Interview with Mark Shuttleworth at DebConf (2011)

Reading the blog of Raphael I meet a interview what he did to Mark Shuttleworth, I really recommend the interview, because there are interesting facts about Mark, as well as ideas he has, the future of Canonical y Ubuntu, and your perspective on how and where the world is currently moving.

I leave you a translation of this interview, it was made by my father (aka Yuri516) so, it is not necessary to review it, he knows much more English than I do, there will be no mistakes HAHA.

You probably don't have to introduce Mark Shuttleworth ... he was already a Debian developer when he became a millionaire after selling Thawte to Verisign in 1999. Then in 2002 he became the first African (and the first Debian developer) to travel to space. 2 years later, he found another great project to pursue: bringing the Microsoft monopoly to an end with a new alternative operating system called Ubuntu (see bug # 1).

I met Mark during Debconf 6 in Oaxtepec (Mexico), we were both trying to find ways to increase collaboration between Debian and Ubuntu. The least I can say is that Mark is stubborn, but any leader usually is, and the self-appointed in particular! 🙂

Read on to find out his views on the Ubuntu-Debian relationship and much more.

Raphel: Who are you?

Mark: At heart, I am an explorer, inventor, and strategist. It is the changes in technology, society and business that fascinate me, and I spend almost all my time and wealth in catalyzing change in a direction that I hope will improve society and the environment.

I am 38 years old, I studied information systems and finance at the University of Cape Town. The 'home of my heart' is Cape Town, and I have lived there and in Star City and in London, now I live on the Isle of Man with my girlfriend Claire and 14 precocious ducks. I was joining Debian around 1995 because I was helping to set up web servers for as many groups as possible, and I thought Debian's approach to packaging was very sound but it had not packaged for Apache. In those days the NM process was a bit easier 😉

Raphel: What was your initial motivation when you decided to create Ubuntu 7 years ago?

Mark: Ubuntu is designed to fulfill a dream of change; a belief that the potential of free software will have a profound impact on the economics of software as well as its technology. It is obvious that the tech world is heavily influenced by Linux, GNU, and the free software ecosystem, but the economics of software is still essentially the same.

Before Ubuntu, we had a two-tier Linux world: There was the community world (Debian, Fedora, Arch, Gentoo) where you supported yourself, and the restrictive, commercial world of RHEL and SLES / SLED. While community distributions are highly regarded, they do not and cannot meet the needs of all of society; you can't find them pre-installed, you can't get certified and build a career around them, you can't count on a school to scale-up a platform that isn't blessed by a wide variety of institutions. And community distributions can't create the institutions to solve that.

Ubuntu brings those two worlds together, as a whole, with a commercial-grade release (inheriting the good things of Debian) that is freely available but also backed by an institution.

The key to that dream is the economic aspect, and as always, a change in the economic aspect; It was clear to me that the flow of money around personal software would shift from licensing ("buying Windows") to services ("paying for your storage on Ubuntu ONE"). If that change were coming, then there might be room for a truly free, free software distribution with an institution that could make all the compromises necessary to correspond to the world of commercial Linux. And that would be the achievement of a lifetime. So I decided to dedicate a piece of my life to trying, and I found several wonderful people who shared that vision of helping with trying.

It made sense to me to include Debian in that vision; I knew this well both as a user and as a member, and I believed it will always be the most rigorous of the community distributions. I share Debian values ​​and those values ​​are compatible with those we set for Ubuntu.

Debian itself, as an institution, could not be a partner for industry or business. The bits are brilliant, but designing an institution for independence involves becoming a difficult decisive counterpart, or contractual provider. It would be essentially impossible to achieve the goals of pre-installation, certification, and support for third-party hardware and software within an institution that is designed for neutrality, impartiality, and independence.

However, two complementary institutions could cover both sides of this coin.

So Ubuntu is the second half of a complete Debian-Ubuntu ecosystem. Debian's strengths complement those of Ubuntu, Ubuntu can achieve things that Debian cannot (not because its members are not capable, but because the institution has chosen other priorities) and conversely, Debian delivers things that Ubuntu cannot, not because its members are not capable, if not because it chooses other priorities as an institution.

Many people are beginning to understand this: Ubuntu is Debian's arrow, Debian is Ubuntu's bow. Neither instrument is particularly useful on its own, except in an anthropology museum 😉

So the worst and most frustrating attitude comes from those who think Debian and Ubuntu compete. If you care about Debian, and want it to compete at all levels with Ubuntu, you will be rather miserable; you want Debian to lose some of its best qualities and change some of its most important practices. However, if you view the Ubuntu-Debian ecosystem as a coherent whole, you will celebrate the strengths and achievements of both, and more importantly, you will work to make Debian a better Debian and Ubuntu a better Ubuntu, as opposed to wishing Ubuntu was more like Debian. and vice versa.

Raphel: The Ubuntu-Debian relationship was somewhat hectic in the beginning, it took several years to “mature”. If you had to start over, would you do some things differently?

Mark: Yes, there are lessons learned, but none of them are fundamental. Some of the tension was based on human factors that really can't be altered: some of the harshest critics at DD from Canonical and Ubuntu are people who applied but were not selected for positions at Canonical. I can't change that, and I wouldn't change that, and I understand that the consequences are, emotionally, what they are.

