Canonical Is Reportedly Considering An IPO

Mark Shuttleworth is reportedly considering a move to make Canonical a public company.

Canonical is going on eleven years as the organization behind Ubuntu Linux but is yet to be profitable. The 500+ person company continues to be financed by Mark Shuttleworth's fortunes, but reportedly he's thinking about an initial public offering (IPO) to take the firm public on a yet-to-be-decided exchange (I'd assume between New York or London).

According to ZDNet, Mark expressed his possible plans this week at the OpenStack Summit in Vancouver. The idea has been tossed around internally for a few months but more discussions are still to be had on the matter.

Besides raising money to finish off the Ubuntu Phone/Touch vision and other consumer plans, Canonical as a public company could be an interesting story for investors on the front where they are making money and inroads against competitors like SUSE and Red Hat -- Ubuntu on servers and in the cloud, OpenStack included.