Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Canonical Has Been Weathering The Pandemic Well: Turned A Profit, Back Above 500 Employees

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • CommunityMember
    replied
    Originally posted by arQon View Post
    But now that they're profitable and stable again
    They are barely profitable (and one year does not prove stable), but sure....

    they may return to trying new things, and we should welcome that
    Only if they actually learned the lesson that they cannot go their own way again. For that way goes ruin (and there may not be a next chance to pivot).

    Leave a comment:


  • arQon
    replied
    Originally posted by Vasant1234 View Post
    Yes, they wasted a lot of time and money on their Linux desktop dream.
    I think it's fair to say they LOST a lot of money on it, but I wouldn't say it was WASTED - a small distinction, perhaps, but an important one.

    At a minimum, they learnt many lessons (most importantly, "Don't put yourself in a position where your largest competitor can royally shaft your plans if they choose to"), and for all that I skipped Unity entirely it was still hugely superior to GNOME3 in terms of UI design. So no, that's not "wasted time and money", that's "doing a decent job, and things just not working out". It happens.

    Mir was potentially a reasonable alternative to Wayland that AFAICT died more because of its (stupid, greedy, MBAtard-style) "theft" license than for any technical reason. Given that Wayland is STILL inadequate even now, ~8 years later, it's pretty hard to argue that the decision to create Mir was actually wrong: just that the execution failed.

    Which is pretty much Ubuntu in a nutshell, in a lot of ways. I'm not saying they didn't make a lot of bad decisions - they were naive, they clearly over-extended themselves, and both aspects bit them hard when the revenue needed to grow into those endeavors didn't appear on time: basically, they tried to run before they could walk. But now that they're profitable and stable again, they may return to trying new things, and we should welcome that: nothing is worse for the Linux ecosystem as a whole than having RH dictate the direction of everything, even for the fanboys who gloss over all the garbage-tier code RH has inflicted on that ecosystem over the years. (In userspace, that is - they do a much better job with their kernel contributions etc).

    Leave a comment:


  • mroche
    replied
    Originally posted by michaelo2 View Post
    Great news, if they play they cards correctly, they've lot of market to gain.

    And by market I mean compare to Red Hat: Red Hat is ~18K employees, hired +500 people ("a full Canonical") during the worst COVID period and revenue is +4B (30x times what Canonical does).
    I joined Red Hat in early June. My manager said that they have grown over 2000 people each year the past two years, and they are still hiring. Like a LOT.

    If anyone's interested in something new career wise, I recommend checking out the jobs page: https://www.redhat.com/en/jobs

    Cheers,
    Mike
    Last edited by mroche; 18 July 2021, 10:01 PM.

    Leave a comment:


  • Charlie68
    replied
    Originally posted by Vasant1234 View Post

    Yes, they wasted a lot of time and money on their Linux desktop dream. Now that they have scaled back their desktop efforts, they are doing financially better.
    In my opinion they did it very badly, they took a lot of effort to make the Ubuntu desktop and phone dream fail and they succeeded.

    Leave a comment:


  • CommunityMember
    replied
    Originally posted by Charlie68 View Post
    ... Canonical is the only one to have had financial problems in recent years. ...
    They learned a very hard lesson that trying to go their own way (unity and touch) was not going to be a reliable path to profitability.

    .... however happy that Canonical is starting to work too.
    Now that they have focused on what is making them money (professional support), and that looks to drive long term profitability, maybe this is the year the company goes public.

    Leave a comment:


  • Vasant1234
    replied
    Originally posted by Charlie68 View Post
    In fact, of the three best known historical Linux software companies (Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical), Canonical is the only one to have had financial problems in recent years.
    Yes, they wasted a lot of time and money on their Linux desktop dream. Now that they have scaled back their desktop efforts, they are doing financially better.

    Leave a comment:


  • Klassic Six
    replied
    I believe that Canonical has to do something similar to System76's COSMIC for future releases. Technically, they both using GNOME Extensions, but usability and functionality in COSMIC is not comparable.

    Leave a comment:


  • Klassic Six
    replied
    Originally posted by ElectricPrism View Post
    I'm not sure how it is in the UK, but in the US -- Smart Companies purposely ensure their profits are close to $0 or negative to avoid paying taxes.

    Take for example Starbucks in their earlier years consistently paid $0 is in taxes, the money they would have paid their made sure to reinvest into the company opening new locations to ensure a deficit.
    Lol, that's disgusting but true. Amazon/Bezos is a good example.

    Leave a comment:


  • Charlie68
    replied
    In fact, of the three best known historical Linux software companies (Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical), Canonical is the only one to have had financial problems in recent years.
    To my knowledge Red Hat and SUSE are doing very well, however happy that Canonical is starting to work too.

    Leave a comment:


  • Awesomeness
    replied
    Originally posted by JellyBrain View Post
    Excellent to hear them having profits again.
    Why? It's not like they actually contribute much to open source. The most prominent contributions are from a single part-time Gnome developer.

    Leave a comment:

Working...
X