However, it would have been nice to be wiser about the way people react to some approaches. We went phenomenally to DebConf 5 in Porto Alegre and broke into a conference room. There was an open door, and many people stuck their heads in, but I think the non-conspiratorial collection of people there was intimidating and the story became one of exclusion. If we wanted to be exclusive we would have gone anywhere else! So I would have worked harder to make that clear at the time had I known how many times that story would be used to paint Canonical negatively.

As for the confrontation with Debian, I think the situation is one of ups and downs. As registrations, it is generally possible to collaborate with any Debian maintainer on an issue in which there is mutual interest. There are exceptions, but those exceptions are just as problematic within Debian as they are between Debian and outsiders. As casualties, it is impossible to collaborate with Debian as an institution, due to the design of the institution.

To collaborate, the two parties must make and keep commitments. So while a Debian developer and an Ubuntu developer can make personal commitments to each other, Debian cannot make commitments to Ubuntu, because there is no person or entity that can make such commitments on behalf of the institution, on any kind of agile terms. . A GR is not agile ;-). I am not saying this as a criticism of Debian; Remember, I think Debian has made some very important choices, one of which is complete independence from its developers, which means that they have no obligation to follow a decision made by someone else.

It is also important to understand the difference between collaboration and teamwork. When two people have exactly the same goal and generate the same result, that is exactly teamwork. When two people have different goals and come up with different products, but still find a way to improve each other's product, that's collaboration.

So to have great collaboration between Ubuntu and Debian, we need to start with mutual recognition of the value and importance of differences in our approaches. When someone criticizes Ubuntu because it exists, or because it doesn't do things the same way as Debian, or because it doesn't structure every process with the primary goal of improving Debian, it's sad. The differences between us are valuable: Ubuntu can take Debian to places Debian cannot, and Debian debuts bring a perfect raft of quality for Ubuntu.

Raphel: What is Debian's biggest problem?

Mark: Internal tensions over Debian's vision and goals make it difficult to create a harmonious environment, which is compounded by a reluctance to censor destructive behavior.

Does Debian measure its success by the number of installations? By the number of maintainers? By the number of flamewars? By the number of packages? By the number of messages for the distribution lists? Because of the quality of Debian Policy? Because of the quality of the packages? Because of the "freshness" of the packages? For the duration and quality of the maintenance of the releases? Because of the frequency or infrequency of releases? Because of the amplitude of the derivatives?

Many of these metrics are in direct tension with others; As a consequence, the fact that different DD's prioritize all these (and other goals) differently makes the debate interesting… The kind of debate that goes on and on because there is no way to choose between goals when everyone has different goals. You know the kind of debate I want to say 🙂

Raphel: Do you think the Debian community has improved in the last 7 years? If yes, do you think the competition with Ubuntu partially explains it?

Mark: Yes, I think that some of the areas that concern me have improved. Much of this is related to time giving people the opportunity to consider an idea from different perspectives, perhaps with the benefit of maturity. Time also allows ideas to flow and of course brings new people into the mix. There are quite a few DD's now that DD's were made after Ubuntu existed, so it's not like this new supernova has suddenly exploded in your galactic neighborhood. And many of them became DD's because of Ubuntu. So at least from the perspective of the Ubuntu-Debian relationship, things are much healthier.

We could do much better. Now that we're on track for four consecutive Ubuntu LTS releases, at a bi-annual pace, it's clear that we could collaborate magnificently if we shared a freeze date. Canonical offered to help Squezze on that basis, but the phobia of institutional commitments reared and ended. And with the proposal to put Debian's first planned freeze exactly in the middle of the Ubuntu LTS cycle, our alignment of interests will be at a minimum, not a maximum.

Raphel: What would you suggest to people (like me) who don't feel like joining Canonical and would like to get paid to work on improving Debian?

Mark: We share the problem; I would like to get paid to work to improve Ubuntu, but that is also a long-term dream 😉

Raphel: How about using the proceeds of the dormant Ubuntu Foundation to fund some Debian projects?

Mark: The Foundation is there in the event of Canonical's failure to ensure those commitments, such as LTS maintenance, are known. They will be optimistically sleeping forever 😉

Raphel: The crowdfunding campaign for the Debian Administrator's Handbook is still going on and I briefly glimpsed the possibility of creating the Ubuntu Administrator's Handbook. What do you think of this project?

Mark: Crowfunding is a phenomenal combination for free software and open content, so I hope this turns out very well for you. I also think they would find a bigger market for an Ubuntu book, not because Ubuntu is something more important than Debian but because it is probably attractive to people who are more inclined to buy or download a book than to dive into the source.

Again, this is about understanding differences in audiences, not judging projects or products.

Raphel: Is there anyone on Debian that you admire for their contributions?

Mark: Zack is the best DPL since 1995; it is an impossible job that he handles with grace and distinction. I hope my praise doesn't tarnish your reputation on the project!

Thanks to Mark for the time spent answering my questions. I hope you enjoy reading your responses as I did.

Translation: Yuri516

A thousand thanks to Raphael for the interview really.

Greetings and ... interesting or not? 🙂