Relief

By Jeff Gould, Peerstone Research / Interop News

Sometimes I wonder whether Ubuntu is really an open source software company any more.

Yes, yes, I realize Ubuntu is not a company at all but a free Linux distribution, GPL'd and open source by definition. But still, the Ubuntu distro is sponsored by a traditional for profit company, Canonical Ltd, and it is very fair to say that the distro would not exist without the company. Ubuntu describes itself on its web site as "a community developed and supported project," but in reality it has no separate existence from Canonical and that firm's owner and founder Mark Shuttleworth.

Legally speaking, "Ubuntu" is a trademark owned by Canonical. In practice, it's a brand. As far as I know, the Ubuntu project has no source of revenue other than the Ubuntu Foundation, which is funded by Canonical and Shuttleworth. Most of the key developers behind the Ubuntu distro work for Canonical or the Foundation. So really it isn't so unfair after all to treat Ubuntu as a proxy for Canonical Ltd. And therefore the question at the start of this post is legitimate, to wit: is Ubuntu really an open source – um, well – outfit?

The answer that has recently emerged to this question is, "yes and no."

Yes, of course, because Ubuntu's web site promises that the distro "will always be free of charge, including enterprise releases and security updates." Don't go thinking that this is some fast moving beta like Fedora that will only be supported for a few quarters and is therefore designed to push you into paying real money for a more stable version like RHEL. No, Ubuntu Server Edition 8.04, released just last week, comes with a guarantee of five years of bug fixes and security patches. And "free" covers not just the source code but also the binaries (contrast Red Hat's restrictive policies with RHEL).

You can download the desktop or server versions directly from Ubuntu's site, but if you don't have a fast Internet connection they will actually mail you a free CD (a very nice touch). Be warned, though, that "delivery may take up to ten weeks" (hmm, are they mailing it from the South Pole?). So you may want to buy one from Amazon instead of waiting. Or just break out your credit card and buy a 20-pack of CDs for about $32 from the Canonical online shop.

But no, Ubuntu is not completely open source, not as long as you understand that "Ubuntu" is ultimately just a brand name exploited for commercial purposes by Canonical Ltd. Ubuntu the distro – a cleverly packaged flavor of Debian with many useful value-add features, all properly GPL'd – is free, as we saw. But Ubuntu the enterprise ecosystem – understood as the collection of desktops and servers running Ubuntu in a given organization – is not.

Canonical makes no secret of the fact that it is eager to sell Ubuntu support contracts to enterprise users. 24x7 support on Ubuntu Server will cost you $2,750 per year, or $750 for 9x5. That's basically the Red Hat business model (with free binaries thrown in), and is perfectly uncontroversial, though surprisingly expensive.

Lately however Canonical has introduced a new twist into the Ubuntu business model with the launch of its Landscape systems management and monitoring tool. Basically Landscape is very similar to Red Hat Network. It allows you to track the configurations and status of all your Ubuntu desktops and servers, and to install updates under central control (though with full customization options). And the catch is? This is completely proprietary code. It's not GPL'd, you can't see the source, and you can't get it for free. In fact, you can't even have the binary, because Landscape is provided as an online service only. Only the Landscape client is free and open source, which it has to be of course because it cohabits physically with the kernel on each of your Ubuntu machines.

With Landscape Canonical has effectively abolished the distinction between its business model and Red Hat's, at least as far as enterprise customers are concerned. To use Landscape you must either have a support contract for the Ubuntu instances you are managing or pay $150 per node. One unstated consequence of this model is to push large Ubuntu users into buying support contracts for all of their managed instances instead of only a few (as a friendly Ubuntu sales rep once encouraged me to do).

Now personally I don't think there is anything wrong in Ubuntu – pardon, Canonical – adopting the Red Hat way. On the contrary, I think it's a good thing. It's a clear sign that Mark Shuttleworth – who has been funding Ubuntu out of the half billion dollar fortune he earned from closed source software back in the 90s – wants the Linux distro he created to be able to stand on its own two feet one day as a viable business. My guess is he has a long way to go before that happens, given that Canonical counts 130 employees today against Red Hat's 2200. Converting free users into paying customers has turned out to be a much tougher sales job for the commercial open source players than they imagined. Even Red Hat appears to be struggling to move the revenue needle on JBoss, and I doubt that MySQL's owners would have been so prompt to sell if the database's sales had been growing as fast as its free installed base.

But no matter. Canonical and Ubuntu have the right to choose whatever business model they please. What's comical though is the blatant, almost Orwellian contradiction between their hard-nosed desire to make money and the grandiose Ubuntu philosophy:

"Every computer user should have the freedom to download, run, copy, distribute, study, share, change and improve their software for any purpose, without paying licensing fees."

Yes folks, all open source software programs should be free. But some are more free than others.