

Dear Canonical: please let me pay for Ubuntu - webstylr
http://www.webstylr.com/2012/09/24/dear-canonical-please-let-me-pay-for-ubuntu/

======
jballanc
I'm surprised no one here has mentioned the obvious solution: go with the
Apple model and build Ubuntu machines.

Sure, Apple made some money from selling OS X at $129. It's making less now.
But new OS sales were never the reason for Apple to remain closed source. That
had more to do with branding/marketing. Not many people remember that one of
the reasons Steve killed the affiliate program is that the Mac affiliates were
making better machines than Apple, and people were buying them instead of a
"Mac". That reduces Apple's revenue, but more importantly dilutes their brand.

Ubuntu, on the other hand, has a very different brand proposition from the
start. Open _is_ their brand. But so is "convenience", and what could be more
convenient than a machine for which you don't have to do research to find out
if all the drivers will work?

~~~
RobAley
The trouble is Canonical is and has always been a software company, and Apple
is a hardware company (or at least its roots were).

To make Canonical in a hardware direction under the Canonical brand, at a
level to compete with existing hardware manufacturers, would take a fantastic
amount of investment.

They are making steps in partnering with hardware manufacturers, see the
recent Dell linux laptop, and the OEM engineering services they provide for
e.g. set top box manufacturers.

But I think it's unlikely you will see Ubuntu brand hardware any time soon.

~~~
jackbravo
Nowdays I think Chinese manufactures make it pretty easy to grab one of those
unbranded computers and just sell it with your own brand. Is this not the
case?

~~~
mariusmg
Yeap. For Android tablets it costs something like 1-2$ to "brand" it.

~~~
RobAley
Simply rebranding basic hardware isn't going to compete with the likes of
Apple.

Cheap and cheerful (read: shoddy) hardware would quickly damage the Ubuntu
brand, and the good hardware is locked up tight by the big brands. Canonical
would need to put in some serious volume or R&D of their own to get _good_
hardware that would lead to a viable Ubuntu hardware brand.

Ubuntu users, at least at the moment, are quite picky about the specs of their
PCs.

------
nicholassmith
The bigger issue is Ubuntu isn't a product. It's a nice community layer with
some high level project management spearheading the direction and a team of
core developers adding nifty features. If there is paying for the product then
how is that money distributed to Jack John Johnson the guy doing patch fixes
on his free time because he enjoys it. Does he get a salary? Some kind of
financial bonus? Then you've got the issue of the lower level aspects being a
very large part of Ubuntu, is the money in part for them? They're as much the
product as Ubuntu One is.

Donations work fine, thats how the community keeps going. You're paying the
Ubuntu high level team to continue what they're doing and helping cover the
costs. If you like what Ubuntu does, go donate. If they're looking at 3rd
party affiliates then maybe they're not getting enough donations, maybe
they've been approached and think it's a good fit.

~~~
pedrocr
This idea that what Ubuntu does is just some light packaging is pretty
demeaning to their true value. Ubuntu really pushed the state of the art in
terms of polish for Linux distributions. You can argue how much of the total
product value that is but I don't think it's at all reasonable to say "Ubuntu
isn't a product" and that it's just a "nice community layer with some high
level project management".

I'm also curious about why you take as a given that money needs to be
distributed to "Jack John Johnson"? There's certainly nothing in the licenses
that forces it, and when Apple takes BSD software and sells it nobody thinks
that's out of line. When RedHat charges for RHEL nobody complains either, even
though most of the software is open source as well. What line is Ubuntu
crossing here?

~~~
brusch
I think Ubuntu moved away from "polish for Linux distributions" some versions
ago. This was the time they've started making their own user interface with
Unity, they're own shop with I-don't-know-what-it's-called (App center ?) and
their own online storage with Ubuntu one.

They make decisions you may like or may not like (moving the window controls
to the left..) - but at least for me it was time to go - and I don't look
back.

~~~
pedrocr
The fact that that has happened only gives more weight to the idea that they
are in fact producing their own product instead of being a light packaging
layer over what everyone else does.

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ivan_krechetov
Won't happen; by definition. See <http://www.ubuntu.com/project> "Ubuntu is
free. Always has been and always will be." Therefore, would be much better to
stop writing link bait posts, but rather go and donate
<http://www.ubuntu.com/community/get-involved/donate>

~~~
wpietri
There's nothing stopping them from charging _and_ offering it for free.

~~~
ivan_krechetov
True!

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dagw
Already exists: <http://www.ubuntu.com/community/get-involved/donate>

~~~
RobAley
Or <http://www.ubuntu.com/business/desktop#services> if you want to make it a
truly commercial relationship.

~~~
imrehg
This wouldn't really work for a simple desktop user, seems like doing IT-
department friendly crippled releases. Otherwise I was actually considering
it...

------
ojii
Am I just blind or where the heck are those ads on Ubuntu? I use it
exclusively all day and I just cannot find ads anywhere (other than on
websites in the browser, but that's not Ubuntu's fault).

