This article shows Mark Shuttleworth to be outside of the normal range on honesty when he first claims to be short Apple (i.e. financially interested in Apple losing value, and not just as a competitor) and then goes on for a couple of paragraphs about how important and powerful it is --- and how much people like its products! (Even though he thinks it's going to decline.)

It is my opinion that he is out of the norm in the positive direction, i.e. he has much more integrity than the average person.

The other really important data point in here, to me, is that it sounds like Ubuntu has still not yet reached cash-flow positive. My early fear was that, since there was no immediately plausible roadmap to profitability, Mark would give up on the project after it remained unprofitable for a number of years. The fact that Ubuntu continues and indeed dominates, despite continuing to lose money, is a testament to his fortitude.

(I am not affiliated with Canonical Ltd. and I have publicly criticized Mark pretty harshly in the wake of the "explain what we do to girls" flap.)

I'm running around advocating Ubuntu to non-tech savvy people (friends, family) and everyone who had it installed is completely satisfied with it, because the essentials (Browser, Skype) work very well. And seeing that I can't help but wonder when it will reach the tipping point where you'll see the Ubuntu-desktop on more and more computers and, gasp, even on TV.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system... there's still a long way to go, but I'm optimistic. And yeah, I really enjoy Unity. I'm a Mac user 50% of the time and an Ubuntu user the other 50. And after learning some shortcuts I actually miss Ubuntu features in Lion. Let's hope they continue improving.. (One issue that probably needs work is battery consumption on laptops.)

(Btw. thinking about buying a netbook for a longer trip now and it's sad that they all come with Win7 preinstalled now..)

It's sad that the interviewer didn't ask Mark about pre-installed Ubuntu computers for the consumer market. Mark only mentioned the increasing uptake of Ubuntu in the corporate sector. So I guess we are not going to see any major manufacturers selling consumer Ubuntu laptops any time soon.

I know there's System76 in the US, but there's nothing here in the UK. I've only found some small obscure websites selling Ubuntu laptops, but they are generally more expensive than the equivalent Windows machines. Dell used to sell some, but stopped for some reason (bullying by Microsoft?).

Why don't Canonical themselves sell Ubuntu machines?

There is a lot of momentum atm around reforming patents, with the TIL story, businessweek, Mark Cuban, etc. but I feel that despite all the attention there doesn't seem to be an end-game, ie. some sort of 'beginning of the end' for software patents or patent reform

What would it take to get this issue to the next step - ie. a house or senate committee investigation. Perhaps a petition signed by industry leaders and software developers? More lobbying?