Shuttleworth discusses future of OSS

This is a reprint of an article I wrote for Ping Wales (now sadly closed) back in July 2006 covering Mark Shuttleworth's keynote speech at ApacheCon.

Despite being on record as disliking public speaking, Mark Shuttleworth was in Dublin last month to give the keynote speech at this year's ApacheCon Europe.

His theme was the future direction of open source software (OSS), and the issues developers should focus on to ensure the OSS movement's continued success.In true cosmonaut style, Shuttleworth's ApacheCon Europe presentation took the form of a countdown of the issues facing OSS developers. Some were obvious to anyone who has ever tried any flavour of Linux; finding webcam or printer drivers, for example, is still far harder than it should be, even on Ubuntu. The OSS licensing models should be simplified and possibly merged, he said. There are too many of them, and people don't know the key differences.The widespread availability of technical support is perhaps the biggest barrier to Linux adoption by the mainstream, Shuttleworth said. He stressed the quality of grassroots support available, but added that accessing it required a degree of technical knowledge, which might discourage first-time users. The slow drive to localisation is also a barrier to adoption.The OSS movement is still paying for the fragmentation costs of early development, he said. From a user's perspective, software is an extension of one's thinking, it should just be there when needed. Commenting on 'the big M', he said that Microsoft had done well in using the promise of increased productivity to market its software.

Leaving developers with thoughts on how to improve their OSS projects, Shuttleworth said that upstream developers shouldn't need to work hard to install software. There should be an orderly way to move code around. We need better ways to package code to the end user and reduce the perception of fragmentation, he said. Coders tend to ignore the outward 'prettiness' of applications, not realising that 'pretty' is a feature.

Shuttleworth sold his South African start-up company, Thawte Consulting, to Verisign in 1999 for $575m. He subsequently spent $20m becoming the first African in space. He embarked on cosmonaut training in Star City, Russia and Khazakstan - culminating in a flight to the International Space Station in April 2002.In early 2004, Shuttleworth founded the Ubuntu project: a Linux flavour which has garnered much support in the tech community, leapfrogging other older and more established distributions to become one of the most popular Linux desktop choices of the past 12 months.

The name Ubuntu is drawn from the African social philosophy which defines the individual as a component of a greater, inclusive collective whole, stressing the importance of social consciousness and unity. The Ubuntu software movement tries to embody this principle.Shuttleworth appeals to both geeks and the business community, and with Distrowatch indicating that Ubuntu currently leads the Linux pack, the future looks bright for this blue-eyed boy of tech.