Has Shuttleworth lost the plot?

Journalists asked Mark Shuttleworth during his Ubuntu tour whether he didn`t think one local distribution (Impi) was enough already.

Yes, seemed to be the answer, if Ubuntu were a local distribution. But it`s not. Ubuntu is global and everywhere it has taken root it is fulfilled under the same name, although some regions requested small name changes for a local flavour. So it doesn`t intend going head-to-head with Impi, or only with Impi.

The fact that Shuttleworth has a personal interest in making Ubuntu succeed locally - through the creation of a vibrant ecosystem - was the sole context for it seeming local, he said.

And although the temptation must exist for some to say he is driving a wedge between good local initiatives and the market, one cannot fault him, as usual, because he backs up his actions with plenty of locally tangible goodwill. Shuttleworth`s corporate social investment in SA is already sizeable and well-documented, so let`s leave him alone on that score.

Let`s try the toughest criticism I can think of. Isn`t Shuttleworth muddying the waters with Ubuntu?

Carel Alberts, special editions editor, ITWeb Brainstorm

Still, one got the nagging feeling that something was not quite right about this undertaking, exciting as it is, likely as it is to succeed and beneficial to SA as it might turn out to be.

I tried the support angle on him. How supportable is a highly customisable offering? He answered that Canonical intended for the distribution to be so crystallised and classy that no one needed to change the install or the bundled applications.

But my point was that although the Ubuntu interface is admittedly "quite spartan", with the "bare minimum" of applications (there you have it - a sound desk is the bare minimum), there is a lot over and above that. Ubuntu`s online repository of applications gives the fanatic user access to some 40 000 more apps.

First of all - are they all kosher? Hopefully the six months that went into Ubuntu`s preparation was at least partially spent on that.

Secondly, my real point was that support providers build support profiles based on what they know. They`ll have skills in a few apps and platforms and their many permutations, list them on an FAQ and support them most happily. Anything else, and support will be a best effort.

Alek Zdziarski, director of Choice Sourcing, Novell SUSE Linux`s national support provider, says beyond OpenOffice, Konqueror, Ximian and other famous names, Choice can only really take the user through the process he says he went through when installing the problem software, and show him the right way. Plus, they`ll warn against using software nobody endorses or has heard of.

So assuming the software is legit and tested, the only thing a user may run into is a difficult install. Are all the packages in the repository well-packaged and easily installed, or do users need seven years in Geek Tibet to make them work?

Shuttleworth "did nothing to dispel the geek rumour" he set out to, as one journalist remarked when he coded busily during the install of a program that needed downloading. At any rate, all this means is that most support calls are likely to be from novices.

I`m still not satisfied. Shuttleworth`s assumption that people won`t change the distribution too much if it works fine seems like too much of an assumption. Don`t geeks like to dick around with stuff that works already?

Not really, says a local open source PR expert. "Everybody know Firefox works; the spam filter, the content filter, the popup blocker, the tabbed browsing, the install. It all works, so I`ll use all that and so will most of the community. But they may want others to have the benefit of their knowledge in other areas, for instance to have choices with regard to its look and feel and so on. So my Firefox and yours may behave and look totally differently, but under the hood..."

OK, I`ll accept that too. Let`s try the toughest criticism I can think of. Isn`t Shuttleworth muddying the waters with Ubuntu? Somebody I spoke to suggests he may have lost the plot altogether, building a new ecosystem and potentially eschewing existing support by making Ubuntu a virtual unknown quantity.

There may be some truth in that. But the fact that Novell has signed some very decent partners and built its own ecosystem probably doesn`t mean it can`t be augmented.

Just as it would be a shame if the service opportunity within Linux is watered down by inefficient replication, or if the existing support line cannot be leveraged for a new distribution, it would be a shame too if existing partners, by dint of their relationships, felt unable to take on another Linux.