[davidw]

It's a complex topic, so I think it's best to look at different funding models differently.

Ubuntu is funded by Canonical. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shuttleworth in other words. So one big donor.

Debian... seems to mostly get by on volunteer labor and be ok with it, or it did when I was involved with them. Has that changed? I suspect that in some ways Debian is underfunded given the amount of work they do. Perhaps money would make some things happen faster there.

The Apache Software Foundation does a decent job at fundraising, and even employs a few people to do stuff like administration. Most of the projects get by with companies that pay people to work on them, which seems to work out pretty well.

Firefox/Mozilla make most of their money with deals: Google and Yahoo, last I remember.

I don't know about OpenSSH.

It's possible, but mostly donations don't seem to work unless it's big chunks of money from companies.

[rectang]

    > The Apache Software Foundation does a decent job at
    > fundraising, and even employs a few people to do stuff
    > like administration. Most of the projects get by with
    > companies that pay people to work on them, which seems
    > to work out pretty well.

The ASF budget is roughly 1.2 million a year, the bulk of which goes to maintaining infrastructure for 200+ projects.

https://www.apache.org/foundation/records/minutes/2014/board...

As a 501c(3) non-profit, it is constrained as to what it can do with donations.

[ryanlol]

AFAIK Ubuntu is profitable for Canonical, so I wouldn't call that a donation.

[Alupis]

> AFAIK Ubuntu is profitable for Canonical, so I wouldn't call that a donation.

Unfortunately, that is very far from true.

Ubuntu was negative $21 million USD in 2013[1]. Canonical would literally make money by just not doing Ubuntu anymore.[2]

(Every time Canonical is on the verge of bankruptcy, Shuttleworth re-seeds back into the company from his personal checkbook)

[1] http://www.scribd.com/doc/199373896/Canonical-Group-Limited-...

(the numbers are represented in thousands, so 21,343 is 21,343,000)

[2] http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-08/13/mark-shuttlew...

The significant losses due to Ubuntu development and related expenses are why Canonical as-of-late has been turning focus away from Ubuntu towards other markets such as Mobile and especially Enterprise (a la Red Hat's turf).

[Maken]

Ubuntu itself is a central part of their cloud business, so Ubuntu is indeed profitable for them. What's not profitable is their desktop and end users' market.

[Alupis]

That's not quite how it gets expensed (nor how it works).

Canonical's cloud business might be profitable (even though Canonical as a whole is very-mush-so-not), however their cloud business is not coupled to Ubuntu, ie. they could use any Linux Distro, or any OS for the matter.

Ubuntu is a total loss center for Canonical. It's surprising to a lot of people given it's popularity... but popularity doesn't equal profitability... especially when most users don't pay anything for the software (not even support fees).

[raverbashing]

"Ubuntu is a total loss center for Canonical"

Typical beancounter mentality.

Probably comes with a suggestion of closing this division and going with something else

OF COURSE this department loses money. But it is a net gain for the company, and in fact without it the rest wouldn't exist.

[Alupis]

> OF COURSE this department loses money.

Not sure what "of course" means here... it's very possible to be profitable off your OS Development division... look at Red Hat, SUSE, etc. They pay for the development from support payments... they collect support payments because enterprise wants their OS... it's a positive feedback loop. The better the OS, the more enterprise pays, the more funding RH can put into the OS dev team, the better the OS gets, the more support fees they collect, etc etc etc...

Canonical has not been able to successfully charge for support like RH and SUSE have figured out.

> But it is a net gain for the company, and in fact without it the rest wouldn't exist.

It's not a net gain unless the company can be profitable as a whole and subsidize (and justify the enormous expense) off-put by tertiary services, etc.

... right now Ubuntu project is responsible for Canonical being perpetually in the red... every quarter, since their foundation. Canonical could very well just run enterprise support contracts, or push their cloud services. They don't have to use Ubuntu... any OS would suffice. They aren't somehow coupled to Ubuntu to the point if Ubuntu didn't exist, Canonical wouldn't either.