~~~
cf0ed2aa-bdf5
This seems to be a post in response to Canonical's plans to add amazon ads to
searches in your home lens.

See: [http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/09/online-shopping-
features-...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/09/online-shopping-features-
arrive-in-ubuntu-12-10)

~~~
pgeorgi
apt-get purge ubuntuone* landscape* unity-lens-shopping # gets rid of all
Canonical tie-ins.

Not so hard, isn't it?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Why not have a click-through at install or on version upgrades that says
something like "we want to install an easy way to add products to your search
results for which we get payment: Allow, Deny" ... rather than default install
something that is going to cause such negative press.

IFF then there is a wide-scale uptake then there is warrant for auto-install
of those features.

------
gadgetdevil
Why not donate to the maintainers of Debian, Software in the Public Interest?
<http://www.debian.org/donations> They are the root of all those awesome
dpkg's that we all know and love.

------
realize
Getting pretty tired of these "dear company, let me pay for your product
instead of showing me ads" arguments. They show a lack of understanding of
business models.

~~~
digitalsushi
I am not a business guy and don't need to understand what their model is. I
understand my model - that I test network software and I don't want to trudge
through amazon lookups in wireshark.

~~~
stephengillie
What's important is to watch the money flow. The article makes a great point -
If money goes like this:

    
    
      you -> developer
    

then the developer is only interested in making you happy, because you're the
payer. However, if the relationship is like this:

    
    
      you -> advertising company -> developer
    

then the developer doesn't really care about you; you're just the means to an
end, a vehicle to drive to the place with money. The developer and advertiser
will build a business relationship, <cynical> and usually make sure their
relationship with you maximizes shareholder (not your) value. </cynical>

------
jiggy2011
I suppose you could always mail them a cheque, they might even cash it.

As I've said before, I don't see how this kind on monetisation would be
practical for Ubuntu unless they took chunks of their software (such as Unity)
and made them closed source.

If there was a sticker price attached to Ubuntu and an activation system (ala
Windows) somebody would simply fork the code minus the activation and make a
free clone.

Basically the same as Redhat/CentOS.

Their best way of monetising the desktop is probably to make their app store
less crappy and get some paid apps in there.

If they can't get enough third parties involved , maybe they can get the ball
rolling with their own proprietary paid apps.

Their main customer base right now is probably developers, so a good start
might be a nice GUI DB admin tool and a good debugging proxy (ala Fiddler) and
they could start monetising tomorrow.

------
andrewaylett
What about <http://shop.canonical.com/product_info.php?products_id=667> ?

It's difficult to envisage charging for the distribution ending well, but you
can already pay Canonical for support if you'd like to, and I'm sure they'd be
happy to tell you how to disable the "advertising". TBH, though, I'm not sure
how Canonical's relationship with Amazon search is any different from what
Mozilla do with Google search.

~~~
andrewaylett
Actually reading more about it: this is using Amazon's store search, not their
web search as I initially thought. It's also getting money by adding referral
codes, rather than Amazon paying Canonical to have their search engine listed.
So there's some differences after all.

------
MatthewPhillips
This seems like a really bad idea to me. You can't charge for something that
the user can just build themselves for free. Someone else is just going to
distribute the binaries. And so what do you do about your repos, are those
just for paying customers as well? You wind up with 2 Ubuntus in this
scenario, both weaker than the 1 today.

~~~
kracekumar
Centos does the same, isn't Redhat making money ?

~~~
MatthewPhillips
The thing RedHat sells isn't the OS itself.

~~~
reidrac
This is a little bit off-topic but... they removed basic support and now
there's a "self-support subscription" option instead for $350.

If you don't get support for that subscription, I can't see a difference worth
$350 between RHEL self-support subscription and CentOS.

EDIT: ate a word

EDIT 2: self-support desktop subscription is just $49. But the point is the
same: no support.

~~~
ajdecon
> If you don't get support for that subscription, I can't see a difference
> worth $350 between RHEL self-support subscription and CentOS.

* Access to the RHEL repositories, with faster updates than CentOS or alternatives.

* Ability to upgrade to supported tier.

* Possibly: access to RHN pages with their forums, documentation, etc?

None of which would be huge advantages to me, but I can totally see the
potential value.

------
AnthonBerg
If you have spent a reasonable amount of time with Ubuntu, try installing
Debian and playing around with it. Sadly, you will probably notice how Ubuntu
have unnecessarily broken things that are working fine in Debian. Core things.

Let me propose you give money to Debian instead.

~~~
b0rsuk
Or just install Debian and see how stable it is. It's familiar enough and it
will cure your upgrade fears.

I think "once every 6 months" is too often, I'd be happier if Ubuntu was
released once per year but better tested.

------
Tichy
Suppose searching shops from the search bar makes sense: what would be a way
to launch it that wouldn't freak out a lot of people?

Personally I find the new feature interesting, because I already use the
DuckDuckGo !-Notation to search Amazon all the time.

