.
owner = Mark Shuttleworth
homepage = [http://www.canonical.com/ www.canonical.com]
footnotes = Formerly "M R S Virtual Development Ltd" [cite web|url=http://portal.gov.im/pvi/CompanyDetails.aspx?company=110334C|publisher=The Isle of Man Companies Registry|title=Company no. 110334C|quote= [ Previous names: ] M R S VIRTUAL DEVELOPMENT LIMITED [ Name type: ] PREVIOUS|accessdate=2005-05-18]

Canonical Ltd. [UK registered trademark [http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tm/t-find/t-find-number?trademark=E4059218 #E4059218] "CANONICAL", filed 2004–09–29.] 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, support office in Montreal and OEM team in Lexington, Massachusetts, USA [cite web|publisher=Canonical Ltd.|url=http://blog.canonical.com/?p=29|title=Sylvania brings new Atom-based netbook to market in record time with Ubuntu Netbook Remix|date=2008-08-19|accessdate=2008-09-19|quote=In the OEM Services team at Canonical, primarily based in Lexington, MA and Taipei, Taiwan, we engage with manufacturers to produce images of Ubuntu specific to their hardware]

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.

Open source software

* The Ubuntu family of Linux distributions:
** Ubuntu [UK registered trademark [http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tm/t-find/t-find-number?trademark=E4059119 #E4059119] "UBUNTU", filed 2004–09–29.] , a Debian-based Linux distribution with a GNOME desktop.
** Kubuntu [UK registered trademark [http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tm/t-find/t-find-number?trademark=E4541661 #E4541661] "KUBUNTU", filed 2005–07–08.] , the KDE desktop on top of the Ubuntu core system.
** Xubuntu, the Xfce desktop on top of the Ubuntu core system.
** Edubuntu [UK registered trademark [http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tm/t-find/t-find-number?trademark=E4541678 #E4541678] "EDUBUNTU", filed 2005–07–08.] , the Ubuntu core improved specifically for educational or thin-client environments.
** Gobuntu, a stripped variant of Ubuntu consisting entirely of free software.
** Ubuntu JeOS, an efficient variant of Ubuntu configured specifically for virtual appliances.
* Bazaar [UK registered trademark [http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tm/t-find/t-find-number?trademark=E5152467 #E5152467] "BAZAAR", filed 2006–06–21.] , a decentralized revision control system.
* OpenCD (now defunct), a collection of high quality free and open-source software compiled for users of Microsoft Windows. The programs come with an easy-to-use graphical installer and run under Microsoft Windows and cover most tasks. Examples are the GIMP, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox and PDF creation software.
* Storm, an object-relational mapper for Python [ [http://www.ubuntu.com/news/storm-python-orm-open-sourced Canonical Releases Storm as Open Source |Ubuntu ] ] , part of the Launchpad codebase.
* Upstart - an event-based replacement for the init daemon

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. [ [http://www.go-opensource.org/freedom/what-is-the-freedom-league.html :: Home |Geek Freedom League ] ]
* 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.

Proprietary projects

* Landscape [UK registered trademark [http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tm/t-find/t-find-number?trademark=E5152418 #E5152418] "LANDSCAPE", filed 2006–06–21, published 2007–08–06.] , a tool for managing large numbers of Ubuntu-based systems via a web-browser.
* Launchpad [UK registered trademark [http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tm/t-find/t-find-number?trademark=E6251219 #E6251219] "LAUNCHPAD", filed 2007–09–04.] 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

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. [cite news|last=Moody|first=Glyn|authorlink=Glyn Moody|title='Linux is a platform for people, not just specialists'|date=2008-05-22|accessdate=2008-05-23|url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/may/22/internet.software|publisher=The Guardian] This strategy has been compared to Red Hat's business strategies in the 1990s.

Employees

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–).
* Matt Zimmerman, formerly of the Debian security team. Now Canonical/Ubuntu Chief Technical Officer (2004–).
* Scott James Remnant, formerly a Debian and GNU maintainer of GNU Libtool and co-author of the Planet aggregator. At Canonical, he has developed Upstart (2004–).
* Jono Bacon, of LugRadio fame. Canonical's new "Ubuntu community leader". (2006–)
* Ben Collins, former Debian Project Leader and kernel developer. (2006–).
* Lars Wirzenius, first contributor to the Linux kernel and Linus Torvalds' former office mate. (2007–)

Past

Notable past employees:
* Dave Miller of Bugzilla fame, employee no. 1 (2004).
* Jeff Waugh, employee no. 3 of GNOME and Planet-fame, 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).

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. [http://bazaar-vcs.org/SprintLondonMay07 ("Where?")] In the summer of 2006 Canonical opened an office in Montreal, Quebec to house their global support and services operation. Shankland, Stephen. [http://www.news.com/Canonical-seeks-profit-from-free-Ubuntu/2100-7344_3-6123249.html Canonical seeks profit from free Ubuntu] , "C|NET", 2006-10-06. Retrieved on 2007-10-19.]

References

External links

* [http://www.canonical.com/ Canonical.com] , official site
* [http://www.ubuntu.com/ Ubuntu.com] , Ubuntu home page