Futurile

If you have a commercial subscription service for Ubuntu how do we prioritise fixing bugs? This was at the heart of a conversation I had with a customer recently.

For business users Ubuntu’s advantage is often flexibility. Adding another system to the data centre is simply a matter of starting it up. This contrasts with proprietary UNIX and the other commercial Linux vendors where license management creates deployment friction.

Nonetheless, it’s hardly “free” if you can’t use the software. And Ubuntu, like all software, has bugs and issues – particularly when you’re using it in a complex environment. To resolve these issues professional users need access to expertise when there’s an issue.

In the proprietary world the license agreement commonly includes support so the customer presents the bug and they should get a resolution.

Ubuntu’s free nature presents a more nuanced picture. Every Ubuntu user is able (and encouraged) to put bugs into Launchpad. Many of these bugs will be resolved by Ubuntu community developers or Canonical’s developers as we work on the next release of Ubuntu.

Nonetheless, any individual bug is a needle in a haystack. Ubuntu receives vast numbers of bugs from our user-base so there’s no guarantee that any individual bug will get a response or a resolution. There’s inherently no prioritisation of one user over another as all members of the Open Source community are equal. Additionally, bugs are generally resolved in the version of Ubuntu under development rather than the one that the problem is reported against. The need for certainty of response and resolution is the value of a formal relationship with Canonical.

A service agreement means that the customers bugs are guaranteed a response, that the issue will be dealt with by an Ubuntu expert and that the issue will be prioritised. For Canonical engineers customer bugs are prioritised over general development work and are split into categories by urgency.

Initially when the customer presents the case the GSS (Global Support & Services) team triage it and where possible come up with an immediate workaround. If the bug requires code development then it is escalated to the appropriate engineering group. This is where a resolution for the version of Ubuntu that the customer is using is created. This is generally delivered to the customer as a custom package for them to use immediately. The resolution is then integrated into the version of Ubuntu under development so that there won’t be a regression when the customer upgrades to the next release.

So flexibility is the Ubuntu advantage, and the advantage of working with Canonical is there’s a canonical resource for Ubuntu expertise.

This week I’ve been in China talking about Ubuntu 10.04 and learning how Ubuntu is used. I’ve learned alot and it’s been a great opportunity to encourage businesses and partners to extend their use of Open Source (Ubuntu in particular!). I’ve really enjoyed this trip and it’s been fantastic to meet so many new people.

Like everyone else I’ve been struck by the energy in China. Everything from the traffic to the rate of technology change is done at full pace. China is a country that is growing up rapidly, across the board there’s great confidence and a total focus on how to grow both in domestic markets and in global trade.

It’s a country with significant divides between the urban and rural communities. One project we’ve been working on is to provide a PC that can be used in rural communities and education. The objective is to provide a platform for those groups to improve their lives, careers and education. The team has done a fantastic job and it’s great to see Ubuntu being part of this project.

I’ve come away convinced that Open Source is an ideal solution for many of the different challenges. Of course it’s cheaper than proprietary solutions and that has significant impact. But, more importantly Open Source and Ubuntu can deliver tailored solutions from the desktop through to the server and into the Cloud. This ability to fit into many niches as a flexible solution and help drive innovation is a key advantage for Ubuntu users.

I’d like to thank Richard, ZengPeng and Juergen for showing me around and Fanny Yeh for helping me navigate the region (particularly with the volcanic clouds!)

Wavesat is using the Bazaar version control system for commercial development making it simpler and easier for their teams to collaborate around the world. It’s a great example of Open Source delivering cost savings and innovation to business users. We’ve recently put up a case study that gives more details.

Bazaar (Bzr) is a distributed version control system. It’s an essential tool for developers: there’s a great guide to revision control on betterexplained.com. When people state that there’s no innovation in Open Source, distributed revision control is one of the examples that counters this.

Bazaar is particularly well suited to distributed development because the concept is built-in right from the start. Perhaps it’s testament to the open source development process which is by its nature distributed. For a business like Wavesat that has developers based in different locations this means they can be more efficient.

Canonical sponsors the development of Bazaar because distributed revision control is critical in Open Source development. But, it’s also something that companies can benefit from so we provide commercial services for Bazaar. This consists of helping organisations migrate, along with providing support and training. For organisations with an existing version control system such as CVS or Perforce we help with the migration to a new work-flow using Bazaar on Linux (Ubuntu, RHEL, SLES) or a legacy operating system such as Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac. Check out the case study for more information.

The Eclipse team released a survey that shows Linux is the most popular deployment platform, outstripping Microsoft Windows. Ubuntu is the second most popular Linux deployment platform, just behind Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). On the development side the Linux desktop shows strong growth, with 27% of developers using it.

The survey itself had over 1,300 participants from a range of different organisations, you can get the full results from their site. Eclipse is popular with Java developers or developers not strongly tied to Microsoft technologies, so the survey gives good insight into their behaviour.

From the survey Linux is used by 27% of developers as their desktop environment, up from 20% in 2007. This is very strong growth, and shows that Linux continues to expand its reach on the desktop. Ubuntu is the lead distribution with 14.5% of users, RHEL/Fedora is next on 4.7% and then SUSE/Novell on 3.2%. Windows is still the largest platform but has lost 10% market share; it was 74% in 2007 and has now dropped to 64% in the 2009 survey.

The survey also asked what platform was used for deployment. There’s a dramatic shift from previous surveys as Linux now represents the majority on 43% and Microsoft Windows 41%. The breakdown is also interesting. RHEL/Fedora is the lead distribution with 13.1%, Ubuntu comes second with 12.0% and SUSE/Novell is used by 5.3% for deployments.

The desktop Linux trend is really good news as it’s another strong data point showing that Linux is growing on the desktop. Developers are power users who tweak and play with their environment, so if they’re satisfied with Ubuntu then it bodes well for other broader users.

For Ubuntu the deployment platform data is also good news as it shows continuing growth for the server. By it’s nature the server isn’t as flashy as the desktop, it’s strengths and capabilities are more subtle. It’s great to see that developers are appreciating that the server edition is capable of delivering the full range of enterprise workloads, including Java application serving. A lot of work has been put into making LAMP and Tomcat easy to install and maintain, to my mind this survey demonstrates that the work is paying off – we’re helping users deploy Java more simply.

If you’re interested in more analysis of the survey then Ian Skerret’s blog post is a good place to start. And for some more commentary on the Ubuntu element see Nick Barcet’s post.