~~~
takluyver
An obvious way is to require some sort of deliberate indication that the user
wants shopping results, like a separate pane, or a prefix to the search term.
It's a problem largely because it's searching Amazon even when you're just
looking for a file on your computer.

~~~
Tichy
Prefix would be good. I guess the Unity way is different keyboard shortcuts
(it is possible to limit the search to certain categories). But I won't be
able to memorize those.

~~~
petitmiam
hold down the Super key for a list of available shortcuts.

------
olalonde
I think Kilo Dalton's comment pretty much sums it up:

    
    
        > 1) make a donation
        > 2) sudo apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping
        > 3) grab a tasty beverage

~~~
flatline3
What it sums up is some Linux nerds' complete disconnection from reality.

1) Donations aren't a sustainable revenue model, and won't prevent Ubuntu from
taking equally user-hostile actions in the future. What they need is a
sustainable revenue model where users are the customer.

2) How is this different than the crapware that comes installed with some OEM
Windows PCs? How is that a model to be emulated? What happens when a feature
like this _can't_ just be installed with apt-get?

3) Water would almost certainly be healthier.

Apple used to be the reliable alternative to the Microsoft hegemony. They're
squandering that position, and we desperately need something like Ubuntu --
consumer focused, polished, and as easy to use as Mac OS X (or at least,
Ubuntu is a lot closer to that ideal than Linux has previously been).

For Ubuntu to maintain a consumer focus, they need the consumers to be their
customers, not their product. Let me buy Ubuntu, or buy Ubuntu hardware.

~~~
olalonde
Honestly, what I get from your comment is that you don't like ads. If you
don't like them, don't click them: problem solved. I have to grant you that
Ubuntu hardware would be awesome but I'm afraid that it might create an
incentive to drop support for non-Ubuntu hardware.

~~~
flatline3
"If you don't like them, don't click them" is a terrible solution, because _I
don't even want to see them_.

Is it so wrong that I don't want "free" things if that means I'm the product
and not the customer? Is that really such a hard market opportunity to
exploit?

I'd rather pay money to not see them. Problem solved.

~~~
olalonde
There's nothing wrong with that but I do think it would be a much harder
market opportunity to exploit. You are definitely in a minority. Also, just a
nitpick but if you don't click ads you are not a product since Amazon doesn't
buy products who merely view its ads.

~~~
flatline3
And yet, look at Apple's profits.

~~~
olalonde
Apple's profits have very little to do with sales of its operating system. As
I said, it would be nice to see "Ubuntu machines" but unlike Apple, Canonical
would never enjoy a monopoly over Ubuntu hardware due to Ubuntu's open source
nature.

------
b0rsuk
I don't see _anything_ wrong with "pay what you want" Ubuntu as long as people
who pay don't get special treatment. The easiest way to ensure that would
probably be _anonymous_ contributions.

Similarly, certain definite projects like "get X functionality into Y
application" could be valid targets for a kickstarter-like projects. Paid-for
code released under GPL. Why not ? This measure would be best reserved for
unfun tasks, something no one wants to do.

------
petitmiam
By default, Firefox has an Amazon search listed in the search engine list.
Unity lens seem pretty similar.

At present, the Amazon results are only present if you do use the shopping
lens or perform an open search. As long as there is an easy way to disable the
Amazon results, I don't have a problem with it.

------
shmerl
<http://www.debian.org/donations>

------
Kilimanjaro
The right price for free software is not free, it's $9.

------
TimSchumann
Are you willing to pay one dollar every time you open up a web browser in
Ubuntu?

Or even one dollar a day?

Look into what advertisers are paying, I'm betting you're not willing to match
their price.

~~~
kintamanimatt
I highly doubt they're going to make a buck a day from even 1/4 of the
userbase from search ads.

Also, they're not being paid every time someone opens their browser. They're
paid if someone searches in the Unity lens, sees something they like, clicks
on the link, and buys something within 24 hours from Amazon. Amazon's
commission rates are < 5% if I remember correctly.

I think they'll be lucky to make $100k from it.

~~~
eloisant
As I recall Firefox used to make about $3 per user per year. (I'm using the
past because the data I have is pretty old).

If we consider they have about 15 million users, that's about 45 million
dollars. But maybe they have other sources of revenue.

~~~
kintamanimatt
Firefox is more valuable though. They have a revshare agreement with Google
and others. People actively use Firefox to search for things, at least a few
dozen times a day, not to mention are more apt to click on ads based on their
current mindset.

I don't think that same behavior is going to be exhibited in a Unity lens,
certainly not with the same frequency. I also doubt the click rate too.

------
taw9
I switched to Linux Mint Debian Edition a while back. Cinnamon is a great
desktop. Don't miss the steaming pile of Ubuntu. It was great while it lasted,
but then came Unity and now they're hitting us with adverts? I don't get it.
Seems like they're trying to kill demand.

