[Consortium] problem about inclusion of Ubuntu

[Daniel James]

Hi Ico,

>>Personally I think the possibility of Ubuntu or any other Linux centered
>>dist, institution or project being ostracized for *any* reason is quite
>>strange. Even more so, because they are involved in a successful
>>business enterprise.
> 
> Second that.

Third that (if you can say it :-) ) In fact I don't believe Canonical is 
  profitable yet; it's funded by personal earnings from the dot-com 
years. No different from how Paul Davis funded Ardour and JACK 
development for so long.

Although 'high-net-worth' individuals attract attention, I don't see why 
a free software company controlled by an individual is any worse than a 
company controlled by VCs, bankers or by shareholders. Companies are 
simply not democratic entities, and it would be naive of us to ignore 
all the Linux-related development that goes on inside commercial 
organisations.

Ingo Molnar's kernel work at Red Hat for instance. Red Hat has a market 
capitalisation of well over five billion US dollars, making it many 
times richer than Mark or Canonical (unless he has a few more billion 
dollars hidden away somewhere).

>>In the past serious decisions have been made by the Board of Directors
>>which is a private invite only mailing list with a smaller portion of
>>the original members included on it.

On the basis of one representative nominated by each member project. The 
current Management Board members, listed on the Contact page of the 
site, are:

Andrea Glorioso (AGNULA)
Patrick Shirkey (Boost Hardware)
Jaromil (dyne:bolic)
Richard Bown (Fervent Software)
Christian Schaller (GStreamer)
Jan Depner (JAMin)
Ron Parker (Mirror Image)
Steve Harris (plugin.org.uk)
Chris Cannam (Rosegarden)
Daniel Wagner (FreeBob)

You'll notice that I'm not on there (as I thought there would be a 
conflict of interest if a director or former director would also be on 
the Management Board - you can't supervise yourself). So my opinion is 
merely an opinion.

Cheers!

Daniel