*Minutes of Mark Shuttleworth's talk at IIT-Bombay*
The GNU/Linux Users Group of Mumbai held an additional GLUG meet in
january at KReSIT, IIT-Bombay. Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth
interacted with the GLUG members and shared his views and ideas
regarding ``Free Software'' and how it made a perfect business
sense. This talk was attended by about 60 people coming from all over
the country.
Falling short of time, Mark Shuttleworth quickly talked about the
following points, apart from answering questions.
* Community and its background:
Before starting his talk, Mark was eager to know about the Mumbai's
GLUG community, its background.. since every GLUG is unique in its own
respect. He then talked about his own background and about his
ventures.
* Ubuntu Organisation Structure:
Mark talked about how ubuntu project started and what its goals are,
how Ubuntu project is different from Debian yet how both still manage
to collaborate with each other, how latest packages are adopted from
upstream to make Ubuntu's archives always fresh.
* Business Sense:
Quoting Mark's own words, ``... knowledge and software are
copyable. Their value or quality does not decrease when it is shared..''
According to him, this makes a perfect business sense. Ubuntu project,
and all the best things that they produce, will always remain freely
accessible to the entire community, individuals or large companies
alike. Canonical is in a self sustaining business since it provides
software services to organisations which are willing to hire them.
Canonical has tied up with LPI and plans to start certification
programs for Ubuntu professionals.
* Free CD distribution:
Mark answered several questions related to free software distribution
and the rationale behind it. There are several parts of world where
internet access is extremely costly. Free CDs therefore have an
important role to play.
Some questions were asked about the free CDs that Canonical ships
worldwide and how some people tend to misuse the resources. Mark then
recalled an incident wherein a `gentoo' fanatic tried to drain out
Canonical's money by ordering 500 CDs.
* Dapper Drake Preview:
Mark gave a brief idea about the upcoming ubuntu release codenamed
`Dapper Drake' and why it is going to have a 3 year(desktop)/5
year(server) support cycle and security updates. Dapper is also a
distribution which is going to be certified by third party application
providers like IBM.
Starting from Dapper release, users will have the luxury of a GUI
installation program and a single CD which acts as both live and
installable.
* Freedom Toaster etc.
Answering a question related to Freedom Toaster, Mark explained the
entire concept behind it and how the whole idea came into a reality
during a brainstorming session. We couldn't talk about his space
travel however due to lack of time.
- tea break
Mark personally autographed on Ubuntu CDs and stickers and posed for
group photos. Though he left on time since he had to catch a flight,
but GLUG members continued to interact till tea lasted :)
----
*Details of next GLUG meet:
Date: 12 February 2005
-> Agenda : to be decided
-> Location: Some other garden probably.
* Presentation slides:
Presentation slides of Mark's talk will be available from the glug
homepage.
* Pictures:
http://db.glug-bom.org/pics/ <Gallery2 Photo Album>
http://www.glug-bom.org/pics/ <Classic Apache style>
Anurag
--
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gnu /noo/ n. Ox like antelope; (abbr.) /gnoo/ n.
(recursive acronym) Gnu's Not Unix.