[zanny]

I wonder what happened behind the scenes that basically killed Ubuntu in its tracks.

Circa 2008, before the Unity and Pulseaudio switches, it was considered by pretty much everyone the premiere Linux distro. I don't see why they could not get support contracts with Dell, HP, etc to sell Ubuntu computers and provide the tech support in exchange for positive cash flows.

Even today Dell is still doing Sputnik and in European countries you can buy HP hardware with Linux. Why is Canonical not taking advantage of the fact that they could be making money off support for their desktop OS through all the hardware vendors?

[Alupis]

> I wonder what happened behind the scenes that basically killed Ubuntu in its tracks.

Ubuntu has never been profitable for Canonical. Shuttleworth's game-plan was always long-term minded regarding Ubuntu -- but as we've seen as-of-late, Canonical is shifting focus to other markets they view as potentially profitable. Shuttleworth has committed to keeping Ubuntu alive, but it's no longer Canonical's sole hope for income.

> I don't see why they could not get support contracts with Dell, HP, etc to sell Ubuntu computers and provide the tech support in exchange for positive cash flows.

This isn't just a problem for Ubuntu, but for most end-user linux distros. People always joke with Linus when the "year of the Linux desktop" will finally arrive... The people who use Linux as their daily driver generally don't need the support, and for the ones who do, well it's a lot less marketshare than Windows.

> Even today Dell is still doing Sputnik

Besides Sputnik, and some Linux-only end-user manufacturers like System76, there really isn't a lot of choice for pre-installed Linux end-user computers.

It's weird too, because Sputnik is $50 more expensive than the windows version of the same hardware. (probably some Microsoft deal going on here).

Linux comes pre-installed on majority of server hardware (server hardware than comes with any OS at all that is), and Linux dominates this field. But the "year of the linux desktop" hasn't quite arrived yet. I do hope it comes soon.

[wtbob]

> Besides Sputnik, and some Linux-only end-user manufacturers like System76, there really isn't a lot of choice for pre-installed Linux end-user computers.

I've used System76 and Zareason. System76 are Ubuntu-only (and the hardware may have issue with other distros); Zareason will support any Linux.

[Alupis]

You know, I actually didn't know about Zareason. Their website seems to have pretty reasonable price for the hardware you are getting, and I love having a choice of my preferred distro to run (I'm a Fedora guy).

I run full-time linux on my laptop and my goto hardware has typically been a Thinkpad T series.

[davidw]

> Canonical is shifting focus to other markets they view as potentially profitable.

Is it about profits, or - I'm going to be kind of cynical here - chasing taillights? The way they seem to bounce around from one thing to another (mobile phones! embedded!) makes it feel like the latter.

[Alupis]

> The way they seem to bounce around from one thing to another

I tend to agree... modern Canonical feels like a company that lacks focus (probably because they aren't quite sure what the focus ought to be after realizing Ubuntu might not ever turn a profit for them).

[takluyver]

The people who would buy computers with Linux probably wouldn't pay for tech support. Enterprises might, but not individuals. Plus I suspect that Microsoft is pretty keen to defend Windows on the consumer front - I've heard stories of deep OEM discounts on the condition that they don't offer alternative OSes.

[zanny]

I mean in the same way you buy a Dell notebook and get two years of phone support, you would get the same with a Dell Ubuntu notebook but Canonical would provide it and Dell would pay them for it.

[takluyver]

I mean that the people who would buy a Dell Ubuntu notebook mostly wouldn't use phone support. If Dell thinks the same, they wouldn't pay Canonical very much to provide that support. They do now sell the XPS 'Developer edition' with Ubuntu; I have no idea whether they pay Canonical for support, or how much that makes.

[davidw]

I've never heard one way or the other whether it is or not; I'd be curious to see some data.