Ubuntu’s Shuttleworth ramps up to take on Apple

From the

“

”

files:

For years there have been those that have accused Ubuntu of not contributing enough to the upstream development of Linux. Mark Shuttleworth founder and leader of Ubuntu is tired of the criticism and is now putting more of his money and resources into upstream development – in the process he’s aiming to fulfill the promise he made in August of making the Linux desktop more ‘beautiful’ than Apple.

“Increasingly, though, Canonical is in a position to drive real change in the software that is part of Ubuntu,” Shuttleworth wrote in a blog post. “So we are also hiring a team who will work on X, OpenGL, Gtk, Qt, GNOME
and KDE, with a view to doing some of the heavy lifting required to
turn those desktop experience ideas into reality.”

This is a good thing. Open Source needs more upstream contributions and it needs the resources that Shuttleworth can throw against it. The idea that simply being users and working on integration and the rough edges as Ubuntu has done so well to date – isn’t enough. Innovation can be driven top down too and not always bottom up.

The Linux desktop is not a ‘mad crusade‘ as Shuttleworth noted back at OSCON and its the stroke of sane genius to hire, influence and develop upstream.