Canonical Is Still Operating At A Significant Loss

[bkor]

Interesting how a majority is assuming they aren't aware of what they're doing. The revenue went up, but costs went up much higher. Hard to see why this is. But because there's not much additional cost per added copy of Ubuntu, I assume it will either be costs related to the revenue (e.g. support people, etc) or it'll be developers and so on. Though could also be sales/marketing stuff (though assume it would be in "cost of sales"). In any case, it seems it is mostly due to the additional cost.

Seeing 57 MUSD in 2012, 66 MUSD in 2013. A nice 15% increase in revenue.

But cost wise, the cost of sales doubled, administrative expenses went from 65 MUSD to 82 MUSD. I assume this is investments into their mobile strategy.

If you compare these numbers to whatever Android costed (up to 4.0) vs the amount of profit Google is achieving from Android, I don't really see why people are so negative.

I don't like Mir, I prefer Wayland/systemd and so on. But no need for negativity. If they kept the 2012 cost base (but with the increase in 2013 cost of sale), then I'm guessing they could be making a profit in 2014 if they just did the same thing. Instead they're aiming higher. Why not!!

[dee.]

By the way, by your deffinition, Chrome is spyware. Android is spyware. Google search is spyware.

Well duh. Yeah they are, and? Is that a good excuse for anything these days? "Google does it too"? Is that really where you want to derive your moral guidelines from?

[Delgarde]

I'm always AMAZED by the APATHY of the moderators on this forum.

This forum has moderators?

[Guest]

Well duh. Yeah they are, and? Is that a good excuse for anything these days? "Google does it too"? Is that really where you want to derive your moral guidelines from?

I could be wrong, but isn't spyware something you aren't aware of harvesting your data? If so, I'm sure Google and Canonical both have a user agreement thing you "have" to read before using the software, and agree to willingly upon that software's usage?

[moilami]

This forum has moderators?

Rather good ones.

[profoundWHALE]

Nobody is denying they did some good. Although, you are overblowing it a bit, at least in my country it hadn't had that much of an effect: public administration still uses Windows, in some cases even pirated one (really). Most of the traction was done by people convincing their friends to give a try, around here. I don't know in other contexts, though.

If it weren't for X11, Linux wouldn't have been usable at all all this years, but maybe it's obsolete by now. Nobody denies the good Canonical did (well, some do, but I don't think arguing with them will make them change their minds anyway), but that doesn't mean everything they do is good.

I agree

I'm not sure if it's apathy or lack of time. When I see a spambot it also takes several hours until they ban them and delete the posts. I usually ignore that kind of stupid post. Except when is BO$$, I kind of like to answer his stupid claims.

I don't know what that guy's problem is, he needs to chill.

Well duh. Yeah they are, and? Is that a good excuse for anything these days? "Google does it too"? Is that really where you want to derive your moral guidelines from?

I think that somehow you completely missed his point.

This forum has moderators?

This made me chuckle.

[philip550c]

Ubuntu Server is a great OS. And is much more important to cannonical and the world than their desktop. I think many users dont use the server or realize how much more important it is but thats got to be their main product.

[berarma]

My thoughts

I installed Ubuntu on some computers but now I'm back to Debian on all of them. You don't need to be a programmer to use Debian but you need to be a programmer to fix all of the fatal bugs in Ubuntu.

As of lately Canonical hasn't produced anything useful, they started by polishing Debian, now they're just breaking it badly. They haven't produced anything valuable for the software ecosystem, all their solutions have become or were already inferior to other ones. The only advantage I see on what they're doing, spending so much money to make the projects their own, is that they keep all the rights, but that won't be profitable unless they succeed like Google or Apple.

PPAs are bad. Most Ubuntu's users problems have to do with PPAs. Even Debian, a distribution with a generally more savvy user base, refuses them.

They did many things right some time ago, that's just not the case for me anymore.

[brosis]

Re: distros with "PPA"

Arch Linux has the AUR, Arch User Repository, which is extremely active. https://aur.archlinux.org/

AUR is not PPA. AUR is similar to ports.

[profoundWHALE]

I installed Ubuntu on some computers but now I'm back to Debian on all of them. You don't need to be a programmer to use Debian but you need to be a programmer to fix all of the fatal bugs in Ubuntu.

PPAs are bad. Most Ubuntu's users problems have to do with PPAs. Even Debian, a distribution with a generally more savvy user base, refuses them.

They did many things right some time ago, that's just not the case for me anymore.

Why do you think they started forking a bunch of stuff and use their own ppas? And how is a tech savvy person messing up something as user friendly as Ubuntu?

Edit: Don't think that I don't know how easy it is to screw up the system using INCOMPATIBLE PPAS. I know, believe me.